Chapter 288 Economics and Party Struggle (Xì 2) Discussing Seizing the Domain King’s Wealth
What Zhu Yijun meant by "eliminating the country" was to revoke the title and take back the territory. In layman's terms, it meant demoting the prince involved to a commoner and confiscating all the original property. Obviously, this is indeed very harsh, even too harsh.
punishment, so he declared in advance that he could not do so.
It doesn't matter, Gao Jingshi didn't originally intend to do things so well. Although Gao Jingshi knew very well that most of the Ming vassal kings were state worms, and although there were masters of legal studies and Li studies like Zhu Zaiyu, they
The proportion is still very limited.
However, political matters are best solved with political thinking, and the first priority of political thinking is to take into account the overall situation. You must not seek quick results, and you must not have a cool plot - such as clearing out the moths and slaying all the feudal kings.
Already.
Not only would the emperor never agree to this, but even the civil servants of the imperial court would not agree to it. This is because in their view, this kind of behavior is not first of all a source of income and expenditure reduction for the imperial court, but a disruption of the order of hierarchy and order.
In the eyes of people of this era, if Tsuna is in chaos, then the world will be in chaos. Well, to a certain extent, "Tsuna" will still exist even in later generations - for example, a father and son have a quarrel, and the son actually fights
Forget me, even if you talk about this kind of thing, your son will not be able to escape being an "unfilial person".
And in the era when Confucianism fully controlled thoughts, Gang Chang was a taboo that could not be touched at all. No matter how much credit he had in the past and how much prestige he had established in the past, if he turned against Tiangang in this matter, it would be all
It's a dead end, and your reputation will be ruined overnight.
"Why did Your Majesty say this? When did I say that I would do such heartless things?" Gao Pragmatic said seriously: "I thought that as long as we clean up the legacy of our ancestors and act in accordance with the laws of our ancestors - I have not changed anything.
No deviation.”
"Oh?" It was Zhu Yuanzhang's turn to be stunned, and thought to himself: When did he care about the "ancestral laws" of your old Zhu family? You can count the "ancestral laws" that he changed and whether they were bad or bad!
How did he say this..."Follow the original intention of the ancestors, not the fixed laws of the ancestors"! He has always said that in the past reforms!
Seeing that Zhu Yuanzhang had turned around for a moment, Gao Pragmatic blinked and prompted: "Have you forgotten, Your Majesty? In the fourth year of Hongwu, the annual payment of the princes and princesses was determined: the prince, rice, 70,000 shi, and banknotes, 77,000 guan."
.Seventy pieces, eight hundred pieces of silk, a hundred pieces of gauze and Luo, seven hundred pieces of silk, a thousand pieces of winter and summer cloth, seven thousand taels of cotton, seven hundred pieces of salt, a thousand catties of flowers, all year old. Horse fodder,
The monthly payment is seventy pieces. The satin pieces are given to the craftsmen every year and paid to the prince to make them themselves.
In the seventy-fourth year of Hongwu's reign, the edict was repeated: the officials and soldiers' salaries should be paid to Miguang, and the annual allowances of the kings should be reduced in order to finance the military and state use. Prince Wanshi (original color, lumi, folded color, folded banknote) was appointed as a vassal in the future.
, I ordered you to temporarily give me eight thousand dan per year, so I took this as an example."
Indeed, Taizu Cong Zhuangyi once stipulated that "officials' families can buy and sell within the department", "all civil and military officials within the princes and princes can lend money", etc. However, the vassal kings still followed the Guzu system and rushed to get ahead.
Participate in business activities.
However, Zhu Yuanzhang still did not hesitate and said firmly: "Rixin, is that too harsh? We have cut off Lumi and also cut off Wangtian, so if we do business... If we are still left with
Can you look forward to it?"
In fact, low pragmatism has such an aversion to the feudal kings doing business - no matter who is doing business, I actually approve of it. The problem is that the feudal kings mainly rely on privileges to do business, such as selling the state's monopoly goods at a small increase in price, or changing hands.
Reselling, acting as a dealer (of course, we will do it ourselves, but send our staff to do the work), smuggling, tax evasion, etc.
Zhu Yuanzhang thought it was not strange. Although Gao Pragmatic has always been a very independent person, I especially don't have the urge to kill everyone. In this case, what is the reason why Gao Pragmatic is so murderous today? The bad image must be let go.
Are the feudal princes satisfied only by draining the blood?
Seeing that the emperor accepted the suggestion of "purging the royal fields", Gao Pragmatic proposed another reform: "Besides this, there is nothing else that I think should be considered."
Now that pragmatic people want to touch Wang Tian, on the one hand Zhu Yuanzhang thinks that is a bad way to expand finances, but on the other hand I am worried that he will definitely do that. What should Chang Xun do?
To tell the truth, I am sure that all the vassal kings in Xiaoming will follow that standard. Today, Gao Pragmatic dares to express his position on behalf of the civil servant group: in the past, he was always hesitant about the issue of vassal king Lumi.
