Thinking about the changes in this year, Wei Bao couldn't help but sigh, no matter if there will be any development in heaven and earth, in fact, for him personally, on the side of the Ming Court, the development is actually okay.

Especially a group of officials, the imperial historians of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, and the officials of Dali Temple, these people all have eyes on the top of their heads, and they live by impeaching others every day, but it is different in the face of Wei Bao.

Because Wei Bao is actually still holding the official positions of the Metropolitan Procuratorate and Dali Temple!

Although he has been absent from the capital for a long time, no one dares to move his official position.

On the one hand, more than 90 percent of the people in the Metropolitan Procuratorate and Dali Temple were promoted by him, and he kicked out all the original people and replaced them with the children of these yamen.

Therefore, these people are as respectful to Wei Bao as they are to their teachers, to their masters, and to their guides.

This is Wei Bao's power in the Ducha Yuan and Dali Temple, and others can't move if they want to.

On the other hand, now that the eunuch party is in charge, Wei Bao and the eunuch party are almost semi-public, although they have not reached the point where Akari is the leader of the eunuch party.

If you don't have a good relationship with Wei Zhongxian, how can you be promoted so quickly in a short period of time, a fifteen-year-old person, sixteen years old is still more than a month away, and he has already achieved the rank of the third grade, which is terrifying.

said that it had nothing to do with the eunuchs, and no one believed it.

What is even more commendable is that the Donglin Party, which has participated in everyone, has not yet had a few Donglin Party ministers impeached Wei Bao.

This is all because Wei Bao once saved Yang Lian, and now he keeps Yang Lian's daughter by his side to support the sons of Yang Lian and Zuo Guangdou and others.

In other words, it is to preserve the descendants of many Donglin Party ministers who were killed by Wei Zhongxian.

Based on this alone, even if everyone thinks that Wei Bao can almost be regarded as half a eunuch party, the Donglin Party does not hate Wei Bao, at least Wei Bao has not deliberately targeted the Donglin Party, and the anti-corruption is treated comprehensively, not against factions, not at any individual.

Also, the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty is not like that of later generations, it cannot span several departments, and the management of the Ming Dynasty is a bit chaotic, there is no such statement.

Some people hold seven or eight positions at the same time.

In terms of the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty, there are too many angry youths and trolls, and they are fake Taoism.

When Zhang Juzheng was in love, everyone was angry, and there was a tendency to disagree.

But when it came to Wei Gelding's dictatorship, I didn't see you dead or alive, and I didn't kneel and lick shamelessly.

Let's talk about the strange title, Lu Bingyi is a martial artist, and he can be sealed alive with three orphans and three dukes, one and only.

Liu Jin, "Emperor Li", Wei Gelding, nine thousand years old, Jiansheng Temple.

Wei Liangqing's nephew, Wei Liangqing, is a living teacher, comparable to Zhang Juzheng.

Of course, Wei Liangqing has not yet been made an earl or duke, and that will have to wait until a few months after the original history.

Because he killed Nurhachi, Yuan Chonghuan was meritorious, and Wei Liangqing was also stained, jumping directly from earl to duke.

There are still a lot of people like Lord Wei who are marquis from the beginning, in the history of the Ming Dynasty.

In fact, Lord Wei didn't have any credit for it, but because he was the son-in-law of the British Duke Zhang Weixian, and he had a good relationship with the Donglin Party and the Eunuch Party, not to mention how big the power was, it was not small anyway, after all, he controlled a large area, and it belonged to the complex of the powerful faction in the capital plus the local powerful faction.

In addition, it is nothing to control a second-grade yamen and make a marquis's name.

There was an admittedly big failure in the governance of the Ming Dynasty, the paper money problem.

Daming treasure banknote, eternal god.

Hu Yuanfa banknotes also know that there must be real things such as silk and silver as reserves, and Da Mingfa's treasure banknotes are purely paper.

Song Jinfa banknotes also know that banknotes will wear out after a long time, and the state has to be responsible for replacing them regularly, and by the way, a part of the currency will be used to curb inflation.

Before the Ming Dynasty issued banknotes, the Manchu Dynasty civil and military did not even know that the banknotes would wear out, and when to change the waste paper for the common people also depends on the emperor's mood, and there is no fixed number on and off.

However, this can only be said to be a dish, after all, financial management is not the bank for the cloth general.

Financial bureaucrats also need to be inherited, and Tatar Yuan Confucianism was passed down from Cheng Zhu, not this way.

