In the first month of 1641 (the fourteenth year of Chongzhen), the New Year Festival did not bring a trace of joy to Zhu Changxun, the Fu King of Luoyang City, on the contrary, he was a little panicked, and Li Zicheng's peasant army was outside the city.
Two years ago, this former imperial court pawn and tens of thousands of mud-legged men who rebelled with him had been defeated by the Ming army led by Sun Chuanting and Hong Chengzu, and When Li Zicheng was at its worst, there were only 17 horses left, but now, as soon as these remnants of the defeated soldiers entered Henan, they responded to everything, and the number of followers who followed Li Zicheng soared to tens of thousands.
Zhu Changxun, the fu king of daily poverty and extravagance, could not understand the reason why so many mud-legged people were willing to follow Li Zicheng's rebellion, but in fact, the reason was that there was no other reason, and Li Zicheng was willing to give them grain.
In fact, Li Zicheng had already come to Henan 1 year ago, the Ming army in Henan was difficult to pay, the army was unstable, and the combat effectiveness naturally could not go up, and the local officials of Henan had tried to persuade the rich and oily Fu Wang to pay for the soldiers, but the Fu King Zhu Changxun refused the request of the local official, his money was given by the imperial court, and he took it to spend the day and wine, and it was righteous.
But now, seeing that the peasant army was about to break the city, Zhu Changxun, the fu king who had weighed more than 300 kilograms, finally agreed to take money to recruit warriors to resist the peasant army, but it was too late, and this was the last Spring Festival of the fu king Zhu Changxun.
After Zhu Changxun, the Fu King, was killed by the peasant army that destroyed the city on January 20, 1641 (the fourteenth year of Chongzhen), the Ming Dynasty, which maintained his extravagant life, lasted for another 3 years, and in the next 20 years, there were constantly people who supported zhu's descendants to resist the Qing army, but ironically, it was Li Dingguo, a former peasant army general who almost starved to death when he was young.
If this is a tragic story, then there are "pigs" and "vampires" in this story.
<h1>Eat the "pig" of Daming</h1>
After Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty, his basic attitude toward his descendants was that the crown prince would inherit the throne, and the rest of the clan kings would return to their fiefdoms.
During Zhu Yuanzhang's time, the king of the domain really controlled the local military and political power, and Zhu Yuanzhang may have done the same as Liu Bang because he was not at ease with handing over the land to others.
But Zhu Yuanzhang did not expect that the heavens joked with him, the crown prince Zhu Biao died early, the second qin king Zhu Zhu, there was no skill, the old third Jin king Zhu Zhuo, the old fourth Yan king Zhu Di was good, of the three, the second was really not suitable to be the emperor, the third oldest, the second and the fourth would oppose, choose the fourth, the second and third will also be dissatisfied, so Zhu Yuanzhang came up with a method, the three are not standing, the prince is the grandson, that is, the later Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao.
Zhu Yuanzhang's original idea was to let the three kings restrain each other, so that the throne of the grandson could sit firmly, but unfortunately, the old second Qin king Zhu Zhu and the old third Jin king Zhu Zhuo passed away one after another, and the old Fourth Yan king Zhu Di became the head of the clans.
The logic of imperial power is that there can only be one center, only one person can say, the emperor and the strong domain are doomed to coexist, so the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao chose to cut the domain without suspense.
There was no problem in cutting the domain, but Emperor Jianwen was too anxious, and everyone knew what happened later, and Zhu Di, the king of Yan, joined forces with Zhu Quan, the king of Ning, to launch the Battle of Jingnan, and eventually occupied Nanjing.
Zhu Di was the founder of the rebellion of the king of the clan, so after he became emperor, he would definitely try to block the possibility of rebellion by other clan kings. As a result, the kings of the Ariake Dynasty were stripped of their real power in the Zhu Di Dynasty.
