Last time, it was mentioned that Emperor Chongzhen used the "soul clone" to govern the government, and with the help of the prestige of Taizu's "Hongwu Emperor", he referred to the "Yongle Shengshi" to integrate resources.

Speaking of the "Yongle Emperor" Ming Chengzu Zhu Di, who usurped through the "Battle of Jingyan", in addition to the "usurpation" behavior was criticized by later generations, and after ascending the throne, perverse behavior, and the wanton massacre of the former ministers of the "Jianwen Emperor" attracted criticism, historians still have a very high evaluation of his 22-year reign.

The average annual revenue of the entire state during the "Yongle period" of the Ming Dynasty was about 30 million taels of silver! During the period of "Zheng He's voyage to the West", he engaged in "foreign trade monopoly" and made money from Westerners, but only increased the annual fiscal income to 37 million taels of silver, because after the "Jingjing", the Central Plains had been eroded.

However, after Zhu Di ascended the throne, he built Beijing City with reference to the "Nanjing" city defense, and successively conquered Mongolia in the north five times and Jiaozhi in the south four times, conquered Liaodong, stabilized the southwest, dredged and opened a new canal, sent Zheng He to the West, built the "Taoist Ancestral Garden" of "Wudang Mountain", and also repaired the "Yongle Grand Canon".

Everything mentioned above costs a lot of manpower, material resources, and financial resources, but few people dare to say that the Yongle Dynasty is tyrannical and tyrannical, and the people are not able to make a living, because it is not better than mentioning a person who has been praised by many Ming historians at home and abroad as the famous minister of "Yongle Shengshi Big Accounts" - Xia Yuanji.

In fact, all of the above reasons can be attributed to the simplest truth - "money can make the ghost push the ghost, and no money can make the ghost push the ghost". In this era of all the "grand undertakings" of the Lielie, the great achievements of the Lielie, in the final analysis, are inseparable from the word "money", not to mention the developed commodity economy of the Ming Dynasty.

A few months after Xia Yuanji was promoted to "Zuo Shilang", in April of the first year of Yongle (1403), he received his first important errand after taking office: to go to Jiangnan to control the water. At that time, Jiangnan was the most abundant place in the Ming Dynasty, and it was also the main source of taxes, which was the reason why Zhu Yuanzhang made Nanjing the capital.

However, since the 31st year of Hongwu, heavy rains have been plagued by disasters year after year, resulting in a decrease in grain production and a great loss of state taxes. Therefore, Zhu Di attached great importance to this matter, and as early as the beginning of his reign in Nanjing, he successively sent Wu Zhong, a waiter of the Ministry of Works, and Fang Bin, a waiter of the Ministry of War, to go to Jiangnan twice in August and December of the fourth year of Jianwen.

However, these two "old team" who followed Zhu Di did not understand the water situation in the south, so that they wasted the people's strength in vain and worked in vain. Therefore, Xia Yuanji was ordered to make this trip, which made Zhu Di attach great importance to it, so that before the trip, Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, also specially sent the governor Yu Shiji to send water conservancy books to Xia Yuanji for water control.

Two months later, Zhu Di sent Li Wenyu, the right attendant of the household department, to assist. After Xia Yuanji took office, he first repeatedly inspected the water situation, and then tried to change the traditional method of water control, proposing to dig a canal from the Wusong River to Taihu Lake, and set up sluices along the way to control the flow, so as to ensure the effect of "flood distribution and drought irrigation". This move used 100,000 migrant workers, and Xia Yuanji led by example, often living on the construction site in cloth and linen, and personally supervising the work.

Others advised "Lord Xia" to pay attention to rest, but he replied: "The migrant workers are all working hard, how can I enjoy comfort alone?" Everyone was moved by this, so the project made great progress. In the following year, he supervised the construction of a project connecting the Baiqiu River to Taihu Lake, connecting the two major rivers in the south of the Yangtze River, and the whole line was completed in September of the second year of Yongle.

Since then, "Susong farmland is profitable" has truly achieved "Suhu is ripe, and the world is full". It is worth mentioning that the West will adopt the same method of water control until 200 years later, when the Tennessee water conservancy project in the United States is launched. This shows that the water conservancy engineering technology of the ancient countries of the East far exceeds that of the West in the same period!

