Ancient saying goes: A Qing magistrate, 100,000 snowflake silver .
In feudal society, if you become a ruling prefect for three years, you can earn 100,000 taels of snowflakes. This is still considered a conscience in an official career. If you are unconscience, you still don’t know how much bad money you will earn.
No official is greedy, even the ancients themselves admitted this, otherwise they would not have described the old officialdom as "a Qing magistrate, 100,000 snowflakes and silver".
In ancient times, due to the imperfect feudal laws, the appointment of officials was entirely based on the emperor's personal preferences, which easily led to corrupt officials rampant, and all dynasties were like this.
Even the wise and powerful "Eternal Emperor" like the Emperor Kangxi , had serious problems of slackness in his later years in power.
Emperor Kangxi failed to deal with corruption well during his reign, which also led to the Qing Dynasty's treasury, which was known as " Kangxi and Qianlong prosperous times" when Emperor Yongzheng and Chen, the Qing Dynasty treasury, which was known as " Kangxi and Qianlong prosperous times" had only a surplus of millions of taels.
If Emperor Yongzheng had not been working hard to govern, I would have probably followed in the footsteps of the Qing Dynasty .
For ancient emperors, if they want to revive the court, the first thing they must do is to strictly enforce the administration of officials: on the one hand, vigorously promote and appoint wise ministers; on the other hand, punish and remove corrupt officials.
In this regard, the one who does the most severely is the Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang . During Zhu Yuanzhang's reign, he pioneered the "Hongwu Governance" and punished a large number of corrupt officials, so that the people of the Central Plains who suffered from war finally lived a stable life after a hundred years.
Among the hundreds of emperors in ancient times, if you want to say who hates corrupt officials the most, it is definitely Zhu Yuanzhang.
How much did Zhu Yuanzhang hate corrupt officials? In addition to the "Ming Dynasty Law", he also specially promulgated a " Great Edict " as the basis for punishing corrupt officials, and the means of punishment were extremely strict.
When Zhu Yuanzhang punished corrupt officials, he often had external punishments due to his personal joys and anger. When he believed that the punishment stipulated in the "Da Ming Law" was not enough to punish those corrupt officials with great crimes, he would use the "Da Qi" as the basis for punishment.
Moreover, in order to warn those corrupt officials, Zhu Yuanzhang also invented a series of tortures, the most cruel of which is "skinning and skinning".
What is "skinned and lasting grass"? It is to peel off the skin of corrupt officials intact, then fill it with hay and hang it on the lobby of the yamen to warn successor officials not to be corrupt and abuse the law.
Zhu Yuanzhang's hatred of corrupt officials was not without reason. All of this has a lot to do with his childhood experience.
In his later years, Zhu Yuanzhang recalled his childhood experiences while chatting with the princes and grandchildren. He once said: "The funeral has no coffin, and is covered with evil clothes. What kind of food is laid!"
When Zhu Yuanzhang was 17 years old, many people starved to death in his hometown due to drought and locust plague. Later, an extremely serious plague broke out. Zhu Yuanzhang's parents and elder brother died of illness within half a month.
In theory, during this period of rampant plague, relatives should be buried as soon as possible after they die of illness to avoid spreading the plague again.
But Zhu Yuanzhang could only kneel on the ground and cried with his parents' bodies, but he could not let his parents fall into peace. Because his family has no land at all, and even his parents have no place to be buried.
Later, it was a man named Liu Jizu in the same village. When he saw the young Zhu Yuanzhang and his second brother cried pitifully. He thought that the two families were neighbors at least, so he took out a piece of land and gave it to Zhu Yuanzhang's family, which made Zhu Yuanzhang's parents feel safe.
When Zhu Yuanzhang later became emperor, Liu Jizu had passed away for many years, but Zhu Yuanzhang still remembered his favors back then and issued an order to posthumously named him "Marquis of Yihui", which was hereditary.
From the experience of Zhu Yuanzhang in his youth, we can see how corrupt the bureaucrats in the late Yuan Dynasty were.
The people suffered disasters, starving to death and ill, and there was no place to bury them, but the government ignored it.Not to mention opening a warehouse to provide disaster relief, we will try to exploit the poor people.
After Zhu Yuanzhang became emperor, he naturally hated corrupt officials because of his childhood experience. He knew very well that only by eradicating corrupt officials in the world could the people live a good life, so he never treated corrupt officials mercilessly.
During Zhu Yuanzhang's reign, he killed nearly 160,000 corrupt officials. Any corrupt officials he caught were sentenced to get cramps and skin.
Once, an official was found out by Zhu Yuanzhang because he was greedy for a little money. Zhu Yuanzhang ordered him to be beheaded and made public. The official felt that he was very willing, so he asked Zhu Yuanzhang, "Who is not greedy in the world? Can you kill all?"
Zhu Yuanzhang looked at the corrupt officials in the audience, frowned and replied with 6 words softly: "How come you know you can't kill all?"
Zhu Yuanzhang's indifferent tone, coupled with his cold expression, all demonstrated his determination to punish corruption, which immediately made the corrupt officials speechless.
Moreover, Zhu Yuanzhang punished corrupt officials equally, whether they were royal relatives or founding nobles, as long as he founded that he had committed corruption, he would definitely be severely punished.
Many people think that Zhu Yuanzhang's killing of meritorious officials was too cruel. In fact, these founding heroes of the Ming Dynasty have committed corruption, so it is not surprising that they were killed.
, however, it is precisely because Zhu Yuanzhang's methods were too harsh that many people mistakenly thought of as a tyrant.
In fact, Zhu Yuanzhang was not a tyrant. On the contrary, among the ancient emperors, he should be a good emperor who loved the people the most.
