Those who have attained the righteousness of the country are only Han and Ming. However, compared with the Han Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty has a point of opening a "historical reversal".
After the Han Dynasty implemented the "Tui En Order" and cut the domain, the prince surnamed Liu became smaller and smaller, and by the end, many of the direct royal families were no different from the people, and their lives were tight, such as Liu Bei, who was a Han clan relative, who could only weave mats and sell shoes, and became a small citizen in the city. After Zhu Yuanzhang established Daming, he vigorously engaged in the "sub-feudal system", wantonly dividing up the Zhu surname Wang Ye, so that his children and grandchildren had princes and princes, and there were more and more "dragon sons and dragon grandsons".
The image left by Zhu Yuanzhang in history is extremely cold. He was cold-blooded and ruthless to the people, to the ministers, to his old friends, to his wives and concubines. Only in the presence of his own children, he was full of kindness, gentle and considerate. In order to ensure the happiness of his children and grandchildren, he racked his brains. Since he had become emperor, he must not let his descendants suffer again, so he issued an "iron rice bowl" to each of his descendants, so that they could not worry about their livelihood.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, "only the lords are not near the people, and the domain is divided without giving land." To put it bluntly, the princes of Zhu Ming were all high-ranking officials and houlu, who were raised by the state, but could not have local jurisdiction. Zhu Yuanzhang stipulated that the descendants of the imperial family were not bound by ordinary laws and were not under the control of the local government. The kings' palaces, costumes, and military horses, the next heavenly son, the princes and ministers, when they see it, they must "bow down and pray."
In the Ming Dynasty, there were generally only two titles of prince and county king, and the sons of the Ming emperor were all made princes except the prince, and the sons of the princes were all crowned as county kings except shizi. The son of the king of the county was Feng Zhenguo General, and the descendants of the Zhenguo general were successively demoted to auxiliary generals, fengguo generals, zhenguo lieutenants, auxiliary lieutenants, and fengguo lieutenants. The children and grandchildren of Lieutenant Fengguo were no longer demoted, and they were all Lieutenant Fengguo.
Zhu Yuanzhang set the lowest salary standard for officials in Chinese history for officials of the Ming Dynasty, but the standard he set for his children and grandchildren was "not thick", from "prince" to "lieutenant of Fengguo", all eight ranks had rich salaries, far higher than officials. For each descendant of the royal family, all consumption needs are borne by the state, and from the age of 10 onwards, the salary is received to enjoy the salary, and when the marriage is married, the state pays the house, crown dress, wedding expenses, and there is a large amount of funeral expenses when dying.
This kind of meticulous "love" is unique in Chinese history, so that the Ming people can't help but sigh, "My kindness to relatives can be described as all-use, and its thickness is far greater than that of previous generations." However, the Ming Dynasty's control over the king of the domain was also extremely strict, and the princes everywhere could not engage in any social occupation, and without the personal permission of the emperor, the princes were not allowed to meet each other for life, which was the famous "two kings do not see each other".
There is a problem here, the prince and the king are more and more sealed, and the children and grandchildren are endless, because anyway, if the state sends money, more children can take more money, and fertility will become rich, isn't it beautiful? "When the clan was born at the age of ten, he was enfeoffed with the title of Zhilu. If you are born as a general of the Zhenguo, you can get a thousand stones. Born ten generals, that is, delu wanshiyi... Li Lu was so thick that he could not take concubines in order to try to be a hundred men. ”
Under the "system" decision, from the middle and late Ming Dynasty onwards, the royal family launched a fierce reproductive competition. In the fifth year of Hongzhi (1492), Yang Chengchu, the governor of Shanxi, reported to Emperor Xiaozong that Zhu Zhongyi, the king of Qingcheng, Shanxi, had given birth to his 94th child, and the number of grandchildren had reached 163, and the number of great-grandchildren had reached 510. That is to say, the descendants of Zhu Zhongyi alone have reached 767!