For Xia Yuanji's achievements in controlling the water in the south of the Yangtze River, even Zhu Di's first strategist "Demon Monk" and "National Teacher" Yao Guangxiao also praised it, and thought that Xia Yuanji was "the beloved of the ancients." Xia Yuanji, who had just built a miracle work, has since been favored by Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, and after returning to Nanjing, he has become more and more important.

Soon after, Xia Yuanji was promoted to "Hubu Shangshu" and officially assumed the role of the "big account room" of the Ming court. As a result, Xia Yuanji took this opportunity to persuade Zhu Di to abolish the "literary prison" and "rehabilitate Zhaoxue" for the literati who caused trouble for "writing articles" in Zhu Yuanzhang's era. This is actually exhorting Zhu Di to avoid "literary prison".

After some enlightenment, Zhu Di finally issued the admonition that "the Ming Dynasty does not kill people because of literature", so that a group of literati, students and many poetry and literary works that had been wronged for decades before were able to see the light of day again. This made the culture of the Ming Dynasty unprecedentedly prosperous, and a hundred schools of thought contended, and it began to be. Xia Yuanji's most important role in the "Yongle Era" is actually closely related to a series of "great achievements" in the "Yongle Era", such as the treasure ship going to the Western Ocean; the construction of Wudang Mountain "Taoist Ancestral Garden"; conquer the Northeast and Southwest; editing the Yongle Canon; 4 southern expeditions to Annam (Vietnam) with 300,000 troops each time; 5 times sent troops to the north to invade Mongolia, with an average of 500,000 troops each time; The economic expenses are astronomical, and without strong financial resources, you can't play at all!

Compared with the previous dynasties and later generations, the era of Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty, which was known as "Fengshu", the era of Huizong of the Northern Song Dynasty, which was praised as the "rich Song Dynasty" by later generations, and the Qianlong era of the Qing Dynasty, which accumulated "ten perfect martial arts", only one or two of the above-mentioned "big moves" were carried out, which was enough to incur an empty treasury and a large number of excessive taxes and miscellaneous taxes, which caused the burden of the people to surge, so that chaos broke out everywhere and the world was in turmoil. However, in the Yongle era, although it is inevitable that the people will work hard, they will finally be able to complete these "big actions" one by one.

Counting the construction of the northern "border wall", that is, the "Great Wall", it is a huge expense, and the mystery lies in Xia Yuanji's "financial management ability".

Qing Dynasty historian Zhao Yi once praised: "In the past dynasties, only Sang Hongyang and Xia Yuanji were the two who talked about financial ability!" Comparing Xia Yuanji, the "big account room" of the Ming Dynasty, with Sang Hongyang, the "big Sinong" of the Western Han Dynasty, the evaluation is very high.

In fact, the reason why Xia Yuanji was able to successfully solve these problems was because of his superior economic vision. In Zhu Di's previous "big moves", some people constantly proposed to use the method of increasing taxes to solve the problem of fundraising, and Xia Yuanji resolutely opposed it every time, because this was "drying up and fishing". His trick can be summed up in one sentence: "Cutting redundant food, leveling servitude, strict salt law, banning money and money, clearing the store, and planting in a wide range of fields, so as to give the border people and facilitate business." Among these methods, "cutting redundant food" is the most difficult, and its content involves "streamlining the organization", reducing the expenditure of the royal family, and even limiting Zhu Di's daily expenses. However, Xia Yuanji knew the difficulty, and in the fourth year of Yongle, on the pretext of raising funds for going to the West, he asked for an order to reduce the number of idle yamen from the central government to the local government by 200 and divert nearly 1,000 people. Zhu Di's rewards to many princes and vassal kings every year were also advised by him, so he saved nearly one-third of his money every year.

After its accounting, the imperial forbidden army eliminated a large number of old and weak soldiers, but built the "three major battalions" with few soldiers and excellent combat effectiveness. Someone once bribed Xia Yuanji for "convenience", but he hung all the bribes under the eaves of his home to show his integrity.

Then rumors spread, and people continued to slander in front of Zhu Di, slandering Xia Yuanjihu and fake tigers, selling fame and reputation, misleading the country and the people, and so on. Fortunately, Ming Chengzu Zhu Di trusted Xia Yuanji, and warned his ministers many times: "Those who frame Xia Yuanji will be punished with a felony." Only then did the false accusations gradually subside.

