Daming Crazy Emperor

Chapter 205

In the Wenhua Palace and the meeting hall, Taichang looked at the vassal Lumi account book sent by the clan's mansion, and his face became more and more ugly, more and more ugly.

This vassal Lumi system is a rule set by his ancestor Hongwu the Great. Simply put, as long as he is a descendant of the royal family, he will have a corresponding position and corresponding Lumi.

Another characteristic of his ancestor, Emperor Hongwu, was that he was very meticulous in setting the rules. This vassal Lumi system was also quite meticulous, even down to every royal descendant.

According to the stipulations of the vassal Lumi system.

The prince, that is, the son of the current emperor, except for the prince, is all named princes, with an annual salary of [-] shi.

The prince's sons, except for the successor son, are all named county kings, with an annual salary of two thousand shi.

The sons of the king of the county, except for the heir who succeeded him, were all named generals of the town, with a yearly salary of one thousand shi.

By analogy, General Zhenguo is followed by General Fuguo, General Fengguo, Lieutenant Zhenguo, Lieutenant Fuguo, etc. The annual branch Lumi is [-] shi, [-] shi, [-] shi, and [-] shi.

As for the rest, no matter how many generations or what kind of concubines, they are all Feng Guo lieutenants, and Lumi is two hundred shi.

In other words, as long as they are descendants of the royal family, they have corresponding positions, and they can receive corresponding Lumi from the Ming court every year, at least two hundred shi.

This is because Emperor Hongwu was afraid of hunger when he was young, and he was afraid that his descendants would have no food to eat, so he established this vassal Lumi system to ensure that his descendants would not be hungry.

It should be said that as a father, a grandfather, and even as an ancestor of the Zhu Ming royal family, what he did was beyond words. He took care of every descendant of the Zhu Ming royal family.

During the Hongwu Dynasty, there was indeed no major problem with the vassal Lumi system.

Because Zhu Yuanzhang has a total of 26 sons, except for the prince, there are only 25 princes, and there are more than 100 county kings under these princes.

In other words, the imperial court paid a maximum of 50 shi for Lumi a year for the royal descendants. This Lumi was indeed not a big burden on the tax revenue of the Ming court at that time.

However, Zhu Yuanzhang overlooked one point, that is, his descendants are too capable of giving birth!
He himself gave birth to 26 sons, and these 26 sons have been reproduced from generation to generation, and the number has increased exponentially!

This is actually very easy to calculate, even if he has no sons, it is normal for a prince to have five or six sons.

In the first generation, his sons count as twenty, and each has five or six sons. Then the second generation has at least a hundred, the third generation has at least five or six hundred, the fourth generation has at least two to three thousand, and the fifth generation has at least two thousand. There are tens of thousands in the first generation, fifty to sixty thousand in the sixth generation, more than 20 in the seventh generation, and millions in the eighth generation!

How can the Ming court afford such a skyrocketing price increase?
He is laying mines for the emperor behind him!

When the mine swells to a certain extent, it will definitely explode.

After the Yongle Dynasty, this thunder expanded even faster, because Cheng Zu Zhu Di cut off the military power of the vassal kings, imprisoned the vassal kings in the fief, and did not let them go anywhere.

These vassal kings and vassal princes have nothing to do all day long, so what should we do?

Of course, it is hard to get a concubine to marry a wife, but hard to make a child!
If they are not fertile, then that's fine, but the descendants of Zhu Ming's royal family can give birth to each other!

How fertile are the descendants of Zhu Ming's royal family?
Zhu Yuanzhang may not have imagined that among his descendants, there are people who can live longer than him, and there are more than one.

Among these most fertile royal descendants, the most famous ones belong to the lineage of King Qingcheng under the knee of Zhu Yuanzhang's third son, King Zhu of Jin.

Zhu Jixuan, the first king of Qingcheng County, the son of Jin Wang Zhu Yan, was a little better. He only gave birth to three sons in total.

Zhu Meixuan, the second generation king of Qingcheng County, is not very strange, he gave birth to twelve sons in total.

Zhu Zhongyi, the third generation king of Qingcheng County, was a bit scary. He gave birth to 44 sons and [-] daughters.

Zhu Qizhen, the fourth king of Qingcheng County, was even more frightened to death, and gave birth to hundreds of sons!

They are so unscrupulous, the number of descendants of the Ming royal family is not scary to death!
Although the county kings and even the princes all died young or even had no heirs, they can't stand them living like this!