Zhu Di
Through a series of restrictions, Zhu Di basically made the clan kings completely lose the ability to threaten the central imperial power, so after Zhu Di, there were few clan kings rebelling, and the only rebellion of Zhu Chenhao, the king of Ning (that is, a descendant of Zhu Quan, the king of Ning who fought with Zhu Di), was also easily quelled by Wang Yangming.
However, although Zhu Di stripped the clan kings of their real power, Zhu Di retained the treatment given to the clan kings during the Zhu Yuanzhang period.
According to Zhu Yuanzhang's regulations: the eldest son of the emperor is the prince, the rest of the sons are all princes, and the treatment of the prince is that the annual amount of rice is 10,000 stones, which is almost equivalent to the grain of three thousand ordinary households a year.
The eldest son of the prince is the son of the son, and the rest are the kings of the county, and the age of the king of the county is much less than that of the prince, only two thousand stones.
The eldest son of the Junwang is still the Junwang, the rest are the Zhenguo General, the Zhenguo General is still the Zhenguo General, the rest are the Auxiliary Generals, and then there are the Fengguo General, the Zhenguo Lieutenant, the Auxiliary Lieutenant, and the Fengguo Lieutenant.
General Zhenguo is 1,000 stones old, Fuguo general is 800 stones, Fengguo general is 600 stones, Zhenguo lieutenant, Auxiliary Lieutenant, Fengguo lieutenant are 400 stones, 300 stones, and 200 stones respectively.
As you should have seen, this is a huge clan group, and in order to maintain the expenses of this group, the state finances must have a considerable expenditure.
However, this is not the most serious part of the problem, the most serious part of the problem is that the titles of the princes and grandchildren of the clan are originally decreasing step by step, but this decrease stops after the lieutenant of Fengguo, and all the descendants after that are lieutenants of Fengguo, and although the age of lieutenants of Fengguo is not as good as the prince's ten thousand stones, there are also two hundred stones, which is enough for them to live a good life. Moreover, there is no end to the number of children and grandchildren, and this number will be very scary after a hundred years.
This is just a regular treatment, if the emperor is happy, there is no other reward, the Fu Wang Zhu Changxun appears at the beginning of the article is the third son of the Wanli Emperor Zhu Yijun, and his mother Zheng Guifei is deeply favored by the Wanli Emperor, and the Wanli Emperor once hoped to pass the throne to him, but unfortunately he could only give up under the fierce opposition of the courtiers. In order to compensate Zhu Changxun, the Wanli Emperor gave him 20,000 hectares of fertile land in Henan, which was not the end, in addition to the one-time payment of field property, the Wanli Emperor also often gave money and grain to Zhu Changxun, the Fu King, and sometimes, these money and grain even came from liaodong military expenses.
When it comes to the number of descendants of the Zhu family, we must also understand a truth: most people in this world will want to increase their own value, and the descendants of the Zhu family are certainly no exception.
Well, we may wish to analyze how they get value-added, in general, entering the core of power is the best way to achieve value-added, but this road was basically blocked in the Zhu Di dynasty, Zhu Di through a series of regulations on the power of the king of the domain was very strictly restricted, in this case, trying to approach the power will not only not add value, but may be the biggest depreciation: losing the head.
So the descendants of the Zhu family faced a choice of points: trying to approach power, the chance of success was very small, and if they did not do well, they would die; no matter what others only enjoyed, the imperial court would give a generous reward, one risk was extremely high, one was almost risk-free, and everyone would choose.
Most people want to add value, and approaching power isn't a good way to add value, so are there other ways to achieve value added? There is, having a child, anyway, having a child, the imperial court will give a piece of money and rice, this kind of risk-free, all good work, who does not do, that is a brain problem. The princes of the dynasty have given birth to dozens of children.
The descendants of the Zhu family can also be regarded as following Zhu Di's wishes, Zhu Di does not need a promising royal family, only a submissive clan like a pig.
