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On the battlefield of Liaodong, the Ming army and the Later Jin were fighting, the emperor and the ministers in the Jingshi Dynasty were playing, the deficit of the national treasury statistics, the surplus grain at the bottom of the imperial warehouse... The vast majority of the "short-sighted" people of the Ming Dynasty did not care about what their eyes could not see, whether the rice bowl in their hands was filled or not, the thick clothes of the cold winter moon, the wine and meat they wanted for marriage and funeral... These are the things they care about most.
01
In the 7th year of the Apocalypse (1627), Wu Yingji (ji Yisheng), a 34-year-old anhui man, was shocked by the desolate scene outside the county town when he passed through Zhenyang County, Henan (present-day Zhengyang County, Zhumadian, Henan), and after being shocked, he recorded what he saw and heard that day, providing the most true portrayal of the lives of the people in the late Ming Dynasty for future generations.
After 20 miles out of the city gate, it looks like yellow and white thatch is all around, and the traces of the fields in the weeds are still faintly recognizable, and there are no crops in the fields, and from the beginning to this, the nearly 40 miles of fields are completely abandoned.
According to the coachman (caravan) next door, this is the case around the county, and the neighboring county next door is slightly better, but it is also abandoned by nearly half.
After that, the group entered the station, and in addition to watching the fire old man, they also encountered several errand boys.
When everyone sat down to chat, Wu Yingji couldn't help but ask why so many fields were left uncultivated and left barren, so didn't the people have to pay taxes?
Everyone said in unison: "Those are all good fields, how can you not have to pay taxes!" ”
Wu Yingji became more and more curious: "If this is the case, then why is there no one to cultivate it?" If you have to pay taxes but don't farm them, where do taxes come from? ”
The crowd replied, "Because there are no cattle." ”
Wu Yingji then asked, "Why are there no cows?" ”
Next, they began to explain in detail to Wu Yingji: "Because the local government often distributes the errands that have contributed money to the heads of people who have cattle and horses in the family, the errands are demanding and tight, and everyone can't stand it, so they can only secretly sell the cattle to avoid the official government from apportioning again." But when the cattle are sold, the fields naturally cannot be planted, the fields cannot be planted, the taxes cannot be run away, the grain cannot be planted here, the taxes on that side must be paid, and everyone really cannot survive and can only flee to make a living elsewhere, so those fields are also abandoned.
The government could not receive the tax from those who abandoned the land and escaped, so they sent the shortfall to their relatives, and the relatives could not bear to flee, and the official government sent them to the people of the village, and the people with good family conditions could barely pay the tax, and those who could not afford to pay could only escape, so now more and more people in the county are running, and the fields are more and more deserted. ”
Wu Yingji then asked, "Then why don't you just sell the field for some money?" ”
The crowd replied: "The government distributes taxes and workers according to the size of the field, and the larger the field, the more the family loses, and now everyone wants to take the field away from their own name, who will buy it?" That's why now the field would rather be left there than planted. ”
"Didn't anyone go to the county to find the government to report this situation?"
"It is not easy to become an official, in addition to corruption and bribery, there are also unscrupulous means to complete the money and grain targets sent down from above in order to keep the official position, how can they take care of other things?" Before that, some people reflected the situation to the county, and as a result, they were beaten up violently, and no one dared to reflect it again. ”
Wu Yingji couldn't help but ask again: "This is a key transportation place, there are always other leaders who have come here, right?" When they saw this situation, did they ever ask questions? ”
The crowd replied, "No one has asked." ”
refugee
Although the incident recorded by Wu Yingji occurred in the seventh year of the Apocalypse, and Chongzhen would not ascend to the throne until next year, the life of the people of the Ming Dynasty had already entered a fiery situation.
In order to complete the tax targets apportioned above, whether the tax rating is reasonable or not, local officials only seek to do everything possible to complete the task so as to retain their official positions or please their superiors, completely ignoring the lives of the people.
As far as the recorder Wu Yingji came into contact with, at this time, the official government's means in order to collect taxes were already unbelievable and mad.
Unable to collect or unable to collect taxes, they actually had to be paid by others, originally just one person and one family fled, and the small area of population lost and the fields were abandoned, but now the government has made the entire village and the whole county flee, and the land has begun to be deserted one after another, and the government still ignores it and continues to suck the marrow on the bodies of the people who have not yet fled, with the completion of the tax target as the only goal.
One of the root causes of this human disaster is human greed.
Many local governments often increase their own payments for the sake of embezzlement, and the central government has apportioned this year's tax targets, and the provinces, prefectures, and counties have increased their quotas at all levels, and the more officials they handle, the greater the burden on the people.
The other lies in the impractical and tough management methods of the entire Ming bureaucracy that disregarded the people's livelihood.
02
Insufficient taxation at the local level, and not much revenue are set as important indicators for assessing the promotion of officials, while the number of people under the rule, whether the fields are deserted or not... A series of people's livelihood issues, no one cares about them.
In this atmosphere, officials with a little conscience and want to change the status quo will inevitably not survive, they cannot or are unwilling to complete this perverted taxation, and naturally they cannot be promoted to gain greater decision-making power and discourse, and then change and prevent this kind of man-made disaster, and worse, they are often dismissed by their superiors because they cannot collect taxes, or even go to prison.
Those who are flattered and fierce, and those who are well versed in the rules of the officialdom will try their best to break the last bone of the people, squeeze the last bit of Blood of the People, and then put these bits and pieces into silver money and rice grain under their feet, so that they can climb up to the high-ranking official Houlu.
Corrupt officials
It can be said that the use of taxation as an indicator for the promotion of officials has not only eliminated most of the officials who still have a conscience, but also pushed the kind of centrist officials who are neither good nor bad in ordinary days to the side that makes things worse and worse.