To what extent is the specific dish, for example, during the Xuande period, some officials suggested that in order to facilitate the banknote law, the private trade of cloth, rice, and wheat should be prohibited.

Dishes can be tolerated, but bad ones can't.

At the same time as the application of treasure money, it was forbidden for the people to use gold, silver and even copper coins, even if the copper coins minted by the Ming Dynasty themselves could not be traded as currency.

However, among the ruling class, silver has always been in circulation, for example, after the Battle of Yuerhai, Zhu Yuanzhang gave 2,000 taels of blue jade gold, and Tang Shengzong and Guo Ying 1,000 taels of platinum each. Double standard.

When Hongwu used treasure money in the eighth year, it was ordered that the people were strictly prohibited from making counterfeit money, and whoever reported it to the government would be rewarded, and what was the bounty? Two hundred and fifty taels of silver!

Co-author Zhu Yuanzhang himself also knows that treasure money is not valuable.

There is only one explanation for this, the treasure money is aimed at the gold and silver in the hands of the common people.

The people use treasure money, and you Zhu Yuanzhang himself use silver.

This kind of behavior of grabbing precious metals with waste paper, this kind of junk currency, everyone can recognize it.

By the time of Taizu's later years, the treasure money had depreciated fourteen times, and the silver in the eighth year of Hongwu was consistently exchanged for one or two treasure banknotes, and the treasure banknote could be exchanged for fourteen times in the thirty years of Hongwu.

In the seventh year of Xuande, it was one or two pieces of silver for one hundred pieces of treasure money, and one or two pieces of silver for one thousand pieces of treasure money in the first year of orthodoxy.

Another side consequence of inflation is the bureaucracy.

Although the bureaucratic salary in the Ming Dynasty was the lowest in all dynasties, according to the standards of the early years of Hongwu, as long as it was paid according to the number, it was still enough.

The hateful thing is that the grain in Yulu is converted into treasure money, two cents and eight cents, is this eight cents money to let the hundred officials drink the northwest wind?

Because treasure banknotes are only issued and not returned, the imperial court can't collect waste paper when collecting taxes, right?

As a result, there was a flood of treasure money in society, but there was a shortage of treasure money in the state treasury, and a large number of officials who relied on their salaries for food could not even receive treasure money.

When Yongle Xuande was in its heyday, the civil and military officials of the two capitals of the Ming Dynasty could be owed money by the imperial court for two whole years! It's really self-defeating.

The officials are not happy to make a living, and then the people are not happy, so they are put in a situation of all erosion.

Wei Bao did not see the Ming Dynasty as the most failed dynasty in governance.

Just as Huang Zongxi later realized the truth, the demise of a dynasty is caused by a variety of intricate and comprehensive contradictions, and it is by no means caused by one person or one thing.

It is by no means explained by a simple monarch and a mediocre minister.

They are increasingly dissatisfied with the economic root cause of all historical phenomena.

Therefore, Wei Bao tried to start from the specific reasons and summarize several main reasons for the fall of the Ming Dynasty according to what he has seen so far.

The financial crisis and the destruction of the military cantonment system.

The dilemma of a fierce battle on two fronts.

The conflict between the new economic factors and the old national capital.

The eunuch dictatorship and the party struggle.

The first is the financial problems of the Ming Dynasty, or the financial crisis of the Ming Dynasty.

The poor finances of the Ming Dynasty were indeed one of the reasons for its demise.

The land tax of the Ming Dynasty was low for a long time, which was the same as that of the Han Dynasty, and the tax rate of less than 20 percent in the Ming Dynasty was not high compared to the surrounding countries at that time, while the tax rate in Japan was as high as 50 percent in the same period.

However, as in the Han Dynasty, the low tax rate only led to a decrease in state revenue, but did not benefit the people, because the lower taxes were attributed to the landlords and wealthy families, and in essence the burden changed hands.

The exploitation of the landlords made low tax rates meaningless.

However, it caused a shortage of state use, and later Chongzhen was repeatedly trapped by financial problems during the years.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the failure of the appeasement policy was due to the lack of money and the lack of money to resettle the rebel refugees, and the refugees had to surrender and rebel in order to survive.

During the Chongzhen period, natural disasters and droughts caused by ineffective disaster relief led to a great peasant uprising, which was also related to the lack of treasury.

As for the "three salaries" such as "Liao Salary", "Suppression Salary", and "Training Salary" in the later period, which led to the intensification of contradictions and accelerated the demise of the Ming Dynasty, all of them were related to the financial crisis.

