take a wife to support the family

Chapter 498 The Writer and the Emperor 8
Starting from Emperor Taizu, the Ming Dynasty gave preferential treatment to the clan, and his old man set the rules, the clan did not take imperial examinations, did not do business, and did not work for generations. Anyway, it was supported by the state treasury.

But the old man never thought that after hundreds of years, the clan has multiplied and flourished, with a population of hundreds of thousands, and the fiefdoms have long been unfettered. In Henan alone, there are many vassal kings, and they actually took up one-tenth of the cultivated land in Henan.Other places are no exception. The king of Huguang vassal rarely says that he occupies one-twentieth of the fertile land in Huguang, and [-]% of the land around Chengdu mansion belongs to the mansion.

The clan does not do production, but relies entirely on the imperial court for support, and only goes out but not in.To Emperor Tianqi, these distant relatives with indifferent blood were just the parasites lying on the dying body of Daming and sucking blood.

If so, the direct line of the vassal king is fine, and those distant relatives who are not in front of the emperor and cannot inherit the title of land will slowly decline.

Some Zongfan tried their best to have children in order to ask the imperial court for money. Later, these side branches lived a miserable life. Some people received some Lumi silver all year round, and the family was struggling to meet their needs, but they still had to abide by the clan rules and not find a livelihood. Waste these manpower.

Another thing is that there are endless things about the clan's fish and meat. For example, the grandfather of Zhang Taiyue, the chief assistant of Wanli, died tragically at the hands of the vassal as a guard of the Liao Palace.Zhang Zhen is still a respectable guard of the royal palace. If you talk about the folks, how many people have their fields and houses taken by the clan, humiliated their wives and daughters, and even their families are ruined?

The place where the clans gather together is the place where refugees will be everywhere in the future, and the place is the most corrupt.

Not to mention the clan clan, they have been supported by the people for generations, and when their family and country are in peril, there is not even a single person who dares to resist.The vassal king is sitting on mountains of gold and silver, but he would rather destroy the city than donate a penny as military pay.

As long as they are willing to do their part for Daming, the Ming Dynasty will not be defeated so quickly and so miserably.

The Ming clan is not only the heaviest and most useless burden, but also a fatal abscess!

Some of these things are happening now, and some haven't happened yet, but the emperor is very clear about each and every one of them. Whenever he thinks of the clan, his teeth itch with hatred, wishing to send all these unworthy descendants to accompany the Taizu Emperor.

But people have the meaning of kinship, and kinship is there. No matter how much the emperor doesn't regard the clan as relatives in his heart, he still has to put on a gesture to the outside world.

Fortunately, the imperial court has its own clan mansion, and the affairs of the clan are considered family affairs. The emperor wants to rectify the clan, and the courtiers will only support it with both hands-the conscience of heaven and earth, the courtiers can't understand the emperor's absurdity, and they can't get used to the clan's immorality even earlier. If it weren't for the ancestors Keeping the rules in mind, they rolled up their sleeves and cleaned up the clan long ago!

Regardless of the arrogance of the King of Liao back then, after Zhang Taiyue gained power, it did not make it easy for the King of Liao's family.These old foxes dealt with the clan that had been raised by pigs for 200 years, and the outcome was clear at a glance. If it weren't for the protection of the emperor, their early skin would have been scraped off many times.

Emperor Tianqi had been on the throne for seven years. For the first time, a decision was supported by the civil officials of the Manchu Dynasty, and it went very smoothly.

The first thing is to abolish the clan's Lumi silver, and order the clan's mansion to revise the Jade Letter, so that each feudal clan will only keep the descendant branch and the near branch.

Then again, most of these people don't have any means of making a living. Could the court let them die?
Not really, the emperor had already prepared a way to survive, arranged by the local government, those who could read and write would organize documents, those who could settle accounts would go to calculate money and food accounts, those who could draw bows and arrows would go to the guards for supplements, and children would be sent to study. Xu imperial examinations in the future...

In the beginning, the clan blew up and clamored to go to Xiaoling to cry for Emperor Tai Zu. His old man said well that Xu Zongshi didn't work and came here.After a few days, after doing calculations, the salary he got when he went out to work was actually more than what the imperial court gave out in the past. Those who had been waiting and watching also hurriedly followed, for fear that they would miss the benefits if they went too late.

As for those who are young and strong, but are unwilling to work and want to slander the government, there will naturally be Jinyiwei Prison waiting.

It's easy to talk about the distant clan clan, and the Dafan didn't do it anymore. Before the New Year's court meeting, they gathered in the capital to discuss an explanation with the emperor: the rules of the ancestors are like this, and the ancestors have never treated them badly. Why is the emperor going to risk the world? Don't you, treat your clan members harshly?

The emperor did not say much, and directly ordered people to put out the accounts: "The world pays 400 million shi to the capital every year, but it costs 900 million shi to the clan Lumi every year. The imperial court has long been unable to support it! Everyone is too... Are the descendants of the ancestor emperor really not as good as those traffickers and pawns outside? They can support themselves with their hands, but the clan can’t live without Lumi?”

What's more, the treatment of the feudal vassals has not changed too much. Without the distant clan clan to fight the autumn wind, even the vassal princes' mansions will be a lot easier.

But what the vassal kings were afraid of was not the abolition of Lumi, but that this was another strategy to cut the vassals, further reducing their privileges.They are all descendants of Emperor Taizu, the proud sons of heaven, and the vassal kings consider themselves superior to others. If there is no preferential treatment from the court, wouldn't they be bullied by those poor families?

