Chongzhen and I became partners

Chapter 504 Roots
After hearing this, Emperor Chongzhen couldn't help but smiled and said, "No, no, you'd better say it, I'm listening!"

What if I'm wrong, I'm the emperor, so I have to show some face, right?
When Liu Weichao heard this, he didn't insist, so he said to him: "That's what I think. I haven't checked the specific information. Do you think this is okay?"

Having said that, he paused for a moment, and said with a serious expression: "For the officials and gentry of the Ming Dynasty, there should be a preferential quota for land, right? In this way, you can reversely determine their status according to their tax payment situation. How many grain fields are there in total!"

As Liu Weichao said, he laughed himself first, with a bit of a gloomy look, and continued: "As for the others, they are definitely not theirs, and they belong to the land of no owner, so they can be taken back to the government? They can still Can't make a fuss? Why do you make a fuss?"

"Did you suffer from being dumb?" Emperor Chongzhen said with great joy when he heard this, "Wonderful!"

Liu Weichao laughed when he heard this, but he still reminded Emperor Chongzhen: "No matter what, you have military power in your hands. This is the premise. Otherwise, no matter how reasonable you are, it will be useless!"

"That's true!" Emperor Chongzhen nodded in agreement after hearing this.

Seeing him nodding, Liu Weichao reminded him again: "I'm just thinking this based on my impressions. If you really want to do this, it's best to check the information first to see what's going on. Also, be careful, it's best not to read the news first. Leak it, or there may be unnecessary twists and turns!"

When Emperor Chongzhen heard this, he became serious, and replied earnestly: "Okay, I know. I will let the supervisor of ceremonies do this matter, and sit in charge personally!"

Compared with the civil servants of the outer court, he trusted the inner court more.

When Liu Weichao saw it, he smiled and said, "Okay, how about this, I'll check the information for you too, and we'll meet again later!"

"Okay, then it's a deal!" Emperor Chongzhen was anxious to do this, so he said to Liu Weichao, "I'll just hang up first?"

"Hang up, hang up!" Liu Weichao listened, naturally he would not have any objections, and hung up the phone on his own initiative.

Afterwards, he thought for a while, and began to look up information on the Internet.

Unexpectedly, after finding out, Liu Weichao's expression became very serious.He didn't expect that the matter of preferential treatment would be so involved.It can even be said that the demise of the Ming Dynasty has something to do with this!
Feeling that the matter was of great importance, Liu Weichao did not rush to make a conclusion, and continued to search for information, digesting and absorbing the information he found.

........................

On the Emperor Chongzhen's side, he also immediately sent an order to the eunuch Wang Cheng'en, the chief inspector of ceremonies, to tell him solemnly, asking him to find all the information about the preferential exemption for officials and gentry, and also the information about tax payment in the south of the Yangtze River in recent years.

He sat in the town himself, watching the eunuch Bingbi, the supervisor of ceremonies, lead their servants to do this job.

In addition, a decree was also sent to the outer court to inquire about the Ming Dynasty Loyalty Museum and the monument, ordering that preparations must be completed before March [-]th.On March [-]th, he will personally lead all civil and military officials to pay homage to the loyalty of the Ming Dynasty.

Two days later, Emperor Chongzhen initiated a video communication with Liu Weichao, but as soon as he got connected, he said with a serious expression: "I have thoroughly sorted out the matter of preferential exemption for officials and gentry, and found that there are big discrepancies."

Hearing this, Liu Weichao was not surprised at all, nodded and asked: "Did you find that there is a big gap between preferential exemption and taxation?"

When Emperor Chongzhen heard this, he was startled immediately, then nodded, and said with a very serious expression: "Exactly, is there any news from you?"

Since he ascended the throne, the situation in the world has been rotten. He can only treat his head with headaches and his feet with pain. There is no chance for him to sort out all aspects of the entire dynasty.Therefore, if he didn't investigate many things specifically, he would not know the specific situation at all.

Nowadays, it seems to be an ordinary matter of preferential exemption for officials and gentry, but I really have to check it out, only to find that there is something terrible in it.

Liu Weichao listened, and said with the same serious expression: "I did find some information. From the information I collected, the preferential exemption for officials and gentry has been changing since the founding of the Ming Dynasty. To be precise, it is the quota for preferential exemption. And the scope is expanding. If it’s just like this, it’s actually okay, but by the end of the Ming Dynasty, don’t mind, if you get used to this word, it will be completely rotten.

Emperor Chongzhen's thoughts at this time were not on the word "late Ming Dynasty" at all, and he nodded with a serious expression: "I found that there are very few gentry in the south of the Yangtze River who pay taxes, and the majority of taxpayers are ordinary people who don't have much money. ! If you say that, then you are right!"

Afterwards, the two began to check the information they had.

Officials and gentry are exempted, no matter which dynasty, there are, which reflects the privileges of officials and gentry.

At the beginning of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the regulations on the preferential exemption of officials and gentry were as follows: Except for taxes and food and regular service in Lijia, the families of Beijing officials were preferentially exempted from miscellaneous general duties; foreign officials were reduced according to their grades.

What does it mean?

That is to say, all officials and gentry have to pay taxes on the grain fields and serve as Lijia official service. Except for these two, other miscellaneous services are exempted by Beijing officials, and officials who are not in the capital will be reduced according to the rank of officials.

