Chapter Eighty-Seven: The Jiangnan Gentry Family

The families in Jiangnan have a heritage.

Since the Three Kingdoms period, there have been big families in Jiangnan, the so-called four surnames in Jiangnan, Gu Zhu, Lu Zhang, and then Xie Xie, the king of the two Jin Dynasty, and so on.

In the Song Dynasty, the Jingkang Revolution was another event that had a great impact on Jiangnan, and many ancestors of large families moved into Jiangnan before and after the Jingkang Change.

Since then, Jiangnan has been the center of Chinese culture.

But in essence, the prosperity of the Jiangnan Wang clan in the Ming and Qing dynasties actually began in the middle of the Ming Dynasty.

Historically, the major families in Jiangnan were on the eve of their probuse.

At the beginning of the founding of the country, because of Zhang Shicheng, Emperor Taizu did not treat Jiangnan people very much, and even set the rule that Jiangnan people could not serve as household books, which was written into the ancestral teachings.

Therefore, in the early Ming Dynasty, it was the Jiangxi people who really prospered, known as the Manchu Dynasty and Jiangxi.

Even in the Xuande period, there was also the governor Xiong Yi who collected money and grain in Jiangnan, and he could be ruthless, and the people in Jiangnan were known as mourning all over the country. The impeachment of Xiong Jian almost drowned the Metropolitan Procuratorate.

Xiong is Zhou Chen's predecessor.

From this point, it can be seen that the Jiangnan gentry are weak.

What really made the Jiangnan gentry ascend to the throne was the fall of Yan Song.

Yan Song is a native of Jiangxi.

And Yan Song is a scourge to the world, but he is good to his hometown, and his reputation in his hometown is not bad. Xu Jie's replacement of Yan Song also changed the situation in the early Manchu Dynasty and half of Jiangxi.

Of course, this is also a gradual process.

During the Chenghua and Hongzhi years, the Jiangnan people gradually became strong in the imperial examination. In the later period, some people even said what is the local product of Suzhou? Champion.

At this moment, in Suzhou City, several old men are sitting opposite each other, but they are not only the local noble families in Suzhou, but also other big families in the vicinity.

The leader is Lu Yong, who is an eight-year jinshi in Xuande, who once served in the Criminal Department, and can be said to have been a colleague with Kou Shen, and now this qualification is also an old minister in the court.

It's just that he knows the predicament of the Jiangnan gentry.

As far as Lu Yong is concerned, he certainly feels a pain for some land. But it is impossible for him to make concessions to Qingzhang.

First of all, he didn't want to.

There are many people who think that these people who eat meat from the country's plate are rich, but they are not.

In the local system of the Ming and Qing dynasties, there were too many places that relied on the gentry, especially after the collapse of Taizu's law a little bit, this situation became even more obvious.

Even after the later stage, several local noble clans partnered to drive away the county order. Without relying on the local households, the government cannot act independently.

Although this situation has not yet arrived, the government must also rely on the help of local clans for many things that have been explained above.

But this help is often unpaid.

Right.

In many cases, it is impossible to get money from the government in an open and honest manner.

Is there something that the local prefect doesn't know?

No, it's even a tacit understanding between the two sides.

These clans must be made profitable in order for them to do things for you. Otherwise, I really thought that everyone was wholeheartedly thinking about the court, and they didn't even want Yulu.

What is the most expensive thing is the thing that does not need to be paid.

Therefore, these overt and covert benefits may not be justified in the eyes of many local families.

Even nowadays to hide these lands, it has cost money to go away.

What's more, money is not saved and not used most of the time, and even in modern times, it pays attention to the capital chain. The output of these fields before. It's all useful.

Now it has been checked and registered, and a large amount of taxes have to be paid.

Where does this money come from and how does it go evenly?

If you say that there is the Jiangnan gentry as a whole, it is convenient to cut the meat, just like the old man of the Yun family, with a clap, the meat of the Yun family, he cut it.

However, each family has its own difficulties, and it may not be so easy to settle things within the family. There are a lot of troubles to even pass on this new tax to the unsuspecting.

The respective families are not quiet inside, and they are watching each other outside. See what others have done?

