The Ming royal family bombed Daming Hongzhi for five years. Yang Cheng, the governor of Shanxi Province, reported an amazing news to the emperor: Zhu Zhongying, the king of Qingcheng who lives in Shanxi, once again set a new record for the birth of Zhu Yuanzhang's family. By August this year, he had given birth to 94 children.
This is indeed a difficult problem encountered by many palaces since the middle of the Ming Dynasty. Most sons of Wang Cheng in Qing Dynasty also inherited his father's outstanding fertility. For example, the total number of children of his eldest son later reached 70. However, the number of children in Qing Dynasty set a historical record, with the number of grandchildren reaching 163 and the number of great-grandchildren reaching 5 10.
In other words, his direct descendants have reached 767 this year, and with many wives and concubines, the "real master" of the whole Qingcheng Wang Fu has exceeded 1000. Wang Qingcheng certainly can't recognize all the family members. Unless there are only a handful of children and grandchildren, it is hard to imagine how he managed this huge palace.
The population growth of Wang Fu in Qingcheng is only a microcosm of the royal bombing in Ming Dynasty. At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zhu Yuanzhang enfeoffed his descendants all over the country. "At the beginning, there were only forty-nine generals in the county." These princes are like seeds. 1200 years later, the number of them in various places is amazing: in Shanxi Province, there was only one Jin king in Hongwu period, and by Jiajing period, the number of royal descendants with titles had increased to 185 1.
During the Hongwu period, there was only one king of Zhou in Henan Province. By the Wanli period, there were more than 5,000 descendants of the royal family ... According to Xu Guangqi's rough calculation in the late Ming Dynasty, the number of royal families in the Ming Dynasty doubled every 30 years or so. According to the calculation of contemporary population historians, the population growth rate of the Ming royal family was 10 times of the national average population growth rate. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the descendants of Zhu Yuanzhang had multiplied to nearly one million people.
The consequence of Zhu Yuanzhang's planting was that the population expanded so fast because of the powerful institutional drive behind it.
The image left by Zhu Yuanzhang in history is extremely cold. He is merciless to the people, ministers, old friends and his wife. Only in front of his children and grandchildren is he full of kindness and gentleness. He racked his brains to ensure the happiness of his children and grandchildren.
Zhu Yuanzhang set the lowest salary standard for Ming officials in the history of China, but he was not afraid of the salary standard for his descendants: in the second year after the prince was made a prince, the salary was nearly seven times that of the highest official, not including a lot of land and other rewards. In order to let future generations fully enjoy happiness, he stipulated that members of the royal family did not have to engage in any occupation.
Every descendant of the royal family, all consumption needs are borne by the state: from the age of 10, the state receives wages and enjoys the salary. When getting married, the state pays for the house, the crown dress and the wedding expenses. There are heavy funeral expenses after death.
There is only one flaw in Zhu Yuanzhang's royal policy, that is, he imagines that he can defend the safety of the Zhu family under the sun by mastering the army through the captaincy. As a result, from the Yongle period, the prince led troops to make an insurrection. This situation led the Ming emperors to make constant efforts to make up for this loophole.
On the one hand, the emperors ensured the luxury of the royal family, on the other hand, they tried their best to strengthen the control of the royal family, especially the vassal king. By the middle and late Ming Dynasty, this kind of control had reached an incredible level: for fear that the governors would unite with local forces to make trouble, the later emperor stipulated that the governors could only live in the palace all their lives.
The most profitable industries are monopolized by the royal family, which is the only creed of China people. It is Zhu Yuanzhang's glorious task to spend money and reproduce. Therefore, Zhu was born in the royal family, confident, glorious and generous, and lived a hearty life. However, for other members of the Ming Dynasty, the repeated refreshing of the royal birth records not only means adding material to gossip after dinner-it also means increasing the burden of every ordinary person again and again.
