Song Jun
In 1234, the "Duanping into Luo" incident occurred, and Song Meng went to war in an all-out way. However, unlike other countries in the world, although the Southern Song Dynasty was in a quiet corner, it blocked the 45th year of the Mongolian Yuan (ending at the Battle of Yashan in 1279), creating a miracle in the world's military history. For a long time, Jia Rudao was regarded as the main reason for the demise of the Southern Song Dynasty, and Jia Rudao also became the representative of the traitorous ministers of the Southern Song Dynasty, but through the study of the policies of Jia Rudao's ruling period, it was found that perhaps history was not simple, and Jia Rudao actually delayed the demise of the Southern Song Dynasty.
Jia Xiangdao
First, the financial situation of the Southern Song Dynasty
Whether ancient or modern, fighting a war is actually fighting the economy, and if the country can meet the costs of war, war can continue. But before the Song and Mongols went to war, the Southern Song Dynasty's finances were on the verge of collapse.
In 1206, the Southern Song army under the command of the powerful minister Han Nong [tuō] carried out the Kaixi Northern Expedition, which failed, and all the materials and wealth hoarded in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty were lost. In 1208, the Song and Jin dynasties agreed to make peace, and the southern Song Dynasty increased the number of coins to the Jin Dynasty to 300,000 taels of silver and 300,000 silk, and paid 3 million taels of silver for the war.
In addition, the traditional three-redundancy problem of the Song Dynasty also aggravated the financial burden. Let's start with redundant troops. During the Song Dynasty, the regular army of the Southern Song Dynasty was maintained at about 700,000 people, plus the local van army, the total strength exceeded one million, and the annual need for military food was 7 million stones. In the heyday of the Southern Song Dynasty, the tax revenue of the Southern Song Dynasty was only more than 6 million stones; during the Lizong period, the territory shrank, so the tax revenue was bound to decrease. Therefore, the Song Dynasty simply could not meet the needs of military salaries. Therefore, the Southern Song Dynasty poet Wang Mai said that "the cost of soldiers is heavy" and "the beetle of soldiers is the deepest". The same is true of bureaucracy. The Southern Song Dynasty inherited the official policy of the Northern Song Dynasty, shading, Tui En, and Keju, creating a large number of officials who only received wages and did not work. The Southern Song Dynasty minister and historian Li Xin said that in 1213, the number of officials below the Seven Pins of the Southern Song Dynasty had reached more than 38,000. In addition to the first two expenses, the southern Song Dynasty royal expenses and disaster relief expenses are also major items.
In order to save the financial crisis, the Southern Song Dynasty authorities could only kill chickens and eggs, increase revenue by levying land taxes, commercial taxes, implementing monopoly, and issuing multiple payments (officially called "楮幣"), which made the Southern Song Dynasty's finances even more collapsed.
Song Dynasty Jiaozi
Second, Jia Xiangdao and the situation at that time
Jia Xiangdao, a native of Taizhou, Zhejiang, whose father was an envoy to Jinghu Lake, Jia Xiangdao entered the shi with shade, and in the early days could only be a petty official in charge of the granary, but Jia Xiangdao's sister was a concubine of Song Lizong, so Jia Xiangdao, as an uncle, began to move in peace.
In 1234, that is, the first year of The Song Emperor Duanping, Emperor Lizong may have lost his mind and actually wanted to unite with the Mongols to destroy Jin Xue shame, but then the Song and Mongol armies were discordant, and as a result, the Song army in Luoyang was defeated by the Mongol army, and a full-scale war broke out between the Song and Mongols. The situation faced by the Southern Song Dynasty was far more serious than in the last years of the Northern Song Dynasty, when the Southern Song Dynasty maintained a long line along the Yangtze River, the defense line was long, the Mongols launched a fierce attack in the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and the Southern Song Dynasty was militarily precarious. Corresponding to the external threat is the financial embarrassment within the Southern Song Dynasty.
