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The early Qing dynasty historian Vance Tong was quite critical of Emperor Mingshen's efforts to accumulate wealth and favor Zhu Changxun, the Fu King. He wrote:
"The emperor sent a mine to tax dozens of people, with a daily offering, a monthly advance, and the treasures obtained are incalculable, and they are called the private wealth of the lord of man." and the kingdom of the blessed king, and rebuke it nine times out of ten. The land given to zhuang was 40,000 hectares, and the land of miscellaneous taxes was invited, from nanki in the east to Sichuan in the west, and the messengers came and went to collect profits, and they were disturbed. Folk saying: 'The emperor consumes the world to give (blessing) to the king, and the king's residence in Luoyang is rich in the great inner cloud'. ”
This passage is extremely profound, not only revealing the greedy and wealthy disposition of Emperor Shenzong and the consequences of favoring King Fu, but also reflecting the crux of many social problems in the late Wanli Dynasty.
First, the expenses of Zhu Changxun, the Fu King
Zhu Changxun was born on the fifth day of the first lunar month in the fourteenth year of the Wanli Calendar, and was the third son of Emperor Zhu Yijun (due to the premature death of the second son Zhu Changxun at the age of one, the third son was actually the second son). In the 29th year of the Wanli Calendar, the emperor made his eldest son Zhu Changluo the crown prince and Zhu Changxun the Prince of Fu.
Although it is a fait accompli, it is between the two sons, thick and often thin.
In the thirty-first year of the Wanli Calendar, the emperor was busy arranging weddings for the eighteen-year-old Fu Wang. In November, when the wedding date of King Fu was approaching and money and food were in short supply, the emperor was very angry and ordered a reprimand to the relevant departments of the Ministry of Households, intending to severely punish them. The household department hastened to report that it was preparing to deposit more than 24,800 taels of silver with grain from the Tongzhou Grain Department (two folded silver of Cao Grain) and all of them were allocated to the wedding of King Fu, so that the relevant officials were exempted from punishment. More than 20,000 taels of silver were obviously not enough, and the household department had no other way but to temporarily borrow 50,000 taels of silver from the old treasury in the palace to procure wedding supplies.
The interior decoration of the Fuwang Mansion and the furniture of yiying are the responsibility of the Ministry of Works. The emperor proposed that all this be discounted, and the Ministry of Works should pay cash to the Fu Wangfu. The Ministry of Works thought that the discount of the objects was inconvenient to calculate, not to mention that the Fu Wangfu claimed to share more than 320,000 craftsmen, and the lion opened its mouth, exceeding the specifications of the Lu King's wedding, if the discount, it must be a huge expense. The emperor did not agree, and must pay the ministry of works at a discount to pay two silver. As a result, the wedding expenses of the Fu Wang were as high as 300,000 taels of silver.
That's a record number. In the sixth year of the Wanli Calendar, Emperor Zhu Yijun's own wedding expenses were only 70,000 taels of silver. In the tenth year of the Wanli Calendar, the cost of the wedding of King Lu (the emperor's younger brother) exceeded this amount, and it was only 80,000 taels of silver. After that, the cost of the wedding of Crown Prince Changluo exceeded 100,000 taels of silver, and the cost of the marriage of the eldest princess and the seventh princess was 120,000 taels of silver. It can be seen that the wedding cost of Fu Wang is 300,000 taels of silver, which is a staggering number. Moreover, 300,000 taels is not all, and there are still many expenses around the Fu King. In the eyes of the emperor, King Changxun of Fu was significantly taller than other children.
Before the wedding of King Fu, the emperor instructed the household department to give 3,000 stones of Lu rice to King Fu every year. This is not a small amount, the founding father of the Ming Dynasty Liu Ji is only two hundred and forty stones old. Even so, King Fu was still insufficient, and after marriage, he instructed the palace staff to open a way to make money and open an imperial shop outside the Chongwen Gate, recruit merchants into Beijing to stay in vehicles and goods, and collect fourteen thousand taels of silver per year for the shop rent.
Zhao Shiqing, the head of the hubu shangshu, objected: If the merchants went on strike, then the original tax revenue of Chongwenmen, a commercial city, would be lost. However, the emperor did not think so, and replied: The opening of the Fu Wangfu's imperial shop to collect shop rent and tooth money is an exceptional measure specially approved by him, and it is not necessary to stick to the amount originally proposed, and it must be levied as discretionary, but it must be controlled by the Fu Wangfu.
