Chapter 336: Who Needs Self-Reflection?

"Thousand Years, does this place meet with your approval?"

The speaker was Li Jizhou, the seal-holding eunuch of the Directorate of Divine Palace. Ever since Zhu Cilang had taken control of Nanjing, the Xiaoling Mausoleum had been placed under the authority of the Directorate of Divine Palace. Li Jizhou had also been ordered to recruit 1,400 men from the former Xiaoling Guard military households, and with the addition of 200 Palace Purification troops, they formed a new mausoleum-defense brigade, commanded by Xu Jingmi, a Chiliarch of the Marshal's Office who had come up through the Palace Purification firelock eunuchs.

The mausoleum-defense troops were no longer rotational conscripts but paid recruits. In principle, however, they would not be sent to the front; they only had to put in their years and receive land. Their training was not especially strict either — no "697" schedule — and their pay was fifty percent higher than that of the other new armies. By any measure, the treatment was extremely generous!

As for the original Xiaoling Guard military households, they had all been released from military registration and become ordinary civilian households. The Xiaoling Guard's land could not be distributed to them, but they were allowed to continue renting the land that had originally belonged to the Xiaoling Guard — which in fact greatly improved their lives!

Because the land rent for renting military-farm garrison land was very low. Take the first-rate paddy fields under the Xiaoling Guard's jurisdiction, for example: the annual rent for one mu of paddy field was only seven dou of rice.

And the annual rice yield of one mu of first-rate paddy field could never be less than three shi. Three shi with seven dou paid as rent — even after deducting all manner of costs, one mu of land still yielded a net profit of two shi. If a household rented ten mu, it could net twenty shi a year. At Nanjing rice prices, after deducting the grain a family needed for its own consumption, that still came to an income of 30 taels of silver.

If they also planted a mu or two of vegetable fields and raised a few livestock and poultry, life would be quite comfortable!

Of course, this rent ratio of three to seven dou per mu was actually a great increase over the rents previously collected on military farms and official fields!

In the past, the Ming's total land-tax revenue had included the rent from official fields! Including that rent, even in the Hongwu era, when Ming land-tax collection was at its highest, it was only 33 million shi — averaged over the number of private and official fields at the time, roughly one dou per mu.

By the late Ming, the amount of registered land had reached more than 700 million mu, a huge increase over the Hongwu era, yet land-tax revenue was only a little over 20 million shi, and sometimes even that could not be collected in full!

At the same time, the common people felt their burdens were crushing, to the point of rebellion. The reason, of course, was that the state had lost direct control over land and population, and could only beg from the scholar-officials!

Not only did the land tax depend on the charity of the scholar-officials, but even the rents from military farms and official fields had to pass through the hands of the gentry. However little the state collected, it had nothing to do with the peasants who actually tilled the land.

After Zhu Cilang confiscated the estates of the Nanjing nobility and hereditary military officers, and seized the guard posts they had controlled for generations, he designated all the land thus obtained — official fields, private fields, concealed fields, and military fields alike — as military-farm land, assigned it to the military-farm guards, and then had the farm stations under those guards sign contracts directly with the tenant farmers who worked the land.

In the territories of Yingtian, Taiping Prefecture, Zhenjiang Prefecture, Chuzhou, and Yangzhou Prefecture, where military farms, noble estates, and salt-merchant landholdings were concentrated, by the end of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, 10 million mu of land had already been brought under "direct military-farm administration," and more than 5 million mu had been distributed to the middle- and lower-ranking officers and men of the New Army of Overcoming Hardship.

Those 10 million mu alone could yield more than 6 million shi of rent each year (the land in this region was of relatively good quality). After deducting "management fees," the rice that could be delivered to the military-farm guard granaries of the Grand Marshal's Office still exceeded 5 million shi.

If 40 million of the 50 million mu not yet brought in hand (including the military farms and official fields that had been sorted out) could all be contracted — most of the remainder would have to be distributed — then the revenue would reach 20 million shi. Even after deducting twenty percent in "fees," 16 million shi would still enter the granaries.

The official fields, military farms, and concealed fields in the entire southeast (not even counting Shandong and Henan, which were frontline provinces) could never amount to less than 100 million mu. If all of it could be brought in hand, there would be no need to collect any land tax at all — the rent alone would come to 40 million shi!

And the farmland of the entire Ming realm, which on the books amounted to more than 700 million mu, in reality could not be less than one billion mu. Of that, official fields and military farms, if not 300 million mu, were no less than 200 million!

With so much land, the state could only collect a little over 20 million shi in taxes — and because of a few million taels in surcharges, the people were driven to destitution and the whole realm to rebellion. Whose fault was that, in the end?

The time had come to lay this matter out plainly and speak of it clearly.

"Thousand Years, do you not find this place a little too crude?" Li Jizhou, seeing that Zhu Cilang had sunk into thought, raised his voice again. "Should we not expand and improve it properly?"

"Expand it further?" Zhu Cilang started, then turned to look at Li Jizhou. "It is only a Palace of Self-Reflection. How grand and magnificent do you intend to make it?"

Li Jizhou frowned and was about to continue his persuasion when he saw two mounted Palace Purification riders approaching side by side. From a distance they were already shouting: "His Majesty has arrived! Make ready to receive him at once!"

The officials and officers waiting quietly in the courtyard of the Palace of Self-Reflection immediately stirred into motion, forming ranks by division. The civil officials were led by Chief Grand Secretary Wei Zaode, and the military officers by Wu Xiang, Guard Commander of the Military Administration Guard of the Grand Marshal's Office, as together they walked out toward the palace gate.

Zhu Cilang glanced back at Li Jizhou. "How are the preparations over at the old Xiaoling Guard town?"

Li Jizhou replied, "Everything is arranged. There is enough to house the officials accompanying His Majesty. In addition, Linggu Temple has been tidied up as well, and can also lodge quite a number of people."

"And the Offering Hall?" Zhu Cilang asked again.

"It has already been renovated."

"Good!" Zhu Cilang nodded. "Come, let us go receive His Majesty."

At that moment, outside the Dismounting Arch, all carriages and horses had come to a halt. Under the gaze of the assembled crowd, the Chongzhen Emperor nimbly swung himself down from the saddle. Though he had been "indulging in female charms" these past months, he had not neglected exercise and rest — he still dreamed of one day personally leading a great army north to retake Yanjing! Naturally he could not afford to let his riding and archery skills go to waste. With ample sleep and far fewer vexations weighing on him, this dissipated, wine-and-women-besotted ruler had, over the months, actually come to look radiant and full of vigor, several years younger in appearance, and considerably more robust as well.

Once dismounted, Chongzhen did not wait for Zhu Cilang to come out and greet him. With vigorous strides, and followed by the thirty-three princes and a crowd of palace eunuchs, palace ladies, consorts, and princesses, he strode forward, heading straight for the Palace of Self-Reflection. He knew there was a traveling palace outside the Dismounting Arch where emperors and officials rested and changed clothes when paying respects at the Xiaoling Mausoleum, but he did not know that it had been repaired, expanded, and named the "Palace of Self-Reflection." He walked swiftly, leading a crowd of eunuchs and palace ladies in front, and after a short while arrived outside the Palace of Self-Reflection. Officials who had arrived early were already coming out, kneeling and kowtowing to him in disorder.

Only then did the Chongzhen Emperor stop. As he happened to raise his head, his eyes fell directly on the plaque reading "Palace of Self-Reflection," inscribed in Zhu Cilang's own hand — and his expression instantly changed dramatically!

(End of Chapter)