The Ming Dynasty was divided into three major corvees: Lijia, Zafan, and Jun.

The battle of lijia was counted by household, with 110 neighboring households as one li, and 1 households from Tadada took turns serving as the head of the lijia.Every year, one of the village chiefs leads 10 armored leaders to join the army, which is called "that year".

This Battle of Lijia is actually a bit like the Baozhang of later generations, or the village head and so on. Generally, the rich are appointed, and the poor can be exempted.This is also the reason why when the Ming Dynasty was founded, even the Beijing officials could not be exempted from serving in Lijia.

The head of the village is responsible to the higher-level government, controls the households under his control, counts the changes in the growth and decline of the small households in the village, supervises the production matters of the households, and mediates civil and criminal disputes in the village. Everyone grabs it.

But in fact, it is a corvee that everyone fears.This becomes more apparent later on.

why?
Because the government does not directly talk to ordinary people, all taxes and corvees are assigned to the head of the village.If there is a population movement in this village, moving to another place, or simply escaping, for various reasons, if the chief of the village cannot complete the tasks assigned by the government, then he will be imprisoned, what should we do?
You can only fill in the shortfall by yourself, if you ask for money or food, you will fill it up; if you need someone, you will pay for it yourself;
If this happens only occasionally, then it's okay, maybe you can make it through if you hold on.However, in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, this was the norm.Whoever is the head of the village will often have his family ruined, who can bear it?
Among the three major handymen, the uniform corvette is to divide the regular and relatively heavy duties such as Menzi, Zaoli, Kuzi, Douqi, Groom, Shanfu, Archer, Shoping, Guard, and Warehouse. According to the amount of rations (or dingtians), it is a kind of labor that is separately compiled.

There are other labors that are not regular, but miscellaneous.

At the beginning of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the privileges of officials and gentry were not very obvious.After all, grain fields have to pay taxes, and regular service in Lijia also needs to be served; it is only part of the exemption for Junyao and Zafan.

Of course, officials and gentry were unwilling to do so, so they often messed around with this matter.

At the beginning, we tried to find a way from the prescribed limit, which was to expand the limit.

For example, in the [-]th year of Hongzhi, the old system was reaffirmed. Ten dings were exempted from the families of current officials (buzheng envoys, etc.), eight dings were exempted from magistrates, three dings were exempted from Tongzhi and county magistrates, and miscellaneous posts, provincial sacrificial offerings, and auditions were exempted from eight ranks and below. Furnishings for other officials, supervisors, juren, students, and officials are exempted from two orders.

But in the Jiajing Wanli period, it was changed to count according to the land property.What does that mean?

That is, part of the grain fields of the officials and gentry are exempted, and the grain fields beyond this part of the quota are borne by Junyao and Miscellaneous Fan. This is called the field of service.

For this, the officials and gentry were still very dissatisfied and misinterpreted the law.This kind of thing is done from the first assistant to the scholar.It is said that even Junyao and Zafan should be exempted.

That's it, from partial preferential exemption to full exemption.

The taxes, taxes and labor exempted by officials and gentry cannot just disappear out of thin air, they can only be borne by those who are not officials and gentry!

This is just a general statement. In fact, the matter of preferential exemption for officials and gentry has been repeated since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, and it is a very complicated process.

It is said that there are policies above and countermeasures below.

Officials and gentry did not pay taxes in order to evade taxes, they came up with countless ways.Among them, the most famous ones are the five methods of guiji, huafen, jizhuang, voluntary, and lailiang.

Deceitful posting refers to the fact that officials, gentry, relatives, disciples, old friends, and ordinary people make false land and land certificates and illegally send them under official households, thinking of them as "avoidance caves".They avoided the service, so someone still needs to serve in this service, so middle households, small households, friend households, and even proletarian households are sent to serve!

This kind was especially popular in the late Ming Dynasty.Even when Zhang Juzheng was trying his best to reform, when he asked his family to investigate, he found this situation: the family followed the system and exempted 74 shi of grain, while those who sent it cunningly sent as much as 500 shi.Zhang Juzheng would definitely not agree, but his family would do so in his name.

Huafen refers to the use of illegal means to divide a household into several sub-households to avoid heavy labor.The reason for this trick is that the Ming Dynasty stipulated for a period of time that the number of acres of land that heavy labor bearers should own should be divided, and at the same time it was stipulated that small households with little land would not be expropriated.Therefore, the wealthy officials had the most grain fields, and they began to adopt this strategy of spending money.

"Ji Zhuang", that is, the purchase of farms in other counties. For officials and gentry, sending Zhuang is a means of obtaining double preferential treatment.

Contribution is to entrust one's own grain fields to the names of officials and gentry, so as to avoid heavy taxation and labor; among them, there are active and passive ones.

There is also the final reliance on food, which is easy to understand. The officials and gentry shouted about natural disasters and man-made disasters. If the money and food cannot be paid, they will just rely on the food. Arrears of food.That's it, the food owed by the officials and gentry was also exempted.

　This chapter should have been written last night, but it took a lot of time to check the information, and it was delayed until morning.Taxation is a very important part of the demise of the Ming Dynasty, so there are more materials to understand it more clearly.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)