From a common sense point of view, Chongzhen at the critical juncture when Li Zicheng's troops were forcing the Beijing Division, and on the day when Sheji was about to die, if he had surplus money, why did he need to ask hundreds of officials to "pay donations", and finally delay the transfer of troops. This is counterintuitive.

When Li Zicheng entered Beijing, the treasury and the imperial treasury were empty.

The reason why the financial crisis of the Ming Dynasty was so serious was largely due to the loss of an important source of finance, that is, the destruction of the military system.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the military cantonment system had a strong guarantee of military spending.

In the first year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty, there were more than 23 million stones of grain in the country's military tun fields, but the national tax grain was only more than 31 million stones, and the income of the military tun fields accounted for more than 70 percent of the national tax grain.

Unfortunately, the military tun system has been gradually destroyed since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, as early as the Hongzhi period, the military department Shangshu Ma Wensheng pointed out, "Tuntian government abolished, the register does not exist." Up and down, no official inspection. As a result, the official flags of the guards, the powerful soldiers and civilians invaded and stole and sold five or six of them, and Tuntian was in name only. ”

The military expenditure originally responsible for the military tun has been spent from the treasury since the Ming Dynasty Wuzong Zhengde, which means that since then, not only has a huge financial revenue been reduced, and the military expenditure has become a heavy burden on the state finance, and after this, because the military salary needs to be allocated by the state and cannot be paid locally, the military salary under the military tun system mainly comes from the harvest of the military tun field.

The reliability of the timely payment of military salaries has been greatly reduced.

Since then, the Ming Dynasty has often had the worry that "it can't afford to fight".

The "Three Great Expeditions of Wanli" cost 7 million taels for the battle of aid to Korea alone, 2 million taels for the battle of Ningxia, and at least 2 million taels for the battle of Zhuozhou.

Later, the Liaodong War and the domestic civil uprising all consumed a large amount of military spending.

During the Apocalypse and Chongzhen years, due to the fact that the military salary could not be paid in time, the mutiny occurred from time to time, and the soldiers demanded the salary and mutinied, all over the military guards.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the most powerful "King Chuang" Gao Yingxiang's troops in the early stage of the peasant uprising were mostly defected by the Ming army, which was the evil result of the lack of military salaries.

The arrears of military salaries even affected Liaodong, and in the first year of Chongzhen, the Liaodong mutiny was caused by military salaries.

In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, because he could not make up one million salaries for the army, and delayed the transfer of Wu Sangui's Guanning Iron Cavalry into Beijing, it was the last life-saving straw for the Ming Dynasty.

Imagine that if the military cantonment system is not abolished, and the military expenditure is abundant enough to be self-sufficient, how can there be such a worry?

The evil consequences of the military retreat a hundred years ago were finally reflected in the Apocalypse and Chongzhen years.

In any case, the orthodox dynasty of the Ming Dynasty directly perished at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the remnants of the forces perished at the Qing army.

The long-term two-front battle with the peasant rebel army and the Qing army was the direct cause of the fall of the Ming Dynasty.

Emperor Chongzhen's dreaming of sleeping at night and being diligent in political affairs is not a typical image of the "king of the dead country" in traditional Chinese historiography.

However, the reality of internal and external troubles was met with natural disasters and droughts, as well as the peasant rebel army that arose as an inducement, and the iron cavalry of the Houjin Eight Banners in Liaodong.

In the wars of the late Ming Dynasty, there were often two major sorrows.

When the Ming Dynasty fought against the Later Jin alone, it achieved certain victories and strategic advantages, such as the "Ningjin Great Victory" during the Apocalypse.

However, with the continuous development of the peasant army on the Loess Plateau and the development and growth of the peasant rebel army in the late Ming Dynasty, there was no doubt that there were factors such as the increase in the dispatch of "liao salary", "training salary" and "suppression of salary", and the "three salaries" undoubtedly greatly increased the burden on the people at the bottom.

The human, material, and financial resources consumed in order to support the war in Liaodong will eventually be passed on to the people at the bottom.

At the same time, in order to support the war effort, investment in disaster relief was also diverted.

Therefore, it can be said that the civil rebellion at the end of the Ming Dynasty was closely and indirectly related to the war in Liaodong.

And the two-front battle of the Ming Dynasty made it impossible to focus on one place.

The peasant army was on the verge of desperation several times under the encirclement and suppression of the Ming army, all of which coincided with the Qing army's attack on Jingji again, so it was able to resume its development, of course, this was not the main reason, and it was finally destroyed by the peasant army within the capital attack.

