Daming: Apocalypse of Longevity

Chapter 248
As time goes by, everyone's attention gradually shifts away from this matter. The court still has many things to be busy with, and various affairs have achieved good results.

By the end of the year, the total tax revenue reported by the Ministry of Household Affairs had reached 7000 million taels of silver. Such astronomical figures have never been seen since the founding of the Ming Dynasty. This is naturally due to the series of reforms carried out by Zhu Tianqi over the years. .

Since the implementation of the tax reform, the income from the industrial and commercial tax has been rising year after year. Later, the salt, iron, and mining industries were opened to private ownership. The intervention and management of the wine, tea, and sugar industries also brought huge revenue to the imperial government's finances.

The output level of state-owned factories is getting higher and higher. In terms of quality, it completely crushes private industrial and commercial households, and the price is basically the same as private goods. It gradually forms a monopoly on the market and brings tens of millions of dollars to the court every year. Revenue.

Another major source of income comes from customs. After the Ming Dynasty implemented maritime reforms and abolished the maritime ban, Ming Dynasty's foreign trade prospered unprecedentedly. Because of the standardized customs policy, customs revenue was naturally no longer the same as that of the previous Municipal Shipping Department. Only a drop in the bucket of money could be collected, and the fiscal revenue brought to Ming Dynasty accounted for an increasing proportion of the overall fiscal revenue.

Of course, in addition to these tax revenues on the books, there are also other inputs, such as furs and timber from Siberia, silver and copper mines from Japan, and the shipping trading companies run by Zhang Guoji and Zhang Shili, all of which brought income to the Ming Dynasty. Very impressive.

But even though Ming's income has doubled several times over the years, Ming's expenditures have also been rising year after year. After all, whether it is building factories, building ships, or repairing railways, everything costs money, and it all costs a lot of money, so even if the court Now that you have money, you can't squander it too much. You still have to save money where you should save money, such as supplying the feudal king.

The Ming Dynasty spent a lot of money on supporting the vassals. It has even become a huge burden for the Ming Dynasty, and this burden will become heavier as time goes by. There is no other reason, because the members of the royal family are getting heavier As more and more people come, naturally there will be more and more vassal kings, and the vassal kings will have more and more descendants.

According to the ancestral system of the Ming Dynasty, these vassal kings were not allowed to be officials, do business, or engage in any work. They were only allowed to eat and wait at home to die. This may be a good way for the stability of the Ming Dynasty, but the court must maintain There are so many idle people, and the finances have to be stretched.

Although the Ming Dynasty's financial situation has improved significantly under Zhu Tianqi's operations, Zhu Tianqi does not allow the court to spend so much unjust money to support idle people every year.

In this regard, he had previously opened the door to the imperial examination for the royal family during the reform of the imperial examination, allowing vassal kings and vassal princes and younger brothers to participate in the imperial examination and become officials. However, although this was very effective, it was only for a very small number of aspiring people. , most people are used to waiting for death, and have long lost the ambition to fight for their future, so the overall situation has not changed much.

Now Zhu Tianqi believes that the time has come and it is time to remove this cancer for Ming Dynasty. There is no psychological burden for Zhu Tianqi to do this. After all, although his surname is Zhu, he is only surnamed Zhu. He and These vassal kings are not related to each other, so there is no need to worry about any clan feelings.

However, although things have to be done, they still cannot be forced. The result of directly cutting off the vassal vassal is to stimulate fierce resistance. Although he now holds a gun in his hand and is not afraid of these vassal kings, a rebellion broke out in the royal family, and brothers and sisters were fighting each other outside. From the human point of view, it's really not good. Maybe some people take advantage of the mess to mess things up, and the situation gets out of control, and the good situation collapses.So in the end, Zhu Tianqi planned to hold an internal family meeting to explain his ideas and plans clearly to these vassal kings, so that the next work would be much easier.

Zhu Tianqi then arranged for Wang Yuanbao to send edicts to the vassal kings across the country, informing these vassal kings that they would all come to Beijing to meet the saint during the Chinese New Year. Firstly, the emperor wanted to talk about family ties with everyone, and secondly, the emperor also had some concerns. Important matters need to be discussed with everyone.

The words were very polite, just to prevent these vassal kings from overthinking, but in order to prevent anyone from really daring to evade, Zhu Tianqi also added a mandatory rule and requirement at the end that all vassal kings must arrive in the capital before the 25th of the twelfth lunar month. If there is any delay, he will send Jin Yiwei to invite him personally.

In fact, to this day, there are not many vassal kings in the Ming Dynasty. Since the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, emperors have conferred a total of 68 vassal kings and 88 posthumous titles. The total number of vassal kings is 29, excluding five of them. After becoming emperors, there were 33 others who were deposed or exonerated due to lack of heirs. Today, there are only [-] emperors. Six of them are still young and have not been granted vassal status.

But the so-called vassal king is the emperor's brother, that is, the prince. Although there are not many princes, princes can give birth to children. After the vassal, the princes are restricted to the fiefdom and can do nothing but give birth to children, and the court gives them The supply was calculated on a per capita basis, which meant that the more children there were, the more money and food the court would give them, so they would naturally have to work hard to give birth.

Except for the eldest son of the prince who will inherit the prince's title, the rest of the prince's children will be named county kings. The eldest son of the prince's eldest son will inherit the county throne, and the rest will be named generals. Of course, this "general" is an empty title and has no real power. It only represents the standard of money and food provided by the imperial court.

Nowadays, the number of royal family members has reached hundreds of thousands, and the amount of money and food the court spends every year to support these royal family members has become an astronomical figure, not to mention that these royal family members quietly work in their own territory. Starting your own industry, annexing land, and doing business privately have had a negative impact on the local people and caused losses to the court.

In this "family meeting", only those who are the masters of the family are eligible to participate, not all royal family members. The Forbidden City cannot accommodate so many people, and there are only a few hundred people in total who meet the standards.

Time soon came to the end of the twelfth twelfth lunar month, and the vassal kings and princes from all over the country had arrived in the capital. Then, Zhu Tianqi held a banquet in the Huangji Palace and summoned all the royal family members to the palace for the banquet. Tianqi planned to chat with them while eating, and took this opportunity to announce the plan he had set to all the royal family members.

Although not everyone will support your plan, you can use this meeting to see who are obedient and who are thorns. In this way, you can deal with those thorns in advance. , be prepared in advance.

(End of this chapter)