Song Lizong
In 1259, the first year of Emperor Lizong's Kaiqing, a large-scale war broke out between Song and Meng, known in history as the "Battle of Kaiqing". Jia Xiangdao led his army to the middle reaches of the Yangtze River to participate in the war as an envoy of the two Huai Xuanfu. In October, Jia Rudao's army arrived in Ezhou, and in November, Jia Rudao, who was appointed in charge of the war situation, led 700 people to the front line to boost morale, and for a time the morale of the Song army was greatly boosted, resisting Kublai Khan's fierce attack. When the Great Khan Möngke was killed in Sichuan, Jia Rudao seized the opportunity to make peace with Kublai Khan, and the Mongolian army retreated. Therefore, Jia Xiangdao wrote in a letter, "The great victories of the various roads, the liberation of the Siege of Hubei, and the purging of Jianghan." The community is in danger and recovers." With the merits of retreating from Mongolia, Jia Rudao's reputation was greatly enhanced, and he was even more trusted by Li Zong. In the case of diplomatic security, Jia Rudao began to plan reforms internally.
Kublai Khan
Third, Jia Rudao's public land law
In 1262, Jia Xiangdao's henchmen Wu Shiqing and Liu Lianggui proposed to Jia Xiangdao to "buy back the public land" (referred to as the Gongtian Law) to alleviate the financial crisis. The so-called public land law, the Song people believe that it is the Han Dynasty's famous land, the law of limiting land, that is, for the magnates to annex land, the rich people even have strange fields, hoarding grain, the poor people throw themselves into the rich and become private slaves, resulting in a reduction in the population and taxes controlled by the state, Jia Rudao limited the number of land occupied by the magnates. Specifically: the first pin official legally occupies 500 mu of land, the second pin 450 mu, and then decreases by 50 mu, to the ninth pin official can only occupy 50 mu of land, the extra number of fields is counted as public land, redeemed by the state, the land redeemed is still cultivated by the peasants, taxed according to mu, abolish miscellaneous taxes. This move is similar to Tun Tian, which greatly restricts the personal freedom of the peasants, but greatly reduces the burden on the peasants.
The redemption price is calculated according to the amount of grain produced per mu of land, and if one mu of land can produce 1 stone of grain, it is 200 mu; if it produces 9 buckets, it is 180 mu; for every 1 bucket of land produced less, the price drops by 20 guan, and the minimum yield is 6 buckets of land, and the price is 120 guan mu.
And the means of redemption are not all real money. If the land redeemed is more than 5,000 mu, give 5% of the real money and silver of the land price; give the corresponding official body of the landlord's family at 50% of the price, let him choose his son to act as an official; issue it to the landlord Du Mu at the price of 25% (the Song Dynasty monk's Taoist certificate, Lu Zhishen's Du Mu in the "Water Margin" is obtained from the landlord's hand, and the landlord's Du Mu is bought with money), so that he can freely give it away; and issue it to 25% of the friends. To put it simply, if 5,000 mu of land is worth 1 million yuan, then when the redemption is bought, only 50,000 real money and silver are given to the landlord, and the remaining 950,000 will not be given cash, but will be offset by the official body, the jiaozi and the degree. The redemption of less than 5,000 acres of land is also only given to 5% of the land price of silver, and the rest of the degree, jiaozi, and official body are adjusted accordingly. Through this redemption method, we can see that the Song Dynasty used all the payment means that could be used, but the proportion of real money and silver was too low, basically an empty glove white wolf.
Jia Rudao's original intention was to implement a pilot project in Zhejiang and Jiangsu, and Song Lizong immediately agreed and ordered Liu Lianggui, the prefect of Lin'an, to take charge of the matter. However, before the Gongtian Law was officially implemented, it was opposed by most of the people in the DPRK and the local landlords in the townships, so that the Gongtian Law could not be implemented, and The Emperor of Rizong was also shaken. At the critical moment, Jia Rudao argued on the basis of reason and made concessions, saying that "buying land, forever exempting heyi (heyi is a kind of additional tax implemented by the Southern Song Dynasty in addition to the positive tax), it is a good law and good intention, and it should start in western Zhejiang, and Shu ta road should be regarded as another." Therefore, Emperor Lizong asked his brother to donate excess land property as an example, and ordered that the pilot be reduced and only implemented in the six places in western Zhejiang, which allowed the public land law to be tried. These six places are Lin'an, Jiaxing, Pingjiang, Anji, Changzhou, and Zhenjiang.
