"Banzai Ye" was a special title for ancient feudal emperors, and the princes and nobles were sometimes referred to as Chitose. However, as a eunuch, he was known as the 9,900-year-old second only to the emperor, which was probably the only one in Chinese history, Wei Zhongxian. In fact, there was something even more absurd than this, that is, the Emperor of Heavenly Revelation who handed over the heinous authority to Wei Zhongxian was illiterate and illiterate. This can be said to be unique in the history of the Ming Dynasty, and even in the history of other unified dynasties in China. So why is this happening? The initiator of this matter is still the Wanli Emperor who has not been in the dynasty for 28 years.
Ming Shen Sect Zhu Yijun
In 1581, when the Wanli Emperor was 19 years old, he happened to have a palace girl surnamed Wang. Originally, this matter was an ordinary and trivial matter for the Wanli Emperor. However, for the Ming Empire, it became a major event involving the foundation of the country. Because the Wanli Emperor was childless and the empress was infertile, and this time, the palace daughter was secretly married. The principle of succession to the throne of a feudal dynasty is as follows: "The succession to the throne is succeeded by the father and the son; there is a concubine, and there is no concubine; the emperor has no heirs, and the brothers and brothers are the last brothers." The first and third sentences are easy to understand, and the second sentence means that no matter how many sons the emperor has, and no matter who of these sons is the most capable, the only one who can inherit the throne is the emperor's wife, that is, the son born to the empress. If the queen is childless, she has the eldest son. In other words, if the palace daughter can give birth to a son, she will inherit the throne of the Wanli Emperor.
However, the Wanli Emperor felt that this palace girl was of low birth and was always reluctant to admit it. Unfortunately, he forgot an important rule of the imperial family: the emperor's living and eating, every word and deed, every move, would be recorded truthfully by a special person. Therefore, the fact that the Wanli Emperor was in the palace of the royal palace was also recorded by the historian in the "Notes on Inner Living" without exception. In the face of his mother Empress Li's questioning, the Wanli Emperor could not argue and could only admit it. However, in the depths of his heart, he still did not change his contemptuous attitude towards the Wang family. This was reflected in the birth of Zhu Changluo, the son of the Wang clan and the eldest son of the Wanli Emperor.
Ming Guangzong Zhu Changluo
According to the view of the ancients, the Wang clan was passed down from generation to generation for the Ming Dynasty and was a hero of the country. However, the Wanli Emperor was reluctant to seal her. Later, under the personal interrogation of Empress Li, the Wanli Emperor held a canonization ceremony. After that, until the birth of emperor Zhu Youxiao in 1605, wang's name was never promoted again. Not only that, the Wanli Emperor even restricted the wang family's freedom of movement and did not let his mother and son meet for a long time, and the time almost ran through the entire Wanli Dynasty. Without strong protection, the situation of the emperor's eldest son Zhu Changluo and the later born emperor's eldest son Zhu Youxiao can be imagined!
Contrary to the indifferent treatment of the Wang clan, the Wanli Emperor favored another concubine, the Zheng clan. According to historical records, zheng entered the palace in the ninth year of the Wanli calendar, and was named a concubine by the Wanli Emperor in ten years. In the eleventh year, she was also crowned as a princess. In the twelfth year of the Wanli Calendar, the Zheng clan gave birth to an imperial daughter, and the Wanli Emperor Long Yan Dayue promoted her to a noble concubine. In the fourteenth year of the Wanli Calendar, Zheng Guifei gave birth to the emperor's third son, Zhu Changxun, and the Wanli Emperor promoted her to imperial concubine. In this way, in just four years, the Zheng clan was promoted to the fourth rank in a row, from an obscure palace girl to an imperial concubine with a prominent status, second only to the empress. Formally, the status of the Zheng clan was inferior to that of the empress, but in fact, the Wanli Emperor obeyed his words and obeyed him, and although he did not have the name of an empress, he had the reality of an empress.
Statue of Zheng Guifei
The zheng clan's name was above that of Concubine Gong, and the emperor's third son, Zhu Changluo, was also comparable to the emperor's eldest son, and these two signals greatly stimulated the courtiers who strictly adhered to the ancestral system. They were very confused: Isn't the Wanli Emperor going to abolish Chang Li Andying? Therefore, Shoufu Shen Shixing immediately drafted a piece of music entitled "Invitation to establish the Eastern Palace to re-establish the national version" and presented it to the Wanli Emperor. The Wanli Emperor did not rely on it, but on the pretext that the eldest son of the emperor was weak, and used severe punishment methods, in a vain attempt to prevent the group of courtiers from arguing. The Qunchen were very backbone, and risked the death of the deposed officials to fight against the Wanli Emperor to the death. After one or two, this matter was actually deadlocked until the twenty-ninth year of the Wanli Calendar. In the end, it was Empress Li who intervened to make the Wanli Emperor obey against his will.