As a result, the descendants of the Zhu family exploded, and by the end of the Ming Dynasty, the grain and rice supplied to these princes had accounted for a considerable part of the Ming court's financial revenue, and as for the specific amount, there were different theories, some said one-third, some said one-sixth, in short, this is a rather terrible number.
The princes of the Ming Dynasty occupied a large amount of land and wealth, and had completely become the parasites of the Ming Dynasty, but they could not do anything, because since Zhu Di, the institutional setting was to hope that they would be pigs.
Occupying a large number of land princes formed part of the feudal landlord class at that time, they exploited the people and became a cancer on the society at that time, and it was not good to have this tumor of the Ming Dynasty, but this is not all.
<h1>The rise of the Donglin Party</h1>
In 1604 (the thirty-second year of the Wanli Calendar), Gu Xiancheng and others restored the Donglin Academy where Yang Shi of the Song Dynasty taught, and gave lectures with Gao Panlong, Qian Yiben, etc., and since then, the Donglin Party has become an important force in the politics of the late Ming Dynasty.
Things will not appear out of thin air, and if there is no social foundation, No matter how much Gu Xiancheng talks about it, he cannot condense such a huge political force by lecturing a few times at Donglin Academy.
Since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, or even the early Ming Dynasty, the industry and commerce in Jiangsu and Zhejiang have begun to exert their strength, and the reasons why these industrial and commercial owners have gained the strength to compete with the old landlords are not all at home, but also abroad.
In the 16th century, European colonists occupied the Americas, and found a large number of silver mines in the Americas, so European colonists used the silver mined in the Americas to buy silk, tea, porcelain and many other commodities in China, silver flowed into China in large quantities, and the original small-scale industrialists and businessmen became rich merchants and tycoons, rich and wealthy, but at the same time, they were suppressed by the feudal landlord class, and they needed to seek a political breakthrough.
So where is this breakthrough? imperial examination.
The princes of the Ming Dynasty were raised as pigs by the emperor, only eating and not working, of course, the emperor did not want them to work, but the work always had to be done, how to select the people who worked? The Ming Dynasty followed the imperial examination system since the Tang and Song dynasties.
Now if you travel to the south, you can still see that there are many exquisite ancestral halls and colleges in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
In the global trade has obtained a huge amount of wealth in the industry and business will invest a lot of resources in education, unfortunately to tell everyone, as long as it is an exam, there are tricks, here refers to not cheating, or normal exams, there are also tips or skills, these rich business practitioners once a huge amount of wealth into education, will soon invent a set of methodology for the imperial examination.
These industrial and commercial owners pass the examination in a reasonable, legal and compliant manner, send their own people to the DPRK, and after entering the DPRK, these people in turn shelter the interests of industrialists and businessmen, and the industrialists and businessmen who have obtained benefits will devote more resources to education, and it will not be long before they will become a force to be reckoned with in the DPRK.
This group of people representing the common interests soon formed a group of friends, excluded others, controlled the government, and finally reached a point where they could greatly influence the decision-making of the Ming court.
Most people in the world consciously or unconsciously defend the interests of their own class, and the Donglin Party members, either from the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, or have great ties with them, naturally want to safeguard the interests of these people, so the last strange phenomenon of the late Ming Dynasty appeared: the rich oily industrialists and merchants did not pay much tax, and the peasants who were too poor to eat problems continued to raise taxes.
Since the government was controlled by the Donglin Party, the Ming Emperor's attempts to alleviate the financial crisis by increasing the industrial and commercial tax repeatedly failed, and you may ask: Can't the Emperor kill the Donglin Party members who oppose the imposition of industrial and commercial taxes?
Killing is indeed possible to kill, but when the entire imperial court has been deeply infiltrated by this faction, the emperor is not easy to deal with even if he has a knife in his hand, because the emperor cannot kill most of the people in the DPRK, so who will still work for you, and killing a few people cannot move the foundation of the Donglin Party, anyway, you have to take the exam, as long as the exam, the exam is our many people, so this industrial and commercial tax cannot be collected late, Chongzhen tries to save money by all means, but these money are completely a drop in the bucket compared with the huge financial expenditure of the Ming Dynasty.
