Zhang Juzheng, the most famous cabinet of the Ming Dynasty, how to rectify the administration of officials, reform the tax system, and strengthen national defense, so that the Wanli Dynasty became the richest dynasty in the Ming Dynasty? Some people say that he bowed down to his best and was a pragmatic and bold reformer, and some people said that he was a dictatorial and chaotic government, and he was an ambitionist who coveted fame and fortune. Why is there such a contrast in people's evaluation of him? During his lifetime, his power was overwhelming, and his grace could not be restored, but he was soon convicted of raiding his home after his death. What kind of legendary life and merits does he have?
In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, a comprehensive reform that lasted ten years and covered political, economic, and military fields swept the country, known as the Wanli New Deal. This reform revitalized the twilight Ming Dynasty with vitality and vitality, revitalized the dynasty, and greatly increased its national strength. It was Zhang Juzheng, a famous politician in ancient China, who carried out this reform. So, before Zhang Juzheng implemented reforms, what were the difficulties and challenges faced by the Ming Dynasty? As a generation of famous courtiers, Zhang Juzheng had seen people at a young age, and at the age of 25, he pointed out that the Ming Dynasty had five major ills. What are these five ills? Why did Zhang Juzheng wait for more than 20 years before he had the opportunity to solve the ills and implement reforms?
The author is the famous American historian Stavrianos, who has this to say about Chinese history. It is said that ancient China was never a state governed by merchants and politicians, but a state managed by landlords and bureaucrats. So what is a bureaucrat and what is a politician? In my opinion, in short. The so-called bureaucracy is that there is no political belief, only to be an official, not to do things, then a group of crowds. Politicians, on the other hand, have strong political beliefs. To be an official is to do great things, to make contributions to the country and the nation, and to leave a name for outstanding figures in history.
So, is Alos right to say this about Chinese history? Looking at the Twenty-Four Histories, it should be said that his words have a certain historical basis. However, in the end, there are some partial generalizations and biases. Because Zhang Juzheng is definitely a politician in Chinese history, and it can even be said that he is the only outstanding politician of that dynasty.
One day the emperor got married, and the old empress dowager made a will for the sake of Tujili and decided to grant a national amnesty this year. In ancient times, in order to implement the heavenly time, when the death penalty was pronounced, the date of execution was always added when speaking, and the beheading was asked after the autumn. And this time, the old lady was happy and wanted to be a mother-in-law, and issued such an order, deciding not to kill people this autumn and winter. Listening to such a decision, the group of ministers was applauded, but Zhang Juzheng, the then assistant minister, jumped out, got on a book, and resolutely opposed it. He believes that this is only a manifestation of a kind of appeasement of love, and that not executing a death row prisoner is to see the pitiful face of this prisoner, but has he ever thought of the feelings of the victim's family? You show mercy to the murderer, so isn't that cruel to the innocent victim's family? Then, after hearing this man's words, the old lady and the emperor were speechless, and finally had to withdraw their lives and behead the death row prisoners as usual in previous years.
When Zhang Juzheng was 25 years old, he saw the five major drawbacks of the country, and after 20 years, all of them were realized. At the age of 48, the dynasty was dying. And he did it on his own. A drastic act saved the dynasty and dealt with it for another seventy years. Even more amazing. After this person did this deed, not only was he not affirmed, but he was liquidated. Some people say that Zhang Ju was a great reformer, bowing down to exhaustion and dying. He was more virtuous than Zhuge Liang. Others say he's a sinister careerist. Dictatorship is chaotic and unscrupulous in order to achieve the goal. More cunning than Cao Cao Sima Yi, he was a real villain. So, which is the real Zhang Juzheng?
Zhang Juzheng was brilliant, he not only had a unique view of the law, but also saw at a young age that the Ming Dynasty was in crisis. He pointed out that the Ming Dynasty's royal family, officialdom, army, and national treasury all had serious problems and were terminally ill. So, is the situation really as grim as Zhang Juzheng said? Zhang Juzheng saw the shortcomings of the Ming Dynasty at the age of 25, but it was not until the age of 48 that he had the opportunity to implement reforms and personally solve the crisis. So, in these 23 years, especially when Zhang Juzheng was 48 years old, what happened to the Ming Dynasty?