On the same day that Zhu Changluo was made crown prince, Zhu Changxun, the third son of the emperor born to Concubine Zheng, was also made the Prince of Fu. At this point, the 15-year-long dispute over the foundation of the country came to an end. However, to the surprise of Qunchen, the Wanli Emperor did not let King Fu go to the fiefdom of Luoyang, but let him continue to stay in Jingshi. That is to say, the Yi Chu thing that the Ming ministers feared could still happen. Therefore, in order to prevent Zhu Changxun from usurping the position of crown prince, the Qunchen rebelled against the Wanli Emperor for 13 years, with Zhu Changxun as the center. In the forty-second year of the Wanli Dynasty, that is, in 1614, under the pressure of his courtiers, the Wanli Emperor finally ordered Zhu Changxun to take Luoyang.
Zhu Changxun, King of Fu
Historical records record that in the thirty-first year of the Wanli Calendar, that is, in 1603, the Wanli Emperor once rewarded Zhu Changxun with 300,000 taels as a marriage fee. This figure far exceeded the 70,000 taels of marriage expenses of the Wanli Emperor and the marriage fees of his brother Zhu Changluo of more than 100,000 taels. In addition, in order to let King Fu have a comfortable nest, the Wanli Emperor also squeezed out 280,000 taels of silver to build a magnificent Luoyang mansion for him. When Zhu Changxun left the capital, the Wanli Emperor gave him a large number of rewards. It is said that 1,172 wooden boats carry supplies alone. Even more astonishing was yet to come: the Wanli Emperor personally issued an edict allocating 20,000 hectares of fertile land to king Fu to manage his own business, that is, not to pay any taxes to the state. In this way, the amount of rent paid by tenants depends entirely on the mood of the Fu King. The Ming Dynasty system stipulated that the king of the domain could not give out a fief without an edict. Therefore, he could only send subordinate officials to collect. Extortion, which then derives. However, this is an afterthought. At present, the first priority that King Fu needs to solve is how to make enough good land for him to be given to him by the emperor.
In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, in order to ensure tax revenue, Zhu Yuanzhang measured the land across the country many times, and concluded that the total amount of cultivated land was more than 8.5 million hectares. After orthodoxy, land annexation intensified, especially after Chenghua, from the royal family to the general landlords, they all intensified their land plunder. By the time of the ninth emperor of the Ming Dynasty, The Hongzhi Emperor, the total number of acres of land had plummeted to more than 6.2 million hectares. In 1573, Zhang Juzheng, a university scholar, became the first assistant to the cabinet. In order to save the danger, he actively promoted political and economic reforms. One of the important contents is to conduct a survey of fields and acres. In the sixth year of the Wanli Calendar, zhang Juzheng presided over the end of the inventory of fields and acres, and the thirteen provincial administrative departments and prefectures directly under the prefecture received a total of 7.01 million acres of fields. In November of that year, based on this data of fields and acres, Zhang Juzheng once again cleared the land of the whole country. This time, it is also the largest census of fields and acres since the founding of the Hongwu Emperor. By December of the twelfth year of the Wanli Calendar, another 1.44 million hectares of land had been identified. But the good times are not long. After Zhang Juzheng's death, the work of clearing the land was immediately stopped.
Zhang Juzheng, Feng Bao, Wanli Emperor, and Empress Li
Later, with the increasing chaos of the government, the former suppressed magnates returned to their old ways, land annexations rose again and intensified, and the fertile land of the whole country was deprived of its fertile land. Therefore, when The Fu King took the throne, Henan, which was known as anointed, only had more than 10,000 hectares of good land left in the province. That is to say, even if the Fu King took it all, it was far from the number of 20,000. Unable to do so, the Wanli Emperor could only order the transfer of more than 4,000 hectares of fertile land from Huguang, and the rest of the arrears were made up by Shandong. As mentioned above, the anointing is almost completely exploited by the powerful. Therefore, the strong forces of Huguang and Shandong and other provinces joined forces to resist, leaving Zhu Changxun helpless. Therefore, Zhu Changxun could only make up his mind from the common people. The Wanli Emperor loved his son and also sent many groups of envoys to help. For a time, the people's grievances in several provinces boiled over. So, will the king of the ming dynasty, who owns the most land ever, be satisfied with this? No! In order to amass wealth, he also set his sights on the pillar of the state's finances: the salt tax.