Song Dynasty court
In 1263, under the strong supervision of Jia Rudao, the land in the six lands was basically redeemed, and more than 3.5 million mu of land became public land to bear the national tax, which greatly alleviated the financial pressure of the Southern Song Dynasty. In 1268, the Song Dynasty upgraded the management system of the public land in the six regions, set up a reminder officer, and changed the previous division of land and farming to "summon people to bear tenants, cultivate and plant by themselves, transport themselves, and stop the divisions to be responsible for and urge", that is, to summon tenant farmers to contract rent seeds and bear their own profits and losses, and the taxes need to be transported to the tax bureau by the peasants themselves, and the tax department is only responsible for collecting taxes. In this way, the rent is reduced by 2 points compared with the past, which can be said to liberate the peasants and increase the personal freedom of the peasants.
Fourth, the curtain has come to an end
The public land law greatly harmed the interests of landlords and bureaucrats, so it was collectively resisted by them. As a courtier, Jia was even forced by bureaucrats to apply for resignation in 1264. However, the Gongtian Law brought rich benefits to the imperial court and greatly alleviated the financial crisis of the Southern Song Dynasty, so Emperor Lizong said that the Gongtian Law "can be exempted from the imperial court's fee for making coins, and the lower can be exempted from the disturbance of Zhejiang Right and Zhen", and "the one-year-old military salary is dependent on this", so he resolutely disagreed with Jia Xiangdao's resignation and did not agree to abolish the Gongtian Law. It was under the emperor's strong implementation that the Law of the Six Lands was implemented in this way, but the opposing forces did not have a dead heart. At this time, Lizong was already terminally ill, although under his ear, the successor Duzong also implemented the Gongtian Law, but in 1274, when Duzong died of illness, the Mongols attacked the Song again, and Jia Rudao was defeated in the conquest, resulting in the collapse of the Entire Southern Song Dynasty, and the Song Dynasty had no power to fight back. Jia Rudao was then deposed, which directly affected the implementation of the Gongtian Law. By 1275, during the reign of Emperor Gongzong, the Gongtian Law, which had been in force for 14 years, was officially abolished, and the Gongtian was "paid to the original tenant". A year later, Lin'an fell; in 1279, the Battle of Yashan was fought, and the Southern Song Dynasty was completely destroyed.
Mongolian Iron Horse
Wen Shijun said
In the 14 years since the implementation of the Gongtian Law, the Southern Song Dynasty has basically met the expenses of the army, and even in 1265, Zong also decreed that "Feng chu cang allocated 500,000 stones of gongtian rice to pay pingyi warehouse, and met rice at an equal price", which shows that the Southern Song Dynasty already had a very sufficient amount of grain to regulate the market. From this point of view, Jia Rudao still made a certain contribution to the society of the Southern Song Dynasty. The demise of the Southern Song Dynasty was not a personal factor, and the war between the Song and Mongolia was not determined by personal factors. For a political figure like Jia Rudao, in addition to his personal conduct, we should pay more attention to his political achievements when evaluating him, so as to be more objective.
bibliography
Zhou Mi: "Qi Dongye Language, Jingding Xing Gongtian", Zhonghua Bookstore, 1983.
Wu Xuxia: "On the Gongtian Law in the Last Years of the Southern Song Dynasty", Jiangxi Social Sciences, No. 6, 1986.
Ren Chongyue, "Discussion on the Gongtian Law in the Late Southern Song Dynasty", Journal of Henan University, No. 4, 1990.
(Author: Haoran Wenshi Purple Orange)
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