Last time, it was mentioned that Emperor Chongzhen not only announced a salary increase for officials in the court, but also lent money to the rich people in the world to redeem themselves and motivate the soldiers.

The operation is as fierce as a tiger, and the reason is that it is confident. According to the original law of historical development, the late Ming Dynasty at this time had already been tossed by the financial crisis, not only the emperor Laozi was anxious, but the "nine-sided defenders" had not been able to eat for a long time, and the hungry heart was close to the back, and there was no fighting spirit at all.

I think that when "Zheng He went to the West", the imperial court paid more than 70 million taels of silver every year through foreign trade and taxes in various places, and now I am afraid that even 700,000 taels of silver may not be able to make up, otherwise he would not be willing to help fight Houjin when Li Zicheng asked for 1 million taels of silver plus Shaanxi and Gansu independence.

However, under the intervention of the courtiers of the "Donglin Party" who controlled the government, Zhu Youzhen, the emperor of Chongzhen, was unable to successfully move the capital to Nanjing before Li Zicheng's peasant army reached Beijing, nor did he borrow one million taels of silver from the courtiers to cash in (in fact, he only received a donation of about 200,000 taels), and was forced to die!

In the early years of Chongzhen, the imperial history of Shaanxi Heizong once gave a piece of music to Emperor Laozi, commenting that Emperor Chongzhen was "three unreachable, five unaware". "Three unreachable" means that Emperor Chongzhen is strict and self-disciplined, not good at money, and does not have some special hobbies like other emperors, which is a compliment.

And the "five don't know" is a reminder of the shortcomings of "Emperor Laozi" Zhu Youzhen, such as he is very suspicious, manages too much, is too confident, and so on. Judging from the various performances of Emperor Chongzhen later, these really hit the nail on the head, pointing directly at the sore spot in Zhu Youzhen's core, which made him angry.

As the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Chongzhen Zhu Youzhen naturally had an unshirkable responsibility for the catastrophe of the Ming Dynasty's demise.

Although compared with his grandfather Wanli who did not go to court for decades, his father Guangzong was intoxicated with men's and women's music, and his brother Tianqi was obsessed with carpentry all day long, his responsibility to the emperor was still dutiful. But as the king of a country, after Zhu Youzhen's shortcomings were infinitely magnified, and then he encountered the chaotic situation at that time, it became even more out of control, so which of the "five not self-aware" to the point is the core problem of Emperor Chongzhen?

One of the things that Shaanxi Sizong said was not self-aware of being "non-amissible responsibility", which really revealed the core problem of Chongzhen, in the vernacular of later generations, that is, Emperor Chongzhen was too eager to achieve, so that he did not know how to authorize, had too many ideas, led indiscriminately, and was too suspicious, in fact, it was all caused by his heart being too anxious. This can't be blamed on him, after all, when he first ascended the throne, he was young and ambitious, so it was inevitable.

However, the Ming Dynasty has accumulated shortcomings for a long time, and it has faintly revealed signs of decay since the late Jiajing Dynasty. Later, fortunately, Xu Jie, Gao Gong, and Zhang Juzheng, the three hard-working cabinet chiefs, were able to save the building a little. However, Emperor Wanli did not go to court for nearly 30 years, which made the situation of the entire Ming Dynasty take a sharp turn again. At this moment, the Ming Dynasty cannot be compared with the beginning of the Ming Dynasty in terms of internal affairs or diplomacy, especially the financial bad!

After his brother Zhu Youxiao worked as a carpenter for seven years, when the rivers and mountains reached Chongzhen, the Ming Dynasty was already full of internal and external troubles, and the "Xiaoice River Period" led to the bad luck of agricultural harvest. On the first day of Chongzhen's arrival, he had to face Wei Zhongxian's possible frame-up, which can be described as walking on thin ice.

Emperor Chongzhen's eagerness is understandable, and even the ministers can perceive it, which is why Yuan Chonghuan has a five-year strategy for pacifying the holy will. But the problem is that many things are not achieved quickly, too much, the more eager to achieve the goal, the more fierce the force, the final result is often the opposite, just like Emperor Chongzhen did not want to be controlled by the "Donglin Party" of the imperial court, had to change frequently, but further caused turmoil in the court.

