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Due to the influence of the Little Ice Age, the northwest suffered from famine for years in the late Ming Dynasty, and the endless wars made Guanzhong extremely devastated.
But strangely enough, since the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the abnormal climate has been slowly improving, and the past two years can even be considered a year of good weather and good harvests.
In order to fight against the Qin Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty attached great importance to the people's livelihood during its rule. Some policies introduced by Dorgon that were conducive to the restoration of people's livelihood are still in use by the Qin Dynasty.
He Luo, who was guarding Guanzhong at the time, was shocked to hear that Lekedehun was defeated and hurriedly abandoned Guanzhong. During the Qin Dynasty's occupation of Guanzhong, no large-scale war broke out. In this way, Guanzhong actually experienced a small recovery process of one and a half years.
After Song Xiance was appointed governor of Guanzhong, he quickly recruited the remaining troops of the Dashun Army and stabilized Guanzhong. The court also transferred two batches of grain from Sichuan to provide relief.
Qin Mu saw along the way that although the people were still in rags and looked pale, at least they were no longer exchanging their children for food or starving to death everywhere.
Society was also very stable. After all, after so many years of famine and war, people's minds were at peace, and the Qin Dynasty's disaster relief efforts were relatively large, so naturally there would not be many people willing to cause chaos.
On the way to Chang'an, the Western Capital, Qin Mu asked about Shaanxi affairs. When Song Xiance talked about the population problem, he said with deep emotion: "In the sixth year of Wanli, excluding the large number of hidden households, the population of Shaanxi Province was 4,502,067. If the hidden households are included, I estimate that the population of Shaanxi at that time was at least 5.5 million. But after these years of famine and war, the population loss is extremely serious.
When I was the governor of Guanzhong, the first thing I did was to re-count the population, establish household registration, and divide the land. Now that the counties have basically completed the census, the total population remaining in Shaanxi is less than 1.3 million. Compared with the Wanli period, four out of five have been reduced! "
After Qin Mu heard this, he felt deeply moved!
This is a shocking number. If there were 5.5 million people in Shaanxi in the sixth year of the Wanli reign, then including the population born in the past few decades, the death toll in Shaanxi alone at the end of the Ming Dynasty was nearly 5 million, which is actually equivalent to the death of five out of six people.
You have to know that the total death toll in the entire World War II was only 40 to 50 million. You can see what a tragic scene this set of figures contains.
Qin Mu sighed from the bottom of his heart: "Pity the people of this world, we have so many worries!"
"King Qin, due to the sparse population, the people cannot cultivate so much. Most of the land in the entire Shaanxi Province is now abandoned, which is not conducive to controlling the northwest. I suggest that people be relocated from the south of the Yangtze River to fill Guanzhong."
Nanjing now has a population of two million, and cities like Suzhou also have a population of one million. However, Shaanxi Province alone has only 1.3 million people, which is really too sparsely populated. Some places may be uninhabited for dozens of miles.
The stability of the northwest depends largely on Guanzhong, not only in terms of manpower and soldiers, but also in terms of food and grass supplies. Guanzhong plays an irreplaceable role. It is no wonder that Song Xiance was eager to relocate people to enrich Guanzhong.
"I will discuss the matter of relocating the people after I return to Nanjing."
The population was not only reduced in Guanzhong, but also in the entire northern seven provinces. More than 50% of the population died, and many places in the Central Plains were also uninhabited for dozens of miles. This was not much different from the scene described by Cao Cao at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty: "Bone bones were exposed in the wild, and no roosters crowed for a thousand miles."
Qin Mu thought for a moment and said, "The government should encourage the people to have more children. For each child born, a certain amount of land can be allocated to the households. If the people are unable to raise the child, the government will take on the responsibility of raising the child and distribute food rations according to the number of newborns."
"King Qin, it is feasible for local government to distribute food rations to newborns. However, it is not appropriate to allocate land to newborns. The land allocated to each household is already the limit for them to cultivate. If more land is allocated, they will not be able to cultivate it, and it will only increase their tax burden."
Qin Mu said: "This can be adjusted. The land newly allocated to the newborn can be tax-free for ten or fifteen years."
This is feasible. The land is lying idle anyway. If we distribute it to the people sooner, they might be encouraged to cultivate it more. Thinking of this, Song Xiance no longer objected.
Qin Mu asked Li Dingguo about the situation in Hexi. Li Dingguo replied, "King Qin, there are too few troops in Hexi at present. Although the areas west of Liangzhou have voluntarily submitted to Qin, there are only two or three hundred soldiers stationed in cities such as Ganzhou. We must increase the troops as soon as possible. Otherwise, if there is a change in Hexi, this amount of troops will not be enough to control the situation."