Fu Wang's expenses were in sharp contrast with the financial situation at that time. Hubu Shangshu Zhao Shiqing (字象贤, 号南渚, Shandong Licheng) said:
"The decay of the heavenly beings has been extreme, the warning of the Heavenly Heart is extremely strict, the mining tax mink digs the grave, the adultery of children, the insult of officials and the people, what kind of world has become?" The Emperor tasted: 'The heart of benevolence has its own day of cessation.' 'Day after day, and more to be done!' ”
Tokoto gave Nakata Daiyoshi (Zi Bozhen, Sichuan Dingyuanren) a more pointed statement:
"The emperor has come to chaos, and the season of six generations has not been reduced." Chen repeatedly wept, and the emperor firmly plugged his ears and refused to listen. Once the chaos is made, the safety of the emperor and his subjects is dangerous and inevitable, why should the gold and jade play well? ”
Tian Dayi's words of "cutting wood and unveiling poles, rising in all directions" seem to be a fantasy in the Taiping Dynasty, deliberately sensationalizing. Not necessarily. An incident that happened in Nanjing in the thirty-fourth year of the Wanli Calendar can be used as circumstantial evidence.
Consider a record in the Records of the Emperor's Congzhi:
"In the thirty-fourth year of the Wanli Calendar, when the winter is long, the hundred officials will go out when they are incense on the tomb of filial piety, and the soldiers will suddenly spread that there are more than 10,000 anti-thieves outside the city, take the tomb, kill the officials, according to the number of the city tyrants. Nine doors have been closed, and there is no need to come out, the city is afraid, and there is no one in the street market. The next day, forty-nine men had been captured and paid to the Heavenly (Fu) Prison. The leader, Liu Tianxu, broke his finger and picked the knee tendon. The internal and external guards will be closed, and there will be seven people who intend to be killed, and the rest will be cut. ”
II. The "Kingdom" of the Fu King, which has been delayed again and again
King Fu's fiefdom was in Luoyang, Henan, and he was supposed to go to Luoyang after marriage. The emperor and Concubine Zheng were very fond of King Fu and did not want him to go to Luoyang too soon, but the Fu King's Mansion in Luoyang had to be built. The progress of this project was deliberately delayed, and it was not completed until April of the 40th year of the Wanli Calendar, costing 400,000 taels of silver, more than twice that of the Lu Royal Palace and ten times more than the other royal palaces.
In fact, the four hundred thousand taels of silver clouds may be underestimated, Xiang Dingxuan said: "Di Bao, Fu Wangfu Mansion Cheng... It was also a service, and the money spent totaled more than half a million clouds. ”
Since the Fu King's Mansion had been completed, the Fu King should immediately go from the capital to Luoyang, which was then called the "Kingdom of The". The Great Ming Society's Canon records:
"The ancestral system, the emperor's concubine is on the throne; all the sons who are crowned kings and princes must choose marriage at the age of fifteen, and live in the capital residence, until the beginning of the country." Since the endeavor of the Dynasty, the land of wealth has not been sealed, and the land of Qifu has not been sealed. The age of the kingdom is not limited. ”
The prince's kingdom was an extremely solemn event, but Emperor Zhu Yijun regarded it as a child's play and delayed it again and again. Considering that the position of the crown prince was constantly threatened by King Fu, the courtiers advocated strict adherence to the ancestral system and urged King Fu to leave the capital as soon as possible and go to Luoyang.
In view of the fact that he was the only one in the cabinet, ye Xianggao, the head of the cabinet, was called "the sole minister", and believed that the urgent task of the government at that time was to replace the cabinet ministers. However, in his mind, the kingdom of the blessed king seemed more urgent:
"Today, it is very difficult for the cabinet ministers to make up for it, and the emperor can detect the last resort of the courtiers and make a decision for the courtiers." In addition, the state affairs of the Blessed King are more urgent...
