national surname chiming

Chapter 346
The reform measures mentioned by Zhu Shuren are very relevant to the disadvantages of the late Ming Dynasty.

Further promoting the collection of lijin and expanding commercial taxes to support the military is a magical stroke that has been verified by later generations of history.It was by this trick that the Qing Dynasty wiped out the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

If there were no lijin, maybe the Qing Dynasty, under the attack of Hong Xiuquan, would not have lived as well as the Ming Dynasty, which was attacked by Li Zicheng.

The only problem with Lijin is the decentralization of local financial power and the separatism of warlords. As a result, although Hong Xiuquan was wiped out in the later Qing Dynasty, it also made Zeng Guofan Li Hongzhang Zuo Zongtang's tail.

But it doesn't matter if this issue is placed on Zhu Shuren's side, because he can replace the combined position of Zeng, Li, and Zuo in later generations, which means that both forehand and backhand are pure profits.If he hadn't caught up with his father-in-law Lu Wang Jianguo, a vassal king who has no son and is not afraid of being usurped, he really wouldn't have the right time, place and people for the deepening of this reform.

And what Zhu Shuren mentioned later is "high salary to maintain integrity and get rid of bad rules", which is also a good law that has been proved by the Qing Dynasty in later generations. of filth.

Only by solving these problems can we talk about solving the problems of the troops eating empty salaries, drinking the blood of soldiers, and deducting more than half of the military expenses allocated by the household department as soon as they are out of the bank and before they leave Beijing.

Otherwise, no matter how good the financial reform is, and there are more financial resources, if more than half of the money is not actually spent on the army and armaments, it will be useless, so what about combat effectiveness.

After Shi Kefa figured out these principles, he would naturally give his full support out of publicity.

……

Of course, Zhu Shuren does not yet have a reasonable status to intervene in politics, and such a traumatic reform will take time to coordinate interests.So after he helped Zhu Changpan and Shi Kefa come up with ideas in late March, he himself left Nanjing at the end of March to avoid suspicion.

Shi Kefa continued to be busy with the work of other ministries, and contacted and appeased the local governors to support Lu Wang's new policies, and became the external spokesperson of the reform.

The detailed rules of the above-mentioned reforms were finally released from Nanjing in early April and distributed to various provinces one after another.From the time point of view, this was basically posted ten days after Zhu Shuren left Beijing, which blocked the hearts of the people in the world, and did not fall behind the handle of "Guo Xing Ye overstepped his authority and interfered in politics as the son-in-law of the supervisor".

The tortuous and complicated compromise of interests here should not be underestimated. Shi Kefa has done a lot of work for this, Zhu Shuren is still too young, and he is indeed relatively inexperienced in this kind of official exchange of interests.

Even so, after Shi Kefa carried out the financial part of the new policy of supervising the country, there were still some small voices of resistance in the localities.

But fortunately, Shi Kefa has explicitly and implicitly emphasized that "these are the three fires necessary for the new supervisor to take office, and it will stop here after they are burned." The people breathed a sigh of relief.

Therefore, those victims whose conflicts were not too intensified, held their noses and endured it for the time being, and decided to wait and see, don't be the first bird.

On the other hand, Shen Tingyang, Minister of the Ministry of Household Affairs, was also very helpful. He took the initiative to let his family members expand their business in the near future, made a fuss, and then obeyed the New Deal and took the lead in paying a large amount of New Deal lijin (in fact, it should be called "Fenjin")

The rich merchants in the south saw that the Shen family and the Zheng family had succumbed successively, so they became less and less willing to resist.

Among the household department in charge of Shen Tingyang, there are some officials who think that they understand the mind of their immediate superiors. I want to "turn a family into a country", which is why I am so willing to spend my capital.

Ever since, a doctor under his subordinates came to his liking and presented a new financial reform plan at the court meeting, saying:

"In this autumn of national calamity, there are too many military funds to be paid. Since all localities actively support the abolition of the three salaries and the increase of the levy, it is better to give more opportunities to the patriotic wealthy businessmen and gentry. The Ministry of Households should introduce a system that allows the merchants to pay the levy in advance. In exchange for the tax payment certificate, the tax payment certificate can be used to offset the actual business in the future when crossing provinces. The imperial court can also give interest discounts to merchants who prepaid lijin in advance.”

To put it bluntly, this idea is a bit similar to issuing national bonds. When Shen Tingyang heard it for the first time, he secretly said that he has capable people under his command, and even wondered whether his son secretly taught Bai Gloves to say so.

But after thinking about it, he also trusted his father-son relationship very much, knowing that his son didn't need to hide this game from him, so he didn't judge this kind of play with colored glasses.

