Gou in Daming, I was overheard by Zhu Yuanzhang

"Compared to Zhu Yunqi's radical policy of reducing the vassal, Zhu Di's methods are even more sophisticated."

"As Zhu Di, who has just rebelled against the superior, he is well aware of the complexity of cutting down the feudal clan."

"If the method of reducing the vassals similar to that of Emperor Jianwen is carried out again, it is very likely to provoke fierce reactions from the brothers of the vassal kings."

"Even if the kings attack together, the fate of Emperor Jianwen may not happen to him again."

"With the lessons learned from my nephew, Zhu Di made full use of his special status and started the great cause of cutting down the vassals as the defender of the interests of the brothers and vassals."

"Zhu Di's great cause of reducing feudal vassals can be roughly divided into four steps."

"Step [-]: Boil the frog in warm water."

"Immediately restore the thrones of Zhou, Dai, Qi, and Min who were abolished by Zhu Yunqi one after another, and show favor to his brothers."

"Let these brothers be grateful to Zhu Di, believe that Zhu Di is not as ruthless to his brothers as Zhu Yunwen, and let the vassal kings gradually lose their vigilance towards Zhu Di."

"The second step is to ascend and descend secretly. The vassal kings sealed in the frontier will be transferred back to the mainland one by one in the name of various rewards."

"Since they are transferred back to the mainland, they don't need to have the military power to guard the frontier, and once the feudal lord loses a lot of military power, it will be even more difficult to fight against Zhu Di."

"For example, Zhu Zhi, king of Liao, changed his title to Jingzhou from Guangning, Zhu Quan, king of Ning, changed his title to Nanchang from Daning, and Zhu Sui, king of Gu, changed his title to Changsha from Xuanfu, canceling their right of imperial generals to go to war."

"The third step is to exchange money for soldiers. By continuously increasing the salaries of the vassal kings, in exchange for reducing the number of private soldiers in the vassal kings' palaces."

"And the prince who has gradually lost a trace of military power is like a toothless tiger to Zhu Di, and he is no longer to be feared."

"The fourth step is to formulate various "vassal bans" to restrain the vassal kings."

"Excuse the vassal's violation of the prohibition and deprive him of his guards. In severe cases, he will become a commoner."

"By the end of Yongle, the guards of the kings were greatly reduced, and they no longer had the military power to suppress local areas."

Hearing this, Zhu Yuanzhang was overjoyed, okay, the fourth child did a good job!

Then, let's go back and let the fourth brother start cutting down the feudal clan!
"However, Zhu Di's reduction of the vassal king was not thorough, leaving many hidden dangers."

"When Zhu Di raised his army, he managed to force King Ning Zhu Quan to join him in rebellion through conspiracy and trickery."

"Zhu Di promised to divide the world equally when things were done. The perfect combination of the two quickly defeated the political rookie Zhu Yunqi."

"However, when the world was settled, Zhu Di began his selective forgetting."

"After sitting on the dragon chair in the Fengtian Palace, Zhu Di didn't mention the matter of dividing the world equally."

"All this is nothing more than normal in the eyes of King Ning Zhu Quan. Since you can't get half of the country, then please let the fourth brother let it go, and let yourself return to the Daning fief granted by the emperor."

"However, Zhu Quan's request was not fulfilled, and instead he was transferred from Daning to Nanchang."

Zhu Yuanzhang's heart tightened. Could it be possible that the seventeenth child has rebelled against the fourth child?

"Without the military power, and being closely watched by Zhu Di, Zhu Quan had no choice but to study, play the piano and compose music."

"Zhu Quan's death did not dissipate the grievances between him and the court, it was just the opposite."

"Zhu Chenhao, great-great-great-grandson of Zhu Quan, believed that Zhu Di's lineage was ruthless and ungrateful. At any rate, his ancestors worked hard to rob the country for Zhu Di, but in the end, human feelings were as cold as water."

"At this time, the emperor Zhu Houzhao was a big player and never went to court. He didn't want to be an emperor, he just wanted to be a general. He named himself the Zhenguo Wuwei General, and set up the Zhenguo Mansion outside the city and worked there."

"The emperor is busy playing, and the ministers are busy making money, so naturally they relax their guard against the feudal lords."

"Some vassals who were dissatisfied with the imperial court took the opportunity to recruit troops to expand their strength."

"The king of Anhua in Ningxia also staged a rebellion, and once defeated the imperial army."

"This kind of chaos makes Zhu Chenhao want to move."

"It's just that Zhu Chenhao's luck was bad. He met a historical giant: Wang Yangming."

"Wang Yangming is not only a great philosopher, but also an outstanding military strategist. It took only 43 days to put down the rebellion."

"In the end, Zhu Chenhao was executed and his body was burned and his ashes scattered."

"The court immediately announced the abolition of King Ning's feudal kingdom."

Zhu Yuanzhang's heart is tugging, this kind of situation can't happen again, how can our descendants be like this? !

If the fourth child's cutting of feudal clans is not thorough, let's do it thoroughly!

Sansun must have a way!

"Actually, the rebellion of the vassals behind is nothing."

"At most dozens of days of chaos, for the entire Daming, the impact is not too big."

Ah, is there anything more influential than the rebellion of the vassal king?

