Saving the Ming Dynasty: I can exchange bodies with Chongzhen

Chapter 196 Chongzhen: Taizu, you are wrong!
Great victory at Pi Island.

Another great victory!

What followed was the death of Duoduo, Prince Yu of the Qing Dynasty. His appearance on the front page of the Ming Times once again caused the people of the Ming Dynasty to fall into an inexplicable excitement.

In addition to these battle reports, some people have discovered something else.

"Tax Law Reform Opinions of the Ming Dynasty"

The word mentioned most frequently is the imposition of business taxes.

Once this thing was released, it caused a huge response in the court.

"Business tax? How can Your Majesty impose business tax?"

"Isn't this action competing with the people for profit?"

"Your Majesty is so stupid..."

But these voices were quickly suppressed.

In the past, they used the ancestral system to suppress Chongzhen, mainly to fight for the right to speak. It seems to be meaningless, but the right to speak is actually a declaration of rights, telling the other party that I have plenty of ways to deal with you.

It was a confrontation between imperial power and the civil service group.

For example, Emperor Wanli of the Ming Dynasty did not attend court for 28 years, which indicated that the power of the civil service group did surpass the imperial power in at least some aspects.

But now it is different. The court’s voice is in the hands of Zhu Changgan.

"You have to listen to what I say. If you don't, I have plenty of ways to deal with you."

……

The Mongolian tribes south of the desert were wiped out in the north. Now that Dodo of the Qing Dynasty was dead, Dorgon's war plan had come to a complete standstill or retreat, but Zhu Changgan would not stop and wait for him.

Instead, you should speed up your plans.

That's business tax.

During the Chongzhen period, there were brutal tortures and brutal killings everywhere. Government soldiers killed people, Li Zicheng killed people, Zhang Xianzhong killed people, and the Manchu Tartars killed people. The whole of China was dyed blood red.

The source of all this is the collapse of the national finances.

The first thing that Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang did after founding the country was to stabilize the finances and levy taxes across the country, but the taxes he levied were agricultural taxes.

On the one hand, commercial tax statistics are underdeveloped and cannot be calculated.

Only the fields can be counted, and the approximate yield per mu can be calculated. It can be said that the talent required for each mu can be calculated based on the average yield.

In the sixth year of Wanli, the country's fiscal revenue was 26,527,000 taels, of which agricultural taxes accounted for 20,820,000 taels, industrial and commercial taxes accounted for 2,238,000 taels, and miscellaneous income accounted for 3,487,000 taels.

The two agricultural taxes accounted for 78%, but in the third year of Chongzhen, the proportion of agricultural taxes not only did not decrease, but instead rose to 81%.

Among them, Zhu Yuanzhang emphasized agriculture and suppressed commerce, strictly prohibited overseas trade, and changed the trade system to a tribute system.

Zhu Yuanzhang also stipulated that merchants were at the bottom of society and were not allowed to take the imperial examinations. If one person in a family was engaged in business, the whole family was not allowed to wear silk. In a later TV series "The Ming Dynasty 1566", Hai Rui questioned loudly when he saw Shen Yishi wearing silk. The origin of this is the story.

But in fact, Emperor Hongwu did collect commercial taxes at a rate of one in thirty, which means that if you earned thirty dollars, you had to pay one dollar to the court.

The tax rate was only 3.3%, which was lower than that in later generations and should be considered as light taxation.

but it is not the truth,
In addition to the poll tax and land tax, what really placed a heavy burden on the people was corvee labor.

If a modern country wants to build large-scale infrastructure, it will pay to hire workers to build roads and buildings. On the one hand, this can accumulate national fixed assets, and on the other hand it can also solve the employment rate. Workers get wages and it can also promote consumption.

However, in the Ming Dynasty, the construction of roads, government offices, transportation of military rations, and repair of river embankments were all done by conscripting civilians for free.

In the Ming Dynasty, adult men had to perform one month of unpaid labor in their own county every year, engaging in local civil engineering, bridge and road construction, river and canal management, grain transportation, etc. If they did not want to go, they could pay taxes instead, which was calculated based on the ratio, and the tax rate was 1/1.

But the problem is that during the reign of Zhang Juzheng in the Ming Dynasty, 5% of the population occupied 90% of the country's land. By the reign of Chongzhen, 3% of the population occupied 95% of the arable land.

However, the taxes borne by the common people have not been reduced at all, especially the corvee, which is much higher than before.

Since corvée labor was free, officials from all over the country could use the people as much as they wanted, regardless of whether they lived or died.

But the biggest problem lies in the monopoly of business by bureaucrats and gentry in the southeast of the Ming Dynasty.

The Kaizhong system gave the salt monopoly rights and salt permits to Shanxi merchants, who then transported grain and goods to the border. They then used the salt permits to go to designated salt fields, withdraw salt and sell it in designated areas.