However, the war in Liaodong still had to ask for money, so the Chongzhen Emperor could only increase agricultural taxes again and again, and in the decades at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the weather conditions were not good (some people think that it was the Xiaoice river period), and the peasants had problems eating enough, but now they had to deal with the successive tax increases of the imperial court, many peasants could not survive and follow Li Zicheng's rebellion, in order to suppress the peasant rebellion, they also needed money, where did the money come from? With the increase in agricultural taxes, more peasants could not eat and followed Li Zicheng's rebellion.
Such a situation doomed Li Zicheng to have a steady stream of soldiers as long as he was not killed, even if Li Zicheng was killed, there was Zhang Xianzhong, and other anti-kings, Daming entered a death cycle.
Historically, the Donglin Party members were not the only ones with this selfish face, and the Donglin Party members proposed early on to curb land annexation, and even once proposed the Ming Dynasty-like "spreading the land into the acres" (this policy was later realized in the Qing Dynasty). In this way, it seems that the Donglin Party members are also thinking about the country.
However, if we use the method of class analysis, it is easy to understand that the Donglin Party represents the interests of the industrial and commercial capitalists in the coastal areas, and the interests of these people are not consistent with the interests of the traditional feudal landlords who occupy the land, and it can even be said that there is a conflict, so it is not their interests that inhibit mergers and annexations and "spread out the land into the acres", and moreover, these policies are actually correct, and the Donglin Party is still very willing to mention the correct proposals that do not touch their own interests.
But the end result was that the interests of these two groups of rich and oily guys were well protected, and the financial pressure of the Ming court was completely borne by the poorest peasants.
<h1>"Pigs" and "Vampires"</h1>
The princes of Daming were able to obtain the money and rice of the imperial court without paying any price, and the Donglin Party allowed the small and medium-sized peasants to be overwhelmed by the agricultural tax for their own interests, and they also resolutely opposed the increase in the industrial and commercial tax of the imperial court.
They are the "pigs" and "vampires" of the Ming Dynasty, and they are certainly happy to maintain this status quo, because this kind of life that only enjoys power and does not assume obligations is really not too cool.
However, all this must have a premise: the world is the world of the great tomorrow.
The reason why the princes surnamed Zhu were able to get something for nothing was because the world was laid down by their ancestor Zhu Yuanzhang, and the reason why the Donglin Party members were able to control the government was because they penetrated into every corner of the bureaucracy, and without them, Emperor Daming had no other team.
But Daming is gone, can everything still be established? Let's look at the end of these two waves of people.
Zhu Changxun, the Prince of Fu, as the representative of the princes, was captured by Li Zicheng's peasant army on January 20, 1641, and then killed.
There are different theories about how His Highness the Fu King, who weighed more than 300 kilograms, was killed, the first one was that Li Zicheng also obeyed the rules, cut it twice, and did not torture Zhu Changxun too much; the second was that Li Zicheng cut off a piece of meat and wine on the fu king's body; the third was the bloodiest, saying that Li Zicheng saw that the fu king Zhu Changxun was so fat, no different from the pig, and simply ordered his men to slaughter several deer in the back garden of the Fu king's family, and threw them into the pot with the fu king Zhu Changxun and boiled it, and also named it Fulu tang (Fu Wang + deer).
I don't know if at the last moment of his life, Zhu Changxun, the Prince of Fu, would regret it, and when the Ming Officials wanted him to pay for the reward of the soldiers, he categorically refused, but in the end he ended up like this.
The fate of other princes is not much better, wherever the peasant army goes, if there is a royal palace, they will certainly not let go, the princes in the royal palace, who have been raised in the way of pigs for many years, can hardly be said to have any combat effectiveness, and the wealth they have is so rich, in this case, the peasant army will let these princes go? Unless there is a problem with the brain.
