"The exiles are prolonged, the people are ruined, there is no way to pacify the troops without gathering troops, and there is no way to pay the soldiers without increasing the endowment." Reluctantly, I will temporarily tire my people for a year, and get rid of this serious trouble. ”
Above is the edict of the Chongzhen Emperor. When Chongzhen ascended the throne, strong enemies from the outside continued to invade, and the inner treasury was empty, and displaced people were everywhere. In the late Chongzhen period, this situation was even worse. At this time, people's hearts are most needed, unity is most needed, and a "money" word makes these all luxuries.
In Chongzhen's edict above, "temporarily tired my people for one year" became Chongzhen's mantra in that year, which meant "Temporarily work hard for my people for another year, and this year I will raise taxes for you again!" ”
The four words "reluctant to obey the court" embody Chongzhen's consistent style of shirking responsibility and throwing the pot, which means that the ministers discussed and decided, and the decision to increase the people's taxes was not decided by me alone.
In the history of the reasons for the demise of the Ming Dynasty, most of them put the responsibility on Chongzhen, saying that he was extremely inferior, extremely self-respecting, suspicious in the use of people, observant for the Ming, self-conscious, mean and unkind, and changed 50 cabinet ministers in his 17 years of reign. In addition to being mean to the members of the imperial court and not being soft to the people, in order to raise grain, Chongzhen created the "three salaries" - "Liao," "Liao," and "Liao," and "Liao," and "Liao, And" and "Liao, Liao, And Li, And Li, Liao
However, there is also a view of history that before Chongzhen took over the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty under Wei Zhongxian's actual rule was not short of money, nor did it cause trouble to the point where the people were exhausted and exhausted.
When Chongzhen hanged himself, only his confidant eunuch Wang Cheng'en was left, and when he heard Chongzhen say, "All of them are mistaken by the traitors, so that at this time", he said an incomprehensible answer: "If the loyal are there, the current affairs will not end here."
Speaking of Wei Zhongxian, many people know that he is a great eunuch who manipulates power, and once called the wind and rain during the Time of the Apocalypse Emperor, covering the sky with one hand. Tianqi became an emperor who did not care about political affairs, and many major events came from Wei Zhongxian's decision-making. According to the current parlance, Wei Zhongxian was a professional manager in charge of executive affairs.
When Chongzhen was in Chongzhen, why were there so many peasant rebels that it was difficult to extinguish them? In fact, this is related to the large-scale famine, taxes are very heavy, hungry people are everywhere, the rebel army has been hit, can flow elsewhere, and there are many hungry people who respond with a call, forming a situation where wildfires burn endlessly and the spring wind blows again.
Most of the rebel armies in the Chongzhen period originated in the north along the Yellow River, and to put it bluntly, they were poor and had no food to eat before they rose up and made trouble. It is this "qian" character that is an important difference between the Wei Zhongxian period and the Chongzhen period.
So, where did Wei Zhongxian get his money? He did not, like the Chongzhen Emperor, snatched silver from the poor people in the north, but extended his hand to the Jiangnan region, where industry and commerce and foreign trade were developed, because their "bearing" ability was stronger.
When Wei Zhongxian was alive, many places built "ancestral shrines" for him, and most of the builders were of course to pat themselves on the back, but among the liaodong generals and the people of Henan, there were those who sincerely cultivated the shrines for him. This was because Wei Zhongxian guaranteed the supply of money and grain for the Liaodong generals, and when Henan was affected by the disaster, he ordered that "taxes be waived and the internal treasury should be allocated for disaster relief."
Therefore, it is worth thinking about why Wei Zhongxian was still in the past of the Ming Dynasty at that time (that is, during the apocalypse period), and as soon as Chongzhen ascended the throne, the Ming Dynasty quickly went to extinction and collapsed. If you look for the reason from the perspective of "the imperial court is short of money", it is that Wei Zhongxian extended his hand to the rich people in Jiangnan, while Chongzhen extended his hand to the poor people who were not happy with their livelihood.
But Wei Zhongxian had offended the "Donglin Party" and other officials in Jiangnan. Moreover, from the perspective of feudal orthodoxy, a eunuch is also a eunuch in any case, and what he does is also improper, so who is on such an authoritarian eunuch who is not on the column of historical shame? He must be the object of defamation.
In fact, Wei Zhongxian was right not to extend his hand to the poor to loot the source of wealth, and effectively controlled the people's rebellion in order to enrich the state treasury. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, corruption was so great that many officials actually had hundreds of thousands or millions of silver in their homes, but they were still crying poor to the imperial court, as evidenced by Li Zicheng's invasion of the capital to open the basement of corrupt officials.
Looting the money of the poor for military pay and suppressing peasant uprisings launched by the poor is like holding a salary to put out a fire, which can only intensify.
It was not until the Chongzhen Emperor was forced to go up the coal mountain that he remembered the sentence that his brother Emperor Tianqi had confessed on his deathbed, "Wei Zhongxian is scrupulous and loyal, and can calculate major events"; only then did he feel that his brother had been spending many years and years, letting Wei Zhongxian preside over the big plan and the reason why the country was worry-free; he regretted that he said "temporarily tired my people for a year" and raised taxes year after year. The irony is that Chongzhen's suicide note tells Li Zicheng that after entering the city, do not hurt the people.
The territory of the Qing Dynasty was "both large and long"? In 1905, the "Complete Map of the Qing Empire" had 11.35 million square kilometers