By the middle and late Ming Dynasty, serious corruption had emerged in the Kaizhong system, and Shanxi merchants were tied together with powerful officials in the court to make private profits through salt and iron.

The change of Kaizhong system to Kaizhongzhe Se system dealt a heavy blow to Shanxi merchants, but they turned to smuggling business with Mongolia and Later Jin in the north. Shanxi merchants engaged in land smuggling, and the scale of the business was not actually particularly large.

The biggest group was the powerful people in the Ming Dynasty. They controlled maritime smuggling in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and the southeast, and exchanged ginseng and sable fur with the Later Jin Dynasty on a scale far exceeding that of business.

Of course, no group can follow Jiangnan.

The silver dug by the Spaniards eventually flowed to the bureaucratic and gentry capital groups, and these people took advantage of this to monopolize half of the court.

Zhu Changgan was eyeing the trade income from the southeast coast. "Millions of taels of silver every year, you just feel at ease and put it into your own pockets? What is the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty?"

……

Huguang, Wuchang Prefecture.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Wuchang Prefecture had seven counties under its jurisdiction: Jiangxia (attached to the city), Xianning, Jiayu, Puqi, Chongyang, Tongcheng, and Wuchang.

The old blind man and his men have already captured Jiangxia County.

Chongzhen rode into the county government office on horseback, "Are you the magistrate of Jiangxia County?"

"In reply...in reply to your Majesty, I am the magistrate of Jiangxia County, Qu Xianming."

Chongzhen ignored him and asked, "How much did you embezzle?"

The old blind man's apprentice had already handed over the account book, "Prince Xin, please take a look. His corruption amounted to a huge sum of 50,000 taels."

Chongzhen flipped through the account book and said expressionlessly: "Behead him!"

"Your Majesty, please spare my life, Your Majesty, please spare my life..." Qu Xianming, the magistrate of Jiangxia County, kowtowed like crazy, "Your Majesty, if you continue to kill people like this, all the officials in the Ming Dynasty will be slaughtered."

Chongzhen was about to let someone drag him away, but suddenly paused and said, "Oh, why is that?"

"Your Majesty, you may not know that the annual salary of a county magistrate in the Ming Dynasty was 90 dan of rice converted from various silver taels, cloth, and grain. In the later period, Zhang Juzheng's reform converted the annual salary into 45 taels of silver." (Converted, it is equivalent to an annual salary of 2023 yuan in 15000, which is more than yuan per month.)
Even with Hai Rui's power, he only bought two kilograms of meat for his mother's 60th birthday. He usually didn't eat meat at all.

According to the taxes and corvee labor of the Ming Dynasty, if ordinary people were not exploited, their income would be higher than that of the county magistrate.

"He studied hard for 10 to 30 years, never had any income during that time, suffered so much, had an extremely high IQ, and stood out from more than 100,000 people, but he doesn't even have the respect of an ordinary person. How is this possible?"

"Compared to the Song Dynasty, when the magistrate received 5 coins per month and 10 to shi of grain per month, this was the basic salary, which was already to times more than the county magistrate in the Ming Dynasty. In addition to the regular salary, there were various subsidies, such as tea, wine, kitchen supplies, firewood, wormwood, charcoal, salt, fodder for horses, and clothing and food expenses for the accompanying servants, all of which were paid by the government, and the amount was also considerable." "So we can only find a way out ourselves. After Zhang Juzheng's "One Whip Law", corruption had already changed from an unspoken rule to an explicit rule."

Chongzhen stared at him with eyes as sharp as nails, "What clear rules?"

Qu Xianming felt uneasy when being stared at. He swallowed his saliva and said, "Huo Hao!"

Before the Single Whip Law, farmers paid taxes in the form of various kinds of goods, some paid rice, some paid cloth.

When laws have no standards and rules, it is easiest for loopholes to be exploited. Officials take advantage of this to make a fortune and use various means to make money. For example, if the cloth and grain paid by farmers are of quality problems and they need to pay more, or if farmers do not give officials benefits, officials will find all kinds of faults.

This is the unspoken rule.

But after the implementation of the Single Whip Law, most of the tax payments were directly converted into silver, and nothing else was required. Farmers also needed to sell rice in the market and exchange it for silver to pay taxes. In this way, the loophole was blocked, because the quality of silver was standard and local officials could not find fault with it.

All localities could not hand over all the broken silver in the country to the court, otherwise the court would be confused again. The prefectures and counties at all levels needed to melt the broken silver and then cast it into standard silver ingots, namely official silver, and transport them to the capital.

Since the purity and quality of the broken silver from the common people vary, and there will inevitably be losses during the smelting and casting process,
For example, Jiangxia County collected 1000 taels of broken silver, but after melting them into large silver ingots, only 960 taels were left. Of course, the local officials would not subsidize the remaining 40 taels with their own money.

Therefore, local officials could collect a certain percentage more silver as loss during smelting.

This is the fire consumption.

