The six-dimensional pictures of emperors of all dynasties were exposed, and the ancestors panicked

Chapter 671: Late Ming Dynasty: The epitome of the causes of national destruction

[On February 1641, the th year of Chongzhen (), Li Zicheng evacuated Luoyang and turned to attack Kaifeng.]

[Zhu Gongyao, the King of Zhou who was enfeoffed in Kaifeng, was a little different from other vassal kings who loved money like their lives. He followed the philosophy of "as long as the green mountains remain, there is no fear of running out of firewood." ]

[When Li Zicheng's army was at the gates of the city, he made up his mind to take out the silver accumulated in his palace for many dynasties, and "ordered the people that anyone who could go out of the city and kill a bandit of one level would be rewarded with 50 taels of silver, anyone who could shoot a bandit to death would be rewarded with 30 taels of silver, and anyone who shot a bandit or injured him with bricks and stones would be rewarded with 10 taels of silver."]

[Soldiers and civilians in Kaifeng went up to the city to fight against the Yijun army.]

[Although the rebels attacked the city bravely, "shooting all day, with arrows piercing the city like a hedgehog", the plan to capture Kaifeng failed to materialize.]

[On the 17th, Li Zicheng went to the city to observe the situation in order to decide on the next method of attacking the city. Unexpectedly, he was not careful enough and was shot in the left eye by the government troops on the city. Although the wound was healed later, his left eye became blind.]

【Li Zicheng was injured, and the government troops led by Yang Wenyue, the governor of Baoding, were also heading towards Kaifeng. 】

【So the rebels decided to stop attacking Kaifeng and move westward to Dengfeng, Mi County, and Song County.】

……

{So Li Zicheng was blind in one eye? No wonder you couldn't become emperor (fog)}

{The Ming army is not fully paid, and they are invincible when fully paid! (dog head)}
{This sentence is a joke, but not a joke either. After checking the data from the late Ming Dynasty, I can only say that no one could save the situation.}
{There were three types of taxes in the late Ming Dynasty: Liao tax, suppression tax, and training tax.}
{Except for the Liaoxi salary which started during the Wanli period, the suppression salary and training salary were both products of the Chongzhen period.}
{In order to suppress the bandits, Yang Sichang proposed to collect three million taels of silver as a salary, intending to "work very hard for three months to resolve the ten-year dilemma". However, the bandits became more and more numerous, and after three months of hard work, the dilemma was truly unsolvable.}
{Yang Sichang did not give up and planned to train the troops, so he added another 7.3 million yuan in training pay.}
{Over 10 million taels of silver were spent, and with the Liao tribute, it amounted to 23 million taels of silver.}
{Note that this is an additional levy, and there is still regular levy in addition.}
{The regular tax is less, about four or five million. But if you look at it from another angle, the additional tax is actually four or five times the regular tax!}

{If the imperial court collects one coin, then the people below will exploit it by dozens of times.}
{Countless local officials and petty clerks used the name of collecting taxes from the imperial court to amass wealth and extort money from the people. Those who refused to comply would be punished by military law, and they had lost all humanity.}
……

The period of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty
"The emperor uses people, not strength."

Liu Heng leaned against the ridge, feeling the breeze and said calmly:
"Governance is the foundation of the court's operation. If it is so corrupt, how can we win the war on the front line and let the people enjoy peace?"

“It is the inconspicuous ants that eat away at the tall buildings.”

Liu Qi held the pottery jar and stuffed the cake into his mouth, while he said incoherently:

"Father, do you think the emperor knows?"

Liu Heng chuckled.

it goes without saying.

Temporarily burdening my people...

Doesn’t the emperor know this?

He knows it very well.

So can he solve it?

how is this possible.