The emperor ignored it, and due to the repeated delays of the kingdom of the Fu King, the conscripted ships congested the river, causing the merchants to be unable to pass. Ye Xianggao reiterated the previous proposal:
"The subject is the most anxious person in The people of China and foreign countries today is like the kingdom of the blessed king." Needless to say, the ancestral system is difficult to violate, and the national pawn is heavy. That is, the boats along the river south of Zhangjiawan are all detained, and the merchants are not passable, and they are screaming. The Nanjing Chalai Ma Express and other ships have also arrived, and no less than tens of thousands of officials and civilian boats have called the head of the military department every day to ask for food. If it is one day earlier, then the human feelings are one day earlier, and the Order of the King of Fortune is also one day earlier. Why stay for an extra year and a half to attract doubts at home and abroad! ”
Ye Xianggao's heart was long, and he had already spoken very thoroughly, and the kingdom of The Fu King had repeatedly delayed, and there were hundreds of harms to the national society, to the imperial court, and to the Fu King himself. The emperor still ignored it, and the emperor accommodated Concubine Zheng guifei and King Fu, repeatedly looking for various excuses, setting up obstacles, and delaying time.
One of the important reasons is to bargain over the number of "dependent lands". King Fu asked his father for 40,000 hectares of "support land", that is to say, there must be 40,000 hectares of "supporting land" before he could go to Luoyang. The emperor himself meant the same thing, and his instructions to Fu Wang's sonata not only did not review Fu Wang's excessive request, but instead blamed the local officials for not doing a good job, delaying the date of Fu Wang's kingdom:
"As played by the king, the proportion of please give support to the land, there have been many explicit instructions before, and the two houses of Zhaojing (Wang) and Lu (Wang) have been allocated to it. For a long time now, the magistrate Shang'er did not comply, prevaricated, and misjudged the canon. ”
To this end, he eloquently ordered the household department:
"Erbu li also wrote with officials such as Henan and Shandong, that is, to carefully investigate the land left behind and the land that should be allocated in each province in each place, and to ensure that the number of 40,000 hectares should be used, and the desolation should not be prevaricated, and the current government should manage its own business to support itself."
In order to get out of the stalemate, Huke gave the official Ying Zhen (字東仙, 号旸谷, Huguang Huanggangren) a suggestion that, in view of the difficulty of making up the number of 40,000 hectares of Zhuangtian of Fuwang, he hoped that the emperor would first announce the date of the country of next spring, and then gradually check and determine the amount of Zhuangtian. Another official suggested that it would be better to allocate a reward from the emperor's internal savings so that King Fu would not have to bother with the management of the estate. The emperor ignored everything.
Li Sixiao, the governor of Henan, considered that The Fu King's fiefdom luoyang was in Henan, and he had direct responsibility, so he pointed out to the emperor that it was extremely difficult to gather 40,000 hectares of land, and if it was necessary, then the date of the Fu King's kingdom was bound to be delayed. The Beijing officials and the officials of Henan and Huguang unanimously opposed, and the emperor was helpless, making a slight concession, agreeing to subtract 10,000 hectares, and 30,000 hectares must be guaranteed.
Thirty thousand hectares was still difficult to make up, and the emperor again gave in, reducing it to twenty thousand hectares, which was shared by the three provinces of Henan, Huguang, and Shandong. Henan is 11,200 hectares, and the less than 8,000 hectares are shared by Huguang and Shandong. Shandong reported that it had more than 1,280 hectares of land, and it was necessary to add more than 1,200 hectares. Huguang should have acquired more than 4,480 hectares of land, but there was no landing, and Dong Hanru, the inspector of Huguang, proposed that 10,000 taels of silver be used to offset the ground rent. At this point, the problem of Fu Wang's support for the field was close to being solved, but the kingdom of Fu Wang was still undecided.
3. The fiefdom of Fu Wang in the northern half of the river
The obstacle of the kingdom of the blessed king is not just to support the land, even if this obstacle is gradually lifted, it will be another obstacle. As the date of King Fu's departure to Luoyang approached, Princess Zheng Guifei attempted to delay the occasion on the pretext of Empress Dowager Cisheng's seventieth birthday, threatening to let King Fu attend the celebration of the rare birthday of Empress Dowager Cisheng in the forty-third year of the Wanli Calendar before going to Luoyang.
The emperor actually obeyed this unreasonable request, and sent a holy message to Xiang Gao, the head of the cabinet, ye: "The Holy Shou of the Holy Lady of Shuosi is in the middle of her life, and she is personally leading the crown prince and the kings to congratulate the grand ceremony." In the spring and March of the following year, the Qin Heaven (Supervisor) chose the kingdom of auspiciousness.