On the battlefield of Liaodong, the defeat of Chongzhen's fourteen-year Songjin War made its "elite of the nine stops lost", more than 100,000 elite troops were killed on the battlefield, and only 30,000 cavalry belonging to Wu Sangui were left in Liaodong, and the Guanning defense line completely collapsed.

It also made the Ming Dynasty lose the last complete elite troops.

Of course, under the circumstances at that time, it was difficult to avoid a two-front battle.

Lack of financial resources, unable to appease, and negotiate peace with the Qing Dynasty, a violation of the ancestral teachings.

Second, the sincerity of the Qing side is also questionable.

Song Yin Jian was in front of him, so there was probably no way out for peace.

The conflict between the new economic factors and the old national capital is also intensifying.

With the implementation of the "One Whip Law" and the pacification of the Japanese and the relaxation of the "sea ban".

In the late Ming Dynasty, new economic factors continued to develop in the southeast, the so-called "germ of capitalism".

The vigorous development of industry and commerce in the Jiangnan region will inevitably exist in conflict with the traditional agriculture as the foundation of the country.

During the Wanli period, Emperor Wanli of Mingshenzong solved the problem of insufficient treasury and insufficient consumption of the court.

The predatory taxation of "mine tax inspectors" to collect wealth in all directions, which brought disaster to the country and the people, was strongly resisted by industrialists and businessmen in the developed areas of the southeast.

The resistance of the industrialists and businessmen and the people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang has even reached the level of armed confrontation.

The popular uprising that broke out in the Suzhou area of Nanzhi in the 29th year of Wanli is one example.

The rise of the Donglin Party at the end of the Ming Dynasty supported the development of the new economy to a certain extent.

Among its ideological propositions, there is also "industry and commerce are all the foundation", and they oppose the large-scale taxation of commerce.

Li Sancai, the prefect of Fengyang, a member of the Donglin Party, vigorously opposed this kind of behavior.

In the later period, the Donglin Party demanded a reduction in taxes on industrial and commercial people, which protected the development of industry and commerce on the one hand, but on the other hand, it also indirectly moved the "national capital".

The reduction of taxes on industry and commerce, resulting in a single type of tax, inevitably reduces the revenue of the state treasury and increases the taxation of agriculture.

The later "three salaries" accelerated the demise of the Ming Dynasty.

"If the tax is not levied in the southeast, it must be taxed in the northwest", the popular uprising on the Loess Plateau is not only caused by natural disasters, but if the country is strong and the policy is appropriate, it will never cause such a large-scale uprising.

The results of the Ming and Qing dynasties eventually led to the setback of the new economic factors in Jiangnan.

Although it still developed after entering the Qing Dynasty, it was also subject to many fundamental restrictions on its development.

This involves the cyclical rate of economic development in ancient China.

This phenomenon of new economic factors emerging and prospering and eventually failing to break through the shackles of agriculture has occurred at least three times in China.

For the first time, during the reign of Tianbao in the Tang Dynasty, under the high development of the traditional economy, many new economic factors were produced in all walks of life.

However, Tang Xuanzong failed to make use of it and failed to give it a systematic supporting construction that was adapted to the system. Rather, it is just a hasty response and the setting of taxes for the corresponding industries.

The ensuing outbreak of the "Anshi Rebellion" caused social and economic regression, and the new economy was greatly weakened in the war. The possible contradiction between the new economic factors and the agricultural capital has been eliminated in the bud.

The Anshi Rebellion was also a turning point in traditional Chinese society.

The second appeared in the Northern Song Dynasty, the social and economic development of the Song Dynasty was good, the citizen economy was quite developed, and various trades and new things to serve the citizen class continued to appear and develop.

The emergence of Jiaozi, Feiqian, and Wazi, the popularization of movable type printing, the prosperity of the storytelling industry, and the emergence of the "Fangguo household" as a separate household in the corresponding household registration system.

The great prosperity of the city and the prosperity of overseas trade all reflect the arrival of new economic factors.

The "Law of Exemption from Military Duty" and the "Law of Equal Loss" that appeared in the "Wang Anshi Reform" all reflect the requirements of the new situation.

The "Market Change Law" can be said to be the prototype of the state's use of the financial industry.

This change can be said to be an opportunity for China to enter modern times.

However, after all, the timing is still not very ripe, and agriculture is still absolutely dominant in the economy.

The provisions of the law are old-fashioned, the conservatives and reformers are old-fashioned, the emperor is old-fashioned, and the ideology is old-fashioned, and the original system, ideology, and socio-economic conditions of the entire society are generally in line with the old system, and a small number of immature "emerging" ideas are quickly submerged.

