I believe that everyone has seen such a scene when watching films and television works about antiquity or reading history-related books: after a war, the soldiers returned triumphantly.
The emperor rewarded the generals who had performed well in this battle, including the golden ten thousand taels, the thousand acres of good land, and the rewards of adding officials to the knighthood. When we see these fragments, we can feel the joy revealed in this picture or text, and at the same time we are curious about the value of these rewards.
We can know the value behind these words, but the reward of gold may give us some questions: Is the emperor's statement that the reward of ten thousand gold is true?
Is it really possible to get ten thousand taels of gold?
Just according to the price of gold at the time I wrote this article, one gram of gold is 383.58 yuan. Today's weighing units are different from ancient times, we ignore these errors caused by units for the time being, but according to today's weighing units, one pound is equal to ten equals 500 grams.
Therefore, gold is a thousand pounds of gold, that is, more than 190 million yuan. Putting this money today, assuming that the person who received this money spent 400,000 yuan a year on family life, then the family could live for at least 479 years while guaranteeing the quality of life. This is where it is interesting to reward gold.
How should such a great wealth be given to those who receive the reward? Moreover, the situation of the emperor rewarding his courtiers with gold and gold wanliang happens from time to time, today a courtier has done a great thing that is beneficial to the country, tomorrow a general has made meritorious contributions to resisting the barbarian invasion, if he really rewards the golden wanliang every time, will the state finances bear it?
State financial expenditure includes many aspects, such as military expenditure on the army, for the construction of productive projects (water conservancy projects such as repairing rivers, etc.), and if there is a disaster in that part of the country during the year, there is also the establishment of disaster relief funds, as well as the expenditure of the royal family and the salaries of local officials of the imperial court.
In ancient times, the social productive forces were far inferior to those of modern society, and if a country was to maintain its stable operation, it was necessary to pay the necessary annual expenditure, otherwise it would face a series of serious national crises such as reducing the ability to regulate the social conditions of the country, peasant uprisings, and foreign invasions.
In contrast, the reward for courtiers is actually other expenditures in the surplus wealth after the necessary expenditure of the state.
Turning back to the source of national wealth, national wealth at any time comes from taxes. We know that the social productivity in ancient times was actually relatively low, so this also means that the annual national tax revenue will not be very high, and our country in ancient times was dominated by a small peasant economy.
Therefore, the country's tax revenue is largely directly related to the year of the year, but the state's expenditure can not be reduced a lot, so many times the country is in a state of income and expenditure.
According to the Song Dynasty, the most prosperous commercial in history, the highest annual tax revenue is more than 16,000 yuan, which is rarely converted into silver, let alone converted into gold?
Therefore, the gold that the emperor often rewards gold with ten thousand taels of gold can hardly be real gold. Not to mention that the ancient gold extraction technology was not developed enough, and there were no modern large-scale instruments. Until the sixteenth century, global gold production produced only seven tons of gold per year.
Therefore, ancient China was absolutely not in a position to have a large amount of gold reserves. Therefore, the emperor's reward of true gold is fundamentally without the basis for fulfilling the promise.
How to receive it if it is really appreciated
The emperor said that the reward was ten thousand taels of gold, although it was not a real reward for gold, but it would also give the minister a corresponding reward. Next, I will tell you in detail about the process of receiving 10,000 taels of gold.
First of all, in ancient times there was a strict departmental system.
There are some necessary formalities for the distribution of such a large reward. We all know the three provinces and six ministries.
The first step is that the Zhongshu Province is required to draw up the order, and the Menxia Province can decide whether the bounty can be issued after a resolution. The next step can only proceed after the approval has been approved after the resolution of the next step has been completed.
Within the scope of responsibility of the Household Department, there is a responsibility for the supervision of financial expenditures, and the Gold Department in the Household Department is the relevant department in the Household Department that full-time supervises the property cashier, and the Gold Department does not have the function of directly spending money, and the department that is really in charge of wealth expenditure is the department called Taifu Temple.
The second step is to go to the department of Taifu Temple to get the proof of receiving the bounty - Muqi. This wooden deed is equivalent to two mirrors in the broken mirror recirculation, and only when the recipient's wooden deed matches the wooden deed of Taifu Temple can the bounty be obtained from the national treasury.
What to do if you find out that the money is fake money
So even if you have already received the bounty, what if you find out that the money is fake?
Then we should understand how the money of the national treasury flows into the national treasury, as mentioned above, the source of the treasury's money is taxation, so how does the tax flow into the national treasury from the hands of the people step by step? First of all, the local tax collection must be collected from the county officials from the hands of the people, and these taxes are first collected into the warehouses of the states and counties.
After the tax collection of each prefecture and county is completed, the officers and soldiers will go all the way from the locality to the capital, and after arriving in the capital, the officials of the Taifu Temple will inspect the collected property and test whether the weight of the property is enough and the quality of these property. When there are some tax assets that do not meet the regulations, they will be counted and then asked to make up for the insufficient property.
During this period, there are actually few links in which fake money flows in, and only during transportation and when in the warehouse can there be any hope of exchanging real money for counterfeit money. After arriving at Taifu Temple, the tax revenue is extremely large, and of course it is impossible to detect everything in the face of so many possessions, so the test method of Taifu Temple is to take a part of each batch to judge the quality of this property.
When the property is deemed qualified, it can only be sealed and stored in the warehouse, and then the source of the property and the person involved in the transportation and verification will be signed. Therefore, counterfeit money can only be mixed into the national treasury if it happens not to be detected at the time of detection.
The rest of the property will be put into the treasury, where there will also be a special person responsible for the management of the state property. For example, treasury officers and patrolling soldiers, treasury officers will also regularly count the quantity of property and verify the quality of the property.
After finding that the property is unqualified or missing, there will be a corresponding person who will be punished, so the fake money generally does not exist in the national treasury, especially such a huge amount of fake money. Nor will it exist in the treasury. After all, if such a huge amount of fake money is in the national treasury, then the relevant officials have long ago not known to be punished hundreds of times.
Finally, according to historical records, in the Western Han Dynasty, there were rewards of several thousand pounds of gold, but the smelting technology at that time was very backward, the so-called gold was just a synonym for the currency in circulation at that time, and the measurement units of the Western Han Dynasty had a huge gap compared with today, so it seemed that the extremely large amount of rewards may actually be only one or two hundred pounds.