Chapter 32 Kublai Khan's legacy

The Mongols unified China with ethnic minorities, not the blessing of the majority.It's just that if they can really use the standpoint of "no self-interest" and "no unwarranted intervention" to sweep away the long-standing abuses and tyrannical policies since the Liao, Jin and Southern Song Dynasties, it will be a contribution to Chinese history.We read Kublai Khan's biography carefully, and we cannot say that he did not have such a heart.His "Xiajiang Jiangxi" accused the inflation of the Southern Song Dynasty as a tyrannical government. He also ordered that buying and selling were prohibited from overestimating prices, and taxes were also reduced.His prohibition of indiscriminate killing by the army, the abolition of torture since the Liao and Jin Dynasties, and the abolition of the brutal method of tattooing in the Song Dynasty all have the style of a reformer.Moreover, since the Southern Song Dynasty, some landlords have taken refugees as customers, treating them as both tenant farmers and serfs, and Kublai Khan also ordered to prohibit them.Marco Polo saw it with his own eyes, and he also said that Yuan Shizu paid attention to farming, sympathized with the poor, stockpiled famine and other good governance.If we look at the experience of a group of Han Chinese who held important positions under him, we can also see that they all have the ambition to support Mingzhu.Zhu Yuanzhang, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, did not like the Mongols. He made the "Da Gao" and condemned the inappropriateness of "Hu Yuan Zhi Zhu". , that is, Han Gaozu, Emperor Guangwu, Tang Taizong, and Song Taizu shared it together, and he himself went to salute before their spirits (his worship of these people was not blind. He also worshiped Emperor Wen of the Sui Dynasty before, but later removed his spirit seat ).

But Kublai Khan's aspirations are not necessarily his achievements; his deeds are not necessarily the traditions he left behind. After Kublai Khan ascended the throne, he had made important changes in his military command.He used military action as a political means, unlike Genghis Khan, who thought that conquest itself was an end.Yuan Shizu first defended from the south and attacked from the north, and personally led his troops to surround Karakoren.But even after Brother Aribu's problem was resolved, he never visited the southern front in person.Attacking the Song Dynasty was dominated by naval forces, and most of the military was Han people, and most of the ships were built in Bianliang.He originally planned to appoint Shi Tianze as commander-in-chief, but Shi resigned at an old age and replaced him with Boyan because Boyan was not addicted to killing people.Meng Ge's tactics have been abandoned so far.Kublai Khan did not take risks to attack fortifications, did not rush forward lightly, and did not specialize in destruction.His siege of Xiangfan took four and a half years (from the summer of 1268 to the beginning of 1273), and he did not take the risk of going deep with a large force until the important town above the Han River was captured.In these places, Kublai Khan always stated that when he planned the overall situation, he used the southern method to deal with the south; the northern method to deal with the north.Because of this, he himself became a shield, preventing the Mongols from poisoning the south.He clearly stated in his imperial edict to Gao Da, who is able to know political affairs: "To make the people work in peace and work hard, the Mongols don't know it." That is to say, he has clearly expressed his own position.However, he is a Mongol himself, and he wants to maintain the Mongolian language, advocate new Mongolian characters, and is unwilling to Sinicize like Tuoba Hong (see the chapter "Tuoba Clan of the Northern Wei Dynasty" in this book for details). Indispensable, and in order to maintain the status of the Great Khan (at least to prevent a competitor from using such a name), he had to win over the Mongols.The amount of gold and silk he gave to the princes and nobles below the "empress of the first dynasty" was rich, and they were not removed throughout their lives. They were also the product of this compromise policy.Regarding the matter of employing people, he told the Prime Minister An Tong in 1285: "The Mongols do not know about this matter, and there are no Han people around me, so I can decide for myself." But An Tong himself is still relatively open among the Mongols. I respect you.The emperor still wanted to talk to him like this, which shows that Kublai Khan wanted to consolidate his position and implement his own policies at the same time, often in a dilemma, not as complacent as we imagined.Marco Polo has mentioned that the majority of Han Chinese under the Mongol emperor were dissatisfied with his racial policies.The current American author John Dardess said that when he employs people, he divides them into four grades according to race, which is really a "transnational" method. Although he also has factual basis, this kind of statement is not easy for ordinary Chinese readers to accept.