After hearing this, Qin Mu nodded and urgently discussed the issue of troop deployment with Sima An and others. It was actually not difficult to deploy troops. The key was supply.
Qin Mu, Song Xiance and others discussed as they moved forward. When they arrived at Chang'an, the Western Capital, all the soldiers and civilians in the city came out to welcome them and stood on both sides of the road for several miles. The atmosphere was quite warm.
From a distance, the walls of Chang'an are tall and majestic. After the Ming Dynasty unified the country, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered all prefectures and counties to build cities. Zhu Yuanzhang believed that "among all the mountains and rivers in the world, only the Qinzhong area is known to be the most rugged and solid." He also sent the crown prince Zhu Biao to Qin, intending to build the capital in Guanzhong. It was during this boom of city building that Xi'an was expanded on the basis of the old city of the Tang Dynasty under the leadership of the governor Pu Ying.
After the expansion, the city wall is 40 feet high, 40 to 50 feet wide at the top, and 50 to 6 meters wide at the bottom. There is a watchtower built every 40 feet on the city wall, protruding outside the city wall. There are a total of 98 watchtowers.
There are 11 horse paths in the city. There are corner towers protruding from the four corners of the city wall. On the corner towers are taller corner towers than the enemy towers. There are battlements on the outer side of the city wall, also known as battlements, with a total of 5,984 battlements.
The original city wall was made entirely of loess, with the bottom layer made of a mixture of soil, lime and glutinous rice juice, making it extremely hard. Later, the inner and outer walls and the top of the entire city wall were built with blue bricks.
After more than 200 years of wind and rain and the baptism of war in the late Ming Dynasty, the whole city still stands tall and majestic, blending seamlessly with the majestic northwest land. The arrival of Qin Mu's carriage added a touch of bright color to the disaster-stricken Guanzhong land.
Over the years, Guanzhong has suffered from famine and war, and a general mood of depression and sadness prevails among the people.
Qin Mu led the ministers of the six ministries to come, with the rumbling of the carriage and the fluttering of the flags. The soldiers and horses who protected him were dressed in black and black armor, their swords and spears were like snow, and their iron hooves clanged, shaking the 800-li Qinchuan Plain. The biting wind blew in his face;
This made the people in Guanzhong feel as if they saw the iron army of the Qin Dynasty that once swept across the world, returning to the majestic land of Guanzhong after traveling through thousands of years.
This scene lifted the morale of the tragic people in Guanzhong, and the fierce power of the Qin Dynasty made the white-haired old men shed tears.
All the traces of the Qin Dynasty in the Three Qins were suddenly awakened. The majestic Qinling Mountains were filled with wind and clouds. The 800-li Qinchuan was filled with rolling waves.
On the top of Mount Li, the incomparably tall figure, tall enough to make people bow their heads and look up for thousands of years, seems to be holding a sword and pointing to the east. His huge black sleeves spread out, covering the sky and the sun, sweeping across the universe.
That was the King of Qin, who pacified the world, brought about the unity of the universe, made the writing system and the wheel gauge uniform, and created a unified situation in China that lasted for 2,000 years.
Among the people who came to welcome the emperor, someone murmured to himself, "Great Qin... Great Qin is back!" This murmur instantly activated the Qin gene that had been passed down in people's blood. Listen, the mighty old Qin was roaring in the west wind!
"Da Qin is back!"
"Da Qin is back!"
"King Qin!"
"King Qin!"
Wave after wave of shouts came from the mouths of the people who came to welcome the emperor. The sound grew louder and louder, reaching up to the sky and echoing in all directions.
The west wind was howling, the war horses were neighing, Qin Mu, wearing a black robe embroidered with golden dragons, with a sword hanging from his waist, stood under the canopy of the chariot shaft;
Amid the rumbling of the wheels, Qin Mu shouted to the people lying on the ground: "The King of Qin swept the country, looking like a tiger! He waved his sword to cut through the clouds, and all the princes came to the west.
My fellow countrymen in Guanzhong, I know that you have experienced too much suffering and have too much pain and tears in your hearts.
However, we must never forget that we are standing on the ancient land of the Three Qins; our ancestors set out from here, swept across the world, and created a unified China for two thousand years, which is difficult to match by the countless achievements of later generations.
We should hold a heart of honor, stand up firmly from the suffering, straighten our backs, let the strong and powerful spirit of the Qin Dynasty blow across the ancient land of Sanqin again, and let the heroic spirits of our ancestors see with pleasure that we have not been defeated by suffering. Fellow villagers, stand up! Stand up from the suffering! "
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.(To be continued..)
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