Zhu Yuanzhang felt that the third grandson was scaremongering?

That's not right, the third grandson revealed from his heart, thinking in his heart, how could he lie to others?
The third grandson's aspirations have never been false.

"Zhu Di deprived the vassals of their political and military privileges, and only retained their economic privileges."

"The enfeoffment system established by Lao Zhu himself has reached this level. If Zhu Di takes away the economic privileges again, the vassal king will lose its meaning. It is tantamount to completely negating Lao Zhu."

"As a result, the vassal kings no longer expected to be high officials or military power, but only wanted to gain more wealth."

"Because the emperors of Ming Dynasty didn't know much about economics, as long as you don't rebel against me and usurp my throne, then I will continue to confer titles on your descendants and let them enjoy the wealth and honor."

"Therefore, the enfeoffments have been continuously distributed throughout the dynasties. As long as they are the children of the royal family, they must be entrusted to the nobles. It is to use the country's finances to support the princes. As time goes by, the more they are raised, the financial burden will become heavier."

"The cost of raising the vassal king in the Ming Dynasty was huge. Except for the crown prince, the emperor's other sons were to be named princes. The prince's eldest son, Long Jue, and the other sons were county kings. The eldest son of the county king was Xijue, and the other sons were to be named generals of the town. .”

"Further down, the sons of General Zhenguo should be named General Fuguo, the son of General Fuguo should be named General Fengguo, and the son of General Fengguo should be named Lieutenant Zhenguo."

"In this way, from generation to generation, the parasites in the clan that rely on the state's finances can grow exponentially."

"In terms of financial expenditure, the fixed salary of the prince, that is, Lumi, is [-] shi per year, that of the county king is [-] shi, that of the general of the state is [-] shi, and that of the general of the auxiliary state is [-] shi."

"There are quotas for other titles, and when they accumulate, they are an astronomical figure."

"For the feudal king, there is no political freedom, food and clothing are restricted, but the freedom to have children is absolutely there."

"Most vassal kings just seize the opportunity to make a living."

"When you are born, you have to be treated. After generations of reproduction, the number of people will increase like a snowball."

"The emperor in the early Ming Dynasty worried about the rebellion of the vassal kings, and the emperor in the middle of Ming Dynasty worried about how to feed these people."

"In the memorial of Lin Run, the censor of the Ming Dynasty during the Jiajing period, it is very clear: the world supplies the capital with 400 million shi of grain every year, but the princes consume 800 million shi of the country's grain every year."

"Specifically speaking, Shanxi, an important military town, stores 190 million shi of grain every year, but the local prince's government consumes more than 300 million shi of grain."

"There are 94 shi of grain stored in Henan, but the local vassals consume more than 190 million shi of grain."

"That is to say, the taxes and rations of the whole country can't fill the mouth of the feudal lord."

"In addition to these fixed financial subsidies, the feudal lords from all over the world are actually making money well."

"Politics has no future, and military affairs have to turn around, so they do everything possible to engage in economics."

"But these people don't have any skills. How do they engage in economics? The main thing is to dig the country's walls. Everyone has their own skills."

"The most fixed method is "imperial bestowal", that is, to ask for land from the imperial court."

"In the middle and early Ming Dynasty, such as the Xuande and Zhengtong years, the land granted by the Ming Dynasty to the feudal lords was usually tens of hectares. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, there were thousands or even tens of thousands of hectares."

"The bad consequences of doing this can be imagined: it enriched the pockets of the vassals, but ruined the country's finances."

"How much land is bestowed, the country loses so much financial revenue, plus the huge expenditure for supporting the vassal king every year, even in peacetime, the country's finances are often stretched.

"If it catches up with disasters and wars, the finances will be even more overwhelmed."

"And even so, the vassal kings still don't stop. Most of the vassal kings have been trying their best to get rich all their lives. The common trick is to invade the people's fields."

Occupy civilian land?

What Zhu Yuanzhang hated the most was the occupation of people's fields. He didn't expect his descendants to think of farmers!

"There are two main methods used by feudal lords to occupy civilian land. One is fraud, which is to deliberately designate a good land they like, colluding with the government to designate it as wasteland, so as to obtain a gift from the court, and then forcibly occupy it."

"The other kind is called "contribution", that is, many small people who can't pay the tax voluntarily put their land in the name of the vassal king in order to avoid taxation."

"As a result, land annexation in the middle and late Ming Dynasty intensified."

"At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Henan area, where land annexation was extremely intense, was known as "half of the Zhongzhou land entered the vassal mansion", which means that almost half of the land was occupied by the vassal king."

"Correspondingly, Henan became the "hardest-hit area" of peasant uprisings in the late Ming Dynasty."

"Zhu Changxun, the king of fortune who once received more than 4 hectares of farmland at one time, was later killed by Li Zicheng, the leader of the peasant uprising."

"During the entire Peasant War in the late Ming Dynasty, the huge wealth of the feudal lords was hidden and hidden on weekdays, and they were reluctant to take it out."

"When there was a peasant uprising, almost all of them were collected by the peasant army and became the money and food capital of the peasant army."

"The Ming Dynasty fell to the peasant uprising. From this perspective, the vassal kings made a "big contribution."

Zhu Yuanzhang was furious when he heard this.

Cut down the clan, completely cut down the clan!