The ancients boiled table salt
In 1368, the Ming general Xu Da conquered the Capital of Yuan, and the remnants of the Mongol Yuan, led by Emperor Yuanshun, retreated to northern Mobei. They were not willing to lose their country, so they often went south to disturb the border. In order to eliminate hidden dangers, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered the Northern Expedition four times, and Ming Chengzu Zhu Di also had five northern expeditions, but failed to completely eradicate them. In this case, the Ming government could only dispatch a large number of elites to garrison thousands of miles of border defenses. Thus, a huge military consumption area was formed. Northern China has little arable land, and even if military tuns are implemented, it is difficult to meet the needs of military food. In order to solve this difficult problem, Zhu Yuanzhang promoted the "Kaizhong Method", that is, to encourage merchants to transport grain, iron, cloth, tea, horses, etc. to the border plugs, and then the feudal officials exchanged the "salt introduction" of how much salt the merchants could withdraw according to the number of materials and the distance of the distance. With the salt lead, the merchant can go to the designated place to collect the salt, and then transport the salt to the designated area for sale.
Salt introduction (non-Ming Dynasty)
We know that table salt is a necessity in human daily life. It is precisely because of its particularity that there are often huge benefits hidden behind the salt introduction. The ming dynasty system stipulates that the prince can withdraw 200 citations of salt per year. Compared with the medium salt case formulated by Hongwu in four years, these 200 salts are equivalent to 40,000 catties. After Zhu Changxun took office, he violated the ancestral system and asked the Wanli Emperor to increase the number to 1300. With so much salt, King Fu and his subordinates couldn't use it at all. What to do? King Fu had a plan, that is, to play the Wanli Emperor again: he hoped to allow him to take over the resale on his own. The Wanli Emperor was even more crisp, directly in place. The edict says, "No one who is not a king can do anything." That is to say, except for those in the wangfu shop or wholesale from the wangfu shop, they are not allowed to buy or sell salt by themselves. In this way, the Fu King, who monopolized the salt trade, seized a lot of wealth from it. Affected by this, the enthusiasm of salt merchants in Luoyang and nearby to transport salt plummeted, and the grain jam on the side was also strained.
Nine-sided town of the Ming Dynasty
To be honest, if it was in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, it would be no problem for King Fu to take this wealth and get away with it. However, King Fu was born at the end of the Ming Dynasty. Even more unfortunately, the biggest leader of the rebel army at the end of the Ming Dynasty was still eyeing the cash cow of Fu Wang: Li Zicheng. Historical records record that Li Zicheng attacked Luoyang in 1641. At that time, there were still two major elite troops left in the Ming Dynasty that could be used after many years of conquest. The first was the Eastern Liaoning Frontier Army led by Hong Chengzuo, and the second was the counterinsurgency army led by Yang Sichang. The former was ordered to march to Jinzhou to confront the Qing forces, while the latter was encircling and suppressing Zhang Xianzhong. That is to say, at present, the only thing that King Fu can rely on is the defenders of Luoyang. King Kefu loved money as much as his destiny, and was always reluctant to pay money to treat the army. When the soldiers heard the news, they all shouted with indignation, "The royal palace has millions of dollars, and my generation has a dead thief's hand!" As a result, the army's heart immediately disintegrated, and an impregnable luoyang city was defended for less than a day before it was breached by the rebels. What about the Fu Wang? At first, under the protection of his slaves, he successfully escaped from Luoyang City. However, the long-term pampering and superiority allowed Zhu Changxun, the King of Fu, to cultivate a weight of more than three hundred catties. I hadn't walked long, and I was so tired that I couldn't walk. At this time, the starving people in the vicinity also discovered this conspicuous target. Oh, yes! In this era of continuous hunger, who can raise such a weight, except for the high-ranking officials and nobles? As a result, the rebel pursuing troops were reported and quickly captured.
Li Zicheng, the king of the invasion
As for the fate of King Fu, the Ming Shi says that he was killed by the rebels. However, out of resentment towards King Fu, people were more willing to believe what Peng Sunyi, a scholar of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, wrote in his work "Liu Kouzhi": Li Zicheng and other rebels held a special banquet to celebrate the victory. At the banquet, the rebels beheaded King Fu and mixed his body with venison, and named him "Fulu Wine".
References: "Biography of King Changxun of Fu", "Liu Kouzhi"