Chapter 16 The first section of the heavy service from the three generations to the Qin Dynasty
In order to maintain its existence and perform its functions, the ancient state not only needed to consume a considerable amount of material materials, but also required a considerable amount of labor force at its disposal and to serve it.The material materials needed by the state are collected from the society forcibly and free of charge, and the labor force it needs is also collected forcibly and free of charge from the society. This is ancient labor, also known as corvee.Labor service includes military service and forced service.The country must establish a certain number of troops, and the people must perform military service in accordance with the regulations.Forced labor is to perform various labor services for the country, such as building palaces, cities, and government offices, transporting official belongings, hunting down thieves, and other activities that the government sends people to engage in.Taxation is a direct extraction of people's property and a plunder of people's labor products.Labor is the direct enslavement and driving of laborers, and the direct occupation of the productive working time of the people.
In ancient times, service was more important than endowment.The specific regulations on labor service in the Xia and Shang dynasties are unknown.It is said that Jie, the last monarch of the Xia Dynasty, was led to the demise of his rule because of the exhaustion of people's power and excessive collection of taxes, which made the people unable to survive.After the establishment of the Shang Dynasty, military service and forced service were also very heavy.The rulers of Shang often used troops against the barbarians, with thousands or even tens of thousands of soldiers each time.It is said that when Muye (to the south of Qixian County, Henan Province) resisted the attack of King Wu of Zhou, there were 170,000 (some say 700,000) people who turned against King Zhou's army and revolted.Military service in the Western Zhou Dynasty, also known as military tax, included two aspects: serving as a soldier and paying for military supplies.The military tax is collected in units of "dian".Each Dian has 64 wells (according to the "Zhou Li" records, nine husbands are wells, four wells are towns, four towns are mounds, four mounds are Dian, and each Dian has 576 households). Every year, four horses and chariots are prepared for the country. One ride, 12 cattle, three armored soldiers, and 72 infantry.Weapons and equipment should also be prepared by those who serve in the military.According to the "Zhou Rituals", forced labor in the Western Zhou Dynasty was generally one person per household.The service age ranges from 20 to 60 for urban residents and 15 to 65 for rural residents.The number of days of service varies according to the year.In a good year, that is to say, three out of 10 days must serve the country, and nearly 1/3 of the year will be engaged in national military service.In the middle and lower years, "ten days use two days".In the year when grains are not harvested, it is necessary to "use one day every ten days". Only in the year of great famine and plague can the levy of forced labor be exempted.The endless corvee in the Western Zhou Dynasty was a heavy burden on the people.There are many poems in the poem expressing the resentment of the working people for the heavy corvee.They said that as long as the country's labor is endless, Zhengfu is like a wild bull in the wilderness, running non-stop, from morning to night, without rest.They climbed to the top of the mountain and looked at their hometown, thinking that their wives could not be reunited, their parents had no one to take care of them, the fields were barren and could not be cultivated, and they often burst into tears.They wanted to go home but couldn't, thinking about all the sufferings and inhuman lives the slaves had endured, they even uttered a painful cry that "life is better than death".
During the Spring and Autumn Period, the feudal lords fought for hegemony, and the wars continued. In addition, the ruling groups of slave owners and aristocrats in various countries became increasingly decayed, and the military and hard labor borne by the people were extremely heavy.Taking the state of Qi as an example, "the people have three strengths, and the two enter the public" ("Zuo Zhuan Three Years of Zhaogong").If all the labor of the common people is divided into three parts, two parts will be occupied by the state, which shows the heavy taxation and labor at that time.In order to meet their own extravagant needs, the rulers of various countries built a large number of palaces, terraces, gardens, bells and drums, and often recruited peasants during the busy farming season, which seriously affected the development of agricultural production.The people could not bear the heavy corvee and were often forced to rebel.For example, in the 11th year of King Xiang of Zhou (641 BC), the rulers of the Liang Kingdom ignored the opposition of the people, built large-scale construction projects, worked hard, and built city walls and palaces many times, but no one actually lived there.He also used the excuse that foreign countries were coming to invade, and dug ditches around the palace. The people were exhausted, and they fled in riots. Therefore, Liang State was destroyed by Qin State.In the forty-second year of King Jing of Zhou (478 BC), the craftsmen of the state of Wei were not allowed to rest due to their long-term service.