However, with these contradictions, we have to understand that the two nations have different backgrounds in history, and in terms of the process of cultural development, their progress is also different. It is very embarrassing to exist under the same system. situation. The Semu people were brought into the trouble because most of them were natives from the hinterland of Central Asia, such as Su Ding'an in the past and Uyghur inscribed in the past. They were both famous for doing business and became agents of the Mongolians.However, the nomadic people's products are nothing more than livestock and horse fur.These products need to be able to be sold in the market favorably, relying solely on specialized merchants to make wholesale advances and preside over them on their behalf.Many Semu people have been in contact with the Mongols for a long time, and they also supply the items and weapons they need. After the Mongols occupied Central Asia, many of them became contract taxpayers in various places. They also entered the Middle Kingdom with the expansion of Mongolian military and political power. .

The above complicated factors could easily put the fiscal and taxation of the Yuan Dynasty at a disadvantage.We must not forget that the Mongols did not destroy the Jin Dynasty until 1234, Kublai Khan became emperor in 1260, his political organization was called the Yuan Dynasty in 1271, the Yuan army entered Lin'an in 1276, and the Southern Song Dynasty was wiped out in 1279. One heavy resistance, unified China.It has been nearly half a century since the development from North China to South China.And as we said earlier, the downfall of the Jin Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty was also related to their financial bankruptcy.Therefore, Kublai Khan has never received a systematic and effective fiscal and taxation organization.

Strictly speaking, the fiscal and taxation of the Yuan Dynasty had no organization and system. "Yuan Shi" "Shihuo Zhi" said: "The ones taken from Neijun are called Ding tax and land tax, which is imitated from the rent and mediocrity of Tang Dynasty. The ones taken from Jiangnan are called summer tax and autumn tax. Tang's two taxes." The so-called inner county is North China, and the principle is to collect taxes by household or by dime, with the same tax rate, regardless of the details of internal family assets.Although its households were further divided into four categories: "silk and silver general households" and "half-reduced households", and later divided into eight classes, the basic principle remains the same, that is, each class and each class still pay a certain amount of tax. It seems that the tax rate is very high, such as "Baoyin" four taels per household, which was later reduced to two taels.In fact, the registered households are not one household.When Dong Wenbing was the county magistrate, he "made the people live together, and the number of households was small".When the ancestors unified the country, the number of registered households exceeded 14 million.There are less than 2 million people in the entire north of the Yangtze River, about half of which are "five silk households". The taxes they pay have been allocated to the Mongolian nobles.

But the situation is not as simple as it is. According to Herbet Franz Schurmann's research, there was no effective central government in North China before Kublai Khan took control of it. , under the Mongolian aristocrats, after the establishment of the central government, the fiscal revenue was gradually concentrated.However, there are many special households who perform various obligations to certain nobles, and they have not been abolished yet.For example, in the mid-dynasties, there were 30,000 "pearl-digging households" owned by nobles. It seems that there were not really so many households buying pearls, but that they had the obligation to collectively worship jewelry.Another example is that many household registrations that were omitted from registration were found and classified as "gold diggers". It is not actually forcing them to work as miners, but imposing a financial obligation at a high tax rate.

The taxation in South China is based on the mu tax. After the Song Dynasty's accounts were taken over by Lin'an, they were all sent to the north.But in the Song Dynasty, its number was already blurred.In the Yuan Dynasty, except for the collection of real objects in the Yangtze River Delta, money was generally paid according to the basic account.Kublai Khan won Jiangnan suddenly within a few years, and he wanted to win over people's hearts, so the general conversion rate is beneficial to taxpayers.The beneficiaries are the landlords rather than the poor, and the tax paid by the southerners is lower than that of the northerners, which has also been repeatedly raised by officials with a sense of justice.

