During the Zhengde period of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Jianyun, the king of Germany who was nearly sixty years old, asked the imperial court to increase the tax and grain on the palace Zhuangtian, otherwise his life would be almost over. Emperor MingwuZong Zhu Houzhao unceremoniously and directly dismissed: "How can Wang Ye be short of money?!" ”
Speaking of which, we can't blame Zhu Houzhao for not giving face to the elders, because this old prince is really too capable of accumulating wealth!
Zhu Jianyun (朱見潾) the Prince of De was the second son of Emperor Mingying's Zhu Qizhen (朱祁镇), and his birth mother, Princess Wan Chen, was originally named Zhu Jianqing (朱見清). Born in April of the thirteenth year of orthodoxy, he was only born half a year later than the eldest brother Zhu Jianshen.
In the Ming Dynasty, which implemented the system of "standing up for a long time", King De had no connection with the position of prince since he was born. Moreover, in August of the fourteenth year of his birth, the emperor Zhu Qizhen was also captured by The Wallachians during the Tumu Fort Rebellion.
The news reached Beijing, and the imperial court was shaken. Forced by the situation, Empress Sun first made Zhu Jianshen, the eldest son of the emperor, crown prince, and then made zhu Qiyu, the new emperor, and Zhu Qizhen the emperor.
Zhu Jianyu, who was still in his infancy, did not know that the outside world had undergone earth-shaking changes, and he had changed from the second son of the emperor to the son of the Emperor Taishang, and the palace where he once lived should also be vacated for his uncle's family to use.
A year later, emperor Zhu Qizhen was sent back to the capital by Wa Lai, and then was placed under house arrest by the current emperor Zhu Qiyu in the Nangong.
Ming Yingzong Zhuqi Town
Zhu Jianqing spent his childhood under house arrest. In the third year of Jingtai, Zhu Jianqing, who was 5 years old at the time, was made the King of Rong by his uncle Zhu Qiyu, and at the same time, the eldest brother Zhu Jianshen was also demoted from prince to Prince yi.
The young Zhu Jianqing struggled to survive from his uncle's hatred and the cold eyes of the palace people, after all, even his brother's position as crown prince had been abolished, and although he had an empty name of a rong king, who would take it seriously? After all, in the deep palace, children are the most likely to wither.
It turns out that Zhu Jianqing's luck is very good, he survived the most difficult seven years of his life, and ushered in a turnaround at the age of 8.
In the eighth year of Jingtai, because Zhu Qiyu was seriously ill, Shi Heng, Xu Youzhen and others took the opportunity to launch a change to seize the door, and supported the restoration of Zhu Qizhen, the emperor of Taishang, and changed the name to Yuan Tianshun.
Zhu Jianqing transformed into a noble prince again, and also received a new title and name, Zhu Jianyi, the Prince of De.
Perhaps it was the fear and lack of clothing and food in his childhood that made Zhu Jianyun particularly enthusiastic about collecting wealth when he became an adult, and repeatedly asked the imperial court for land, and even the Zhengde Emperor, who had always been greedy, could not help but spit on this uncle: How could the prince be short of money!
In the eighth year of Tianshun, Emperor Mingying's Zhu Qizhen died, and before his death, he instructed the crown prince Zhu Jianshen to be filial to his mother and brothers, and to choose a good land for King De and others as a fief.
Since Zhu Jianyun was the King of De, the fief was naturally Dezhou, Shandong. Zhu Jianshen, however, thought that Texas was poor and sealed his second brother to Jinan.
In the third year of Chenghua, Zhu Jianyu went to Jinan to take the domain, and in the same year, his birth mother, Princess Wan Chenfei, died of illness at the age of 37.
In the first month of the following year, King De went to the imperial court and demanded more than 4,100 acres of idle land in Shouzhang and other counties in Shandong.
Zhu Jianshen waved a large pen and agreed to give the land to his brother. However, what he did not expect was that the next King de became more intense, not only demanding the Zhuangtian left by the Qi and Han kings in the early years, but also wanting to take more than 700 acres of people in Qinghe County, Guangping Province, into his own.
Local officials complained to the imperial court, saying that the land had been donated to the royal palace by the traitors and not the intention of the people. Moreover, the county's land is narrow and the people are poor, and they still have to bear heavy labor, so they really can't lose land anymore!
