A Millennium Aristocratic Family Starting from the Shang Dynasty

Chapter 516 Changes in the Aristocratic Family and the Choice of the Times

The climate in Daqian has been extremely changeable in recent years, and natural disasters have become extremely frequent. Wang Yi thought of a term once mentioned by an ancestor - the Little Ice Age.

The climate changed abnormally during the Little Ice Age, and temperatures across the country dropped. At the same time, floods and droughts occurred frequently in various places. If there are more disasters, more people will die, which can easily lead to plagues. And droughts can cause locusts to breed on a large scale, which can easily lead to locust plagues.

It is precisely because of this that locust plagues often appeared after droughts in history.

Nowadays, the climate in Daqian is changeable. Even if there is an observatory to suppress it, some disasters will occur in various parts of the world every year. Wang Yi speculated that this was the Little Ice Age, and it was very likely that the world would be like this in the next few decades.

What Wang Yi didn't know was that in addition to the influence of Little Glacier's climate, there was also the influence of destiny. After Bangzhou received his destiny, Bangzhou was not always strong and prosperous.

It shows an ups and downs. In the early stage of obtaining the destiny, the dynasty's destiny continues to increase. After reaching the peak, it begins to decline. There may be recurrences during this period, but overall it shows a downward trend until the end of the destiny.

The increase in natural disasters will reduce the national strength of the Daqian court, but it can also reduce population growth. To alleviate the contradiction between man and earth during this period of Daqian, we can only say that the reincarnation of heaven has its own destiny.

After Daqian could not quickly open up new land, and agricultural technology did not grow explosively, Daqian's destiny entered an unstoppable decline.

After Wang Yi decided to use Prime Minister Gong Yangze's suggestion, he immediately issued an edict, and the Daqian court began to operate as quickly as possible.

The Huai'an Granary, the Jinyang and Handan Granary, and the Guanzhong Granary allocate grain and grass to the three prefectures of Qing, Yan, and Henan. At the same time, in order to coordinate this disaster relief, Wang Yi appointed Chao Cuo, the imperial censor, to personally take charge of the affairs of the three states.

Wang Yi is very wary of those noble, powerful, and official families. The imperial court has delivered no less than a million in various materials for disaster relief. As long as those people are willing, they can work with the local subordinates to deceive the superiors and deceive the food supplies. .

After more than a hundred years of suppression by the royal family, noble, powerful, and official families have found many ways to circumvent the laws of the court.

Just like the imperial court did not allow a family to have more than 1,000 acres of land, otherwise a high land tax would be levied. These noble and powerful official families used the method of dividing land to each household to avoid this.

In order to cope with the separation of households after household division, the family's power will eventually be weakened. These aristocratic families require all family members to live nearby. Family villages or family towns were formed.

Then, as the patriarch, he controls all the official and commercial power of the family. Although those family branches are nominally the owners of the land, once they dare to go against the will of the patriarch, they will be controlled by the patriarch and his family with the help of officials. The external forces are suppressing everything from taxation, labor and even children's education.

The patriarch's line controls the inheritance of titles, official positions and even the right to study. Even various workshops, mills and other things are all controlled by the patriarch's line.

It can be said that unless you are willing to make up your mind not to live here, otherwise, all aspects of your life will be affected by the clan leader. In order to make family members obey the family and have a sense of belonging to the family, many families began to implement Confucianism.

Confucianism advocates seclusion among relatives, advocates the concept of a large family, encourages families to live together, respects the elderly and loves the young, and promotes filial piety, which is very beneficial to the large family model of the aristocratic family.

Confucianism has given clear requirements for filial piety: "If the father observes his ambitions, but the father does not observe his actions, if he does not change his father's ways for three years, he can be called filial piety." Even if the royal family does not rule the world according to Confucianism, among Confucianists Many things were also recognized by the court. On the one hand, those aristocratic families, nobles, and powerful people control the family with their official, economic, and political advantages; on the other hand, they use ethics to restrain other members of the family.

Although this approach is not as strong as that of those aristocratic families in real history, it is not much different.

As for why those family branches didn't leave and just moved away? It's simple, because here they can enjoy benefits and family benefits that ordinary people don't have.

The simplest issue is tax collection. Even though the imperial court strictly suppressed officials in various places who broke the law and oppressed good people, it still could not prevent subordinate officials from relying on their power to collect taxes to embarrass ordinary people.

For example, the simplest method is to collect taxes from others first. Most of the taxes collected by the court were in kind. Even if those subordinate officials did not dare to collect more taxes, they could collect other people's taxes first and leave you at the end.

It may seem like this trick is nothing, but in fact it can be said to be exhausting for ordinary people. In real history, even in modern times, when collecting grain taxes, there were queues at the grain station day and night. It was common for a production brigade to queue at the grain station for several days and nights.

If someone targets this, how can ordinary people endure it? If it rains during this period, the grain will have to be pulled back and dried again.

Those high-ranking officials do not know that such a small, almost invisible right can make ordinary people exhausted. Also, if you go to the yamen to do things, without the guidance of the subordinate staff, you can run back and forth more than a dozen times to get a small thing done.

When the children grow up, they need a homestead. If you are an ordinary citizen, even if those grassroots officials follow the rules, they can still cause you countless troubles, and you may not be able to build a house in a few years.

But if you are one of those noble, powerful, and official families, even if you are a side branch, you can use the power of the family to say hello to you and complete these easily.

People are not stupid, they know how to choose.

Did these subordinate officials break the law? No, they even ‘acted according to the rules’. There are no regulations on these behaviors in the "Da Qian Code". Even if you sue the officials, no one will pay attention. Don't you think it's ridiculous? But that's the reality.

Even though the royal family has been suppressing noble, powerful, and official families, these families are still springing up like mushrooms after a rain.

From the perspective of those officials, this was a trivial matter, not worth mentioning. But for ordinary people, it is an insurmountable mountain.

In order to cope with this, ordinary people have begun to form groups. Various villages were formed, and what they pursued was simply fairness. Even the Daqian royal family does not have the power to change these now. This is the limitation of the times and the choice of the times.

Unless the Zhuxia civilization continues to develop, these problems will be solved bit by bit.

(End of this chapter)