Before Hou Jin entered the customs, the population of the authentic Manchu Eight Banners was about 55,000, and the population of the Mongolian Eight Banners was about 28,000. The population of the Central Plains under the control of Manchu and Mongolia did not exceed 100,000. Even if all the old, weak, women and children were sent to the front line, the total military strength of Houjin was less than 200,000, but in the face of the Ming Empire with a population of over 100 million, Huang Taiji was not afraid at all.
Someone asked Huang Taiji, what was the reason why Hou Jin could defeat Ming Dynasty?
Huang Taiji replied: The officials are respectful to the people . (Officials are cautious and honest, and people are simple and pragmatic).
When I first read this conversation, I thought Huang Taiji was bragging. Until the fall of the Ming Dynasty, and until I saw all the strange phenomena in the Ming Dynasty, I suddenly felt that Huang Taiji was a rare person in a century. The Ming Dynasty had already been firmly controlled by him.
Today, when talking about the reasons for the demise of the Ming Dynasty, some people still refuse to admit the truth. They always look at the left and right and attribute the factors of destruction to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, plague, droughts and floods, and even conclude that "drought, flood, famine, and plague" were the fundamental reasons for the collapse of the Ming Dynasty.
As everyone knows, there is no dynasty or generation where natural disasters and plagues have not occurred. It was also a natural disaster and plague. Why could the Ming Dynasty not be able to handle it, and it was destroyed immediately after it spread? In fact, natural disasters are just symptoms. What are more destructive than natural disasters are often "man-made disasters".
Disaster relief is the result of power struggle
In the first year of Chongzhen , Emperor Chongzhen, who had just succeeded to the throne, ushered in a drought in northern Shaanxi. The people had nothing to eat or drink, so they could only dig weeds everywhere to satisfy their hunger. In the end, when all the weeds were eaten, the tragedy of Yi Zi's cannibalism happened one after another.
This is not the first drought in northern Shaanxi. The impact of the last round of drought has not yet recovered. The scope of this drought is far greater than in the past, covering an area of nearly a thousand miles in Yan'an, Qingyang, Pingliang, and the huge destructive power directly pushed northern Shaanxi into a dead end.
Emperor Chongzhen, the young emperor, would certainly have great achievements. He immediately transferred 300,000 taels of silver from the cash-strapped treasury for disaster relief in northern Shaanxi. After the disaster relief silver was sent from the national treasury, the data that actually reached the local areas is that Yan'an Prefecture and Qingyang Prefecture, the two major disaster-stricken areas, received 3,004 taels and 880 taels respectively.
Where did the court’s life-saving money go? He was intercepted and exploited by officials at all levels and powerful landlords! There is no money available for the money that is actually used for disaster relief. Not to mention that Yan'an and Qingyang Prefectures were allocated less than 4,000 taels of disaster relief silver. Even if all 300,000 taels of silver were used for disaster relief, it would be a drop in the bucket.
When Li Jizhen, the official of the Ministry of War, wrote a letter to Chongzhen, he calculated an account and said that if I bring one hundred thousand gold to one person, I can only live one hundred thousand people, and seven dollars per bucket of rice can only live fifty days.
(The translation of Li Jizhen’s words is that one tael of gold can only save one victim. You can imagine what role 300,000 taels of silver can play.)
The victims are dying in the tragic situation of Yi Zi eating each other. What are those people above the Ming Dynasty doing? What they think about is not how to provide disaster relief to save the hungry people, but to regard disaster relief as a battlefield for power struggles and a machine for making money. They attack and impeach each other on the pretext of disasters, and even fight to the death over which group of people is responsible for directing disaster relief.
After three years of debate in the court, the Ming Dynasty finally took action. Wu Zong, who had just been reinstated as an official, was responsible for directing disaster relief as the relief censor. The reason why it was Wu Di's turn to come forward was not Wu Di's will, nor the emperor's will. This was the result of mutual struggles and compromises between all parties in the court. Because Wu Di's foundation was relatively shallow and he belonged to the neutral faction, sending him was the best choice among the worst results.
But the problem is that this life-saving disaster relief operation lasted from the first year of Chongzhen to the third year of Chongzhen. During the bargaining of the powerful, the victims became refugees, and the refugees turned into bandits. Those hungry people who had no way to survive did not wait for the disaster relief funds from the court, so they could only take refuge in Li Zicheng, seizing the most unreliable life-saving straw of rebellion.