Ye Xianggao returned the emperor's holy edict and asked the emperor to adhere to the explicit purpose of "holding it in the spring of the coming year". The emperor was stubborn and sent a clerical officer to Ye Xianggao's house to reiterate that the kingdom of the Blessed King was granted only after the Holy Mother's Holy Birthday Ceremony. Coincidentally, on the ninth day of the first month of February in the 42nd year of the Wanli Calendar, Empress Dowager Cisheng died of illness and did not live to the day of her rare birthday, completely dispelling the last excuse for King Fu to delay the date of leaving Beijing.
On March 24, 42 of the Wanli Calendar, King Fu finally left the capital and went to luoyang, with the huge wealth rewarded by the emperor. In order to carry the property of the Fu Wangfu, the expenditure on the seat hall and vehicles alone amounted to thirty-four thousand taels of silver, of which fourteen thousand taels were moved from the Ministry of Households and works, and 20,000 taels were borrowed from the Taibu Temple.
A fleet of 1,172 ships, carrying a cadre of fu wangfu and a large amount of gold and silver treasures, escorted by 1,100 soldiers, marched majestically toward Luoyang, with a mighty wind like an emperor on a tour. I think that in those years, the kingdoms of the five kings, such as King Zheng, King Huai, King Jing, King Qing, and King Liang, each had three hundred ships; the kingdom of the five kings, such as King De, King Xiu, King Ji, King Chong, and King Hui, each had seven hundred ships; the kingdom of King Xing and King Qi had 900 ships each; and the kingdom of King Lu had only 240 ships. The specifications of the Fu King are above the kings.
Despite this, such a profligate and wasteful way, thankfully, King Fu finally left the capital division, which was a blessing for the imperial court and for crown prince Chang Luo. As Tan Qian said: "The favored king is in the country, and China's diplomacy is fortunate for the Eastern Palace, which is like a relief of worries." ”
After King Fu arrived in Luoyang, he relied on the emperor's favor and flew high and commanded. As soon as I got off the bus, I was committed to asking for the rent of the land to support the land. The officials of the Fu Dynasty Mansion went out of the fields and urged them to pay two silver. In October of the 42nd year of the Wanli Calendar, a group of officials (Chengfeng, Menzheng) led by the officials of the Fu Dynasty suddenly appeared in Shandong, harassed them all the way, measured the zhuangtian, and raised the legal rent to 50%, causing a disturbance in the countryside. The magistrate said:
"The colored clothes are crowned, and after the crowds are embraced, they are all beggars who think of the scheming people." Such a scene, through a yiyi, a yiyi mound; after a fall, a fall escape. ”
In order to maintain social order, the magistrates tried to prevent the Fu Wangfu from measuring the fields everywhere and forbade the direct collection of land rent from the peasants, and the support of the fields that the emperor reprimanded the Fu Wang for playing, although it did not reach the predetermined number, but it had greatly exceeded the scale of the Zhuangtian fields of the kings in the Central Plains.
According to the study of the Japanese scholar Fumitoshi Sato, the number of fields owned by the Fukufu is about 13,395.75 hectares, while the vast areas of the lake are filled with silver and silver, and the number of fields actually controlled by the Fukufufu should exceed this number. Compared with the kings who were divided into in Zhongzhou, they were far ahead.
According to the information provided by the Ministry of Households in July of the 43rd year of the Wanli Calendar, the data of the Zhuangtian owned by the kings of Zhongzhou are as follows:
King zhou, more than 5200 hectares; King Zhao, more than 990 acres; Tang king, more than 140 acres; Zheng wang, more than 360 acres; Chongwang, more than 8500 acres; Yi wang, Hui king, more than 3000 acres; Lu wang, more than 12000 acres.
Therefore, the local magistrate at that time said that the number of Fuwang Zhuangtian was "very larger than the usual", which was unmistakable.
King Fu was insatiable and asked the emperor for miscellaneous taxes on Hagi Chau along the Yangtze River, as well as Sichuan's salt wells and tea silver. One of the most powerful is to play the Huai Salt Three Thousand Introduction, opened shops in Luoyang and other places to sell. Zhongzhou originally consumed Hedong salt, but King Fu ordered that all Huai salt be changed, and even issued a ban: Huai salt that was not sold by the Fu King's Mansion could not be bought or sold. Not only did the benefits of salt go to the Fu King's Mansion, but hedong salt was banned, and the salaries of the border guards were short of pay.
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