In real history, the gentry of the Ming Dynasty and their political representatives, the officials, mostly chose to cooperate with the Dashun, the new regime of Onishi, and later the Tatars.

In Beijing, the vast majority of officials were unscrupulous and subservient, indicating that they had abandoned Emperor Chongzhen and the Ming Dynasty in behavior and thought before Li Zicheng entered Beijing;

In Sichuan, although there were far fewer officials and gentry who surrendered to Zhang Xianzhong than in Beijing, there were also many famous ministers and high-ranking officials. Some offered silver and gold, others daughters; Some led troops to hunt down the Ming dynasty, and some actively participated in the imperial examinations of the Onishi regime. There are also some people who are even more ridiculous, taking Zhang Xianzhong as Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang as Zhuge Liang, preparing to leave a story that has been praised through the ages. It's just that perhaps none of them thought that what they surrendered was a devil who killed people without blinking.

You can't treat them as victims just because they were also skinned by Zhang Xianzhong in the end. Their tragic fate only confirms an ancient Chinese idiom:

"Take the blame!"

……

With the help of the official, it can be discussed, and with the help of the thief, everyone knows it. Zhu Pingjin asked Tian Qian for advice, asking for a solution to the problem, not his boastful Kan Dashan.

Tian Qian's goose feather fan was fanned heavily, and a warm wind blew through Zhu Pingjian's ears: "Li Wei, Marquis of Wuqing in the Wanli Dynasty, I don't know if the prince knows?" ”

Li Wei, Marquis of Wuqing, is the grandfather of Emperor Wanli, the father of Empress Dowager Li, and a typical relative of this dynasty.

Li Wei was originally an ordinary mason, but later the ancestral tomb smoked and his daughter was elected to the Yuwang Mansion. King Yu ascended the throne of Dabao, for Mu Zong, and gave Li Weijin Yiwei the command of the guards. Shenzong ascended the throne and entered the Jue Wu Qingbo. In the tenth year of Wanli, he was named the Marquis of Wuqing with the respect of the emperor's grandfather, and both sons were named governors.

One of Li Wei's most famous things is to make fake padded jackets for Qi Jiguang's soldiers. He was a general contractor of munitions, and he withheld seventy-five percent of the 200,000 taels of silver, and only gave 50,000 taels of silver to the subcontractor. The subcontractor did not have enough money, so he adulterated the padded jacket, and as a result, the soldier froze to death. Qi Jiguang, the chief soldier of Jizhen, reported to the imperial court, and the court discussed it one after another. Empress Dowager Li was ashamed and hateful, so she had to use her own money to make up for her father's holes, and sent a eunuch to take a list of scolding people to count her father.

In addition to contracting large and small government projects with his connections and making huge profits, Li Wei, the Marquis of Wuqing, was also a broker who took over the grains of Huang Zhuang. Later, he even began to collect government taxes and became a so-called "tax collector". Between one in and one out, I made countless amounts of silver.

Master Shu talked about a lot of things about the previous dynasty in class, but he didn't talk about this Wuqing Marquis Li Wei. But this Wuqing Marquis, Li Wei, and Zhu Pingjin just knew, and they knew it very clearly. When Zhu Pingjin was young, he was naughty and mischievous. Although the princess doted on her only son in her bones, she always used Empress Dowager Li to educate Emperor Wanli as an example to educate Zhu Pingjian, so as to establish her authority and image in the eyes of her son.

Tian Qian mentioned Wuqinghou at this time, and Zhu Pingjin immediately nodded subconsciously.

"Marquis Wu Qing took over local taxes to gain profits, which was to harm the people! If the royal palace can also take care of local taxes, with the meritocracy of the world, it will be able to benefit one party! ”

"Collecting taxes?" A spark exploded in Zhu Pingjian's head. He urged Tian Qian, "Sir, you might as well elaborate on it for this son!" ”

"The father of the minister was originally a lowly subordinate who collected dung, so the minister was not allowed to go to the field for life. There is no talent to learn, so I have to enter the government as a subordinate. ”

The goose feather fan shook again. Some people are in a hurry, and some people are not in a hurry. Tian Qian started from his own life experience, which whetted the appetite of the prince Zhu Pingjian.