During the Jiajing Dynasty, the number of royal family members exceeded 20. During the Wanli Dynasty, the number of royal family members exceeded 60. In the hands of Taichang, the number of royal family members will soon exceed the million mark!

According to the rules of the ancestor Hongwu, all the taxes and taxes of the entire Ming Dynasty would not be enough to pay the Zongfan Lumi. Although the Jiajing Dynasty restricted and reduced the Zongfan Lumi, but this would The number of Erzong Fan Lumi has also reached a terrifying more than 900 million stones!
You know, after removing these vassals and vassals, the tax revenue of the Ming court for a year is only 500 million taels!

That is to say, most of the tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty was used to support these royal family members, and the tax revenue of the entire imperial court was less than half of that of Lumi, the vassal.

This is not the most frightening thing, the most frightening thing is that these vassal kings are not satisfied with the Suzerain Lumi, and they want to annex the land crazily, and the land they annexed is scary.

For example, the Wanli Records of the Prince of Shu's Mansion have recorded that the fertile land in the Chengdu Mansion has seventy seven in the royal mansion, two in the army, and only one in the folk.

That is to say, the Shu Prince's Mansion occupies [-]% of the land in Chengdu Mansion, and the other [-]% is the land of Tunwei, and the land in the hands of nearly one million people in Chengdu Mansion only adds up to [-]%!
This is not the most frightening, the most frightening are Shanxi, Henan and northern Huguang.

After all, there is only one King of Shu in Sichuan, and the people in other prefectures can still live. Shanxi, Henan, and northern Huguang are almost full of vassals.

King Jin of Taiyuan Mansion, King Dai of Datong Mansion, King Shen of Lu'an Mansion, King Lu of Weihui Mansion, King Zheng of Huaiqing Mansion, King Zhou of Kaifeng Mansion, King Tang of Nanyang Mansion, King Zhao of Anyang Mansion , King Yi of Luoyang Prefecture, King Xiang of Xiangyang Prefecture, King Chu of Wuchang Prefecture, King Hui of Jingzhou Prefecture, King Rong of Changde Prefecture, King Gui of Hengzhou Prefecture, King Min of Wugang Prefecture, etc., they have all been It is almost enough to annex the surrounding land.

Later, Wang Jieren, a famous poet in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, ridiculed in "Zhongzhou Miscellaneous Cues", "Only the remaining Qingcao Wang Sunlu will not enter the family of the rich emperor's son."!
What does his poem mean?

Zhongzhou refers to Henan and its surrounding areas.

Qingcao Wangsun Road refers to the official roads in these places.

In other words, the fertile fields in Shanxi, Henan, and northern Huguang were basically annexed by these vassal kings, and the remaining official roads did not belong to the vassal king's family!
This is the main reason why the peasant uprising started in Shaanxi, but soon swept through Shanxi, Henan and Huguang.

You know, Shaanxi was the worst hit, and other places are not as serious as Shaanxi.

Especially Henan and Huguang, the two places were not seriously affected by the disaster, and Huguang was hardly affected by the drought, but these places were the most troubled, and the rebels liked to flee to these places.

why?

It's very simple, because there are so many vassals in these places, and these vassals have basically annexed the good land in these places, and the common people basically have no land in their hands!

How can ordinary people live without land?
The common people in these places were forced to die by the princes!
The more Taichang looked at it, the more angry he became, the more he looked at it, the more angry he became, he was so angry that he just wanted to kill all these royal relatives!

These vassal kings are not as simple as taking the court Lumi for nothing and annexing the land frantically.

They also have a common feature, that is, they are very stingy and pick to death.

Each vassal has stored at least hundreds of thousands or even millions of shi in food, but they would rather put it in the warehouse to rot and rot than take it out for disaster relief.

In addition, these vassal kings have accumulated a lot of gold and silver over decades, hundreds or even two hundred years, but they would rather put it in the treasury than donate a penny to the court.

Disaster relief is his business, counterinsurgency is his business, resisting foreign invasion is his business, and exterminating rebels is his business. These things seem to have nothing to do with them. Not caring at all.

They only care about money and food in their hands.

These moths are going to rot the whole Daming!

Taichang is so angry, if these vassal kings didn't treat the people under their rule as human beings, would these rebels rush to Shanxi and Henan to develop and grow so quickly?
(End of this chapter)