Daming Military Empire

Chapter 110 The Way of Being a King
Seeing Zhu Cijiong's melancholy face and deep frown, Xu Guangqi knew that the emperor was upset, so he didn't say anything, but solemnly gave Zhu Cijiong a courtier's gift.

Zhu Cijiong couldn't help being surprised. Generally, when there is no one in private, these red tape etiquettes are avoided. Xu Guangqi was so solemn today, he had no choice but to solemnly give Xu Guangqi a teacher-student gift.

Xu Guangqi accepted his gift calmly, then took out a memorial from his bosom, and said solemnly: "Your Majesty, although I am your teacher in name, I am deeply ashamed that I have not taught you anything. Today, I The minister specially wrote a memorial, hoping to help you."

After finishing speaking, he solemnly handed the memorial to Zhu Cijiong.

Why does this sound a bit like confessing a last word!Zhu Cijiong stared blankly at Xu Guangqi, he was really old, his hair and beard were all white, and his hands and feet seemed to be a little out of control.His eyes shifted to Xu Guangqi's trembling hands, and he realized the memorial when he saw the memorial. He quickly took the memorial with both hands respectfully, and asked worriedly, "Master, what's wrong with you?"

Xu Guangqi shook his hands in relief, and said with a smile: "It's nothing, it's nothing, this person is easy to miss when he gets old, the emperor doesn't have to worry, I'm fine."

After finishing speaking, he surrendered and resigned!
Zhu Cijiong stood in a daze for a long time before he came back to his senses. What happened to Xu Guangqi? Was it because of the content in the memorial that he lost his composure?How strange, Zhu Cijiong shook his head, gently opened the memorial, and looked carefully.

As soon as he saw the title, Zhu Cijiong's face immediately became solemn, because the title of this memorial is: The way of being a king!
He has been the emperor for three or four years, and no one has taught him the way of being a king. It stands to reason that these should be taught by his father's precepts and deeds, but who told him to be cheap? His father died early, basically everything Hang up without teaching him!
Now someone finally taught him the way of being a king, how could he not pay attention, he ran back to the desk in three steps and two steps, sat down and read carefully.

The first paragraph is nothing, it is an excerpt from "Zhenguan Zhengyao", Volume [-], a passage in the first chapter of the monarchy:

The way to be a king is to save the people first. If you hurt the people to serve your body, it is like cutting your thighs to eat your belly, and you will die if you are full.If the world is safe, one must first correct one's body, before one's body is upright, the shadows are distorted, and the top is governed but the bottom is chaotic.

This is a passage from Tang Taizong Li Shimin to his courtiers, which means that to be the monarch of a country, you must first save the people.If you harm the interests of the common people to serve yourself, it is like cutting off your own thighs to fill your own stomach. When your stomach is full, you will die.If you want the world to be stable, you must first straighten yourself. There will never be a body that is straight and the shadow is crooked, and the top is well-regulated but the bottom is in turmoil.

What does this have to do with me?I did not bully the common people, nor did I behave improperly!
Zhu Cijiong looked down curiously. It turned out that Xu Guangqi was not criticizing Zhu Cijiong for his misbehavior and harming the interests of the people. What he was talking about was the royal family!

In the second paragraph, he quoted a passage from the Memorial of Lin Run, the censor who inspected Zhili during the Jiajing period: "There is nothing more serious about today's affairs than the Zongfu. The world's wealth provides 400 million yuan of food for the capital every year." Stones, and the 850 million and 150 stones of Lumifan in the palaces of various princes are no less than twice that.For example, in Shanxi, there are 310 million shi of rice and 84 million shi of Lumi; in Henan, there are 190 shi of rice and [-] million shi of Lumi.The grain of the two provinces was all lost by order, which is less than half of the Lumi, and the salary of officials and the salary of the army are all out of it.

Immediately afterwards, he listed the titles and annual salary standards of the royal family members:

Prince: Lumi ten thousand stones;

Prince of the county: Lumi two thousand stones;

General Zhen Guo: Lumi One Thousand Stones;

General Fuguo: Lumi Eight Hundred Stones;

General Fengguo: Lumi six hundred stones;

Lieutenant Zhen Guo: Lumi five hundred stones;

Lieutenant Fuguo: Lumi four hundred stones;

Lieutenant Feng Guo: Three hundred stones of Lumi;

This does not seem to be much, a Lieutenant of Fengguo only has three hundred shi a year, which is only 300 taels in silver. For a relative of the emperor, this amount of money seems to be not enough to spend at all.If it was the early Ming Dynasty, the sum of Lumi would not be much. Zhu Yuanzhang had only 26 sons and more than 30 grandsons. The other brothers and uncles combined were less than 100, and Lumi was only hundreds of thousands of shi. It's nothing to the entire Great Ming.

