Chapter 72 Owning the world but still amassing money like crazy

Ming Shenzong dealt with Zhang Juzheng and began to take power in person.But he soon lost interest in government.In the eleventh year of Wanli (1583), the emperor issued an order to temporarily suspend court lectures for a few days on the grounds of "occasional illness".After the first time, there will be the second time. After that, Ming Shenzong stopped visiting the court and giving lectures on the grounds of illness.His reason was very crowning: illness.So the ministers have no choice but to keep the emperor from getting sick.But although he is not interested in government affairs, he never relaxes on one thing, that is, collecting money.Historian Meng Sen once commented on this emperor as: "Indolent in administration, brave to collect money", "There are no administrative matters, but there are no surprises in collecting money", "The greed of an emperor has never been as good as an emperor since ancient times."

There is a saying that "Under the whole world, is it the land of the king; on the shore of the land, is it the king's ministers", it is unbelievable that the dignified emperor is actually a money fan, so they all searched for the reason.Mr. Zhu Dongrun, who wrote the biography of Zhang Juzheng, once analyzed the lineage of Emperor Shenzong's parents, and believed that Zhu Yuanzhang started from a poor man and became emperor. Shenzong's father was born in a poor peasant family; and his mother, Queen Mother Li, also came from a commoner family and was a small farmer. His mother's family is also considered a small farmer.The descendants of such poor peasants, the grandsons of small peasants, will probably be narrow-minded and short-sighted. The so-called "small peasant consciousness" will pay more attention to gold, silver, treasures and the like.This may also make sense, but people are always complex and changeable. It may not be so accurate to determine a person's lifelong character and behavior based on bloodlines.Wang Rong of the Western Jin Dynasty was one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. He was born in the famous Wang family of Langya in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, but he was so stingy to the point of unimaginable.The plums in his family are so good that they are afraid that others will buy the seeds, so they go to the trouble of pitting every plum before selling them.It can be seen that this bloodline is really unreliable.The reason why the son of heaven is greedy for money still has to be found elsewhere.

Perhaps this has something to do with Zhang Juzheng's control over him back then.Zhang Juzheng taught the little emperor that as a wise monarch, he should pay attention to food accumulation instead of luxury goods such as pearls and jade, because the people live on food, but pearls and jade cannot eat or wear clothes when they are hungry.Regarding the expenses of the little emperor during festivals and the rewards to the palace people, he also advised the emperor to try his best to be frugal, so the little emperor's rewards to the court ladies were always shabby.However, after receiving so much orthodox frugal education, the little emperor finally became impatient, especially when he faced Zhang Juzheng's list of confiscated homes, he felt more strongly that the former teacher's words and deeds were inconsistent.Even if it was revenge, it would make his love for money unusual.Therefore, as soon as he confiscated the properties of Feng Bao and Zhang Juzheng, he asked the eunuch Zhang Cheng to move them all into the palace and put them at his disposal.

But for Emperor Shenzong, the confiscated property was just a small amount of money, far from satisfying his desire for wealth.So he thought about it, and finally found a shortcut to make money, which also brought about one of the biggest maladministration in the late Ming Dynasty-the notorious mining tax. In fact, it was not easy for the emperor to come up with this trick to collect money.The land tax cannot be increased, otherwise, the common people will have to take advantage of it; the commercial tax income is limited, and it is too troublesome to collect it; the traditional monopoly has a fixed variety and a basically stable amount, and it is estimated that it will not be squeezed out How much oil and water.Moreover, it is very important that these types of income must be turned over to the national treasury, that is to say, they belong to the state property and may not allow him to spend as he pleases.As for ransacking the house, it can only be done occasionally, and it can't be used as a regular income.So, in the end he came up with the idea of ​​opening a mine, bypassing government officials at all levels, and only letting his trusted eunuchs go to handle it, and all the benefits he got would be counted as the emperor's personal money.

Of course, mining can become a way to make money, which is also the result of the development of the technological level at that time.Mining needs to pay taxes, which began in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, when it was a means to cope with the lack of fiscal revenue.In subsequent dynasties, mining tax should be counted as an income of the government.At first, the income from mining tax accounted for only a small part of the government's tax revenue, but with the development of science and technology and the development of a large number of mineral deposits, this income gradually became considerable, and in the Ming Dynasty, the scope of collection was expanded a lot.However, because mining requires digging mountains and land, it is always regarded as a kind of thing that destroys "feng shui".Therefore, the government at that time also had restrictions on mining, and there was a set of strict approval procedures.However, Ming Shenzong, who was focused on collecting money, couldn't take care of so much now.In addition, at that time, troops were used against Ningxia, North Korea, and Bozhou successively; the two palaces of Qianqing and Kunning, and the three palaces of Huangji, Jianji, and Zhongji were hit by fire, which wiped out the little family property that Zhang Juzheng had saved before. The treasury has also become empty, and the emperor needs to find a way to make money quickly.Therefore, from the twenty-fourth year of Wanli (1596), Qianhu, deputy deputy of Qianhu of the government army, asked to open mines in February, breaking the strict restrictions on mining in the past.Since then, the emperor sent eunuchs to supervise whenever Zoubao opened a mine.In the twenty-sixth year of Wanli (1598), eunuchs began to be sent to various places to mine and collect taxes, and to search indiscriminately.Naturally, all the money collected was donated to the emperor, so the emperor who had tasted the sweetness was even more happy with it. In the end of the Wanli Dynasty, the mining tax has been extremely harmful.