Under the leadership of Kublai Khan, Emperor Shizu of the Yuan Dynasty, a group of Semu people repeatedly advocated "calculating the money valley".Just like Ahema, a Huihe man, managed the money for the ancestors for 20 years. He increased new taxes, verified and found that they were concealed, and was credited to the emperor. , was dissatisfied by the regular courtiers, until he was murdered by Kublai Khan and the murderer was punished.It was not until the corruption and violation of the law by Ahema and his subordinates were exposed by everyone that the emperor ordered the tomb to be slaughtered.Shirong from the Han Dynasty and Sangge from Xifan also tried to strengthen financial control for Kublai Khan, but they also met a similar fate.On the day when Sang Ge was proud, he erected "monuments of virtue and government" for him everywhere. Later, when he was attacked by everyone, a close minister even said to Kublai Khan: "Today, the people are unemployed, thieves are rampant, and chaos is imminent. It is not urgent to punish them, but fear Worrying for Your Majesty." Yuan Shizu sentenced two people to death one after another, and their cronies were also punished, and even the Hanlin, which used to be the stele of Sang Gede's government, was also affected.Therefore, Zhao Yi accused Shizu himself of being "lust for money", because he "has been in power for more than 30 years, and he has been with these three people almost all the time." The editor of "Yuan History" included three people in the "Biography of Traitorous Officials".I read Chinese history, especially pay attention to decades of experience in financial history, and I feel that the fiscal and taxation of the Yuan Dynasty should be sorted out urgently, and the country's income can also be greatly increased.It's just that under the autocratic imperial power that day, presided over by two or three officials, there will be no good ending.At this time, "the world is in a state of turmoil, especially Jianghuai", and even "the people have attached to Guo Meitian, and they have taken it for themselves, bribed with currency internally, and punished with demonstrations externally".But in the final analysis, all these situations are still due to the fact that an accurate and verified accounting system cannot be produced on that day, so "lenient" means everything is sloppy, and "pragmatic" means that the cruelty of the lower end cannot be stopped. Lie is a great politician with flexible means, and he is eager to please all parties, so he does not hesitate to blame a few ministers in order to preserve his reputation.

This matter has not yet been settled. In 1291, Yushitai wrote: "Goukao Qiangu has been in the 30th year since the beginning of the central government (it should be more than 30 years), and Ahema and Sangge have managed to save the country. It’s unbearable, so it’s better to let it go.” The emperor’s decree was to “discuss and hear about it”, but there was no definite follow-up in the future. Therefore, the set of financial institutions left by Kublai Khan is neither realistic nor chaotic.As much was spent in the private pockets of princes and nobles, the revenue of the treasury was affected.Therefore, in addition to the above-mentioned three "treacherous ministers" increasing their financial resources through guerrilla warfare, they also relied on recruiting personnel and materials outside the law with a wartime posture.During the Zhengyuan period of the Central Committee, he did not issue too much banknotes, and the succeeding emperor could no longer maintain this record, which eventually turned into hyperinflation at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.This situation also explained the reason why the Yuan Dynasty could not become a dynasty with subjectivity, and it also left the background that Zhu Yuanzhang had to create his system with an iron fist.

Kublai Khan's religious policy has also been discussed by later generations. Now it seems that he does not believe that any religion holds absolute truth.All religions can be used as tools of administration.If monks, abbots, and monks are appointed as officials, the people who share their beliefs will be easy to govern.Therefore, in his early years, he sought scholars who "learned and learned", and sent people to search for "medicine, Confucianism, monks, and Taoism" everywhere.Liu Bingzhong had already become a monk, so he asked him to return to lay life, gave him a new surname, and attended meetings of the Privy Council (a military institution).When he met Marco Polo's father and uncle in 1265, he also begged them to tell the Pope to send a hundred Catholic elder monks to help him manage a growing empire.When the Southern Song Dynasty fell, it was the young emperor Zhao □ who descended to the Yuan Dynasty in Lin'an. He was less than 5 years old at the time, and later settled in Dadu, and was also taken care of by Kublai Khan.Zhao □ was 17 years old at that time, and Shizu ordered him to study Buddhism in Tubo. Unfortunately, we don't know the whereabouts of this person.

