Grandaire, as a character in Balzac's representative novel Eugenie Grande, also shows us an extremely miserly, even daughters and wives are not as good as one of his coins, the typical image of a scrooge. In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, there was also such a figure who was more than enough, he was the mother-in-law of the Chongzhen Emperor, Zhou Kui - known as the "Grande" of the Ming Dynasty.
Everyone's achievements are all related to the times. And this is also what we call "The Fortune of The Lord of The Lords The ascension of the Chongzhen Emperor can be said to be Yunye, which is extremely dramatic, under such a small probability event as the fall of the Emperor of the Heavenly Revelation, and the seemingly inconceivable death of the Emperor of the Apocalypse, the Emperor zhu Youxiao has no heirs, and the 17-year-old Zhu Youjian also ascended the throne as emperor according to the "Ancestral Training of the Emperor Ming" established by Zhu Yuanzhang, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty.
But a person's luck alone cannot accomplish his deeds. At the beginning of his term of office, the situation in Liaodong became a trend of erosion, Yuan Chonghuan corrected the edict to kill Mao Wenlong, and then made a good wish of "five years of pingliao", and within the dynasty, since 1626, the great drought and locust plague in the north, northern Shaanxi was even more hungry, Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong and other peasant revolts, and even more complicated, and the southwest region's luxury rebellion, these are also like the sword of Damocles hanging above the Ming Dynasty, although he is very diligent, he is also vigorously eradicating Wei Zhongxian and other castrated parties, and life is more frugal. Even in order to pray for the stability of the world, he sinned six times, but when these classes were in trouble, it was extremely difficult for a founding prince, even the emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, who was born of a beggar in his ancestors, not to mention that for the Chongzhen Emperor, who was very conceited and suspicious, at best, he was a medium-sized emperor, and the danger of the dynasty was unstoppable.
The great drought and the loss of Ningyuan and Jinzhou, the defection of Hong Chengzu, Zu Dashou and others to the Qing court, the attraction of Li Zicheng's "greeting the king and not paying grain" to the poor displaced people, the plague that spread in The Beijing Division in the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, the death toll was even more "Chongzhen sixteen years, the population of Beijing died nearly 40%, ten rooms and nine empty." "But as a human monarch, even so, do you not want to make progress, do you want to tie your hands and grab it?" On March 13, 1644, Li Chuang and conquered Taiyuan, and on April 7, Datong fell, and on April 21, he had already reached Juyongguan.
At this time, the Chongzhen Emperor was faced with the fact that after listening to the Donglin Party and abolishing the industrial and commercial tax, the finances dried up, and the three taxes of the three salaries of silver and liao, the salary of suppression and the salary of training were imposed, and more of them forced the poor peasants to Li Zicheng. Lacking military salaries, the Chongzhen Emperor had no choice but to issue orders to the emperor's relatives and manchu ministers of culture and military affairs, hoping that they would be able to survive the national disaster together and donate silver to resist Li Zicheng's peasant army.
Our grandfather, Zhou Kui, faced with such a difficult national difficulty, how did he behave? Under the momentum of Li Zicheng's army, there was a wave of momentum, and in the face of his son-in-law's request for donations, he resolutely refused, no. You must know that this benevolent brother, but after eating kickbacks in Liao, can the lord who can sell the objects of the palace be sold without money? However, the Chongzhen Emperor had been in politics for decades, and if he said that he hated it, he could also kill Yuan Chonghuan and Wei Zhongxian, and if he said that he was unwise, he could do nothing about this old man. And her own empress Dowager Zhou, seeing that her father was so rogue, had to sell her own belongings, and gave five thousand taels to her father in the hope of donating it to the imperial court in the name of her father, so as to become an example, so that the benevolent gentlemen of the Manchu Dynasty generously donated money to alleviate the country's difficulties, and what was even more dramatic was that this "Mr. Grantai" first left 2,000 taels and then donated it to his son-in-law.
Unfortunately, when this group of gentlemen led by the Donglin Party and full of high winds and bright festivals faced the national disaster, Zhang Jinyan, the shangshu of the military department, opened the city gate to welcome the new master. Zhou Kui's son-in-law, the Chongzhen Emperor, chose to abide by the ancestral precepts on the coal mountain, and the king died of sheji and hanged himself. Li Zicheng, on the other hand, did not plunder at the beginning of his entry into the city. But when he turned around and wanted to understand, since he didn't accept money from the common people, and didn't collect money from these "upright gentlemen of the Donglin Party," how could he fight the war with the money?
The Chongzhen Emperor's approach is very good, and I also come to make a donation. Only this time, the recipient of the donor, Li Zicheng, is a bloodthirsty and murderous figure. And our grandfather-in-law, although his daughter is dead, his son-in-law is dead, and his patron is gone, but in the face of Comrade Li Zicheng's "donation request", he resolutely maintained his Grundy true color, no. Liu Zongmin, as a general under Li Zicheng, felt that it was time for this guy who regarded money as a father and mother to see it, and first forced his wife and daughter-in-law to commit suicide, I did not; then beat his eldest son to death, I still did not; and then... Or just hit you, seeing that this grandfather of the country was going to be killed, he was relieved. But this silver was paid, the money was gone, the people were gone, and we don't know, this grandfather, whether he resented his wife and daughters, the country was broken, the family was destroyed, or the money was empty, and soon he died.
Reference: History of the Ming Dynasty