I was the emperor in the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 235 The biggest enemy
In the Ming Dynasty, from 270 to [-], a total of [-] years, except for the wild boar skin in the last years of the Ming Dynasty.

Although there are ethnic minorities who violate the border all the year round, in general, Daming has never really been afraid of these ethnic minorities.

Most of the foreign wars are won more than lost.

But it was such a powerful empire that was the strongest in the world at that time, and its comprehensive national strength far surpassed any other country in the world. Why did it eventually go to destruction?

According to the comprehensive historical records, the reasons are actually various.

Some people say that the decline of the country was caused by the reduction of grain production during the Little Ice Age.

But Li Tian doesn't think so. The maritime powers such as Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands in the same era are almost all developing and growing during this period.

Why didn't they get affected by the little ice river, but became stronger and stronger instead.

Therefore, the theory of the Little Ice Age is simply untenable.

What is that, is the wild boar skin very strong, is there something wrong inside.

Throughout the thousands of years of Chinese history, there is a dynasty that has no foreign invasion.

Even the weak Song Dynasty persisted in two generations for more than 300 years in the face of Mongolia, Jin, Xia, Liao and other foreign races that swept the world.

The Ming Dynasty was no weaker than any other dynasty in terms of military strength or troops, but why was it still defeated by Houjin who had only hundreds of thousands of people?
The reason is that there is an internal problem.

However, what is the problem inside.

Is it because the court's tax burden is insufficient to support an army?Or are the officials of the imperial court betraying their masters for glory and not wanting to serve the country?
In fact, it is not. Even at the last moment, Ming Dynasty still has an army of one million, and the generals who can recruit and fight have never been cut off.

And living and dying with the capital, when the bandit army invaded the capital, the important officials and generals who committed suicide and died for the country did not say much.

The reason, internal strife and internal friction, seems to be the cause of the demise of the Ming Dynasty.

In fact, if you dig deeper, you will find that the real cause of the downfall of the last Han feudal dynasty was the rise of the big landlord class.

What is the big landlord class, to put it bluntly, is the "official and gentry group" who initiated the land annexation, did not pay taxes, and did not perform hard labor.

Just how powerful they are.

It can be seen from the fact that Li Zicheng's army of millions was wiped out in less than ten months.

At that time, Li Zicheng not only captured the capital, but also seized tens of millions of taels of silver in the capital.

At that time, he wanted people, someone wanted money, and he wanted to be a new generation of emperor in the end.

It is not impossible to create a dynasty, but why did he still lose in the end.

To put it bluntly, it was because of his behavior that the interests of those big landlord groups were moved.

Hitting local tyrants and dividing the land may work in later generations, but in that feudal era.

If such a strategy is implemented at the peak of the official and gentry group, it will sooner or later be defeated.

But how did the official gentry group form?

There are reasons left over from history, and there are also reasons for the special preferential treatment of literati in the Ming Dynasty.

The historical reason is easy to understand. It is nothing more than a family that has been passed down for thousands of years.

The Guanlong nobles in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the seven families and five surnames, and even the Langya Wang family and the Qufu Confucian family at this time are actually representatives of the big landlord class.

The preferential treatment of literati in the Ming Dynasty pushed this class of officials, gentry and landlords to its peak.

After just one election, the exemption of taxation and labor labor has given birth to countless emerging landlord classes.

Even a small person in the district has already had someone come here with their property, not to mention those officials in the court.

Just ask the officials of the Ming Dynasty, how many of them have never accepted speculation, and which family does not have a hundred acres of fertile land and countless servants.

In the more than 200 years of Ming Dynasty's history, the number of people who have been elected as officials cannot be counted by statistics.

Not to mention the princes and county kings that Daming entrusted to various places. Although their number is not as large as that of the official and gentry groups, they are definitely not much worse than them in consuming the country's tax burden.

Just the addition of the two will reduce the country's tax revenue by more than half.

If you add the increasingly decaying and corrupt guard system.

The people who actually pay taxes only account for [-]-[-]% of the total population of the country.

Use the taxes of 70.00% to [-]% of the population to feed [-]% of the country's population.

Even if you think about it with your feet, you can know that such a deformed state will cause problems sooner or later.

He wants to turn Daming into an ideal paradise.

The enemy that Li Tian had to face was not an invasion by a foreign race, let alone a rebellion by some feudal lord.

Instead, they are gradually eroding the bones and blood of the country, lying on Daming's back, sucking the bones and marrow of these big landlord classes.

However, the emperor and the scholar-bureaucrats share the world is not an empty talk, nor can it be solved by Li Tian killing a few civil officials and killing a few corrupt officials.

In order to completely end this class, we must kill them from the root in the bud.

But it is not easy to do all this.

It is not impossible that if one fails, the whole world will be reversed.

Even if the inspection of the guards will cause the generals to retaliate, there are only a small number of people who really dare to rebel and are capable of rebelling.

Even if Li Tian doesn't need to do anything, the gang of officials under him will help him settle it in order to make contributions.

But if the cake that the scholar-bureaucrats rely on for their survival is really touched, the rebellion caused will not be just a few generals.

Even if Li Tian has hundreds of thousands of troops, all equipped with the latest muskets, it is estimated that it is impossible to win the battle.

The only way to solve this problem is to make subtle changes.

Regarding this point, Li Tian has also thought carefully.

The best way to fight against a ruling class is to re-establish a new class.

Letting this emerging class that can be controlled gradually replace the original class is the best way to completely cut them off without causing a backlash.

As for what this emerging solution is, in fact, anyone with a little knowledge of modern history can guess.

That is the working class.

That's right, it is the working class, an emerging class that represents the new era, technological innovation, and the liberation of productive forces.

But where do workers come from?
The answer is from the factory.

But where is the factory?
This question is not only a question for Daming at this time, but also a matter of distress for Li Tian at this time.

If you want to figure out where the factory is, you have to figure out what the factory is.

The word factory was only born during the Industrial Revolution, and it is still two hundred years away from now.

Although no one has ever said this word at this time, it does not mean that there is no alternative saying in this era.

In Daming, this thing is now called a workshop or workshop.

However, most of the current workshops are still in the hands of the government, and the people who work in them are not called workers, but craftsmen.

Although there are also private workshops, most of them are extremely small in size, employing no more than dozens or hundreds of workers at most, and no large-scale ones have yet appeared.

(End of this chapter)