The Chenghua Emperor Zhu Jianshen eventually reconciled with a thin mud, and still assigned the seven hundred acres of earth to the De Wangfu, but the imperial court managed to collect taxes, and the tax was also reduced to three cents per acre of silver.
The local people were forced to exchange land ownership for "low taxes", after all, they had to pay more taxes to the imperial court, and at least they could pay less grain for the royal palace.
Here we need to introduce the Ming Dynasty's Zhuangtian system. In addition to the Ming Dynasty king's allocation of money from the imperial court, another important income was the rent of Zhuangtian.
The king of the clan adopted the good land as his own through the emperor's reward and skillful plunder, and the peasants became tenant farmers in the royal palace, and the Ming Dynasty lost the land to collect taxes.
In the long run, these princes were like moths, eroding the foundations of Ming rule, and the court officials were forced to give preferential treatment to the ancestral precepts of the clan and could not stop them.
After this Zhuangtian incident, King De also said that his royal palace was "narrow and the palace was wet", and he wanted to expand the stables of the warehouse outside the palace.
At that time, the DewangFu was expanded from the residence of the nobles of the Yuan Dynasty, modeled on the Forbidden City in Beijing, with a grand scale, occupying one-third of the city's area, the palace wall was as high as two zhang, and the interior decoration was luxurious and golden.
Zhu Jianyun sat on such a luxurious palace that he even cried to the imperial court, and the Ministry of Works, hindering the emperor's face, had to promise to expand the palace for King De in the future.
In the eighteenth year of Chenghua, Zhu Jianshen gave 1320 hectares of land from Baiyun Lake in Zhangqiu County to The King of De, and in the twenty-third year of Chenghua, he gave 430 hectares of idle land in the three counties of Shandong New Town, Boxing and Gaoyuan.
In the Records of Emperor Mingxian alone, it is recorded that the emperor gave more than 6,000 acres of zhuangtian to the king of De, not counting the land that the royal palace had seized in the local area.
This number may not be much among the tens of thousands of feudal kings who were often tens of thousands of acres in the late Ming Dynasty, but it was still a very striking number during the Xianzong period.
After the death of Emperor Mingxianzong Zhu Jianshen, King De proposed to enter the capital to mourn his brother, but was stopped by the newly enthroned Emperor Mingxiaozong Zhu Youfan. After all, the nephew is no better than the brother, and there will be no need to respond.
Therefore, King De also relented a lot during the reign of Emperor Mingxiaozong and did not ask the imperial court for Zhuang Tian.
When Emperor Xiaozong of Ming died and Emperor Wuzong of Ming ascended the throne, King De was nearly sixty years old. It is said that Zhu Jianyun's parents, Ming Yingzong and Concubine Wan Chen, did not live to be forty years old, but Zhu Jianyun was unexpectedly long-lived, and had already lived to the time when his nephew ascended the throne.
As soon as Zhu Houzhao ascended the throne, the courtiers began to ask for a tax reduction to three cents per acre of silver for the Zhuangtian of the royal palaces.
As mentioned above, the De Wangfu demanded 700 hectares of mintian land in Qinghe County, and the local officials complained to the imperial court, and finally Ming Xianzong specially approved that each mu of land only needed to pay three cents of rent to the royal palace.
Now all the zhuangtian should only pay three cents of silver, and the king of Germany also complained to the imperial court, saying that if it was reduced to three cents of silver, his life would probably not go on!
Zhu Houzhao originally wanted to agree to his uncle's request, but Hubu told the emperor that the local floods and droughts were frequent and the people were in difficulty, and it was necessary to prevent the risk of accidents. The implication is that if the tax cuts are not cut, they may provoke a popular uprising.
Thus happened the scene at the beginning of this article, when Zhu Houzhao dismissed King De's request and said, "Wang He is poor!" Since then, the king of Germany has also stopped a lot, no longer asking the imperial court for money and land, and enjoying the happiness of the world in the palace.
In the twelfth year of Zhengde, King Zhu of Germany died of illness at the age of 70. In the last Ming Dynasty, the De clan inherited a total of 8 princes, and the last two De kings, Zhu Youshu and Zhu Youque, were captured and executed by the Qing army, and the lineage of the De kings was also declared.