When Emperor Chongzhen first ascended the throne, there was only a "tiger" (Houjin) in Liaodong on the couch, and the peasant army had not yet formed a momentum, as long as he concentrated on dealing with Huang Taiji, even if he could not recover Liaodong, at least he could block the Eight Banners Iron Cavalry from the "Ningjin Defense Line", and the situation must not be so bad.

However, in order to open up sources and reduce expenditure, and to collect Liaodong grain and salary (Liaojiao), many post stations were abolished, and "Liaojiao" and "Lianjiao" were levied at the same time, coupled with the continuous drought, locusts flooded the sky, so that a large number of people were displaced and forced to join the peasant rebel army, which led to a more passive financial situation.

Later, not only was there war in Liaodong, but also the peasant rebel army in Guannai was also uneasy. As the expenses of the "three salaries" became larger and larger, more and more poor peasants automatically became "hooligans" after going bankrupt and joined the ranks of the rebel army to openly rebel against the imperial court, and so on, and finally formed a vicious circle.

At that time, in many places in Shaanxi, Henan, and Hubei, the peasant rebel army first came to toss, and then the officials and troops sent by the imperial court came to toss again, fighting to death, burning, killing and looting.

The more anxious Emperor Chongzhen was to exterminate the two forces outside the Guanguan and inside the Guan, the worse his financial situation became, and the more the people at the bottom were exploited and oppressed.

So, some people may wonder if the economic state of the Ming Dynasty is really so bad that it is in such a situation? Could it be that the imperial court is really poor and dead?

In fact, Emperor Zhu Youzhen reigned for 17 years, and the annual financial income was about 13 million taels of silver, and the "highest peak" of financial revenue after the "levy of three salaries" was the 12th year of Zhen, that is, about 20 million taels of silver.

It can be said that the financial revenue of the Ming Dynasty at this time was already stretched. However, paradoxically, when Li Zicheng's army besieged the city of Beijing and forced Emperor Chongzhen to hang himself. Some people say that after the peasant army entered the city, it collected more than 70 million taels of silver from the rich households and gentry, which was four or five times the annual financial revenue of the Chongzhen Dynasty. At this time, the bureaucrats of the Ming Dynasty who regretted not being at the beginning realized that they had made too many mistakes!

When the city of Beijing in the Ming Dynasty was besieged by the peasant legions led by Li Zicheng, the common people waited for a demon who was more ferocious than the officials of the Ming Dynasty, because the entire city of Beijing fell into a nightmare. The more credible theory is that the peasant army dug up the land and forcibly took more than 37 million taels of silver and more than 1.5 million taels of gold!

Even Wu Sangui is not a fuel-efficient lamp, because at that time, the power of these "quasi-warlords" was revived Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di underground, and Li Zicheng's army was busy grabbing money, food, and women, forcing Wu Sangui to take the initiative to switch in order to protect himself and get Chen Yuanyuan.

However, Chongzhen was not very old at that time, and history did not give him that choice. Think about the Anshi Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty, Tang Xuanzong had to be replaced, so that the imperial court could unite the hearts of the people and the army to quell the rebellion. And Chongzhen will never cover his internal money and watch his country fall and die step by step.

For Li Zicheng, who conquered Beicheng at that time, he was very unpopular, because the world was not stable and he announced that he would be the emperor early, and his subordinates also seized Wu Sangui's woman Chen Yuanyuan, so that Wu Sangui, who led the army to guard the "Shanhaiguan", was annoyed and ashamed, so he opened the city pass and let the Qing army enter the pass.

This led to hundreds of thousands of peasant troops being caught off guard by tens of thousands of Qing troops and Shanhaiguan defenders, and they fled in defeat all the way, accelerating Li Zicheng's defeat. As for Li Zicheng's later death in Hubei after the defeat, that is another matter, after all, the "Manchu Dynasty", which aims to swallow the world, will not tolerate him.

Li Zicheng's tactics were flexible and flexible, and he fought everywhere, and finally became bigger and bigger, gathered millions of people, and became the climate, taking advantage of the situation to break into the city of Beijing. It stands to reason that he could easily reach a consensus with the intellectuals and the landlord class, but instead of doing so, he pushed himself into opposition to them. Because during the forty-two days in Beijing, Li Zicheng and his Dashun regime plundered wealth and robbed the people's daughters, which made the people of Beijing panic and rumors spread.