Several other policies are in effect at the same time. For example, "equal service" means increasing taxes on the rich and reducing taxes for the poor at the same time, which is actually the use of administrative means to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor and eliminate the hatred of the rich. At the same time, Xia Yuanji also allowed the villagers to pay for labor when they had to.

"Clearance field" is to clean up the warehouses and abandoned government-run handicraft workshops around the country, strictly investigate corruption, every time he encounters a major case of corruption, he will personally calculate, repeatedly expose the tricks of corrupt officials and then hand over to the "Three Law Division", in accordance with the "Da Ming Law" law, the house should be raided, the distribution should be distributed, and even beheaded!

"Guangtun planting" means recruiting landless "hooligans" from the interior to go to the border to cultivate and settle down. This is not the "forced relocation" of Zhu Yuanzhang's era, but the introduction of "preferential" policies by the state, using tax exemptions and economic subsidies to attract farmers to settle down, and the result is that the "nine-border important town" has "doubled" in 22 years, which is greatly conducive to the national defense and security construction on the front line of the "Ming Great Wall" and relieves the pressure on the imperial court. And the earliest people who "broke into the eastern part of the country" from the mainland also appeared during this period.

Among them, the most critical and difficult things to do are two - the "strict salt law" and the "ban on money". The so-called "Strict Salt Law" is a readjustment of the "Open China Law" advocated by Yang Siyi during the "Hongwu Dynasty". The "Open China Law" was a method implemented by the Ming and Qing governments to recruit merchants to pay for military rations, horses and other materials with salt and tea as intermediaries.

Since its implementation in the Hongwu period, it has played an important role in consolidating national defense and strengthening the defense of border areas. But in the "Yongle period", the situation changed dramatically.

Since the eighth year of Yongle (1410 AD), Ming Chengzu Zhu Di began to take the initiative to attack, and successively used troops on a large scale of the Mongolian departments five times, although the good news was frequent, but each time the division was more than 300,000 people, plus "going to the Western Ocean", "opening the canal", "opening the Western Regions" and other major actions at the same time, so that the financial use was stretched.

In desperation, Xia Yuanji started "leapfrogging thinking" and changed the "open Chinese method" to the "strict salt method", that is, from the annual merchants to the "nine-sided important towns" to transport grain, ordnance, and horses in exchange for "salt introduction", to the merchants only to the "starting point" of the northern expedition to Mongolia to concentrate on transporting grain, ordnance, and horses in exchange for "salt introduction".

Although this small adjustment reduced the income of other "border towns" in the "Nine Sides," it ensured that the state could concentrate a large amount of money and grain in a short period of time and fight the battle of the Northern Expedition to the Mongolian steppe. Later, when Ming Chengzu Zhu Di moved the capital to Beijing, Xia Yuanji's old trick was repeated, which immediately solved the economic problem of the Ming Dynasty moving the capital.

Although this is a "stopgap measure", it solves a practical problem after all. In fact, the "ban on money" is a "historical problem" in the era of Zhu Yuanzhang. In the Hongwu era, Zhu Yuanzhang issued paper money, that is, "Hongwu treasure banknotes", but at that time, the Ming Dynasty issued paper money without "reserves", which led to the depreciation of paper money and soaring prices.

Although the Yongle period issued a ban, strictly prohibiting private gold and silver trading, but the common people still take a boycott attitude towards the "treasure banknote", the specific method is to deliberately raise the price every time to trade with paper money, and every time to trade with copper money, it will return to the regular price, although often punished heavily, but repeatedly prohibited, so that once there was an embarrassing situation of "paper is not as good as copper". This is also one of the important reasons for the demise of the Yuan Dynasty, that is, the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty issued paper money indiscriminately, causing a credit crisis!

On the one hand, the monetary system should be tightened to ensure the credibility of the "treasure banknotes", and on the other hand, the "price" represented by the denomination of the banknotes should be linked to the table salt, which is closely related to the daily life of the people, so as to maintain the stability of the economic value of the "treasure banknotes" and not easily depreciate, similar to the "petrodollar" in later generations.

This "economic means" of "traveling through time and space" did work, and soon prices gradually stabilized, making the country's finances increasingly stable. As a "big account room", Xia Yuanji is faced with the situation that the country "spends like water" every year, and naturally develops Xia Yuanji's character characteristics of "cautiousness".