On Shi Kefa's side, when I first heard about this trick, I thought it was a bit novel, but fortunately, Shi Kefa is knowledgeable and well-informed. He also consulted with Xu Guangqi and other seniors who dabbled in Western learning, so he finally thought about it. :
In the Ming Dynasty, it was no surprise that financial officials thought of issuing "advance tax deduction bonds". In fact, the Venetians had already done this in the Western world 200 years ago.

Even if the news of Daming is blocked, but considering that the Dutch learned this trick more than 100 years after the Venetian pioneered it, and Daming has been dealing with the Dutch red-haired barbarians for so long, it is not surprising to have heard of this trick.

If a Han Chinese in the Han and Tang Dynasties thought of this trick, he might be said to be a time traveler.He didn't think of this until the end of the Ming Dynasty, so he can't be regarded as a time traveler. At most, he can be said to have learned both Chinese and Western.

After calming down and carefully considering the pros and cons of this request, Shen Tingyang still persuaded Zhu Changpan not to accept such a request in the court meeting from the very heart.

Zhu Changqian was a little surprised at first, because he also felt that the solo performance of the household doctor made some sense, and it could indeed open up a lot of money and earn enough money. Why did his in-laws disagree?
Faced with this question, Shen Tingyang said solemnly: "Once this law is implemented, the wind of looting in the localities will be unstoppable, and it is hard to imagine how officials who have obtained the authority to collect lijin in advance will abuse this authority.

I, a local official in Ming Dynasty, would change jurisdictions every few years. Who wouldn't want to collect more taxes during his term of office?In this way, the old official has achieved outstanding achievements, but the new official finds that the local business tax has been pre-levied for several years, and the wealthy businessmen have a bunch of tax credit certificates in their hands. How can the new successor start their work?

Considering the difficulty of our Ming Dynasty's official administration, these powers must not be delegated casually, otherwise the people will definitely live in dire straits! "

Zhu Changqian was originally a soft ear, and he had never learned how to govern a country. When he heard it, he really felt that it made sense, so he asked other courtiers for their opinions.

Therefore, a few courtiers who don’t know much about finance but are loyal and patriotic (those who are not patriotic and have selfish intentions, wish that this suggestion cannot be implemented, so they will not open their mouths), followed Shen Tingyang’s train of thought and asked:

"Shen Butang, since delegating the power of pre-collection of lijin and deduction certificates for payment and interest will lead to so many opportunities for corruption, shouldn't it be fine if it is not devolved?

If recruited by the Ministry of Households, with the Ministry of Households' current strict law enforcement and honesty, Shen Butang, your high integrity, should be able to plug these loopholes, right? "

At this moment, people in the court still have a high degree of trust in Shen Tingyang not being greedy for ink, because Shen Tingyang has already taken the lead in supporting the increase in business taxes. Many people estimate that according to the standard of Shen Tingyang's payment, the Shen family may be able to pay 200 million taels this year. business tax.

The Zheng family also paid about that much, and all the businessmen in other southern provinces who did inter-provincial trade paid a total of 1000 million zero points.In total, the total income of the Ming court this year can exceed 500 million taels of lijin.

This is more than 400 million from the Shen family and the Zheng family, and more than 1000 million from the southern half of the world.It's just that Shen Tingyang is a good friend, and he won't engage in the trick of "after the incident is completed, Master Huang's 180 million will be returned in full, and we will divide the two big families in the south of the city with a little knife". He, Master Shen, paid the real money. of.

Therefore, everyone now believes that Shen Tingyang himself will be able to strictly enforce the law and will not exhaust his resources.

But Shen Tingyang still shook his head fairly, and reminded with little knowledge: "This is not a question of whether we can stop eating enough food to catch fish after the power is taken over by the Ministry of Household Affairs.

Do you still remember that the reason why the lijin method was effective at the beginning was to gain the support of the people and strengthen the military preparations of the southern provinces. The key point is that "the commercial tax paid by the localities is only for local flowers, and it is only used to protect the defense of the province. '.This prevented the gentry in the southern provinces from worrying that their money would be subsidized by the court to other provinces, so they were stingy.

Human nature in the world has been like this since ancient times. In order to protect their hometown, the gentry are still willing to pay, but in order to defend the world and things far away, the world's people do not have such a high level.If today, in order to prepay lijin, the pre-expropriation right is transferred to the household department, how can the people of the local provinces be willing to be enthusiastic?Wouldn't it be the same old way?

The imperial court should keep its word. At the beginning of Lijin’s birth, it was agreed that each province had separate accounts, and the province’s money only supported the province’s military expenditure. It must not be changed, at least not until the world is stable again. "

After these words were finished, most of the officials who held discussions also shut up.Some people feel ashamed. It is said that Confucius has talked about benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and faith for so many years, but in fact Confucian scholars also talk about benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom. Just saying the word "faith" is not as good as being from the merchant class. I know more about the importance of credit.