After the destruction of Li Zicheng's Dashun regime, the more ferocious Qing army would not spare these guys who were as weak as sheep but had a lot of wealth, the ming dynasty prince was almost killed by the catastrophe of the late Ming Dynasty, and the lucky undead could survive, daming was gone, who still had that kind heart to raise this group of people.
The life of the Donglin Party was slightly better, when Li Zicheng was approaching the city of Beijing, he proposed to give them 1 million taels of silver to withdraw their troops, and the Chongzhen Emperor hoped that the Qunchen would pay for it. But the acting skills of these people have gone deep into the marrow, they said one by one that they were innocent as officials, had no savings, only one house, how the emperor needed, can sell the house, so a spectacle was staged in Beijing: the officials in the city listed the houses for sale, and they said one by one that they wanted to "destroy the family and relieve the difficulties."
In the end, the Chongzhen Emperor failed to scrape together the money, and the peasant army of Li Zicheng entered the city, and the Chongzhen Emperor hanged the coal mountain.
The wishful thinking of the officials led by the Donglin Party was still quite loud, no matter who became the emperor, they all needed civilian officials, and when Daming was gone, it would be gone, and whoever became the emperor would still be an official.
But reality soon gave them a merciless slap, Li Zicheng's peasant army after entering the city first thought not about how to re-establish the bureaucratic system, but to find money, Li Zicheng's way of finding money was simple and rude, that is, to fight, these large and small officials were arrested and beaten until the money was paid, and in the end, this group of courtiers who could not take out one million taels of silver in the Chongzhen Dynasty were beaten by Li Zicheng with seventy million taels of silver.
Later, the Manchu Qing rulers who entered the city were more sophisticated, they knew how to use the civilian officials of the previous dynasty, and many Donglin Party members still had officials in the Qing Dynasty. Some Donglin party officials could even exert influence over the Manchu rulers, allowing Confucian ideas to permeate the Manchu rulers' governing principles.
However, the officials of the Donglin Party still wanted to safeguard the interests of the industrial and commercial capitalists in the southeast coastal area in the Qing Dynasty, and they also wanted to prevent the increase of industrial and commercial taxes. Thinking beautifully, the Donglin Party was able to control the ming Dynasty's government because they were the main team of this bureaucratic system, and in the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the Eight Banners nobles outside the Guan were the real team, and the Donglin Party could only be a follower.
The Brave Eight Banner Army
Therefore, the Manchu Qing rulers raised taxes on the industrial and commercial practitioners in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, no one dared to oppose, who objected, directly killed, all the property went to the imperial court, more directly, anyway, even if you Donglin Party were killed, everyone had their own bureaucratic team.
I don't know if everyone has such a feeling, the Manchu Qing people are only hundreds of thousands, the soldiers are not more than tens of thousands, but they can enter the customs and seize the world, which gives people a very strong sense of unreality, in fact, understand everything above can understand these.
Although Daming is strong, but the prince who eats empty pay and the Donglin Party who makes money crazy but does not pay taxes, these two forces are Daming's BUG, although Daming is strong, but it is constantly consumed by these two BUGS, because these two BUGs, Daming's finances are stretched, but there is no way.
Although the overall strength of the Manchu Qing is weak, but the political power has just been established, the vitality is very strong, the society does not have this kind of BUG, even if there is, because the social vitality can also be solved through its own internal, Daming can not get money and land in the hands of wang ye and a large number of feudal landlord classes and the Donglin Party and the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie, but the Manchu Qing can, because of this, even if the Manchu Qing has made a shaving order, a land enclosure order, an escape law and other policies that are almost equivalent to suicide, there is still a chance to stabilize the situation.
An organization, a society, is not afraid of the weak, nor is it afraid of difficulties, afraid of the emergence of this kind of BUG, because the weak and difficult can be solved by development, but development can not solve this BUG, on the contrary, they will grow with the society, until beyond the scope of social tolerance, trigger a collapse, and then go through the next cycle.