Chapter 75 Section 28 "Harvesting Grain"
The second serious problem Zhang Xianzhong faced was the problem of eating.In the past, Zhang Xianzhong's department did not have this problem.They have always been "receiving food from the enemy", "when hungry, gather and plunder, and when full, abandon the surplus. The food that has been caused does not know how to accumulate crops, and the benefits of the land are not planted."
Although he established the Daxi regime and claimed to be the founder of the dynasty, Zhang Xianzhong's measures in the imperial economic management were lacklustre.At first, he relied on the confiscation of the property of the government and nobles to support his finances, but this was not a long-term solution after all, and the money was soon spent.
As a result, his economic measures were left with "struggling grain".The so-called grain harvesting, in a word, is "grabbing", and the soldiers are indulged in looting within the "empire". "The thieves will send people to collect food every five days and ten days. If one person does not return to the camp, the leader will be in charge of the team, and all his companions will be killed."
Of course, the primary target of the grain they harvested was the big landlords, but Zhang Xianzhong's troops had no political training, and they had never distinguished between the landlords and the people in the past, and of course they would not specialize in robbing class enemies when they entered Sichuan.Instead, they robbed the food they saw, killed the pigs they saw, tied people up when they saw them, tied them up and grilled them over fire, and forced him to reveal where he knew the grain was stored.Seeing passers-by on the road carrying a bowl of rice, they also "killed and seized it".
As a biography that attempts to "reverse the case" of Zhang Xianzhong points out: "During Zhang Xianzhong's more than two years in Sichuan...according to the materials I have seen, Zhang Xianzhong did not take a single measure to directly restore and develop agricultural production... …In the past, mobile warfare depended on "harvesting grain" from various places. Now, after living for two years, the landlords and official warehouses quickly run out of grain. "
Another book affirming the Peasant War in the late Ming Dynasty puts it more clearly: "From the available materials, the Daxi regime did not implement the policy of taxation according to the land and population in Sichuan. The hundreds of thousands of troops and the government at all levels Consumption basically relied on confiscation and harvesting of grain. In the writings of people at the time, Fu Diji and Li Fan, both described the situation of the Daxi Army going out to harvest grain. In the late Ming society, it is true that landlords had surplus grain at home, but this view The policy of robbing pigs and killing them for food will inevitably infringe on the interests of ordinary farmers. If this practice still has its rationality in the period of mobile warfare, then as a relatively stable regime, if it continues to do so, it will inevitably go away. to an unsustainable level.”
Many great figures have repeatedly said: "The common people in China are the best common people in the world." Or more precisely, "the common people who govern best in the world."The honest and kind farmers can bear anything, the only thing they can't bear is starving to death.
Zhang Bing's reputation was not good in the first place. After Zhang Xianzhong entered Sichuan, most of the Sichuan farmers fled to the mountains in front of the soldiers, and large tracts of land were left uncultivated.For the remaining peasants, it was meaningless to carry out economic production when the Daxi Army’s grain hunting team was rampant.
Under such a rule, it is understandable for the "best common people" not to support the regime.
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