In 1572, the Ming Dynasty was 204 years old and was considered the Longqing era. The country, from politics to economy to military, has decayed and is sick, not lightly. Let's start with the first disease, which is the expansion of the imperial family, which is the largest vested interest group of the Ming Dynasty. At this time, the number and desire are infinitely expanding, and the rise is amazing. Sentence, Xu Guangqi, the Shangshu of the Ministry of Rites at the end of the Ming Dynasty, recorded: In Hongwuzhong, there were only 58 men and women in the imperial family, and at the beginning of Longqing, there were 45,000 subordinates. In the early days of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang and Hongwu had 17 princes, and the total number of kings was only 58, while in the Longqing era 200 years later, there were as many as 45,000 registered royal family members. This 200 years increased 1,000 times. If you add the domestic slave retinue of these royals, you can definitely break the million, which is an astronomical number, 1 million royals. In this way, for the royal family, it has a problem. The original land acquisition was not enough to eat. What if the wolf has more meat and less meat? Only by expanding the scope of hunting and forcibly plundering. So on the one hand, the land encroached upon by these royals is constantly expanding, and on the other hand, the land per capita in the country is naturally declining. That's all there is to it. One thing goes on and on.
Historical records show that the King of Luoyang Fu had millions of dollars, and the King of Chang'an Qin had millions of dollars and was rich in the world. The King of Datong owned 1,060 houses. Ordinary people have to work hard to provide a suite, this prince alone occupies more than 1,000 houses, tens of thousands of people serve him alone, how greedy. According to statistics, at that time, half of the land in Henan Province was occupied by the royal palace. Tens of thousands of people ate imperial food. At that time, the total population of Daming was more than 60 million. How about this? A dozen families had to support an earth emperor. Plus there are taxes to feed those officials. What a burden on the people of Daming.
These inflated royals not only have to eat and drink spicy, but also because of the long-term lack of discipline, they also do whatever they want, becoming a local public nuisance. Historical equipment Jiajing 37 years, a royal butler. When he went to this provincial government to ask for money and food, because he did not achieve his goal, he openly beat up the envoy. In the Ming Dynasty, the envoy was a grand erpin official, equivalent to the current executive vice governor. And a domestic slave, a domestic slave of the royal family, dares to beat the vice governor and the provincial and ministerial levels, which shows how arrogant they are, and the above is the first symptom of a serious illness.
Let's move on to the second and third pathologies, which are followed by the rules of the bureaucracy. That is to say, government officials are rigid in their thinking, habitual and conservative, they do not act and do not work, and the phenomenon of passive sabotage is very serious. A famous scholar of the Jiajing period, The Nanjing Taibu Temple, Cheng Gui Youguang, once recorded the official style of the time, and the officials of the Ming Dynasty did not do the right thing that day. Every day, the calculation is how to make friends with superiors, lest it be unfavorable to make friends with superiors. What I want is to get promoted to an official and get rich, before he became an official, he was a poor student, and after a few years of being an official, he had everything. So, can it be done without greed or possession? Such an official, can you expect him to bring a clear and upward wind to the country?
The number of members of the royal family has increased dramatically, and the population is very large. They do not engage in productive labor, they encroach on large amounts of land and wealth from ordinary people, they have no fear, and they corrupt the law. However, many officials only want to get rich by being promoted to higher ranks and have no intention of doing government affairs. Even more deadly, corruption prevails in the military and combat effectiveness declines. According to the records of Emperor Ming Shizong, in the 34th year of Jiajing, an army of thousands of people actually appeared, and it could not defeat dozens of thieves.