Because there are too many children and grandchildren, they don't even know each other, so that every time the Zhu Zhongyi family meets, the brothers don't know each other. Later, Zhu Zhongyi himself panicked and reported to Emperor Mingwuzong: "There are many clan branches in this province, and the children born to each general may report their age without evidence, and beg the generals' offices to check the report." "I can't even find out if anyone pretends to be my own child!"
Zhu Zhongyi, the king of Qingcheng, is just a microcosm of the population expansion of the descendants of Zhu Ming's royal family. During the Hongwu period, Zhu Yuanzhang's family had 58 people; during the Yongle period, 127 people; during the Zhengde period, 2,980 people; in the eighth year of Jiajing, 8,203 people; during the Longqing period, there were more than 28,000 people; and in the thirty-second year of the Wanli Calendar, more than 80,000 people!
There is no specific data record of the Tianqi and Chongzhen dynasties, and according to Xu Guangqi's rough calculations at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the number of Ming Sects doubled every 30 years or so. In 1644, when the Ming Dynasty died, it was roughly estimated that it should be around 200,000 people! The explosion of royal descendants means a sharp increase in state financial expenditure, after all, the royal family's fenglu directly comes from the financial revenue of various places, which means that the burden of the common people is getting heavier and heavier.
From the middle of the Ming Dynasty onwards, local governors were alarmed to find that their local financial revenue was no longer enough to support the royals living in the local area. For example, the local fiscal revenue of Shanxi is 1.52 million stones, while the annual consumption of Shanxi princes is 3.12 million stones! Henan's annual revenue is 840,000 stones, and what needs to be supplied to Wang Ye is 1.92 million stones!
During the Jiajing period, the ministers pointed out anxiously: "The generals and lieutenants of the royal palace move tens of thousands of times, and if they order for decades, although they damage the accumulation of the inner government and exhaust the full tax of the world, xi is enough to support it." "In the future, the Holy Son, God, and the Descendants will pass on to all generations, and with a limited land, they will increase the grain of the uncounted, and where will they do it to do the rest?" Soon, perhaps the whole country will not be able to support this family! Isn't that ridiculous?
However, although the treatment has been so generous, the descendants of the Zhu Ming royal family are still insufficient. They use their special status and influence to extend their tentacles to all areas where there is oil and water, and as long as they are profitable, they will do everything they can to seize it in their hands. These princes used their extraterritorial power to frantically annex land, even oppress the people, commit adultery and plunder, and did nothing wrong, becoming representatives of the "evil forces" everywhere. Therefore, the people of the Ming Dynasty also gradually hated the Zhu Ming imperial family to the bone.
When Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong and other rebels at the end of the Ming Dynasty began to rage, the descendants of the Zhu Ming royal family understood that the time for liquidation had arrived: Zhu Ming's descendants had become the most interested "prey" of the peasant army!
Whenever Li Zicheng went to a place, he first hunted down and killed the royal family. Although Li Zicheng was not known for his "thirst for killing", he was too aggressive, and those princes surnamed Zhu almost did not survive. The most famous is Zhu Changxun, the King of Fu, who was stripped and washed by Li Zicheng, thrown into a large cauldron and boiled with several deer to form a "Fulu Feast" and eaten separately.
After the Manchu Qing dynasty came to power, a high-pressure policy was adopted against the descendants of the Zhu family, and some of the descendants of the Zhu family with higher rank and certain influence were expelled and exterminated, so as to prevent the descendants of the Zhu family from rebelling, or those who had the heart to use the name of the Zhu family to plot against the Qing and restore the Ming, such as the frequent uprisings in the name of "Zhu Sanzi" in the early Qing Dynasty.
The descendants of the Zhu Ming royal family have done whatever they want for more than two hundred years, accumulating too much public anger, and they have completely stood against the ordinary people, and have to pay for themselves and the "happy life" of the previous decades with their own blood and life.
[Reference: History of the Ming Dynasty, Sixteen Emperors of the Ming Dynasty, etc.]