However, the imperial court did not give a standard for this fire consumption.

Without standards, corruption is bound to occur.

The court's tax rate was 15%, but the collection of fire consumption exceeded all the court's resources.

"How much did you charge?"

"Replying to the king, we are a relatively normal county, and the fire consumption for every two taels of silver is 5 cents."

"How much?" Chongzhen's eyes widened suddenly. "Five cents? Isn't that fifty percent?"

"Your Majesty, we...we are really considered to be a small number. Some counties and prefectures have even exceeded 70%."

"Seventy percent..." Chongzhen's eyes were blazing with anger. He chopped the county magistrate to the ground with a knife, his teeth grinding. He turned his head and asked the old blind man, "Is this the case in the Ming officialdom?"

"Almost. The entire Ming officialdom is corrupt. Anyone who collects less huo fei is a fool. Officials collect more huo fei in various ways. Some counties have already collected too much huo fei, and the huo fei can even reach 90%."

Chongzhen clenched his fingers, his eyes flashing with the light of a beast, "No wonder the people can't survive, it would be strange if they can survive..."

"According to what he said, he is indeed an honest official among the Ming Dynasty officials. He only embezzled 50,000 taels of silver..."

It was as if a sharp boning knife was suddenly stabbing into my heart, and it felt like I twisted it hard a few times and then pulled it out.

Chongzhen drove everyone out in a daze, leaned on the table, and muttered: "With the Ming officialdom in such a state, how can we save the collapsing edifice?"

After a moment, he raised his head suddenly, "Taizu, you are wrong. Have you ever thought that your evil policies have made corruption a daily routine for Ming officials..."

Ancestral system!

At this moment, Chongzhen finally understood that the ancestral system was no longer a shield to maintain imperial power, but instead became his biggest constraint.

a long time,

Chongzhen's eyes slowly became firm, "Kill! Since the ancestral system doesn't work, let's kill our way out and create another Ming Dynasty."

Before, Chongzhen had been thinking about how to slow down the progress of the army, let the old blind man slow down, and try not to go to big cities.

But now, he no longer thinks so.

Since the Ming Dynasty's officialdom is completely rotten, let's get rid of all these acne.

Scraping the bone to heal the wound is more painful than glossing over the problem, but it is also more effective.

……

August twenty-fifth,
The troops led by "Prince Xin" once again captured Xianning and Jiayu counties, killing more than 500 county magistrates, county secretaries, legal advisors, and county bullies and evil gentry.

The people of these counties beat drums and gongs, and some even lit firecrackers to welcome the "King Xin".

Of the seven counties in Wuchang Prefecture, three have now been occupied by the peasant army, and the county magistrates of two of the remaining four counties, Puqi and Chongyang, have fled upon hearing the news.

When the people from the two counties ran over to welcome "Prince Xin", Chongzhen was still confused.

At this point, except for Tongcheng and Wuchang counties, all other counties in Wuchang Prefecture fell under his control.

Chongzhen's army also reached a huge number of 105,000.

The momentum was so great that Gou Youquan, the governor of Huguang, and his 10,000 soldiers could only watch from afar and dared not come close.

There is no other reason, the strength difference is too big.

These ten thousand of him just go up there to deliver food.

"It's over. Our Huguang capital has completely fallen into the hands of the bandits."

He wrote several memorials to the court, requesting it to send a large army to suppress the bandits. However, the army of "Prince Xin" had already grown to a huge number of 150,000, and the court's army had not yet arrived.

Most of Wuchang Prefecture was lost, and it was only a matter of time before the remaining two counties fell.

Gou Youquan, the governor of Huguang, beat his chest and said, "The court has misled me!"

As several counties in Wuchang Prefecture fell, all officials in Huguang Province came to the Governor of Huguang, Gou Youquan, and asked, "Sir Gou, please give us a solution. What should we do?"

"Yes, sir, has the court sent an army?"

With such a big situation, they will also be in trouble, not to mention whether the Ming court will settle accounts with them.

Their official residences and mansions are all in Wuchang Prefecture. Now they are in danger. It is not right to run, and it is not right not to run...

Running away means abandoning one's post without permission.

Of course he would not run away. Once Wuchang City fell, "Prince Xin" would become bloodthirsty, especially officials and gentry.

Killing hundreds and hundreds of them was just like slaughtering pigs and dogs. Who among these officials would not be afraid?
……

The number of Prince Xin's troops exceeded 105,000, and the greatest impact was not at the court level, but on the peasant army.

After all, the imperial court had Zhu Changgan to suppress it, but the peasant uprising army was facing encirclement and suppression by Sun Chuanting, Sun Yingyuan and troops from various provinces, and was having a hard time.

Li Zicheng encountered Cao Bianjiao and suffered a defeat, with more than 20,000 casualties.

The Huige Zuo Wuying was beaten into a "bald chicken" by Zu Dabi and Zuo Guangxian...

(End of this chapter)