The Ming Dynasty: Starting with the border troops, it was overthrown and the Qing Dynasty was destro

Chapter 208 The Three Agreements of Long'an
Once they entered Sichuan territory, it basically meant that Jiang Han's army could finally get rid of the narrow and treacherous Shu Road for a short time.

Due to geographical limitations, the border troops in Shaanxi will not come to encircle and suppress him for the time being.

The next step is to find a place where I can truly settle down and make a living.

Inside the command tent, Jiang Han stood before the map, his gaze sharp and intense.

After interrogating the surrendered soldiers, he discovered that the area in northern Sichuan at this moment was like a naked, defenseless beauty.

Due to the Shapu Rebellion in Yunnan, almost all the elite troops in northern and central Sichuan were drawn away.

Now, it's like ordering food in a restaurant for him; whichever prefecture on the map he sets his sights on, he can basically take it over.

Of course, he won't make a move on Chengdu Prefecture and Baoning Prefecture for the time being, as a direct assault on these towns would likely take a considerable amount of time.

The most urgent task is to find a place to quietly develop and build up the framework of civil affairs.

After much deliberation, Jiang Han finally chose Long'an Prefecture.

This place is close to the Songpan grasslands and Gansu, located in the northwest corner of Sichuan province. Further up lies the plateau and the mountains of Sichuan.

With his business based here, Jiang Han doesn't have to worry about being attacked from all sides.

Longan Prefecture was originally the seat of a foreign chieftain.

It wasn't until the 45th year of the Jiajing reign that the imperial court quelled the rebellion of Xue Zhaoqian, the Pacification Commissioner of Longzhou, and then abolished the hereditary chieftain system and upgraded the Longzhou Pacification Commissioner's Office to Long'an Prefecture, taking the meaning of "pacifying Longzhou".

This prefecture governs four counties: Pingwu, Jiangyou, Shiquan, and Qingchuan. Pingwu County is the seat of the prefecture, while Qingchuan County is the location of the Qingchuan Garrison Command.

Its territory spans approximately 400 li from north to south and 300 li from east to west, with a total area of ​​nearly 30,000 square kilometers, equivalent to one-tenth the size of Sichuan Province.

Long'an Prefecture is predominantly mountainous, with the Fu River and Bailong River systems flowing through it.

Its main grain-producing areas are two:

First, the Jiangyou Plain, located in the middle reaches of the Fujiang River, is an alluvial plain with about 60,000 mu of land. The soil is fertile and it mainly produces rice and wheat. It is the most important grain base in Long'an Prefecture, with an average grain production of about 50,000 to 80,000 shi.

The other is the Pingwu River Valley, which is close to Pingwu County and located in the upper reaches of the Fujiang River. It is at a higher elevation and has only about 15,000 mu of land.

In addition, there is the Qingchuan Garrison Command, which also has some land reclamation.

The rest were farmlands cultivated by local people in the hills and valleys.

Although Sichuan is known as the "Land of Abundance," apart from the Chengdu Plain, most of the central region consists of low hills.

These low hills only divide the land into smaller, fragmented areas, but the flat areas between the hills, which the locals call "ditches" or "bays," are excellent rice paddies.

The relatively flat areas on the low hills are called "pings", which are suitable for growing dryland crops such as wheat and corn.

In addition, Sichuan has a dense network of waterways, with many alluvial "dams" formed on both sides of the rivers, resulting in fertile soil, abundant water resources, and high grain yields.

After conducting on-site investigations, Jiang Han also discovered that some farmers were sporadically growing corn, which locals call maize, but he didn't see any sweet potatoes.

According to records, these two high-yield crops were introduced to the Ming Dynasty as early as the Jiajing and Wanli periods.

However, it is mainly grown in coastal areas, and there is no record of large-scale cultivation in inland provinces like Sichuan.

Logically, both of these crops are drought-resistant and high-yielding, and should have flourished in the late Ming Dynasty when food was scarce. However, they were not planted on a large scale until the Qing Dynasty.