In the end, though, the discussion wasn't entirely fruitless.Based on the attitude of treating the matter rather than the person, everyone continued to discuss in detail according to the situation, and Shen Tingyang really found out a method that could be piloted:

Although the prepayment of lijin is allowed in all provinces of the country, which will lead to the depletion of fish, and all the collection of the Ministry of Households will lead to local distrust of earmarked funds. Then, only in the southern Zhili area, the franchised prepaid business tax deduction, and give Interest can perfectly avoid the above-mentioned problems.

Because in the Ming Dynasty, the Nanzhili area did not have its own financial officer system, and the finances of Nanzhili have always been managed by the Nanjing Household Department.In this special period, the Nanjing household department has been upgraded to a formal household department, but the original authority is still concurrent.

In addition, this place is at the foot of the prison, and all officials are staring at it, so the officialdom environment is more transparent. Shen Tingyang is indeed an iron-fisted and fair financial officer, and he will not be greedy for his own money.So at the end of the discussion, Zhu Changping agreed to open this opening for special matters. This year, in the Southern Zhili area, which will be directly managed by the Ministry of Household Affairs, the trial will be carried out to pay more commercial taxes and interest payments to deduct deductions in advance.

Starting next year, if wealthy businessmen and gentry from other provinces are envious of this meager interest, and willing to share the worries of the imperial court, they can apply again and discuss separately.

In this way, it can be regarded as carrying through the initial volatile period of fiscal reform, so as not to act too hastily and cause trouble.

It is a matter of tens of millions of dollars, so of course we can't act too hastily, we must try it out locally, and then promote it.

And after this law was passed, the relatives of the Shen family who run the merchant fleet (Shen Tingyang has long stopped running the family business himself after he became an official of the household department, and let his relatives hold it on his behalf), also subscribed a large amount of prepayment in a very face-saving way. , Further stabilized the financial gap in front of Zhu Changpan's supervisory regime.

With such a leader, the voices of resistance from all over the world were suppressed weaker and weaker.

……

The fiscal reform decree was first promulgated in early April, and it will take a month or two to be implemented in various places. During this period, various fine-tuning needs to be announced.

Therefore, in the four to five months of the court, there will be no new actions in civil affairs for the time being. The court basically revolves around these three fires of King Lu's supervision of the country.

No matter what the final result is, most officials, gentry, and generals in the south have seen a supervising prince who is light on government, does not do too much work, and only does necessary things, and fully understands the completely different styles of King Lu and the first emperor.

The ruling tone of "letting go of the past and not entangled in historical merits and demerits" has also been fully demonstrated, making people feel more at ease.

In addition, the words are divided into two parts. Before the three fires of King Lu's New Deal, as early as mid-March, the decree to summon the kings to come to Zhili in the south has also been issued.It would have taken a month or two for this work to take effect, so it happened to be advancing in parallel with the new policy of supervising the country.

In mid-April, the first batch of vassal kings who obediently came to Beijing after receiving the order arrived in the territory of Nanzhili.

Other vassal princes, if there are no accidents and disobedience, can also come to Nanzhili in late April, or June at the latest, to accept tighter control of the imperial court.

In the 70 years of the Ming Dynasty, thirteen generations of emperors have sealed more than 200 princes so far.Of course, a small half of them were not handed down all the time because of the lack of offspring and the excommunication of the country.

There were only more than 100 princes who could be passed down to the Tianqi period. In the early years of Chongzhen, because the war had begun, thieves began to kill the vassal princes in the occupied areas one after another. Therefore, when Chongzhen ascended the throne, the number of princes had dropped to 150. the following.

Now, after nearly 20 years of bloody civil wars, the number of princes has continued to drop sharply. After all, the princes in the northern provinces have basically been killed. They either died at the hands of Li Zicheng and other thieves, or were killed by Tartars. up.

Even in the south, the princes of Hunan and Sichuan were all fled by Zhang Xianzhong, and a total of more than a dozen families were taken away.

Therefore, there are less than fifty families in the world who can have the status of a prince.Only Fu Wang Zhu Yousong is the only person whose bloodline is closer to the first emperor than Zhu Changping, and none of the others are even as close as Zhu Changping (Wanli does not have so many descendants who have survived to the present)

Now that Zhu Changqian's edict was received, the first and most positive responses were those vassal kings living in the fringe areas at the junction of Shandong and Nanzhili.Because they were on the territory of the vassal, and they were already on the verge of Li Zicheng and the Tartar soldiers going south. If they didn't run away, they would have died. They wished that the imperial court would issue an edict to allow them to escape from the fiefdom.

From Zhu Shuren's point of view, he actually didn't want to save those Shandong princes at first. He wished that those pig raising wastes would be killed by Li Zicheng or Dorgon directly, so that he could be at peace.The imperial court can also reduce an expenditure and spend more money on the people and the army.