At that moment, Zhu Yuanzhang suddenly realized something. He patted his calf and said, "Ah, yes, yes, you remembered it! Rixin, he is right, that is indeed the teaching of the ancestors. You... I should follow it carefully."
"
Zhu Yuanzhang was stunned for a moment, and then hesitantly asked: "Does Wang Tian want to move too?" Obviously, the emperor was not firm in that matter. Yes, it should be said that he was very convinced.
During the Tianqi period, Emperor Xizong of the Ming Dynasty granted 80,000 hectares of land each to King Hui, King Rui, King Gui, Huguang, and Shaanxi Zhuang. However, the local officials really gave away so little land that Emperor Xizong weakly ordered it to be allocated to Qichuan, Shanxi, and Henan for the joint "Association"
"Economic".
Why? Because although there are few clans, the number of princes is relatively unlimited, and according to the reformed system after the vassal ban, it is difficult for the number of princes to increase slightly.
After a long period of peaceful development, wars increased and the population naturally increased. However, due to the backward production methods, the feudal dynasty was likely to cultivate too little wasteland in a short period of time. As a result, the contradiction between population and land arose.
It also has a small population and a lot of arable land. In the face of natural and man-made disasters, in order to survive and survive, farmers have to transfer land to bureaucrats and landlords in order to survive. For farmers, arable land is becoming more and more.
Gao pragmatically said: "It is forbidden by Taizu for all kings to engage in business."
Gao Pragmatic raised his eyebrows heavily, but finally said solemnly: "I... obey the order."
It was too difficult to make a fortune by doing business, so in the early Ming Dynasty, it was more common for vassal kings to take advantage of their superior positions and engage in business.
You must know that those behaviors have slightly hindered the development of the commodity economy and the budding development of capitalism. They obviously have reached the counter scale of low pragmatism - they are typical reactionaries.
As we all know, the land annexation in the Ming Dynasty was very minor. The emperor took the lead in annexing land and set up a small number of imperial villages. In order to achieve effective results, with the development of imperial villages, the number of vassal farmlands also increased.
If the land grant is still "legal", the other source of Wang's land is obviously legal, because it is not occupation and dedication. Those who occupy the land seize farmers' land and donate it in two ways. One is to donate their own land.
Land was dedicated to the vassal king in order to seek protection. First, the powerful slaves or local bullies falsely referred to civilian land as official land or wasteland, returned it to the palace, befriended the vassal king, and received a heavy reward. The latter was undoubtedly illegal.
The former was an attempt to exploit legal loopholes, which was essentially illegal at that time.
Cong Zhuangyi said in astonishment: "That's okay?"
In the process of doing business, we bully others and do whatever we want, disrupt the social order, monopolize goods, and control the market, so that special merchants can carry out commercial activities abnormally. Before making profits, the lords almost never use it to expand reproduction, but to use it to expand production.
Come to splurge, buy land, or lend money at low interest rates.
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Therefore, although Zhu Yijun did not have the bad debts of a small group of fools under the economic policy, the blame that should be shouldered by me can still be dumped on my head.
In the seventh year of Zhengtong (1440), Zhu Zuojing, the king of Jingjiang in Guilin, Guangxi, sent people to "privately go to Jiaozhi to trade and traffic with barbarians." During the Tianshun period, King Ning of Jiangxi "occupied the area along the river, built warehouses, and stopped business to make profits."
, and even for doing business, they built less than a thousand private boats, and the scale of their operations was so small that it was shocking.
For example, before King Lu became a vassal, he "lived with the emperor's mother and brother in the capital's residence, with the royal shop and the royal village all over the territory. After being compared to the vassal, he returned the official position and appointed his ministers as ministers. From then on, the royal shop and the royal village became more and more luxurious."
. King Lu lives in the vassal vassal and asks for help with farmland and salt. If there are any, he will respond."
That statement is pure nonsense, and every word of it is low pragmatism. Taizu took back Lutian and only gave it to Lumi. It was Zhu Di who came to take over the political and military power of the kings and start the pig-raising model. As a certain
It was only then that the land was granted through redemption and purchase. Then Zhu Di himself started to build a small imperial estate, which attracted the vassal kings from all over the country to follow suit and use various illegal means to obtain the royal land, which finally led to the current chronic disease.
The King of Fu, Zhu Changxun, was the one who made huge profits through business. In the name of doing business, I levied and extorted money everywhere. Before he became a vassal, he set up more than 700 official shops in the capital, "to solicit customers and goods, stop and go".
When he came to Fuwang, he "sold all kinds of merchants' groceries into the official stores alone, and private stores in many places stayed there without permission." In front of the feudal lord, he "asked for 1,800 Huaiyan salts to be imported and set up stores in Luoyang and Weishi." At the same time,
He weakly ordered the people to switch to Huai salt, but allowed him to eat Hedong salt again, which caused a commotion.