Ordinarily, the government's encouragement of mining should be a good thing for economic development, and it is only natural to collect taxes.However, it was the eunuchs around him who were sent by Mingshenzong to preside over mining and tax collection, bypassing all levels of government.Originally, in the Ming Dynasty, the power of eunuchs was quite strong, and eunuchs came out in large numbers.Relying on being the emperor's cronies, these grand dukes don't look down on those officials at all, and these people are not of high quality and have no sense of responsibility. All they do is to collect money as their top priority. They don't let go of the national economy and the people's livelihood and the suffering of the people. on heart.Therefore, whenever they went to a place, they set aside the local government and set up another tax office, which was dedicated to composing affairs and went straight to the emperor.For the magistrates who did not submit to them, they reported and slandered them. Of course, the emperor would not doubt his grand dukes, and always ordered the arrest and punishment immediately. Some magistrates were even beaten to death.Moreover, wherever these grand dukes went, they only cared for gold and silver, and they didn't care if they had mines or not.Sometimes when I see a beautiful house in a good land, I will talk nonsense that there is a mine underground, so as to blackmail or forcibly occupy it.They not only collect mining taxes, but also extend their hands very far, and set up tax cards all over the main traffic arteries.The merchants who come and go will be in trouble, and they are often forced to offset the goods as taxes.Moreover, these father-in-laws still have a big appetite, and they even accept some small and small money together.When ordinary people buy a chicken, they will not let it go without bundles of vegetables, and they have to pay taxes.There is even no mining at all, but the fictitious due "income" is apportioned to the common people, which is called "mining".Naturally, such a plundering effort has yielded rich results.In the 29th year of Wanli (1601) alone, more than 900,000 taels of silver, 1,575 taels of gold, and a large amount of jewelry were transported to Beijing by these mine supervisors for the Ming Shenzong. .While serving the emperor, these grand dukes certainly did not forget to make their own fortunes, so a large amount of search results were directly put into the private pockets of mine supervisors and tax envoys.For example, only one tenth of the gold and silver looted by mine supervisor Chen Zeng went to the emperor, but nine tenths fell into his pocket.

Such unreasonable behavior naturally caused great commotion among the people.Business travel is sluggish, people are unemployed, and even those local officials can't stand it.In addition, these people and their minions did all kinds of evil, such as Chen Feng, the tax supervisor in Hubei, who connived at his minions to rob civilian women and plunder them directly into the tax supervision office, and the local officials were helpless.Chen Zeng, the mine supervisor, was in Yidu, Shandong. Every day, thousands of people were recruited to dig mountains and open mines. In order to supervise the construction period, many workers were killed.Cheng Shouxun, Chen Zeng's minion, and others went to the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas, threatened to search for gold treasures under secret order, framed those big merchants and wealthy families for hiding prohibited items, destroyed more than a hundred houses, and even killed them in public.Such greedy and brutal acts aroused the hatred of all social classes, so there were frequent civil upheavals, and even the local officials secretly stood on the side of these "mobs".

Not only did the people revolt, but officials in the court also wrote letters to the emperor, persuading him to abolish the mining tax, which had greatly angered the people.Advise him that this mining tax will not only cut off the livelihood of the poor, but also the rich will suffer. If this continues, it will inevitably arouse "great chaos". It will "collapse" and cannot be saved.At that time, even if the emperor has a box full of gold and pearls to fill his house, no one will guard him.However, "the emperor regards wealth too much and people too lightly; taking money is too detailed and letting people be too careless", despite the ministers' earnest words and letters of advice, the emperor ignored them all and put them all on the shelf.Later, the emperor quarreled with the ministers because of the establishment of the crown prince, and hid in the deep palace to "strike". He ignored all the affairs of the court, but he couldn't let go of the mining tax that collected money. All related reports were approved. Very fast.Once, Ming Shenzong fell seriously ill and felt that he was about to die, so he summoned Shen Yiguan, the chief minister of the cabinet, and said that the mining tax would be abolished.When Shen Yiguan saw that the emperor finally understood, he was very happy. On the same day, he drafted a decree to abolish the mining tax and submitted it. The emperor agreed after reading it, and replied that night.But on the second day, not only did the emperor not die, but he recovered miraculously. His first reaction was to immediately send eunuchs to order the cabinet to recover the decree to abolish the mining tax.Because I can't die, if I cut off my money, doesn't that mean suicide?Shen always ignored it, and still wanted to execute the decree last night.The eunuch kowtowed and begged, his forehead was about to bleed.Shen Yiguan had no choice but to return the edict.As a result, the mining tax was still collected as long as the emperor was alive.

The emperor looted so much money, but he was reluctant to spend it, and kept it all in the treasury.Later, when the imperial court wanted to use troops, the treasury had no money, and the courtiers begged for help, so he took out a small change that was useless, but the silver had turned black and moldy because of being stored for too long, and was almost unusable due to corrosion.In March of the forty-eighth year of Wanli (1620), the emperor died of illness, and the mining tax, which was disastrous to the country and the people, was declared to stop.However, over the past few decades, the excessive levies of mine supervisors and tax envoys have caused great damage to the social economy, especially to the development of industry and commerce, resulting in the reduction of the country's regular taxes, financial crises, frequent urban uprisings, and various contradictions. expand.Twenty-four years after the mining tax ceased, the Ming Dynasty also perished.