In his later years Kublai Khan changed his attitude towards all religions.The prestige of Lamaism is gradually rising.In fact, the Tubo lama monk Basiba was honored as the national teacher, and it happened in the first year of Zhongtong (1260), that is, when Kublai Khan began to be emperor.He once created the Mongolian alphabet for Kublai Khan and won the emperor's credit. He later resigned and returned to China.We have not yet been able to determine exactly why Lamaism was not prominent at the beginning and has become more and more important since then. "History of the Yuan Dynasty" explained the old legend: "When it came to the Western Regions, the ancestors thought that the land was vast and dangerous, the people were rough and aggressive, and Si You thought that they were gentle because of their customs. Lead it to the emperor's teacher." It may be said that it is important because of its practical effect.However, after the capture of Lin'an, Confucian scholars could not raise their heads, which may also be related.What can be noticed at this time is that the Han people who used to occupy important positions around him, such as Yao Shu, Xu Heng, Shi Tianze, Liu Bingzhong, and Dong Wenbing, all passed away around this time. Yannahan people are like entertaining the above ministers.He also repeatedly said that the officials in the south of the Yangtze River were too indiscriminate, and he ended up in the body of Kublai Khan. He never opened a course to obtain a scholar.In the administration of officials in the Yuan Dynasty, officials were more important than officials, which was also mentioned by Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang in his imperial system "Da Gao". There is another deed of Yuan Shizu, which is quite important in the development of history. This is his two attacks on Japan. The first expedition took place in 1274. At that time, the Southern Song Dynasty had not yet completely collapsed. The Yuan army was based in North Korea. 25,000 Mongolian and Korean soldiers participated in the battle, using 800 large and small ships.After occupying several coastal islands, they landed in Hakata Bay on the northern coast of Kyushu on November 20.The Japanese army has been waiting for reinforcements on the ground.The victory or defeat of the day was undecided, and the typhoon hit in the middle of the night, and the coalition forces decided to retreat. The order was disordered for a while, and as a result, 13,000 people were drowned in the sea. The second expedition took place in 1281. The Southern Song Dynasty had been wiped out, and the number of expeditionary forces increased greatly.The Mongol and Koryo armies, with 40,000 soldiers and 900 ships, marched from the north along the first route. The southern army was led by Fan Wenhu, a surrendered general from the Song Dynasty, with a total of 100,000 people, all of whom were Chinese.Its 3,500 ships set sail from the Zhoushan Islands. It was the largest sea-crossing force until the advent of modern world history.The two armies converged in the northwest corner of Kyushu.The coastal islands were occupied without resistance, and the expeditionary force landed in Hakata Bay.However, between the first battle and the second battle, Japan's Kamakura shogunate mobilized to build a long embankment at the landing site of the Yuan army, restricting the movement of troops on land, and the war was postponed from June to July. In the beginning of August, a typhoon struck again, and countless ships capsized. The generals of the expeditionary force fled back on giant ships a few days later. The abandoned soldiers were besieged by the Japanese army on the beach. Human beings were beheaded without distinction. So far, there are still so-called "Genguan Tombs" in Imazu and Shika Island in Hakata Bay. The "Japanese Biography" in "Yuan Shi" stated that "the provincial officials (Kublai Khan had established the Japanese province in advance, and its chiefs included Mongolian, Korean, Han, and southerners) disagreed with each other, so they all abandoned the army and returned."According to North Korean historical data, more than half of the soldiers were lost. "Yuan Shi" said that among the 100,000 people who participated in the Chinese side, only 3 people fled back, and even the names of these 3 people were recorded in "Yuan Shi".Japanese sources claim that the Mongolian light cavalry cannot be compared with Japanese armored soldiers, while the morale of the Chinese troops is low.These two battles also created the legend of the Japanese "Kamikaze". The Japanese beheaded the envoys sent by Kublai Khan twice, and defeated the Yuan army's expedition twice, so he had to prepare for the third expedition.For a while, the coasts of China and North Korea were busy building ships, sailors were recruited, pirates were recruited, prisoners were released from prison to serve, and troops were dispatched. In the winter of 1285, the government prepared to hoard 1 million shi from the Yangtze River to North Korea, and it seemed that the third offensive was imminent.However, the records of the "Benji of the Ancestors" at the beginning of the following year stated: "The emperor used Japan to be far away from the islands and barbarians, and the people were severely impoverished. Blair could not be without moral courage.However, his development outside the territory of China, such as in Annan and Burma, and the final attack on Java, also had no obvious results and results.In this, we can also see clearly: before the emergence of modern society, it was difficult for a land power to become a sea overlord at the same time.Since its mobilization is so costly and the people are forced to move in directions they are not accustomed to in their sphere of life, it is difficult to be sustainable. After we review this period of history, we feel that even after 700 years, it is still quite difficult to write a detailed biography including Kublai Khan's life today. His psychological factors are complicated, and some of them are not found in the original materials.However, it is not difficult to summarize Yuan Shizu's position in Chinese history.He, like other figures who created Chinese dynasties, solved most of the problems of the day, but also created some new problems (this is also the focus of big history, otherwise Chinese history would not run through the connections between the dynasties).Not only did he unify the north and south that had been divided since the late Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, but he also appeared as a conqueror, who was relatively stable and gentle.His nephew, Haidu, who was against him, had vowed with other princes not to change Genghis Khan's tradition.In this way, we can also say that Kublai Khan at least moderated the brutality of Mongolia's outward development.It's just that the Mongols think his sinicization is too much, while the Chinese think it's not enough.This is also a common system that can not be found in history to manage grassland culture and Chinese precision farming culture at the same time. Therefore, Kublai Khan made compromises everywhere, and the traditions he left behind have no real power.