……

{In addition, the Ming Dynasty had a most expensive and largest interest group that had never existed in previous dynasties—the royal family and princes group, which owned the largest share of the society's wealth.}
{Before the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the royal family was forbidden to engage in any occupation and was completely supported by the state treasury, and the standards were very high.}
{When a prince "becomes a vassal" in a country, he will occupy a large amount of land and collect taxes, which can reach millions of acres. Even half of the fertile farmland in a province will belong to the prince. None of this wealth will belong to the court.}
{In the early years of the Wanli reign, there was a book called "Wanli Accounting Records", which recorded that the national fiscal expenditure was more than 18 million taels of silver, of which the salaries of the royal family and vassal states reached more than 5.5 million taels, accounting for nearly 30%.}
{That is to say, nearly 30% of the country's normal financial expenditure is used to support the royal family, and these royal family members do not engage in any profession.}
{In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the national grain supply to Beijing was more than 4 million dan per year, and the grain supply to the imperial family was more than 8 million dan. In some provinces, such as Shanxi and Henan, the annual grain output was not enough to supply half of the imperial family in the province.}
{This is just the issue of food. The same applies to the supply of silk, cotton cloth, silver, etc.}
{The population of the Ming Dynasty imperial family doubled every thirty years, and by the end of the Ming Dynasty, the number had reached hundreds of thousands. These people had no productive capacity, but they owned the largest share of the society's wealth.}
{Therefore, when the world was in chaos at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the princes and royal families became the "cash machines" of the rebel army and the Qing army}
……

Great Qin.

Every time this happened, Ying Zheng respected and loved Shang Jun even more.

Let’s not talk about other things for now, it’s better to abolish the hereditary nobility!
"Most of the people who hold power and are famous in our Great Qin are from foreign countries, and some of them are of humble origins."

"Those who have made military achievements will be awarded higher titles according to their military performance."

"Unless a member of the royal family has military merit, he cannot be a member of the royal family."

"Those who have made contributions are honored, while those who have not made contributions are not honored even if they are rich!"

"From now on, officials are not always noble, and people are not always humble!"

Proud and proud!
Ying Zheng held his head high.

My Great Qin is advanced...

"Shang Jun opened the way to the nobles, and Your Majesty led them to the lower city. Your Majesty is truly a genius!"

Who?! Who is the one who is showing off...your mother's servant Liu Bang...

The emperor looked at the old face with a sour look.

Liu Bang looked at the emperor with an "innocent" face.

The other four squeezed out again. If you want to die, then die, but don't splatter our blood.

……

Yanhan·Lingdi Period
"Just... raise it?"

Liu Hong was confused.

Don't the feudal lords exist to be the final deciding factor?
No expectation of return at all?
Do you, the Zhu family, understand the meaning of these four words "hereditary succession"?

Hereditary succession means that except for one of the emperor's sons who inherits the throne, all the other sons are conferred the title of prince.

The eldest son of a prince shall inherit the title without any reduction in rank, while the rest of his sons shall inherit the title at a reduced rank.

The eldest son of a prince will always be a prince, and the rest of his sons will be princes, and so on.

Can't you do arithmetic?
Was it just for fun when Emperor Wu of Han issued the Enfeoffment Order?

"My Lords, my head hurts!"

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He looked up and saw that all the ministers in the hall also had painful expressions on their faces.