The main reason for this is the lack of government promotion, resulting in very limited dissemination among the general public.

The main force behind the dissemination of information among the people was officials, merchants, and gentry, not actual farmers. Farmers had never left the prefecture or county in their entire lives, so the information could only be disseminated within a small circle.

In the eyes of officials, merchants, and gentry, corn and sweet potatoes at this time were considered coarse grains, with a rough texture, inferior to wheat and rice. Moreover, sweet potatoes would cause bloating and acid reflux after consumption.

Therefore, corn and sweet potatoes were generally not favored by the gentry class.

The officials of the Ming Dynasty ate only the finest rice. In their eyes, these coarse grains were only for feeding livestock, not for human consumption.

Once the gentry class lost the motivation to spread the word, corn and sweet potatoes could not be promoted in the Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, if they wanted to survive the long Little Ice Age by relying on corn and sweet potatoes, they first needed an efficient government.

In summary, the systemic collapse at the end of the Ming Dynasty had closed the window of opportunity for using high-yield crops to alleviate famine.

The Qing Dynasty, however, only achieved the transformation of the value of these crops under population pressure and institutional adjustments.

Just as potatoes lay dormant in Europe for a century before being accepted, the fate of high-yield crops has always been closely intertwined with the fate of society and the times.

The two complement each other and achieve mutual success; it is not simply a matter of high-yield crops that can save the Ming Dynasty from collapse.

Overall, Long'an Prefecture is mostly mountainous, and its arable land area is not very large.

But for Jiang Han right now, this is the best choice.

The total number of troops he currently commands is only about eight thousand.

With such a small force, occupying a well-connected plain in a prefecture might seem impressive, but in reality, it would be vulnerable from all sides, requiring troops to be deployed everywhere for defense, resulting in immense pressure.

Long'an Prefecture, with its mountainous terrain and numerous strategic passes, is still defensible.

By occupying Jiangyou County, we can control the vital waterway, which will not only prevent the Ming army from advancing north from the Chengdu Plain, but also block the possibility of government troops sneaking across the Yinping Trail.
Occupying Pingwu County would prevent the Ming army from advancing south from Songpan.

Having set the strategic direction, Jiang Han immediately summoned his generals to discuss advancing into Long'an Prefecture.

Military deployments were secondary to these generals;
The challenge facing everyone was an unfamiliar one: how to get along with the local people.

There's a lot to learn here. Jiang Han's army has spent the vast majority of its time on marches and battles since the day it started, and has absolutely no experience in managing a prefecture or county, let alone a whole province.

Even though they captured some cities along the way, it was mostly under the guise of "recovering stolen goods to aid the army," and they mainly robbed officials, gentry, and wealthy households, without interacting much with the local people.

Of course, Jiang Han didn't dare to have any deep involvement with the people along the way.

He knew all too well the nature of Hong Chengchou's gang; wherever the government troops passed, nothing grew.

If he were to become too involved with the common people, they would likely be slaughtered by the government troops no sooner or later than he left.

But the situation is different now.

Since the goal was to establish a base area, they had to study how to transform a mobile army into a local regime capable of controlling a region.

This is easier said than done.

First and foremost is the issue of human nature.

To put it bluntly, Jiang Han and his group are nothing more than a rebel army, a makeshift operation.

When it comes to popular support, the vast majority of people in the world still recognize the Ming Dynasty, which has been passed down for more than two hundred years.

For ordinary people and starving people, this problem is easy to solve: by distributing land and making them come under the government's control.

However, for those literate students and scholars, loyalty to the emperor was deeply ingrained, and almost no one would accept Jiang Han's team.

Of course, Jiang Han could also take a knife and force these people to join his cause.

But if we do that, how can we guarantee the loyalty of these people? What if they surrender the city in a critical moment?
Ultimately, it boils down to a lack of talent reserves.

When it comes to charging into battle, Jiang Han's men are all elites capable of taking on ten men each;
But when it comes to governing the country and managing people's livelihoods, these people are completely clueless and know nothing.