Fu Wang's family was particularly troublesome: "Since Long Live wants to reduce our treatment, we have nothing to say, but Your Majesty shouldn't treat people differently. King Xin's life is much better than ours!"

The emperor was eccentric, and they refused to accept it.

The emperor glared at him and said, "If you stay in Beijing, you will be treated the same as King Xin."

The son of King Fu did not dare to say a word at that time. In the struggle for the country, Emperor Shenzong pushed King Fu to compete with Xianguang Temple.

In the fief where the sky is high and the emperor is far away, the vassal king can still be a local emperor, staying in Beijing like the king of Xin, reading or writing all day, spinning around under the emperor's nose every day, and a group of civil servants impeach him at every turn, what else? taste?
King Xin enjoyed it, he was an outlier in the clan, he was close to the emperor since he was a child, he would rather stay in the capital and receive education from the emperor's side than go away to the feudal land.

That day when the emperor wanted to reduce the patriarchal Lumi, King Xin was the first to stand up. I hope that starting with him, and with King Xin, the emperor's younger brother, the clan will not rebound too much.

Afterwards, King Xin and the Emperor said: "Anyway, there are only Wangfei and I in the Palace of King Xin, no matter how we reduce it, Brother Huang will not be able to wrong us."

The emperor laughed: "You only think about you and the princess, but never about your children?"

King Xin was stunned, his ears were blushing, and he said after a long time: "When you have children, come and discuss with the emperor's brother."

The folks say that a brother who fights a tiger is a father and son soldier in battle, no matter how suspicious the emperor is and believes in the king, it is this brother who can help him at critical times.

For example, in the early Han Dynasty, Liu Wu, the king of Liang, wanted to be his brother and brother, and wanted Emperor Jing of Han to make him the emperor's younger brother. Give the Han Dynasty time to breathe, and finally put down the rebellion in three months.

In the eighth year of Tianqi, the emperor sent the wet nurse Hakka, who had taken care of him for many years, out of the palace, and asked her to go to a place to raise her honorably.Ke's eyes were full of tears, and he looked back many times, but the emperor was not moved.The power in the harem returned to the queen, and there was a bloody feud between the queen and the Ke family. Naturally, some actions were taken to expel the Ke family's cronies, or put them in idle positions.

As soon as the Ke family left, Wei Zhongxian lost a helping hand and felt constrained everywhere. He inevitably complained to the emperor: "In the past two years, Long Live has become farther and farther away from the old slave."

The emperor was almost angry, the power in the harem should have been in the hands of the empress, Wei Zhongxian joined forces with the Hakka family to evade the empress, and he even sued for grievances!

The emperor sighed and said: "I originally thought that my big companion could understand my thoughts best..."

Wei Zhongxian's heart trembled, and he quickly knelt down: "Your maidservant is not smart, but loyalty is the only lesson to learn from. You only need to give me a word to tell you what to do, and your maidservant will be smashed to pieces, and I will be happy in my heart."

The emperor stared into Wei Zhongxian's eyes and said: "I don't need my companion to be smashed to pieces, companion, you should understand that civil servants are unreliable."

Wei Zhongxian's party is called the eunuch party, and Qingliu and Wei Zhongxian have never been used to each other. Wei Zhongxian can't wait to gossip in front of the emperor every day and say that Qingliu is a traitor, and he will not hesitate to trap the monarch injustice for the sake of gaining Qing's name.

The emperor just mentioned this, and Wei Zhongxian immediately said: "Long live wise, those scholars have at least 1 minds, they are not as loyal as us, and they can't see our loyalty."

The emperor smiled and said, "Big companion, get up and talk. I can't trust them, but I can trust you. It's just a small matter for you to serve me. The most important thing is that you can clean them up for me."

Wei Zhongxian straightened his back: "With the words of long live, the slaves are worth dying for!"

This is what you said, the emperor thought in his heart, but he showed a sad look on his face: "Don't say such things, no matter when, I can always protect you."

The master and the slave then made a plan to let Wei Zhongxian deal with the Donglin Party, but he was not allowed to attack the Donglin Party indiscriminately. If there are officials in the Donglin Party who can do practical things, they must be kept. Wei Zhongxian claims to be loyal to the country. I can't promise.

Donglin was originally just an association of scholars, but it has become more and more out of control these years. If it is okay in peacetime, seeing that the country is about to perish, and then let them mess around, how can the emperor gather the power of the whole country to keep the Ming Dynasty?

Besides, Donglin is not just a sage, the phrase "the water is too cold" by Donglin's genius has made posterity ridicule for hundreds of years!

To deal with the Donglin Party, the emperor has no burden at all.

As for Wei Zhongxian's random grabbing and biting, the emperor was not afraid, his purpose was to break up Donglin's prestige, lest they compete with the imperial power, but he did not intend to ruin their family.At most, they would just distribute some money. There are a lot of nobles in Donglin, and they should spit out some of the blood they have sucked from Daming, so that the imperial court's empty pockets can be relieved.

Seeing that the group of young eunuchs in Xiyuan had been trained quite effectively, the emperor simply assigned all of them to the East Factory, and asked Jin Yiwei to select young people to train.

Jinyiwei already had many hereditary positions, and many people held titles but there were not enough positions to share with them. The emperor ordered hundreds of young people from the capital and northern Zhili to gather together in one place, and trained soldiers according to the law—even small eunuchs could After training their appearance, if these hereditary Jinyiwei are useless, it is better to lose their posts.

(End of this chapter)