Corruption has been prevalent in all dynasties, especially in the Ming and Qing dynasties. In the early days of the Ming Dynasty, the grasp of corruption was particularly strict, and the neck was cut off by corruption, but it was still impossible to curb the trend of corruption, except for some people who were originally greedy, there were also people who were too little to live because the salaries of officials were too small, and they could only find ways to get some money themselves.
After the Qing Dynasty, the salaries of officials were still not high, and the trend of corruption was even more prevalent, the most famous corrupt official and the emperor, who embezzled hundreds of millions of taels of silver, was really copied and the family, rich in the national treasury.
After the late Qing Dynasty, the people went to nibble on the bark of the trees, and the officials and royals were still dressed in fine clothes and wasteful.
There are even things like Cixi embezzling military funds for pleasure, which shows how corrupt the government of the late Qing Dynasty was.
There are two kinds of people who are corrupt in history, one is to do practical things, not greedy and no capital can not do things, such as Qi Jiguang; the other is to enrich their own pockets, for their own power and their own enjoyment to embezzle, such as Yan Song. He Yan is the latter, Zeng Guofan is the former.
Zeng Guofan
Forced to "embezzle"
When Zeng Guofan first became an official, he also set several rules for himself, such as not forming parties, not engaging in personal gain, not embezzling, not accepting bribes, and so on. Like all the politicians of his generation, he had lofty ideals. In the beginning, he did, very high, but it came at a cost.
When Zeng Guofan first became an official, his salary was only 45 taels, plus other formal income, and he only had 135 taels a year. According to the purchasing power, 135 taels is less than 30,000 yuan, which means that Zeng Guofan's monthly salary is less than 2,500 yuan, and this is still in the capital.
At that time, there were two ways to be an official who could get rich, one was to take bribes, and the other was to borrow money. Borrowing money needs to be repaid, and taking bribes is not needed. Zeng Guofan initially used the second kind, but over time he owed too much money.
Zeng Guofan still earns so much money a month, his family is not enough to spend, he still needs to borrow money, where does he have any money to pay back?
After a long time, he found that the Qing government had begun to rot from the inside, and if he did not give gifts to his superiors, he would not be reused, he would be excluded, and honesty could not help him realize his political ideals, could not really do practical things, and could only leave a reputation of two sleeves and a clean wind.
Are honest officials good officials?
This is not necessarily true, integrity is only a criterion for a good official, and an official who really does things is a good official. Moreover, in a political environment like the late Qing Dynasty, if you want to do things, you can only do things with others
"Complicity"
。
In the previous article, we said that Zeng Guofan was an official who belonged to the former, and he never embezzled for himself, but only to realize his political ideals and dedicate his last attempt to the corrupt Qing government.
Zeng Guofan did indeed do it, he extended the life of the Qing government, but the Qing government had rotted to the point of internal organs and there was no medicine to save it.
Moreover, judging from the property left behind after Zeng Guofan's death, he did indeed use all the money he received from bribes for serious affairs.
Zeng Guofan's property left behind after his death was only 18,000 taels of silver, which was not much for a high-powered person, and a county order embezzled more than that in a year. Moreover, almost all of this money was used for his funeral.
From Zeng Guofan's meager income, there was nothing to take from him
"Cash register"
We can all see the decay of the Qing government.
The corrupt Qing government
Although the salaries of officials in the Qing Dynasty were not high, they were not poor and were rich. In the late Qing Dynasty, the Qing government allowed donations to buy officials in order to open source.
In the late Qing Dynasty, this situation was very common, and many people wanted to buy officials, even if they were seven-pin sesame officials like the county grandmaster, there were also many people who rushed to buy them, all because they could embezzle a lot of money when they were officials for a year.
According to the records, there was a common man in Zhejiang, Jiang Yuan, who also wanted to buy an official pawn, but unfortunately he did not have enough money.
The living can't be choked to death by urine, and if they don't have money, they can find rich people, so he found four of his good friends, and everyone took money to buy this official, and Jiang Yuan, who paid the most money, did the county order, and the person who paid the second most money became the master, and waited until Jiang Yuan did the county order to arrange everyone to a position.
Still
The Buyer's Office Co., Ltd. was thus established. Not out of what Jiang Yuan expected, after buying the officials, each one
"Shareholder"
They all performed very well, fishing hard for three years, and fishing for more than 600,000 taels of silver. However, due to the excessive hard work of buying official joint-stock companies, it was discovered.
However, after Jiang Yuan's up and down points, in the end, he was not punished at all, but was only deposed. It's just a small county ordinance, and everyone else is even more so. Compared with these officials who are rich and oily, ordinary people who are not clothed and hungry rarely appear in film and television works.
Corresponding to the common people selling their children and selling their daughters in the hope that their children can eat and drink enough, is Cixi's birthday feast.
At Cixi's fifty-year-old banquet, there were more than 120 dishes, as well as a singing and opera stage, etc., which cost a total of 560,000 taels of silver. However, this was not her most extravagant time.
Empress
In order to cope with Japan, the Qing government ordered more than a dozen ships from Britain and Germany, totaling more than 4 million taels of silver. After having a ship, you can't have no soldiers, and soldiers can't skip meals, which also needs to be allocated, but the military expenditure is still short of nearly ten million taels.
In 1894, the year cixi was sixty years old, the Qing government faced various expenditures, and she still insisted that her birthday banquet should be held in a big way.
For this wish, she not only reprimanded the ministers at the imperial court, but also embezzled more than 6 million taels of silver that had been invested in border defense costs and railway costs for private use.
After that, she also set up a clever name to divert the navy's military funds to build the Summer Palace, and the army had no money to buy a few more warships.
The armaments and weapons of the Beiyang Marine Division, which had no expense, stopped being renewed, and the training of the army without pay soon followed suit, without the previous active training, but more as a model.
This also blames them, from the decay of the top to the decay of the lowest, all sucking the blood of this country and the people.
Of course, Cixi's embezzlement of military funds only paid a price for building her own back garden sooner or later, but this price needed to be borne by 40,000 people.
Beiyang Marine Division
epilogue
In the late Qing Dynasty, in order to save themselves, many people also did a lot of sports, such as the Western Affairs Movement as we know it. However, none of this could save the Qing Dynasty from decaying from head to toe.
However, we Chinese have a tenacious quality, no matter what kind of dilemma, we will never give in, and there will always be someone who will become a pointer and lead us to the dawn.
We, the descendants, can also learn from history, understand the corruption of the Qing government, and restrain ourselves.