Soon after, Dolgon led the 200,000 troops of the Manchu "Eight Banners" and Wu Sangui's 100,000 defenders to launch a fierce attack on Li Zicheng's 500,000 peasant army.

Later, Dolgon led the main force of the "Qing Army" to chase and encircle and annihilate Li Zicheng's peasant army, while the deputy general Duoduo led the "Qing Army" to attack the richest Jiangnan region of the Ming Dynasty, conquering Yangzhou, Jiading and other places, and carried out the "Yangzhou Ten Days Massacre" and "Jiading Three Days Massacre" against the stubborn resistance.

After the conquest of Nanjing, this army, which had conquered 150,000 Mongol cavalry with 20,000 Manchurian warriors, also obtained the legal right to rob and capture.

Duoduo was really good, robbing countless money and treasures, and more than 20,000 women died tragically under the cruelty of the Qing army, because the rape had been legalized to boost morale. The people of the Ming Dynasty hated Li Zicheng at this time, because if he hadn't forced Emperor Chongzhen to death and forced Wu Sangui to switch to meet the enemy, there would not have been such a human purgatory on his head! However, Li Zicheng himself is difficult to protect, who still has the air to care about the life and death of the people of the Ming Dynasty?

Therefore, judging from the chaos at that time, the Gini coefficient of the Ming Dynasty, which had no money on the surface, had actually reached an extremely terrible level.

Although Chongzhen himself was still kept in the dark, individual generals had already understood this internal logic, and Sun Chuanting began to operate his own set of "rules" as early as Guanzhong. He knows that if the tax is raised to the people at the bottom, the situation will completely collapse in the end, and the situation will be out of control!

So, he extended the salary of the military to the wealthy households in Guanzhong, and raised the salary of his Qin army through the collection of the wealthy households. Moreover, there are many people like Sun Chuanting who find problems, but there are also more who pretend to be asleep, after all, in the name of the imperial court, they squeeze the people to make money wantonly, which is the favorite of every corrupt official and corrupt official, and has a fatal "attraction". Under the net of common interests, generals like Sun Chuanting are destined to become a lone ranger behind the dynasty.

Why is Emperor Chongzhen in a hurry, because there is no money, why is there no money, because the gap between the rich and the poor is serious, and a large net to protect their own interest groups has already suffocated the entire dynasty, as for whose world it is, it is not what they care about, but once the balance pattern is broken, the entire dynasty will inevitably usher in a change of dynasty. The end of the Qing Dynasty and the end of the Ming Dynasty are very similar to each other to a certain extent, both of them are internal and external troubles, but why did the Manchu Qing Dynasty finally carry it over, but the Ming Dynasty fell?

In the early years of Shunzhi, the national finance returned to the 30 million taels again, after the Kangxi Emperor "spread the ding into the mu", the population and finance have attracted great development, Qianlong about 30 years, the financial income reached the peak of the feudal dynasty dominated by agricultural taxes 50 million taels, and then with the marginal effect of the release of the demographic dividend decreased, until the Daoguang Wukou trade, the financial income of the entire dynasty fell to about 40 million taels.

However, at this time, the population was as much as two or three hundred million more than that of the Chongzhen Dynasty, and this situation of rapid population growth and slow decline in fiscal revenue directly led to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom uprising. In the absence of financial support, Zeng Guofan and his staff pioneered the establishment of a lijin, which is a road maintenance fee.

Why Zeng Guofan must occupy the waterway and go down the river step by step, the key is that with transportation, there is money, and he has the money to support the Hunan army. This initiative was applied to the financial system by the Qing Dynasty, and by the time the Qing Emperor abdicated the throne in the third year of Xuantong, the Qing Dynasty's fiscal revenue had reached 300 million taels.

Then the question arises again, why did the Manchus, whose fiscal revenues were so high, end up falling even more silently? The outbreak of the fuse protection movement is a high-end version of the gold income, and when the balance is finally broken, it is also the time when the dynasty is coming to an end.

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