"The foot teeth of the car and ship shop (Tongya), innocent should be killed. The darkness of the official office, the ministers see it!

Those who are powerful in the place are hereditary officials. The magistrate is an official in a different place, and he is not familiar with the language and social conditions, and every time the two taxes are levied, he must turn to the township officials for help, and the township officials will take the opportunity to get up and down from them.

Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, taxes and grain have been collected and transported, and there must be grain chiefs. The system of requisitioning grain has changed repeatedly, and the setting of grain chiefs cannot be moved. In the early years of Hongwu, Emperor Taizu Gao ordered those who chose a solid family to be the grain chief, and the chief and deputy grain chiefs took turns to serve; During the Yongle period, it was changed to the annual change method, which was changed once a year; The year of Xuande was changed to a permanent system, and the grain was inherited from generation to generation, just like the military household. The long-term service of grain is heavy, and there is not only the burden of levy, but also the risk of freight, and the weight of compensation. The slightest negligence is bankrupt. Those who are honest and make friends lose all their wealth, and those who engage in personal fraud get rich overnight. It is not uncommon to collude with the government, repay with fire and water, and embezzle ten thousand stones!

After the Wanli whip, the imperial court gave miscellaneous labor, and paid silver as a whole, but it was still levied according to the number of acres of land and the amount of grain. The number of silver in each county is very different, and there is no addition to the complexity, although there are old officials, they cannot understand everything. Therefore, although the government has a policy of preventing malpractice, Dingli A is attributed to the grain chief, and a wooden cabinet is built to collect cashiers (locked cabinets for cashiers), and additional counters are distributed, and there is a general book on the counter, and the general secretary is appointed above the general book, and the fish scale atlas is also determined, and the registered population is checked. The gentry were originally strong in the local area, and they were supported by the alliance of teachers and students, so they did not pay. The grain chief paid for the amount of grain, and was afraid of the gentry, so he had to persecute the small people. At the beginning of the year, there was a civil unrest, and Gaido was for this! ”

Zhu Pingjin led the army to quell the chaos at the beginning of the year, and he was very familiar with the local shortcomings of the Ming Dynasty. He didn't need to ask Tian Qian to understand the public opinion at the grassroots level, he urgently needed to find a way to enrich the country and strengthen the army without or with less class struggle. He interrupted Tian Qian's logic of advancing layer by layer, and asked bluntly: "There is no grain chief in Shuzhong. Does the gentleman want the palace to be this countryman? If this is the case, the gentry do not pay for food, how can Wang Zhuang borrow from the government? ”

……

Except for a few coastal areas in the south of the Yangtze River, the production of goods in the Ming Dynasty is generally not developed. If you insist on labeling "capitalism", you can only add one suffix: "sprout". The fiscal and taxation system of the Ming Dynasty was nothing more than a system embodiment of the self-sufficient natural economy at the national level.

Ordinary people are self-sufficient from family to family, and they try their best to produce all kinds of daily necessities for food, clothing, and use, and generally do not need to go to the street to buy. This is true for the people, and it is true for all levels of government. The government collects taxes from the people to fulfill the functions of the government, which is also the principle of self-sufficiency. Local things are done locally, and local things are local silver.

It is precisely for this reason that there are actually two major parts of the Ming Dynasty's taxes: tax (endowment) and (labor) service.

The tax was levied by the state, and it covered the expenses of the clan, military expenses, and the emperor's court expenses; The service is collected by the state and local governments at all levels, and mainly bears the cost of infrastructure construction and government management.

For example, the dam repair of the Yellow River and the dredging of the canal must not be organized at the national level, so the people in several provinces along the river have to share the labor; Some small projects were carried out in the localities, such as the Dujiangyan annual repair project, which Zhu Pingjin was particularly concerned about, and the scope of influence was limited to a few prefectures in one province, so the Sichuan government organized labor.

As for the officials at all levels, most of them do not have a state budget, so their salaries can only be collected by the local government.

Therefore, if we want to roughly grasp the characteristics of the tax structure of the Ming Dynasty, we can simply understand it as a hierarchical tax structure of the state (national tax) and local (provinces, prefectures, prefectures and counties, and lijia multi-level forced labor).