As for the problems that have arisen in the practice of changing the law, it is even more obvious that they bear the deep imprint of the old system.

It is extremely inappropriate to demand that the ancients transcend the limitations of the times, and it can only be said that this is the inevitability of the historical environment.

After the failure of Wang Anshi's reform, the Jingkang Revolution led to the entry of backward nationalities into the Central Plains, which made the contradiction between agriculture and the new economy once again forcibly resolved.

Because the new economy was greatly weakened by the protracted war and the subsequent domination of backward peoples, its cornerstone agriculture also experienced a temporary decline.

The second new economic factor failed to break through the agricultural economy.

In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the third new economic factor once again developed to the point of conflict with the agricultural economy, and this time it was the most developed, because it produced the germ of capitalism, but after all, it did not break through the agricultural economic system.

Because the development of the traditional economy is divided into two lines, the new economic factors are based on the highly developed agricultural economy, and according to historical experience, the development of the agricultural economy will inevitably lead to a high concentration of the means of production - land annexation.

The emergence of new economic factors is nothing but a by-product of the development of the agricultural economy.

The great land annexation led to social unrest, and the result of social unrest was the destruction of the fragile new economy.

The subsequent entry of the Qing army into the customs once again exacerbated this result, and the new economy was once again restricted.

In short, the fall of the Ming Dynasty was, to a certain extent, a cyclical contradiction in the agrarian economy.

Economic development - great land annexation - intensification of social contradictions - turmoil - economic recession - redevelopment.

As a result, this has a very different end from the cyclical rate of the capitalist economic crisis.

Unfortunately, the Ming Dynasty became another applicator of this law, the last victim of this chain.

There were too many modern reasons for the fall of the Qing Dynasty, and its demise did not fully apply to this law.

The alternating eunuch interference in the middle and late Ming Dynasty and the party struggle at the end of the Ming Dynasty undoubtedly greatly consumed the central force of the Ming Dynasty.

It is a bad performance of internal affairs, and as for the issue of eunuchs, in the final analysis, it is a matter of appointing people to the nearest place.

It's human nature to trust people who you have close contact with and know each other.

In addition, there is another important reason why eunuchs are reused, that is, most eunuchs come from humble backgrounds and do not have a strong background compared with most civil officials.

Most of the Jinshi civil officials were born in the upper middle class of society, because most of the families who had the ability to make a person study for the imperial examination for many years were not poor households.

The reuse of people from humble backgrounds to hold power is also a way of ruling for the emperor, which is similar to the reuse of civilian talents by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty in principle.

From the emperor's point of view, the reuse of eunuchs posed less threat to his own imperial power.

Of course, it turned out that it was not entirely true, but it is true that the eunuch dictatorship did not pose much threat to the emperor himself from the beginning to the end.

The eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty were also a huge bureaucracy, with internal checks and balances, and all ministries were heavily dependent on the imperial power, which was highly mature.

The eunuch dictatorship in the Ming Dynasty was essentially a perversion of imperial power, a special way of exercising imperial power, and an extension and alienation of imperial power.

The eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty were "talented", from Wang Zhen, who caused the "Tumubao Change" due to the "Horizontal Sword Prancing Horse", to Wang Zhi, who founded the upgraded spy organization "Xichang", to Liu Jin, the head of the Eight Tigers, and Wei Zhongxian, the "nine thousand years old" who consumed the last vitality of the Ming Dynasty, all contributed to the demise of the Ming Dynasty.

And the performance of the civil official group does not seem to be very good, otherwise Emperor Chongzhen would not have said in his edict that "all civil servants can be killed".

In the late Ming Dynasty, there were many parties within the imperial court, and they were inclined to each other, and the "Three Major Cases of the Late Ming Dynasty" was a typical representative.

When doing things is not based on the merits of the incident itself, but on the interests of the party, the party will fight against the same and the decay will be the inevitable outcome.

The tragedy of Xiong Yanbi in Liaodong and the forced resignation of Yuan Chonghuan after the victory of Ningjin are the direct embodiment of the evil results of the eunuch dictatorship and the struggle between the party.

The party strife in the late Ming Dynasty was more harmful, and this was more fully reflected in the various regimes of the Southern Ming Dynasty.

The reasons for the fall of the Ming Dynasty were complex, and the illnesses suffered in the later part of the Ming Dynasty were comprehensive.

Just as Huang Zongxi later realized, the demise of a dynasty is caused by a variety of intricate and comprehensive contradictions, and it is by no means caused by one person or one thing.