There were very few literate people in the army, and some of them were members of the Zhu clan. Jiang Han dared not entrust a county to them for governance.

To put it bluntly, these people can only play a supporting role at best; they can never enter the core of power.

The rest were mostly soldiers who had only recently learned to read. They might be able to manage a hundred-man squad, but to expect them to support the administrative operations of the entire prefecture or county was wishful thinking.

Jiang Han didn't have a good solution to this either.

We can only wait until we capture Long'an Prefecture, and then we can do both things at the same time: first, we need to post recruitment notices to solve the short-term talent shortage;
On the one hand, they run their own schools to continuously cultivate their own people with impeccable moral character.

After repeated discussions with his generals, Jiang Han finally established three basic principles, which he called the "Three Agreements of Long'an".

The first rule is to prohibit indiscriminate killing.

The entire military must remember: "To kill an innocent person is like killing my father; to rape a woman is like raping my mother."

Because of Jiang Han's long-standing strict military discipline, this was not too difficult for his soldiers, and they were generally able to do it.

The second point is to distribute the land.

The slogan was "Equal land distribution and rent reduction, so that the hungry can get food."

Wherever they went, the fine tradition of "recovering stolen goods to aid the army" could not be abandoned. All the gold, silver and grain confiscated from the homes of corrupt officials, local tyrants and evil gentry were taken into the army.

The confiscated land was then placed under the unified control of the government and rented out to local landless or land-poor people.

The third and final point is to reduce taxes.

Jiang Han promised that all exorbitant taxes and levies would be reduced or waived in any territory under his jurisdiction.

The land was divided into three grades—superior, medium, and inferior—based on its fertility. Each year, a fixed 50% rent was collected from the tenants, with the remainder belonging entirely to them.

Fifty percent of land rent sounds like a lot, but in the Ming Dynasty at that time, with all sorts of exorbitant taxes and levies added up, it was as high as seventy or eighty percent, and in some places it even exceeded one hundred percent.

Many tenant farmers worked hard all year, only to find that they had no grain left at the end of the year and ended up owing the landlords grain.

So they had no choice but to sell their children or borrow money at exorbitant interest rates to pay off their debts.

Jiang Han issued a strict order that whenever the troops conquered a prefecture, county, or township during their march, they must immediately post notices and send out commanding officers to go from street to street to repeatedly explain the "Three Agreements of Long'an" to the people along the way.

After the rules were set, Jiang Han split his forces into two groups. One group headed towards the Qingchuan Garrison Command, and the other group went straight to Pingwu County, Long'an Prefecture.
Another group, led by Shao Yong and others, attacked and captured Jiangyou, Shiquan and other places.

The capture of Long'an Prefecture proceeded exceptionally smoothly.

In less than a month, Jiang Han had basically brought control of the four counties of Long'an Prefecture under his command.

Along the way, Jiang Han's troops did not encounter strong military resistance. The main time was wasted was communicating with the local people.

Taking the Southern Route Army led by Shao Yong as an example, he captured Jiangyou County and all the surrounding villages and towns in just three days.

But for the next month or so, his main task was to send out a large number of military commanders to post notices everywhere, appease the people, and explain the specific contents of the "Three Agreements of Long'an".

At the same time, he also launched a vigorous campaign within the country to "recover stolen goods and contribute to the army," encouraging the people to report and expose those wealthy and unkind officials who were usually rich and heartless.

Shao Yong followed Jiang Han's example when he arrested the most heinous criminals, holding several large-scale public trials in Ningxia, under the banner of "acting on behalf of Heaven and upholding justice for the people," and punishing many corrupt officials in front of the public.

He treated some officials with a reputation for integrity with kindness and sincerely invited them to join the temporary government established by Jiang Han to continue to appease the people and manage civil affairs.

With this series of combined measures, Jiang Han's troops quickly won the initial support and trust of the local people.

However, significant problems arose during the land distribution process.

(End of this chapter)