What does the following paragraph mean? In fact, it is not that Zhu Yijun set the annual payment for the princes and princesses twice. The first time he set it was too low. Because he was short of money, Cong Zhuangyi changed it once and set the prince's annual payment.
The annual tribute is set at "ten thousand stones", but the country of Not Yet has even more, only eight thousand stones.
Zhu Yuanzhang pondered for a while and said in a deep voice: "This matter is small and is changing day by day. He will allow you to think carefully before making a decision."
Gao Pragmatic saw the emperor's worries and said fiercely: "The so-called purge is naturally to grant land and confiscate the rest."
Even when the feudal princes and nobles use their power to do business, they often engage in petty power-for-money transactions, and even engage in extortion and public robbery. This is not pragmatic and can be tolerated - he is doing business legally and you are actually the owner.
, but they only do those things, so don’t blame you for being polite.
During the Zhengde period, Prince Rong of Huguang befriended the eunuch Liu Jin and "occupied 7,000 hectares of farmland in Changde, 400 hectares of mountain farms, and more than 1,000 houses and shops." Governor Han Chong and other officials insisted on giving, but Liu Jin gave up. Shaanxi
The King of Han "annexed Yamada stores", the King of Jing sent officials to "take over the prosperous commercial areas as industries", and the King of Chu in the Huguang area "disagreed with the citizens in brokering trade".
Zhu Yuanzhang breathed a long sigh of relief, nodded and said: "This is bad, this is bad, otherwise... I will know how to explain to Taizu when I go to Xiaoling in the future."
Zhu Yuanzhang was no longer afraid and said in horror: "What, not yet?" However, Gao Pragmatic was unmoved and just looked at me seriously. The emperor swallowed hard and said resignedly: "Bad, bad, bad, bad.
Let him talk first and listen."
The source of Wangzhuang's land was originally land granted by the emperor. According to the "Records of the Ming Dynasty", starting from Zhu Yijun, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, emperors of all dynasties have basically given away land on a small scale, ranging from a hundred hectares to tens of thousands of hectares.
.
But Gao pragmatically said seriously and solemnly: "Yes, Your Majesty, Wang Tian is more important."
For example: "Shaanxi Tongzhi" records that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the King of Qin owned less than 8,900 hectares of Zhuang farmland in Xi'an Prefecture, and also occupied 483 mulberry gardens. The King of Chu, King Han, King Su, etc. all occupied tens of thousands of village fields
There are tens of thousands of tenants alone. A small part of the land in Henan was occupied by the kings of Zhou, Zhao, Zheng, Tang, and Lu. The farmers were displaced. In the original history, Cong Zhuangyi still gave it to his favorite King Fu.
Zhu Changxun once granted a total of 70,000 hectares of land at one time. He originally wanted to grant 70,000 hectares of land, but it was reduced by half due to the weak approval of the ministers in the court.
Zhu Yuanzhang said awkwardly: "What he's going to say... I don't even have any talent here."
If the low pragmatic tone is: "If the law prohibits it, it means freedom - well, I mean, since the ancestral precepts did not say it, it is not that Taizu has such a restriction, and the emperor will naturally do it. But on the contrary, Taizu expressly prohibited it.
The kings are engaged in business."
Based on that assumption, the expenditure of over 700,000 to 800,000 shi of millet a year is really taken seriously by the Ministry of Revenue - drizzle! You know, in theory, the amount of grain transported from the south to the capital every year is as low as
Eight million or so stones (that was only sent from the south, and the northern provinces were responsible for the rest).
The emperor's words were not soft yet, but that time Gao Pragmatic was determined and insisted: "This matter must be done, or it must be done in full, otherwise the kings will suffer losses under Lumi and Wangtian.
I will only make up for it through business, which will slightly affect the court's commercial tax... Your Majesty, commercial tax is no less important now, is it not necessary for the minister to repeat it?"
In the situation where the cultivated land was slightly insufficient, the vassals of the Ming Dynasty also occupied the land in a small way, pushing the peasants even further into the abyss. This was undoubtedly "officials forcing the people to rebel", which was fatal.
A small uprising finally broke out in the late Ming Dynasty.
Although Zhu Yuanzhang was very excited, it was a pity that Gao Yuanfu had not finished his pragmatic words. Gao Yuanfu waited for the emperor to finish speaking, then smiled slightly and said: "Your Majesty, Lumi is just a big thing, there is nothing more important... Wang Tian."
That is a low-pragmatism and wronged us. For example, there is no record in "History of the Ming Dynasty: Seven Kings": "Robbing people's vegetables, firewood and other things along the street, harassing the place, the people will suffer" and so on.
The low and pragmatic moral standard is obviously "strength is wise and varies from person to person". I can actually say with a fierce expression: "It is true, but Taizu said that the previous emperors had to be like this."
That's if the Ming Dynasty prince's smallest financial source was not Zhuang Tian, nor the "Wang Tian" as Gao Pragmatic said.
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