The increase of princes will inevitably lead to the increase of palaces and the expansion of enclosures. The best land in the world is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the royal family. Since the mid-Ming Dynasty, the per capita land in China has been declining, while at the same time, the land occupied by the royal family has expanded rapidly. Many Wangs have a lot of land: King Jing and King Lu cultivated 40,000 hectares in Huguang and other places, 20,000 hectares in Axe King and 30,000 hectares in Wang Gui, Wang Hui and Wang Rui. Ji Wang has 700,000 mu of land in Changsha, and 40% of the land in Changsha and Hua Shan counties is also owned by Ji Wang. Half of the land in Henan Province belongs to all the palaces.
The salary of the royal family comes directly from the financial income of various places, and the geometric growth of the royal family population means the increase of financial expenditure by dozens or hundreds of times. At the beginning of Ming Dynasty, Shanxi Jinwang only needed an annual salary of 1 mangoku, which increased to 870,000 mangoku during Jiajing period. The Zhouwangfu in Henan increased from 654.38+100000 stone to 690000 stone. Huguang Chu Palace has increased from 65,438+100,000 to 250,000 stones ... In the distribution of national wealth, the proportion of powerful people has expanded rapidly, while the living space of the bottom people has been continuously compressed.
The state regulations have been so generous that the emperor's sons and grandchildren are still not enough. They use their special status and influence to extend their tentacles to all fields with oil and water, without profit or profit.
Royal families often collude with big businessmen to monopolize the industry. These relatives used their connections to ask the court for special policies, and then handed them over to businessmen, from which they made huge profits. They monopolized all the most profitable industries in the area. All scarce natural resources, such as land, mountains and mines, will be seized by the royal family by begging the emperor or by surprise as long as they prove profitable.
Monarchs everywhere often cry to the emperor, demanding all kinds of Teri. In many places, the right to collect taxes has been transferred to local palaces: Zhou Wang has the right to collect taxes in Kaifeng, Luwang has 26 berths, the commercial tax in Lucheng County has been given to Qingyuan King, and the commercial tax in Tunliu County has been given to Liaoshan King. King Pingyao said that he had too many families and his life was not comfortable. The emperor ordered him to give him the business tax of Licheng County for one year. ...
Through all kinds of plunder, the royal family accumulated the most wealth in the world.
It's a pity that the 200-year banquet is not free. All parties must end. After Li Zicheng, Zhang and other "seventy-two changes" rebels crossed the sea in the late Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang's descendants suddenly found that their banquet was not only interrupted, but also declared to be over forever. What is even more frightening is that they discovered at this time that this 200-year banquet is not free, and it is time to check out.
These princes, county kings and generals surnamed Zhu are the most interested prey of the peasant army. No matter where the peasant armies, large and small, pass, the royal family is in born to die. The most magnificent palaces in all parts of the country were almost destroyed in the continuous national war.
Let's take a look at Shanxi, where the royal population is growing fastest. After the early conquest of Taiyuan in the 17th year of Chongzhen (1644), the Li Zicheng army "captured more than 400 imperial families of the Jin Dynasty, escorted them to An, and killed them". These more than 400 people are senior royalty of the Jin Dynasty. Then, because of "fear of artificial change (in the middle and lower classes), they searched behind closed doors and got more than a thousand people, killing Haiziyan like a jackal. "After these two murders, the main characters in the imperial clan of Shanxi Jin Dynasty were killed.
In March of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng army captured Datong again. Within six days, more than 4,000 royal families under acting king Zhu Chuanqi were killed. Other county kings are not immune. In the folio, Jiang said, "The ancestral surname of Yun (now Datong, Shanxi) is about 4,000, and the thief has been entrenched for six days, and the slaughter will be exhausted ..." Generally speaking, Li Zicheng's army killed more than 65,438+00,000 descendants of Zhu in Shanxi alone.
Shanxi is just a microcosm. In fact, although Li Zicheng is famous for "not loving killing", he has been through many battles, and almost none of the princes named Zhu survived.
The Ming royal family did whatever they wanted for more than 200 years and accumulated too much public anger. They have completely stood on the opposite side of ordinary people and have to pay for their "happy life" with the blood and life of their own generation.