Wei and Jin cooks

The summer harvest is over, and every family is preparing for summer taxes, and Zhao Hanzhang finally ushered in the harvest - collecting taxes!

As the magistrate of Xiping County, Zhao Hanzhang worked on the front line. She personally went to the countryside to inspect the tax collection situation.

With her here, the amount of tax and grain in Xiping County this year is very standard, and the people are as happy as if they were celebrating the New Year.

She not only looks at the collection of summer taxes, but also looks at the situation of summer sowing to ensure the autumn harvest.

After a winter, everyone already knows that beans can make a lot of delicious food, and everyone has more expectations and feelings for planting soybeans. In addition, the county government now collects soybeans at a fixed price, and the price is slightly higher than before. Even if it is not for Everyone is more enthusiastic about eating and making money.

So the beans that had been neglected since the seeds were sown were all taken care of, including weeding and catching insects. Although they are still small green bean sprouts, they look better than in previous years, and the germination rate is not low. .

One benefit of intensive farming is that the number of acres of land per person will be reduced, and the yield will increase. The same number of acres of land can feed more people.

Xiping County is collecting taxes, and Shangcai County is naturally doing the same.

After Zhao Hanzhang collected all the summer taxes in Xiping County, he went to Shangcai.

By coincidence, an official document urging counties to pay grain taxes also arrived. Because there is a war going on, this year's summer taxes have increased a bit.

Magistrate Chai County was still worried about the taxes to be paid this year. As soon as Zhao Hanzhang arrived, he immediately divided the summer taxes collected into three parts.

One part was handed over, one part was left to the county government for expenses, and the other part had to be returned to her.

"Repay you?" Magistrate Chai was extremely surprised.

"Yes, Shangcai County and Xiping County borrowed so much grain and copper coins at the beginning of the year. Shouldn't they pay it back?" She said: "Although the two counties are brothers now, it is precisely because they are brothers that they have to settle their accounts. "

Magistrate Chai County: "...But in this way, the taxes submitted to the court will be far from enough. It is not enough in the first place..."

Zhao Hanzhang said: "Don't worry, Magistrate Chai. I'll ask Ji Yuan to write a letter. You can copy it and send it to the governor's office so that you can understand us."

Magistrate Chai frowned, a little worried, "Sanniang, how do you account for the one-third of the grain tax you took away?"

Zhao Hanzhang smiled and said: "Don't worry, Ji Yuan will take care of it. Don't say that the superiors don't have time to send people down to investigate now. Even if they come, we can handle it."

Magistrate Chai was still very scared. He withheld as much as two-thirds of the taxes for the first time. You know, in previous years he had secretly withheld some, and it was just a little bit.

In order to appease him, Zhao Hanzhang said that her Xiping County withheld more taxes.

She said: "In recent years of war and natural disasters, our county government has to save something. Otherwise, if there is an accident in the future, who can save us?"

The magistrate of Chai County was still hesitating. Zhao Hanzhang said: "These things are taken from the people and used for the people. Isn't it right for the county king to be the official of Shangcai County and work hard for the people under his rule?"

Magistrate Chai became thoughtful.

In the end, Ji Yuan ghost-wrote the excerpt for the two of them. Yes, he wrote one excerpt and also wrote two excerpts.

It’s all about complaining anyway, so I’ll have experience writing the second letter and it’ll be faster.

So Zhao Hanzhang gave him her own notes to write, and then she copied them again.

The reply letters from Xiping County and Shangcai County were slowly sent to Chen County.

There was a war not far away from Chen County, so a large number of refugees poured into Chen County.

There was no way. Although they fought mostly in the wild, the King of Donghai wanted to kill Gou Xi and seize Yanzhou. Gou Xi wanted to kill the King of Donghai and also wanted to go to Luoyang to pick up the emperor, so he had to attack the city and seize the territory.

During the war, it was not only the soldiers on the battlefield who faced death, but also the people who were captured.

Especially during the summer harvest, they destroyed a lot of farmland when fighting, and a lot of wheat that had not been harvested was wasted; and when the soldiers were short of food, they would directly grab the wheat with knives.

A large number of refugees instantly appeared in places affected by the fighting.

They had to pack up and flee their hometown, firstly to escape the war, and secondly to escape the summer tax.

Yuzhou is located in Yanzhou and on the edge of Luoyang, so most of the refugees choose to come to Yuzhou to settle down.

Governor He could not close the city gates and refuse the refugees from entering. He could only disperse the influx of refugees as much as possible and let them go to the lower counties.

At the same time, Chen County needed a lot of property and food to collect so many refugees. In addition, the collection tasks assigned to him by the imperial court were transferred directly to the counties below, and the governors or prefects were transferred to the counties below.

Therefore, the tasks assigned to Shangcai County and Xiping County are both heavy, especially Shangcai County.

Not only is it a large county, many counties in Runan County suffered from military disasters last year, but it was the only one that was fine, so the task assigned to him was the heaviest.

Magistrate Chai County also knew this, so he was very afraid of refusing the summer tax request from above and secretly leaving so much summer grain.

But he copied the notes written by Ji Yuan, and the more he copied them, the more he felt that what Ji Yuan said made sense. It was also very difficult for them to go to Cai County last year. This winter, several people froze to death and starved to death.

If it weren't for Zhao Hanzhang's help at the beginning of spring and the brotherly alliance he formed with Xiping County, how could he have collected so much summer tax?

At that time, he was asking for help from the governor's office every now and then, thinking that he could allocate some money and food to help the people survive until March.

There will be a lot of wild vegetables in the wild by then. Even if you eat wild vegetables, you won’t be very hungry, right?

But the governor's office didn't reply for a long time. When he finally replied, he said that the treasury was empty and asked him to find a solution on the spot.

Zhao Hanzhang and Ji Yuan were right, he had to leave something for the county government. If something like this happened again in the future, if the governor's office didn't save him, he wouldn't have no way out.

Zhao Hanzhang was also copying the book. She copied it very quickly. After she finished copying, she checked it over to make sure there were no typos, then threw it aside and gave it to someone to send to Chen County.

She took people with her the next day to watch the food being put into storage.

Most of the food in Xiping County went into the grain depot, and the rest was sent to the military camp.

Finally, she no longer had to buy food to support her troops.

She currently has a lot of soldiers, only about a thousand people on the surface, but her troops scattered in various settlements are also soldiers. They also farm the land on weekdays, but they are more trained, so the food output is not yet self-sufficient.

What's more, she has to take in more refugees and open up more wastelands, so she is in urgent need of food.

As for the one-third of the grain tax collected from Shangcai, Zhao Hanzhang did not take it back to Xiping, but stayed in Shangcai.

She said to Ji Yuan: "This is taken from Shangcai County, so let's use it in Shangcai County."

Ji Yuan was very satisfied with this, "Girl loves me so much."

Zhao Hanzhang thought so too, so he smiled complacently.

After writing for a while, I found that my eyes were about to close, so I only have one update tonight, and I will make up for it tomorrow morning.