Regarding Li Zicheng's origin, the accounts in the historical data are different.
In historical materials such as the Suikou Jiluo, it is believed that Li Zicheng's ancestors lived a relatively wealthy life, but in Li Zicheng's generation, they went bankrupt, but they did not say that he had been a pawn, and later because of the criminal case, he took a risk.
However, in the "History of Ming", it is said that Li Zicheng's family was poor, and in his early years he worked as a pawn in Yinchuan, was good at riding and shooting, and later escaped in violation of the law and became a butcher.
The "Ming Chronicle" says that Li Zicheng was "good at walking, able to ride and shoot, and his family was poor for the Yishu", and the "Yishu" here should be to transmit letters to the station, which means the same as the yipao.
Today we will look at the Ming Dynasty's post and delivery systems, which are roughly equivalent to the public postal system, and also transport people and goods.
According to the "Minghui Code", the specific undertaking of the materials for the transmission of goods is the delivery office, and the means of transportation of each delivery station is a ship or vehicle, with different specifications of ships and vehicles, equipped with a different number of personnel, plus management personnel, the usual operation of this system naturally requires a lot of money.
At the beginning of the young Chongzhen Emperor's ascension to the throne, he faced a situation of financial difficulties, on the other hand, the situation in Liaodong was getting worse and worse, and it was necessary to increase the number of troops and salaries. Therefore, the Chongzhen Emperor demanded to reduce expenditure in many aspects, such as eliminating corruption in the Ming army, verifying the true number of soldiers, and putting an end to the phenomenon of impersonating the salaries of leaders, saving a total of hundreds of thousands of taels of silver.
This will inevitably affect the interests of many people, but also affect the income of the low-level soldiers, causing the noise of many border soldiers.
Another measure was to abolish the station, and the result of the calculation at that time was that hundreds of thousands of taels of silver could be saved, which was a lot of money.
This idea was put forward by the Bing Section to Liu Mao in the incident.
According to the Ming Dynasty's Chronicle of Food and Goods, the Ming Dynasty's miscellaneous services were complex, and the people suffered greatly, and after the implementation of a whip law, this situation could not be completely changed. Liu Mao proposed to abolish the stagecoaches and assign the labor of the post to the vast number of households to bear. In this way, it not only increased the burden on the households, but also led to a large number of stagecoaches losing their jobs, "the stagecoaches have no income to eat, and the maximum phase rate is from thieves to chaos."
As far as the reality of that time was concerned, whether it was the salary of the border town or the cost of the station, there was indeed a considerable amount of water. However, as a nationwide postal system, the station has an irreplaceable role in the transmission of materials.
More importantly, each post employs many poor people. There must be exploitation, and the money that ends up in the hands of these poor people is pitifully small. But these poor people can exchange their coolies for a small income, even if they are not enough to feed themselves, at least to give them a sense of belonging and stable expectations. This is very important.
Now that the imperial court has dismantled the post stations, a large number of poor people have suddenly become unemployed vagrants, and they have caught up with the year of famine, and these people will accept any temptation to survive.
We cannot be sure that Li Zicheng went from a pawn to an anti-thief, but what is certain is that a large number of cut stagecoaches had no food and clothing, and eventually became part of the rioters.
Therefore, on the issue of the dismissal of the postman, Liu Mao and the Chongzhen Emperor were too short-sighted, and only calculated the economic account, not the political account.
There is a saying in the Suikou Jiluo that later when Liu Mao fell ill, he regretted that he had given the emperor that bad idea.
Liu Mao died in Beijing, the body was to be transported back to his hometown, and when he went to Shandong Province, he could not find a coachman who drove the car and carried the weight, and the people at the bottom hated him. ”
Written by Yu Zuo