novelSusiti Chapter 10 Strong Trunk and Weak Branches
Chapter 10 Strong Trunk and Weak Branches
Li Sheng stood on the periphery of the crowd for a while, then, having made up his mind, he stopped lingering and pushed his way forward.
He withdrew again after a short while.
He found out about the recruitment situation here. In addition to conscripting able-bodied men to protect the territory and the people, the main purpose of recruiting soldiers here was to follow the county magistrate Sun Jian and Sun Wentai on a campaign to suppress the Yellow Turbans in Yingchuan.
The former received their weapons and rations from the county government, which was considered an obligation to defend the territory.
The latter rewarded more generously. Those who accompanied the army on campaigns received a settlement allowance of one thousand coins per person, plus a monthly military pay of five hundred coins. Additional rewards were given for meritorious service. Those who could capture enemy generals and flags, or be the first to scale a city wall, were even more likely to be promoted to official rank and general.
Li Sheng also learned that several hundred people have already been recruited, and they will undergo half a month of military training to select the best and worst and classify them.
Looking at the people who came to sign up for the army, Li Sheng truly realized the decline of the Han Dynasty.
As far as he knows, there was a transition from conscription to recruitment during the Eastern and Western Han dynasties.
During the Western Han Dynasty, the conscription system relied on a stable population of registered households, also known as the "good families" of the Han Dynasty. The quality of the soldiers was relatively balanced and stable, which is why Emperor Wu of Han was able to achieve the remarkable feat of "one Han soldier being worth five Hu soldiers".
The soldiers recruited by the Eastern Han Dynasty were highly differentiated, including both elite professional soldiers and a large number of unemployed people, with varying levels of competence.
The elite professional soldiers naturally came from the descendants of military families or the sons of local powerful families, while the unemployed included a variety of people, such as bankrupt farmers or even criminals.
No wonder the Eastern Han government suffered repeated defeats in its foreign wars.
Li Sheng thought to himself.
After the Eastern Han Dynasty adopted a conscription system, the army's overall decline in quality, loyalty, and strategic capabilities directly led to repeated setbacks and even disastrous defeats on the battlefield.
In the long run, the Western Qiang Rebellion in the Eastern Han Dynasty lasted for more than a century. Faced with the disorganized Qiang people, the central army performed poorly, and even famous generals fought 180 battles in a year before barely winning, costing hundreds of billions of coins. In the more recent case, take the campaign against the Xianbei in the sixth year of Xiping (177 AD) as an example. Emperor Ling of Han sent three armies, each with 10,000 cavalry, to attack the Xianbei. The result was a disastrous defeat, with 70-80% of the army killed in battle.
However, none of these factors were fatal to the Eastern Han Dynasty, because a large empire is often not destroyed by external threats, but rather by internal struggles, and the conscription system was one of the reasons for this.
Because people joined the army for personal gain, these soldiers lacked loyalty to the country. They obeyed whoever paid them, causing the army to gradually become the private armies of local officials, thus laying the groundwork for warlordism at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Seeing the bustling scene at the recruitment center, Li Sheng shook his head slightly.
"The Eastern Han Dynasty is doomed to perish sooner or later!"
Having gained a better understanding of the current situation, Li Sheng turned around and quickened his pace.
He had to go back to the village to see what useful information Li Feng and his group had gathered.
……
Li Sheng left the county town and stepped onto the main road outside the town, his steps never stopping.
The sky grew increasingly gloomy, with leaden-gray clouds hanging low, and a damp, earthy smell permeating the air.
Seeing that it was about to rain again, Li Sheng glanced to the side and saw many farmers working hard on the ridges of the fields, bending over and busy in the fields, occasionally looking up at the sky and cursing the damn weather.
Spring plowing must not be delayed.
If you miss a day, you'll lose a bushel of grain during the autumn harvest.
If we miss a ten-day period, we'll have to tighten our belts next year, and some people might even starve.
Of course, these flat, high-quality fields outside the city do not belong to them, or rather, they once belonged to them. Now they all belong to the Chen family in the county town, and the people who cultivate the land are all their tenants.
They had to hand over 60% of all the produce from the land to the master, and the rest was theirs.
Seeing the villagers working so hard, Li Sheng lowered his eyes, quickened his pace, and soon returned to the village. The others were already waiting for him at his home.
As soon as Li Sheng entered, everyone else stood up.
"Brother Sheng, you're back."
Li Sheng nodded and closed the door behind him.
"Tell me first, what have you found out?"
Li Feng was the first to speak.
"Brother Sheng, Li Shi and I took a walk around the village today and asked several familiar households."
He paused, then licked his slightly chapped lips.
"Many villagers believe in the Taiping Dao, but when it comes to starting an uprising... most people are afraid."
"Oh? Tell me more."
Li Sheng asked.
"I asked several familiar villages, and they all know that the talisman masters of the Taiping Dao are not bad people, but they dare not get involved with the Taiping Dao right now, for fear that the government will implicate them."
As soon as Li Feng said this, the other brothers agreed, saying that they had asked several other families and they all had the same attitude.
Li Sheng nodded slightly.
It is understandable that the people reacted this way. As small farmers, they are naturally inclined to be conservative, afraid of change, and afraid of getting into trouble.
"It seems that not being blindly optimistic about the Yellow Turban Rebellion was the right thing to do; if this is the attitude in our own village, then we can only imagine what it's like in other places."
For the common people to rise up and revolt, besides their belief in a peaceful and prosperous world, the decisive factor was that they simply couldn't survive.
At this moment, Li Shi took over the conversation, his voice muffled.
"Brother Sheng, you don't know, people from the village came today?"
"Hmm? Who's here?"
"Village elders and minor officials."
When Li Shi uttered those two words, his tone was filled with a deep-seated disgust, as if he had chewed on a fly.
"They said they wanted to collect money and grain to prepare for the Yellow Turban Rebellion, repair the city's defenses, and recruit local militia."
Liu Lu chimed in from the side, his voice becoming shrill.
"What preparations for defending against the Yellow Turban rebels? The rebels haven't even arrived yet, and they're already looting!"
Zhao Hu was young and impatient; his fists clenched so tightly they cracked.
"Every household has to pay money! Grain! And straw! They say the army horses need to eat, and there's not enough fodder."
Everyone's face showed hatred when these things were mentioned.
"And what else?" Li Feng sneered, "The forced donations. They're supposed to be voluntary, but the village elders come door-to-door, demanding money. Who dares not pay?"
Li Sheng frowned slightly, but did not interrupt, and listened quietly.
"Brother Sheng, let me give you a number."
Li Feng held up three fingers.
"This time alone, each household will have to pay at least three hundred coins, plus three bushels of grain, plus two bundles of straw."
"Three hundred coins?"
Li Sheng's eyes darkened.
He quickly calculated in his mind what this number meant.
According to the ideal level described in the "Treatise on Food and Commodities" in the Book of Han, "one man with five people can cultivate 100 mu of land." If one cultivates 100 mu of land and the yield is 1.5 shi per mu, the annual income would be 150 shi of millet. After deducting consumption and taxes, and considering the fluctuations in grain prices, the annual monetary income of a family of five would be roughly between 1350 and 3000 coins.
Three hundred coins were enough for an average family to eat salt for more than half a year.
Not to mention that with the intensification of land consolidation, many families own far less than 100 acres of land!