The emperor's dirty hands have never stopped
It is understandable that the ministers under him are enriching their own pockets, and becoming rich as an official is also in line with normal human needs. The strange thing is that the emperor of the Ming Dynasty also had dirty hands, and he never stopped taking the lead in extending his dirty hands to the treasury.
Let’s make it clear here. Although the emperor was rich all over the world, not all the money could be used casually. The wealth of the imperial courts in the past dynasties was divided into two parts. One part was the emperor's own money, called the inner treasury; the other part was the court's money, called the treasury.
The national treasury is managed by the Ministry of Household Affairs, and all official expenses are borne by the national treasury. The emperor's inner treasury is the property donated to him by his subordinates or the income drawn at a fixed rate every year. The emperor's inner treasury was private wealth, used to support his family, including rewards for ministers.
According to the rules, the emperor can only spend money from his own internal treasury, and cannot reach out to the treasury to ask for money, but the emperor of the Ming Dynasty never cared about that.
The first emperor of the Ming DynastyZhu Yuanzhang, although his character was not very good, he was commendable in punishing corruption. Most officials who were found to have problems with their financial income would inevitably die. However, the corruption-punishing mechanism established by Zhu Yuanzhang changed its taste in the hands of his descendants and eventually became a decoration.
Because the emperor takes the lead in tampering with the treasury, how can we investigate? If the king of a country is like this, how can he ask his ministers to be honest and honest. The biggest corruption in Chinese history is and Shen . He served as Minister of Military Aircraft for 20 years and acquired nearly 30 million taels of silver and 8,000 hectares of land. Is He Shen's amount big? Compared with the Ming Dynasty, it was just a drop in the bucket.
The eunuch Wang Zhen only used seven years to build 60 "treasury" wealth, more than a hundred jade plates, and more than 20 seven-foot-high coral trees . It doesn't need to be calculated by tens of thousands or taels. How much wealth is in one treasury is up to you to use your imagination. Wei Zhongxian has been glorious for three or four years, with more than ten thousand hectares of land, and his wealth can no longer be estimated.
This is just a powerful minister with a small head, Wanli The emperor has a big head. His imperial estate covers an area of more than 2.1 million acres, and the fertile land given to King Fu, King Hui, King Rui, King Gui, King of Chu, and King of Han often starts with tens of thousands of hectares. Emperor Longqing and Emperor Wanli often put their dirty hands into the treasury and transferred the treasury money of Taicang, Guanglu Temple, Taipusi into their own treasury. After encountering collective opposition from ministers, they restrained themselves slightly and halved the amount embezzled.
Because it was too extravagant and wasteful, the emperor's money was naturally a little tight. In order to make money, the emperor and his ministers jointly engaged in money-making activities. The salt mines censors sent to various places acted as tools to make money for the emperor.
Do you remember that in the TV series " The Ming Dynasty1566", the Yan Shifan faction collected 3 million taels of tax silver for Jiajing, but only paid 1 million taels as tribute to Emperor Jiajing. Emperor Jiajing was so angry that he slapped the table and said, "I got a small head."
This scene is a true historical portrayal.
With the emperor and ministers conspiring to make money, those small tax collectors became rich at every turn. After Liang Yong, the Shaanxi tax envoy, left office, he packed a total of 13 packages and used 168 farmers and 55 mules to transport the property. No one knew the specific amount. The property was eventually shared with the emperor and did not enter the imperial treasury.
Faced with this kind of reckless behavior, some upright ministers stood up to oppose it, such as Shen Lian, Yang Jisheng.On the one hand, they want to severely punish the lawbreakers, and on the other hand, they hope to teach the emperor to be a wise king. However, their endings are extremely miserable, and they all become the souls of the people they attack.
In other words, In the Ming Dynasty , the emperor knew who was corrupt and who was honest. It can also be said that the behavior of people like Yan Song and Yan Shifan was tacitly approved by the emperor. They are the people the emperor needs to rely on, and they are his own people who can really wear a pair of pants.
In the past, whenever the question of "where did the money go" of the Ming Dynasty was raised, someone always blamed the Jiangnan wealthy people, saying that they lied and concealed their reports and refused to pay taxes and money to the court normally. Anyone with normal thinking can understand that businessmen in feudal society did not even have basic social status. What strength did they have to fight against the court? Moreover, there were no routines for property transfer in ancient times.
The final truth is that the greatest wealth of the Ming Dynasty was jointly plundered by the emperor and scholar-bureaucrats. As a result, the court had no money and the people had no money.
lost money to the national treasury and enriched them! His thick skin is unparalleled in history.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-