……

{Below the imperial family, there is the scholar-official group.}
{The Ming Dynasty implemented the imperial examination system for selecting officials. For more than 200 years, the imperial examination was usually held every three years, with 200 to 300 people admitted each time.}
{These people were exempted from taxes and labor service after they obtained official titles and positions in the imperial examinations. Therefore, in order to avoid taxes and labor service, a large number of lower-class peasants entrusted their property and land to these people.}
{For example, according to regulations, farmers are required to pay 10 taels of silver in taxes to the state every year. Now, if they entrust their property and land to bureaucrats and nobles, they only need to pay 7 taels of silver to the bureaucrats or nobles every year, thus saving 3 taels of silver.}
{Both bureaucrats and peasants benefited, but the emperor and the court lost tax revenue.}
{Therefore, some big bureaucrats can own tens of thousands of acres of tax-free land, or even hundreds of thousands of acres. What's worse is that the actual taxes borne by the lower-class people are far higher than the standards explicitly stipulated by the state.}
{The amount of hidden taxes other than regular taxes is “unknown”.}
{For example, if a local official went to Beijing to pay homage and undergo assessment, the travel expenses would be as low as five or six thousand gold coins. Every time the central government assessed local officials, the whole country would have to pay millions of additional taxes.}
{Similarly, the central government sent inspectors to various places to investigate, and each time they did so, they also had to pay 20,000 to 30,000 taels of silver, so the whole country had to pay an additional million taels of silver. All of this was not paid by the national treasury, but by the local people.}
{In addition, when collecting taxes, local governments also have to levy an additional "haoxian".}
{That is, ordinary people would pay taxes with small change, and officials would cast the small change into silver ingots according to the standard, and then send them to the national treasury in Taicang.}
{But there would be loss during the casting process, so a little more would be collected when taxes were levied. The amount of the loss was set by the officials themselves, so the amount of the loss was very large, sometimes even several times the regular tax, which became a heavy burden for the people.}
{It was not until the Qing Dynasty that Emperor Yongzheng abolished the system of embezzlement.}
……

Song Dynasty: Zhezong Period
Zhao Xu frowned, looking exhausted.
The problem of redundant officials seems difficult to solve.

Unless we don't need the imperial examination, but if we don't need the imperial examination, we have to use aristocratic families and relatives...

In the end, we still took the old path of the Han and Tang Dynasties.

Zhao Xu sighed and looked up at the sky again.

"Well, at least the Song Dynasty has relatively few problems."

"Your Ming Dynasty is in trouble..."

……

Ming dynasty.

Do bad things with good intentions.

Zhu Yuanzhang deeply understood the meaning of these five words.

He was not convinced that Tianmu and later generations said that he had set a trap for the Ming Dynasty.

After all, what do you know? We are avoiding all kinds of opportunities that brought disaster to the country in the previous dynasty and the dynasty before that!
But facts speak louder than words...

"... summon all the ministers to discuss the matter."

Zhu Yuanzhang calculated the time and Chongzhen probably didn't have much to say.

If I go there a few times, I will be able to come back just in time for the court meeting.

……

{At the same time, the Ming Dynasty's organizational mobilization efficiency was low, and the statistical data of governments at all levels were just formalities and fraudulent.}
{Typical examples include the official land and household registration numbers, which have remained almost unchanged for more than 200 years.}
{During the early Ming Dynasty, during the Hongwu reign, the registered population of the country was counted, which was nearly 60 million. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, it was more than 60 million, with only a slight change.}
{These data come from the Yellow Book, which is compiled every ten years according to regulations.}
{The data in these official documents are really fabricated.}
{Every ten years, when Ming Dynasty officials re-compiled the Yellow Book, they did not verify the age of each person on the original household register, and added ten years to each person’s age. As a result, they kept adding years until some people lived to be over two hundred years old.}
{In the Yellow Book Library of Xuanwu Lake, the Yellow Book of the Ming Dynasty had been compiled up to the 24th year of Chongzhen...}
{…Apply for World Heritage status…}
……

Qing Dynasty and Qianlong period
Qianlong shook the folding fan in his hand and sighed in his heart.

It’s all the same.

Not only are the subordinates fooling their superiors, but the superiors also know that the subordinates are fooling them.

Moreover, the subordinates also know that their superiors know that they are fooling each other, but they do not expose each other, and they keep fooling each other like this.

What else can we do if we don’t do this?
If imperial power does not extend to the countryside, you must employ people if you want to govern.

Khan Ama’s idea is quite good.

But what should we do if the situation becomes too pressing and the whole country starts to rebel against the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty?
……

(End of this chapter)