Daming's national tax standards are extremely low. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Taizu set the world's officials and people's fields to be endowed: "Where the official land is taxed five liters of three in five spoons (5.35% stone), the private land is reduced by two liters (3.35% stone), and the eight liters of the land are heavily rented and the five spoons are five in five spoons (8.55% stone), and there is no official field one bucket and two liters (12% stone)" But for the Su, Song, Jia, and Lake areas, Taizu was angry that he originally worked for Zhang Shicheng, so he confiscated the wealthy and rich people's fields as official fields, and they all started according to the private rents before they were confiscated, forming a surge in Jiangnan Tianfu, forming the famous "Jiangnan Heavy Endowment" phenomenon.

It can be seen that the national tax rate at the beginning of the founding of the Ming Dynasty was extremely low.

How low is it, Mintian's tax rate is only 1.68%, which is a world of difference compared to Zhu Pingjin's personal income tax of 20% in his previous life!

The Wanli Dynasty was the era with the largest total amount of national taxes. After deducting the part legally withheld by the local government (ranging from year to year, an average of about 60% to 70%), the silver in Taicang is only 4 million taels, which is only enough for the current military expenses of the Liaodong Border Army for one year! Even with the addition of the notorious three salaries (Liao, Lian, and Xuan), the level of national tax collection is still within the level of the people (except for the last few years of the Ming Dynasty, when there was chaos in various places.) ）

The national tax is so low, but why are the people still hungry and unclothed, and finally have to rise up in rebellion?

Because although the national tax is nominally low, the total tax burden of the people is not low, and it is frighteningly high! There are two key points: the surcharge at all levels and the tax pass-through of the gentry.

Most of the local additions are servants, and there are roughly three types of servitude: lijia, conscription, and miscellaneous. The Ming Dynasty stipulates that men are 16 percent old, and they will be exempted from 60 square meters. Military households serve in the military, and craftsmen serve in labor, which is permanent service. In general, the conscription is performed by the households.

At the beginning of the country, all kinds of military service were directly used as labor force, that is, forced labor. After the Wanli whip, it was changed to the people to pay silver, and the government collected it on behalf of the government, so forced labor evolved into a kind of men's poll tax.

However, a poll tax is not levied on heads. In order to facilitate the collection, the local government dispersed the service silver into the grain amount, and collected it according to the amount of grain set by the state, that is, the number of stones. After the whip, the number of stones is folded into silver taels, which are solidified into the agricultural tax, so some places are folded back and forth, and the amount of silver per stone of grain is staggeringly high!

Take Sichuan, for example. The total amount of grain in Sichuan (the national land endowment) is about 1.07 million stone (Note 1). There are more than 100 prefectures and counties in Sichuan, and the average of each prefecture and county is about 10,000 stones. According to the standard of the imperial court's grain and silver conversion ratio, it is about more than three million taels. But this is more than 3 million taels, and this is only the number handed over to the central government. The amount of expropriation at all levels at the local level is always a confused account.

For example, in the past two years, the amount of silver per stone of grain in a county in Sichuan was as high as nine taels. From this, it can be inferred that if the grain amount of the county is taken from the average of tens of thousands of stones in the province, then the people of the county actually need to pay 90,000 taels of silver. If the county actually has 150,000 mu of land, and there are 100,000 mu of land that is exempt from tax, unregistered, or not paid for tax resistance, then all the taxes of 90,000 taels of silver will be passed on to the remaining 50,000 mu of land. 50,000 acres of land are divided into 90,000 taels of silver, and the average burden per mu is 128 yuan. This one or two or eight dollars of silver per mu is the actual tax burden level of the landlord! If you add temporary tribes, it is possible to have three taels of silver per acre of land!

High actual taxes, huge tenant rents, extortion that will never keep accounts, robbery by soldiers and bandits who have nowhere to redress, coupled with floods and droughts and plagues that follow everywhere, the world of the Ming Dynasty is safe!

Note 1: Figures at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. At the beginning of Wanli, it dropped to 1.03 million stones.