Then there is the fourth disease, border maintenance, and corruption in the army. Border war readiness has fallen into disrepair, and logistical supplies have not been able to keep up. We know, a dynasty. More serious than the bureaucracy is corruption, which is the corruption of the army. The Ming Dynasty is nothing short of extraordinary. In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the selling of officials and knights was made public in the army. Anything in the military can be bought with money. For example, if there is a rich man in the military, he can buy idle. What is idleness? It's about buying idle work. If you have money, you can not participate in military training if you have the money. In the daimyo barracks at this moment, the chief soldier, the deputy general, the staff general, and the garrison are all valuable. The Ming Dynasty documents Huang Ming Articles of Law and Matters were transferred, and it was recorded in this way. Ming soldiers often accepted financial escorts along the way and appeared on camera privately. We know that this salt, in this dynasty it belongs to the official camp, private sale of salt is illegal, but in the Ming Dynasty deformed, as long as the salt merchant pays, the Daming barracks can broadcast a small detachment armed to escort you smuggling, to this smuggler salt dealer escort. It's corrupt to this extent.
There are also state-allocated military salaries and war materials, which are often privately embezzled by officials and officer corps. The appetite of these officers' youth was astonishing. Less than half of what is actually sent to soldiers for combat readiness, sometimes only 1/10. Well in this case. Can logistics keep up? Can the weapons be well equipped? During the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of the Ming Dynasty, Ma Wensheng, the warrior shangshu, was blunt in his practice of the Five Books. It is said that because the officer in charge of the manufacture of the ordnance has embezzled the price of silver, this is a manufactured weapon, counterfeit and inferior. As early as the previous dynasties of Longqing, such a problem occurred during the Chenghua years. The weapons created by the Ming Dynasty have no strength in the bow, the knife is not fast, and the armor is loose and the equipment is very poor. How can such equipment kill the enemy? We know that later, such a problem arose in the ming army and the Qing army. That Ming Dynasty soldier, slash the Qing army with a knife, people are fine. And the Qing army? A single arrow can shoot the Ming army to death. Why is that? Because your knife is blunt, you can't kill people, and your helmet is rusty, and people can shoot you through with one click.
What's even worse. At this time, the army of the Ming Dynasty, the battle has been declining. Because of corruption, where there is a will to fight in the army, morale is low, there is no fighting spirit, so the combat effectiveness is extremely poor, and it is often won by people with less. According to the records of Emperor Ming Shizong, in the 34th year of Ming Jiajing, that is, in 155 AD, the remnants of 60 or 70 people were killed and 45,000 people were killed and wounded for 40,000 or 5,000 people. What does the Ming Dynasty Records record? It is the Ming Dynasty, that is, the Jiajing Emperor period. Sixty or seventy remnants led by the Japanese ronin. In the southeast coastal area of the Ming Dynasty, it was like entering a no-man's land. They killed or wounded about four or five thousand Ming troops. These thousands of people were killed by dozens of people, and the officials were killed by a large group of them. These small groups of troops roamed the southeast coast of Daming for more than 80 days before they were wiped out.
Speaking of this, we must remind you that the so-called Wokou during the Ming Dynasty was different from the Japanese army that invaded China in modern times and modern times, it was not a regular Japanese army, but some Japanese samurai, ronin, and sea bandits. There are also many Chinese pirates, many of whom were zhuangding captured from China's southeast coast. Such a miscellaneous army, Daming's border defense army he could not defeat, which shows how weak the combat effectiveness is.
So let's talk about the fifth disease, that is, the national treasury has no money. At this time, the Ming Dynasty was empty, and even the royal treasury was overstretched and very embarrassed. To what extent? The history book Lingnan records that the Ming Dynasty could not even pay the salaries of officials. What to do? Then in the first half of the year, white strips will be played, and local specialties will be issued in the second half of the year. This pepper sumu from all over the world was given to these officials as the salary base. In Zhang Juzheng's view, the royal family is arrogant and extravagant, the officials are doing nothing, the combat effectiveness of the army is low, the national treasury is extremely empty, and the whole country is in crisis and on the verge of collapse.