However, Zhu Shuren also knew that these Shandong princes must be used as introductions to draw out princes from other stable and prosperous places in the south, so as to show that the court treats them equally.

Otherwise, only the princes from the rich and affluent areas in the south will be forced to come, but the princes of Shandong will not be recruited or rescued. No matter how stupid people are, they will be able to see that there is something tricky about "weakening the clan and respecting King Lu alone".

As a result, some small accidents inevitably happened on the way to the south of these Shandong princes—two or three princes among them were not acclimatized because they had always been pampered, lacked exercise, and had never traveled far in their entire lives.

If you can take a slow rest and recuperate, you can get over it, but because some Liu Fangliang and even Dorgon's troops have infiltrated and harassed in the Shandong area, especially the Tartar cavalry can cross the strong city to burn, kill and loot in the non-combat zone behind.

In the midst of chaos, how dare these princes stop halfway?
After a lot of tossing, among the dozen or so princes who went south from the fringes of Shandong and Henan, two died of the rebellious army invaded by the Tartars, three died of inaccurate disease, and of the [-] northern princes, only nine survived. Arrived in Yangzhou.

Zhu Changqian would not allow them to cross the river to Nanjing, but also to prevent careerists from appearing in Nanjing, so he put all the princes who came from the north to Yangzhou, which is across the river.

While the nine northern princes arrived in Yangzhou one after another, six or seven of the remaining thirty princes of distant or near bloodlines in the southern provinces combined survived to arrive around Nanjing.And behind the arrival of these six or seven families, there was also a disease and death at the hands of thieves——

The south is not completely safe now. Zhang Xianzhong's army that was wiped out in southern Hunan two years ago, some of the remnants fled westward to Jinggang, Luoxiao Mountains and other mountainous areas in the south after the Battle of Hengzhou. It's kind of messy.The two princes who were killed and frightened to death were from Jiangxi.

After this wave, of the more than 40 surviving princes in the world, seven died, and fifteen of them were completely controlled by Zhu Changpan.

There are still more than a dozen companies on the way, only a few in single digits. For various reasons, they chose Xuefu Wang to resist. Over one hundred, all kinds of people, there are so many princes in the Ming Dynasty, those who are not clear-headed, those who are stupid, those who are timid and afraid of being killed, there are all kinds of people.

In any case, after this wave, all the vassal kings in the world have been plowed like a plow, and they have been completely classified and filed.Those who want to be assassins will naturally be punished by the court.

In addition, in the process of escorting the vassal king to cross the border, the local officials involved in various places were also trembling. Those local officials who caused the vassal king to be killed by Tartars and bandits in their own defense area were all frightened at the beginning, lest King Lu would follow him. The first emperor also attached great importance to the crime of "trapping the vassal" and wanted to use their heads to pay homage to the murdered prince.

However, Zhu Changping took the opportunity to extend an olive branch, and repeatedly expressed that "in this special period of national calamity, it is not easy for officials in the north to guard the land, and they are infiltrated and killed by small groups of Tartars. "The kindness of these officials pardoned the crimes of these officials.

The magistrates and military generals saw that "there are vassal kings who have been killed in the territory under their jurisdiction, and they will no longer be questioned", and they became more courageous. Thinking back to the harsh punishments and laws of the Chongzhen Dynasty, how many governors and military departments Shangshu was executed by Chongzhen because of the death of the vassal king. After everyone recalled the bitterness and thought about the sweetness, they supported the benevolent King Lu even more.

Who made the Ming Dynasty develop to the present, few people in the world like vassal kings!Hearing that the death of the vassal king does not need to be held responsible, but can be analyzed on a case-by-case basis, who doesn't feel a big sigh of relief.

Of course, Zhu Changping's "lenient and benevolent" will definitely leave excuses for the feudal lords.For example, King Fu has connected with other vassals many times in private, expressing that "Zhu Changqian is weak, and now he is controlled by Zhu Shuren. Bad look".

In the Guangdong and Guangxi regions where Zhu Shuren's power is weakest in the south, there are also some vassal kings who were quite ambitious in history and wanted to become emperors. Because they were afraid of entering Beijing and wanted to stay in Guangdong and Guangxi, where the emperor was far away from the sky, they chose to echo Zhu Yousong.

As time entered May, two months after Fu Wang Zhu Yousong first claimed illness and refused to go south, Zhu Changqian specially issued another edict for him, asking whether Zhu Yousong's condition has improved and whether he can go south to state the previous "intervention with the Secretary" responsibility.

If he continues to complain about his illness, Zhu Changqian also said that he can send several imperial physicians from Nanjing to Fengyang to help Zhu Yousong consult and confirm his condition.

(End of this chapter)