Every year at the end of the year, Xia Yuanji would "discourage extravagance and extravagance", even including court expenses and vassal kings. Even the various "big activities" of the "Yongle era", such as receiving foreign envoys, building rivers, "border walls," and even training and fortification, were all used by him, and he was 100 times more careful and careful in calculating them, so that he could save money. For this reason, he often had disputes with officials of the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Household and other departments, which earned him the nickname "Xia Thorn Head".

The so-called "thorn head", in the folk dialect at that time, means "stingy ghost". This time, the "thorn" Xia Yuanji finally stabbed Ming Chengzu Zhu Di and Long Yan angrily. In the nineteenth year of Yongle (1421), Zhu Di wanted to launch the third northern expedition to the Mongolian steppe and wiped out the Tatar Taishi Arutai in one fell swoop.

Xia Yuanji, who felt that the country's finances were becoming increasingly tight, couldn't stand it and tried his best to stop it, so he angered Zhu Di. Coupled with the provocation of Zhang Fu, the prince of the state who had always hated Xia Yuanji, and Zhu Gaoxu, the king of the Han Dynasty, Xia Yuanji was finally dismissed from his post and sent to the "Inner Palace Prison" by the factory and health secret service for long-term detention.

Fortunately, the crown prince Zhu Gaochi, who knew his talent well, mediated and saved his life. When raiding his house, there were only cloth clothes and pottery in the house. Zhu Di sighed when he heard it: "Sure enough, it's a thorn." And the result of the northern expedition was unfortunately said by Xia Yuanji, the Mongols fled, and the Ming army returned in vain.

However, Ming Chengzu Zhu Di launched continuous expeditions, and the "Strict Salt Law" was gradually abused and destroyed, and the country's finances and taxes were also stretched, making the treasury empty. Of course, the cavalry of the Ming Dynasty was far less than that of the Han and Tang Dynasties, and they all relied on large-scale mobilization of infantry and the "Shenji Battalion" to demonstrate on the grassland, and the results were not obvious.

From the 19th year of Yongle (1421) when Xia Yuanji was imprisoned to the 22nd year of Yongle (1424) when Zhu Di died of illness on the way back from the Fifth Northern Expedition, the price of rice alone soared from 1 stone and 1 "treasure banknote" to 1 stone and 50 treasure banknotes! In other words, the domestic inflation of the Ming Dynasty was at least 50 times!

After Zhu Di died of illness, Mingrenzong Zhu Gaochi ascended the throne, pardoned Xia Yuanji from prison and reinstated the official, and the first priority was to solve the problem of "inflation".

Xia Yuanji tried his best to change the "strict salt law", allowing merchants to directly exchange treasure money for salt quotations, stipulating that 300 yuan was exchanged for 1 quotation, and continued to "prick" the emperor, prohibiting extravagant consumption in the court. Despite the accusations of the Imperial Family and the feudal lords of various places, Akihito always believed in Natsumotoyoshi's loyalty to the country.

Therefore, after Zhu Zhanji ascended the throne of Xuanzong of the Ming Dynasty, Xia Yuanji presided over the reform of commercial taxes, reduced domestic checkpoints, encouraged the circulation of goods, reduced the proportion of taxes, and strived to "reduce taxes and increase wealth".

In the fifth year of Xuande (1430), Xia Yuanji retired, and died of illness at home a few months later, giving the "Taishi". This "big account room" of the four dynasties of Hongwu, Yongle, Hongxi and Xuande can be called the key figures of the two golden ages of "Yongle Prosperity" and "Renxuan Zhizhi". Then again, Xia Yuanji, who has always been regarded as a "thorn in the head", has also been generous, for example, the funds allocated to the "nursing homes" for the adoption of lonely and widowed elderly people in various places every year have always increased year by year.

However, whenever there is a disaster in various localities, the allocation of relief grain and rice greatly exceeds the budget. On the contrary, in terms of private life, his own brother came to see him from his hometown, and he only gave him two stones of rice. However, for the lonely students around the capital and even in their hometowns, they can often get their selfless funding and complete the ten-year cold window.

In the eyes of this "big account room", if the "money" is used on the people, it is also used on the "blade". Of course, Xia Yuanji did not know his "life deeds", which was used by the later Emperor Chongzhen as a "reference" to measure the officials of the Ming Dynasty, which made many people who were fishing in troubled waters uneasy.

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