Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 437 Solving the Problem of the Feudal King Group
King Zhu Yihai of Lu and King Zhu Yujian of Nanyang were the ones who decided to travel across the ocean to join the domain.

Zhu Youjian hereby restores Zhu Yujian's title as Prince of the Tang Dynasty and named him the Lord of the Tang Kingdom.

The King of Lu was also named the Lord of Lu.

But in fact, no one knows how far Tang Wang Zhu Yujian and Lu Wang Zhu Yihai can go, and whether they will succeed or not.

Even Zhu Youjian himself didn't know.

Many civil servants thought that Zhu Youjian was thousands of miles away from Daming, and that he had set aside some territory for the vassal princes and nobles, just for the reason of cutting off the vassal king's fields.

But what no one knows is that Zhu Youjian still hopes in his heart that these vassal kings who dare to venture out can really create a Han regime in another continent.

Tang Wang Zhu Yujian and Lu Wang Zhu Yihai and other vassal kings who chose to go out and take risks made Zhu Youjian feel very gratified.

In this era when the West has begun to colonize the Americas and has monopolized most of the gold production in the Americas.

The departure of Zhu Yujian and other vassal kings also shows that from this moment on, it is not Zhu Youjian who is working hard for the progress of Ming Dynasty.

Most of the vassal kings still chose to stay in the capital, even without fiefs, they were unwilling to take the initiative to "exile".

Zhu Youjian's Ming court took back all the fiefs and fields belonging to the vassal kings, and unified them under Huangzhuang.

Then Huangzhuang distributed these fields to the tenant farmers of these vassal kings, and the surplus was distributed to other poor farmers with no land or little land.

The means of production is a collective term for people and land.

The gentry class and the vassal class controlled most of the means of production in Ming Dynasty not only in the control of land, but also in the control of population.

The total population on the Yellow Book of the Ming Dynasty Household Department has always been more than 1000 million households, or about 7000 million, while the actual population is no less than [-] million. This shows that nearly three times the human resources are also monopolized by the landlord class.

In this landlord class, vassal kings naturally occupy an important part.

After all, the total size of the vassal group in the Ming Dynasty has reached millions. Even though the war has reduced by hundreds of thousands since the end of the Ming Dynasty, it is not a small number.

Therefore, the hidden population such as tenant farmers and servants controlled by these vassal groups is naturally not a small number.

Now that Zhu Youjian has caused the vassals to lose their original land and cut their salaries, these vassals are naturally unable to support such a large population.

Therefore, after the vassal kings had no choice but to lose their original acres, they naturally had no choice but to release these populations.

Of course, these vassal kings also want to take this opportunity to see if they don't care about how these low-level servants and tenant farmers who used to rely on the palace to survive make troubles and cause trouble to the court.

However, Zhu Youjian's way of directly distributing the land to these tenant farmers and servants and restoring their status as self-cultivating farmers frustrated the hopes of these feudal lords.

If the land of the vassal kings is distributed to the original tenant farmers and servants, the tenant farmers and servants will naturally stop making trouble, and they will even be grateful to the court.

However, the reason why Zhu Youjian allocated the land through the Huangzhuang instead of directly by the cabinet is that the name of the land belongs to his emperor, and he allocated it to these people for use by the emperor.

Therefore, these tenant farmers and servants can farm to survive, and only need to pay the rent, that is, the agricultural tax, to the court.

From a certain point of view, in fact, it is Zhu Youjian who intends to publicize the land.

In fact, Zhu Youjian didn't know whether the land was privately owned or publicly owned, but he knew that no matter what the situation, the disadvantaged common people would not have land in the end.

Instead of allowing the people's private property to be annexed again in the future, it is better to directly assign it to the emperor, so as to explicitly prohibit these people from buying and selling the land, so that the Ming Dynasty's own farmers can not be reduced.

But what Zhu Youjian is worried about is that one day in the future, the ruling group will deprive these ordinary people of the right to use these lands, or forcibly transfer these cultivated lands from the function of producing agricultural products to other economic interests. Functions for the production of industrial raw materials.

In that case, the agricultural output of Ming Dynasty will decline, the economic foundation will be destroyed, and the entire economy of Ming Dynasty will collapse.

Therefore, Zhu Youjian thought that it might be necessary for him to set a red line for cultivated land, that is, to stipulate that the land used for agricultural production in the Ming Dynasty should not be less than a certain number of acres, and even used this as an iron law to warn future generations to abide by.

This may guarantee the basic agricultural foundation of Ming Dynasty.

But in any case, Zhu Youjian basically solved the chronic disease that the feudal lord group was a drag on Daming.

On the surface, this solution seems to be less difficult than solving the problem of the Manchu Qing going south, but in fact it is because this problem actually started several years ago.

Because Li Zicheng and other thieves rebelled in a few years, causing countless feudal lords to die or disappear, and among the remaining vassal kings, except for the rebels who were executed, the rest were not strong in resistance, let alone Zhu Youjian. Let the torture of countless sinners warn these princes.

Although most of the current vassal kings still stay in the capital, they still only receive a salary every month.

This is naturally insignificant, and Zhu Youjian is not someone who is willing to suffer. Since these vassal kings still receive their salaries in the capital, Zhu Youjian will naturally not let them be too idle, and send them to do some things from time to time. Go fight with the civil servants.

The issue of vassal kings is essentially the same as the issue of the gentry class, and it is just a political system that exploits the people at the bottom.

Zhu Youjian solved the problem of the vassal king, which means that the problem of land annexation in the Ming Dynasty has been eased, and the class conflict has been eased, thus making the country more stable.

But for Zhu Youjian, this may just be the beginning.

His actions against the vassal kings were just a small test, and he was targeting that terrible group in the court, that is, the gentry class.

It is the most difficult thing to let this group of privileged people who really control most of the wealth of the empire bear the tax obligation for the operation of the empire.

Zhu Youjian didn't like many emperors of the Qing Dynasty, but he liked the fourth elder brother Yongzheng alone.

Because although this person is the most hated by literati in the comparison between "one emperor through the ages" and "ten perfect martial arts", he is actually the chief of the Qing Dynasty who is most willing to do practical things.

It is neither good governance nor a sharp weapon to attack the privileged class of officials and gentry.

But Zhu Youjian knew that even if he was the emperor, it would be very difficult to enforce it by force and there might be the worst consequences.

Even if the business tax is increased, people will be assassinated, not to mention that the officials and gentry should pay the food as a whole.

These days, Zhu Youjian has been thinking about how to use a more secure method to attack these most privileged classes.

Perhaps it is a good way to cultivate an agent, and a minister from Wang Anshi and Zhang Juzheng will replace him.

Because of this, Zhu Youjian was selecting and testing such courtiers.

His first choice was Gao Hongtu.

Most of the handling of the vassal issue this time was handled by him personally, and the next salt tax reform, he will ask Gao Hongtu to take action in person to see if Gao Hongtu has the ability to pay the government and gentry one after the salt tax reform New Deal capabilities.

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(End of this chapter)