In a word, good money is hard to give up.

The second is external support.

The economic situation of the North and the South is different, as mentioned above.

Whether it is a yield per mu or an extreme natural disaster, there are more in the north than in the south, and Zhu Qizhen has migrated to the northeast in a big way. The contradiction between man and land in the north is much lighter than in the south.

There are some problems, but they are not a big problem.

But the south is different, except that Huguang was greatly developed in the early Ming Dynasty, and now this development is still continuing, until the future Huguang is familiar with the world.

Therefore, although the contradiction between man and land in Huguang is heavier than that in the north, it is generally lighter than that in Jiangnan, Jiangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Guangdong.

The same is true of Sichuan, which was so devastated by the Song-Yuan War that it almost became a no-man's land. In the middle, there was the founding war, and on the whole, Sichuan's economy was also in a recovery period.

The contradiction between man and land is not too big.

So many people in these southern provinces are watching Jiangnan's moves.

Some ministers are already active.

Lu Yong has received many letters from ministers from Jiangxi and Fujian, and of course, their thoughts will not be written in the letters.

But the implication could not be clearer.

Lu Yong felt that it was difficult to ride a tiger for a while.

Lu Yong, as the head of the local gentry in Suzhou, is also a senior of the department. Many people see what Lu Yong did?

If Lu Yong has just started to act like the Yun family, hand over the land that his family has encroached upon, compile a book, and pay taxes in the future. It won't be where we are in the dilemma we are now.

It's not easy for him to get in now.

Without him, he and Kou Shen have worked together in a yamen, although it has not been for a long time, but he knows what kind of person Kou Shen is, and Kou Shen is a person who will not compromise easily.

But he retreated?

He felt that there was also an abyss behind him.

Because of the signatures of the letters he received, there are big families behind them, including the Yang family of Yang Shiqi Ji'an, the Yang family of Yang Rong Jian'an, the Yongxin Liu family of Liu Dingzhi, and the Ji'an Chen family of Chen Xun, all of which are prime ministers.

Although some are in office and some are not, many connections do not dissipate all at once.

And he is the person with the highest official position in the Lu family.

However, the highest official position is only Langzhong of the Criminal Department, and Fujian participates in politics. It's not worth talking at all in the court. Facing the pressure of these letters.

Lu Yong will not be allowed to do it.

Maybe these families are not strong enough to resist the great politics of the imperial court, but it is not a problem to pinch you to death in a small Langzhong.

It can also be seen from here that the weakness of the Jiangnan gentry is now.

The one who can really come out is just a third-grade magistrate.

Lu Yong thought about it, but he could only go down. Before that, he first split his family and separated his line from the Taicang Wang family.

Just in case.

A few old men asked, "Lu Gong, what should I do now?" ”

Lu Yong said: "Now this Kou Gong is a ruthless character. A storm in Jiangnan is inevitable, but there are some things that must always be done, if the northerners are allowed to do whatever they want, in the future, we Jiangnan people will not be slaughtered by the imperial court. ”

When Lu Yong said this, everyone else felt the same way.

The local gentry in Jiangnan have always felt the deep malice of the imperial court.

The issue of Jiangnan reassignment has always been a big problem.

Jiangnan taxes account for one-third of the big tomorrow. In many places, if the harvest on the acres of land alone is not enough to support taxes. That is, because the handicraft industry in the south of the Yangtze River is developed, the money earned from it makes up for the high heavy endowment on the acres.

Even when Zhou Chen was there, sometimes he sold grain from Huguang and handed it in.

It can be seen that the so-called Jiangnan heavy tax cannot be simply regarded as agricultural taxation. It can even be regarded as a special tax on other industries in the Jiangnan area, but it is levied through the field tax.

From the perspective of political makers, this has a certain rationality.

After all, the richness of Jiangnan is well known to the world, and it is necessary to balance the underdeveloped areas with money from the developed regions, and such things are being done even in later generations.

But on the head of every common gentry, it is greatly unwilling. After all, no one wants to pay more.

This kind of tax clearance seems to have nothing to do with taxation, but it is essentially a tax increase at the local level.