When the vast majority of government officials can only see the "tax" in their eyes, it is not surprising that the people at dawn are forced to abandon their fields and flee, which should be regarded as a matter of "water and water".
What is even more frightening is that Wu Yingji mentioned at the end of the record that not only did the local government ignore it, but all the officials who saw this scene looked strange, and it is not difficult to see that the violent taxation of the government caused the people to abandon their fields and flee was not unique to Zhenyang County, but a large-scale and large-scale situation.
How big is this massive scope? Does the Chongzhen Emperor, who will come to power next year, know these things? What will he do to save the people?
03
In the first year of Chongzhen, a severe famine broke out in Yan'an, Shaanxi.
Yan'an people Ma Mao (mao Sisheng) was ordered to go to Shaanxi to investigate the disaster situation, and on the way, he recorded the tragic situation he witnessed, and then compiled it and played Chongzhen in "Preparing for the Chen Disaster and Neglecting".
Chongzhen Emperor
"It didn't rain in Yan'an Province last year... The people went up to the mountains to eat the grass, which was like a grain of millet, and the taste was bitter and astringent. After October, the mountain grass is all eaten, the people began to peel the bark to eat, at the end of the year, the bark is eaten, the people went into the mountains to dig a kind of soil called 'green leaves' to fill the hunger, this soil block smells fishy and difficult to eat, but as long as you eat a little, there is a feeling of fullness, but after a few days people will die of bloating...
...... What's even stranger is that as soon as a child or a loner leaves the city gate, he disappears without a trace, and when he finds that someone outside the city gate is eating XX, he knows where the missing people have gone before..."
Eat the weeds first and then eat the bark, the bark is eaten and then begin to eat the "green leaves" that will bloat and die, and finally even the same kind of people also began...
After that, Ma Mao analyzed the reasons for this human tragedy.
“...... The government was under pressure from its superiors and had to levy taxes severely. If there are only one or two people left in a household, then these two people pay a tax amount, and if there is only one or two households left in a first (ten households for one A), then these two households pay a tax amount, and so on, one mile (ten for one mile) and one county are like this... Those who did not flee fled with hatred, drifted to other places, had no one to rely on, and finally gathered to become thieves, making a living by robbing their homes and houses, and bandits were all over Guanzhong. ”
From the seventh year of the Apocalypse to the first year of Chongzhen, from Zhenyang in Henan in the Central Plains to Yan'an in Guanzhong, Shaanxi, although the time is small, the distance range is not insignificant, and the official forced people to flee in Yan'an is the same as that of Zhengyang in Henan, combined with the analysis at the end of the material at both ends, the whole country is not known, but this kind of man-made disaster is at least prevalent in the Central Plains and Guanzhong, these places are densely populated, and the number of victims is countless.
The cause of the famine in Yan'an was a natural disaster (before the rain), and if the local government did its job of disaster relief, not to mention that everyone was saved, it was always a big problem to avoid the total collapse of the local social order.
But the reality is that the people who cannot grow grain and rely on grazing and soil to survive when it does not rain on a rainy day, the government does not provide relief, and even still collects taxes at the perennial standard, and then just like Wu Yingji saw in Zhenyang, Henan, those who did not flee paid taxes on behalf of the fugitives, and then more and more people fled, people went to the field, and the next year there was no one to cultivate in the spring, and the famine intensified.
Famine
On the other hand, in order to survive, the fleeing people have begun to take risks again, and the robbers have become bandits, and the normal social order in the Guanzhong area has been fully impacted.
The vicious circle of official tax collection - the people's tax evasion (abandonment of land) - famine (natural disaster or man-made) - sharp reduction in tax sources - official tax collection (those who have not fled) is a vicious circle that is getting bigger than a day, and the few lives left in the Ming Dynasty are rapidly being lost.
In addition to the taxation of the fields, all kinds of arbitrarily dispatched servitudes from local governments also crushed the people to pieces.
04
In the seventh year of Chongzhen, the Daming Prefecture (present-day Daming County, Handan) sent a batch of grain to Tianjin by fate, and according to the paper regulations, the government called the people to pay salaries for work.
The local government not only did not pull out a dime, but also directly apportioned the transportation target of 2,000 vehicles to each local household, forcing the people to work voluntarily, and then changed to those who were unwilling or unable to contribute, they could pay two or two silver to the government to work.
During this year, the peasant army entered Henan, and the Later Jin army invaded Xuanfu (present-day Xuanhua District, Zhangjiakou), and the Hebei region of the Central Plains was in a time of war and chaos, and the risk of going to Tianjin was extremely high, and many people had no choice but to pay money in order to survive.
According to the previous report of Ma Maocai, Chongzhen should know what happened to the people,
However, in the end, during the Chongzhen Dynasty, the people's livelihood was not effectively improved, but deteriorated.
Lee Zi-cheng
In the third year of Chongzhen, the imperial court levied three cents on the basis of the original "Liao salary", Chongzhen increased the "suppression salary" for ten years, and Chongzhen added "training salary" in the twelfth year, and a total of more than 16.7 million taels were levied before and after.
These newly added taxes undoubtedly kicked the people into hell completely, and likewise, it also accelerated the speed at which the Chongzhen Emperor himself was close to death.
From a third-party standpoint, the Chongzhen Emperor, as the supreme leader, did have many unavoidable things, but who among the people who were forced by the government's tax collection to separate their wives and children, and whose families were destroyed, could say that they had the obligation and responsibility to understand the difficulties of those emperors and show sympathy?
A dynasty that does not love its people is doomed to be completely annihilated by the corpses of its people.