However, it was different at the end of the Ming Dynasty, because the children of the clan were too capable of giving birth, the so-called fullness and warmth, thinking about sex, eating enough all day long and having nothing to do, what should I do?Naturally, it is most comfortable to do human-making exercises. Not only is it comfortable for yourself, but if you accidentally create a man with a handle, you will make a lot of money. A lieutenant of Fengguo can earn 300 taels of silver a year, at least for nothing. Earn more than ten years!
Therefore, all the children of the clan are desperate to give birth. The famous literati Wang Shizhen recorded in "The Grand Event of the Emperor Ming Dynasty" that Zhu Jixuan, the king of Qingcheng County, gave birth to a hundred sons in one go. Except for the eldest son, the hereditary king, the other 99 were all towns. General, during the family reunion, there was a joke that couldn't be fully understood between the same father and brother. The fertility of these royal family members can be seen!
According to Xu Guangqi's statistics, by the third year of Chongzheng, the number of royal family members had reached a terrifying 30, and their annual salary had reached a terrifying 300 million shi. The annual salary is gone!
In this way, these clansmen were not satisfied. Most of them were addicted to wealth and honor, arrogant, ignorant of etiquette, what's more, they colluded with local gentry to annex land, forced wives and concubines, and squeezed tenant farmers, so that the people were in dire straits and bandits arose everywhere.Like Henan, where land annexation is the most serious, Xu Guangqi quoted a poem in Li Yulin's "Seeing Off Henan": "Only Yu Fangcao Wang Sun Lu, does not enter the home of the rich emperor's son." 'This means that, except for the official roads reserved for the kings and grandsons and common people to walk together, the rest of the land in Henan is the private property of the clan surnamed Zhu!
Of course, this is a bit exaggerated. Xu Guangqi then gave examples of the private lands of the royal family in various provinces. Among them, Shanxi and Henan land mergers are the most serious. Almost all the best land in Shanxi province is occupied by the clan, and there are princes and counties in Henan. 72 families, more than half of the land in Henan is the private property of these 72 royal families!

Not only did they take the annual salary of the imperial court for nothing, but they also continued to annex the land, so that the royal family members occupied more and more land, while the peasants became tenant farmers, slaves, refugees and even rebels because they had no land to grow!According to incomplete statistics, by the early years of Chongzheng, the land that had fallen into the hands of the royal clan and landlords had reached a terrifying 500 million hectares, while the total arable land area of ​​the entire Ming Dynasty was only about 1000 million hectares!
Xu Guangqi also calculated a terrifying rule, that is, every 30 years, the number of royal family members will double. Annual salary!
Seeing this, Zhu Cijiong's face turned blue with anger, these moths, don't you know that Daming will be mothed by them sooner or later?If you don’t do anything meaningful, you will know how to give birth desperately, enclose the land desperately, enjoy it desperately, squeeze it desperately, and make a good Daming full of holes. Now the mothed Daming is dying, but let me alone Children less than ten years old stand in front to protect you from the wind and rain!
These bloody bastards!

No wonder Li Zicheng had just killed Fu Wang Zhu Changxun in Luoyang, and immediately his reputation was greatly shaken, and there were many responders. He transformed from a bandit to a savior of the people;
No wonder Zhang Xianzhong just killed Xiang Wang Zhu Yiming in Xiangyang and immediately won the support of the people. He transformed from a murderous demon king into a bodhisattva who saves suffering and disaster!

No wonder the people are all attached to the thieves and not to the soldiers. It is because these vassal kings and clans have committed too many crimes in normal times, and they have already made the sky angry and the people resented.
And the representative of this official is not Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youjian, let alone his Chongzheng Emperor Zhu Cijiong, but the vassal king, these clan relatives, these moths, and these bastards!
Now that Zhu Cijiong finally understands the root cause of the Ming Dynasty’s demise, it’s no wonder that Emperor Chongzhen didn’t buy into the disaster relief time and time again.
In the end, Xu Guangqi proposed a very cryptic strategy, that is: kill people with a knife, gather all the defenders in the state capitals, and go after the main force of the peasant uprising army.

Let them make trouble, anyway, the peasant uprising army will not kill ordinary civilians, and they are very polite to honest officials. They only kill corrupt officials and royal family members, let them kill them, kill all these moths, and return Ming The sky is bright!
Zhu Cijiong finally understood that Xu Guangqi was not persuading him to implement the rule of benevolence, which was a method only used by prosperous emperors.The reason why he quoted Tang Taizong Li Shimin's words in the first paragraph is not to let him follow Li Shimin's implementation of benevolent rule, but to imply that he is a king in troubled times, and he must kill decisively. You know, Li Shimin even killed his own brothers!

No wonder Xu Guangqi behaved so strangely today. He was probably afraid that Zhu Cijiong would think about his blood and family relationship, so he couldn't bear to do it. You must know that those princes and counties are all Zhu Cijiong's uncles or even grandparents!

He was wrong about this point, Zhu Cijiong is not the original Zhu Cijiong, he came from time travel, and he has no family relationship with those moths at all.He only knows that Emperor Tianqi Zhu Youxiao is his father and Prince Regent Zhu Youjian is his uncle. As for other royal family members, he knows who you are!
It happened that more than half of the disaster victims in the five provinces had moved out, and the rest were either bandits or the royal family and their minions. As for the real civilians, most of them were military households, and they all stayed near the guards. Will not run to attack the guard for no reason.At the time of the Chongzhen Dynasty, the five northwestern provinces were full of ten rooms and nine empties, and the few people left now, Zhu Cijiong lost, lost, gained, and got up!

Thinking of this, Zhu Cijiong's eyes flashed, and he shouted: "Cao Huachun."

Cao Huachun entered in response, kowtowed and said: "My minister is here."

Zhu Cijiong folded the memorial and handed it to him, then said coldly, "It's burned."

Without saying a word, Cao Huachun took out a fire folder and folded a little memorial, which was quickly submerged in the flames.

(End of this chapter)