The Warring States Period was an era of frequent wars. The scale and cruelty of the wars were far greater than those of the Spring and Autumn Period, and military service and forced labor were also more arduous than those of the Spring and Autumn Period.Every country employs hundreds of thousands of troops.For example, during the battle between Qin and Zhao Changping (now west of Gaoping County, Shanxi), the State of Zhao sent 400,000 troops.In order to defeat the State of Zhao, King Qin Zhao came to Hebei in person, conscripted men over the age of 15, and sent them all to the Changping battlefield to cut Zhao's soldiers and food.A country, sometimes even allowing all the people to join the army, cannot meet the needs of war.Qin State encountered such a contradiction at that time: if the people were allowed to cultivate land and develop agricultural production, there would be insufficient soldiers on the battlefield.If the people were sent to serve as soldiers and fight, there would be no one to cultivate the fields.Therefore, some people put forward the idea of lai [lai lai] democracy, that is, to implement a preferential tax and service policy, to attract people from Han, Zhao, and Wei to come to Qin to work in agriculture, and to let Qin people to serve in the military, so that both agriculture and war can be achieved. error.In addition to war, the construction of cities, the delivery of military supplies, and the manufacture of weapons related to war will naturally increase.According to Dong Zhongshu of the Han Dynasty, after the reform of Shang Yang and the establishment of the feudal system in Qin Dynasty, in the continuous annexation wars, the force labor prescribed by the law alone was 30 times that of ancient times.Peasants had to do hard labor for one month every year, called "gengzu", and they had to serve as "junior soldiers" for one year in their lives, and they were "garrisoned" in the frontier for one year.The actual amount of labor levied far exceeds this figure.For example, if the various projects built by the common people are damaged within one year, the counties must re-establish the civil servants to rebuild them, but this is not counted within the number of days of corvee service.
After Qin unified the whole country, in order to consolidate the power of the landlord class and the needs of the luxurious life of the aristocratic ruling group, the labor force increased dramatically.For example, overhauled the Chi Road from Xianyang to Yan, Qi, Wu, and Chu, built a straight road from Jiuyuan (northwest of today’s Baotou) to Xianyang, built the "Five Foot Road" in the Yunnan-Guizhou area, built new roads to climb the Five Ridges, and excavated Hundreds of thousands of people built the Afang Palace, 700,000 people built the Lishan Mausoleum, 500,000 people built the Great Wall on a large scale, 300,000 troops were sent to fight against the Xiongnu, and 500,000 troops were sent to attack Baiyue.It took 30 shi of military rations to arrive at one shi.Large-scale forced labor and military service have brought serious disasters to the people. "Han Shu Wu Bei Biography").The criminal laws of the Qin Dynasty were extremely harsh. If you missed the deadline for military service, you would be severely punished, and if you missed the deadline for military service, you would be executed.The heavy corvee and brutal rule made the people unbearable, and finally triggered a large-scale peasant uprising.In 209 B.C., Qin Zheng sent poor people from Luzuo, who were exempted from corvee, to garrison Yuyang (now southwest of Miyun, Beijing). A group of 900 people went to Daze Township (now Su County, Anhui) due to rain and could not arrive on schedule.Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, who served as the head of the village, mobilized the garrison soldiers and said: Everyone who is delayed by the rain will be executed according to the law.Anyway, it is death, it is better to rebel and have a chance to survive.The angry masses responded to their call one after another and rose up.The Qin Dynasty was finally buried by the fire of peasant uprising ignited by Chen Sheng and Wu Guang in Daze Township.
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