Chapter 40 Section Four: Two Incentives for Subjugation

It seems that it is the hope of the poor people in the world, feeling the reincarnation of heaven, and the Taizu Emperor Hongwu was born in Zhaofu Village, Mingguang Town, Anhui Province.This pilgrim was born, and according to the memories of the villagers later, he was also a red light (but no one recalled it before Zhu Yuanzhang became emperor).This Emperor Hongwu was heroic, brave, wise and generous. Since ancient times, the emperors were not as good as this emperor. He led twenty-four strong generals and conquered fifteen provinces.This son of heaven sweeps away the world, quiets the Central Plains, the name of the country is Daming, the capital is Nanjing, the head of the sixteenth dynasty emperors, and the foundation of the emperor for three hundred years.The difference between this son of heaven and the emperors of previous dynasties is that he has a pure background, so he can connect with the peasants, worry about what the peasants are anxious about, and think about what the peasants think.

When working hard at the bottom of the chaotic and corrupt society at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, like all farmers, vaguely longed for and described the appearance of an ideal society.And when he lived in Jiuchong, Zhu Yuanzhang discovered that the ideal blueprint in the heart of an emperor coincided so seamlessly with the dreams of the peasants. He found that the realization of the "farmer's ideal" is where the interests of the royal family lie.Not long after he came to the throne, he described the ideal society he wanted to build in government documents: "People have fields to cultivate, and they live and work in peace; Mutual aid and mutual aid; light corvee and low collection, riches and people; take advantage of the time to plant walls and pay taxes."

Looking through the thick Chinese history, he found that there were nothing more than two reasons that led to the demise of the dynasties: One is the combination of landlords and officials, land annexation and political corruption, leading to a widening gap between the rich and the poor, causing officials to force the people to rebel;Therefore, in order to ensure that the country is in the hands of Zhu's descendants from generation to generation, these two phenomena must be eradicated. In response to the second inducement, he carried out drastic political reforms with a boldness beyond the reach of the emperors of all dynasties, abolishing the two highest civil and military officials, the prime minister and the governor, and dividing the power of the prime minister into six departments; Divide one into five, and set up the Five Armies Dudufu.And from the system, let the various power departments check each other, no one can pose the slightest threat to the imperial power alone.In Zhu Yuanzhang's own words: "Today, we have dismissed the prime minister and set up five government offices, six ministries, the Metropolitan Procuratorate, the General Administration Department, and Dali Temple to manage the general affairs of the world. So it is safe. In the future, when the descendants become emperors, they will not be allowed to set up a prime minister. If the ministers dare to make a memorial, the civil and military officials will immediately impeach the criminal, Ling Chi, and the whole family will be executed."

After such a major operation, the bureaucratic hierarchy has been greatly simplified. All officials, big and small, are directly responsible to the emperor, and every official runs errands directly for the emperor.He can control it to the end without leaving any dead ends.Zhu Yuanzhang directly observed the working conditions of his people in the fields through this thin and almost transparent bureaucratic network, which greatly improved the sense of security of being an emperor. In contrast, it is much more difficult to eliminate the first trigger.Because land annexation and bureaucratic corruption are almost like water flowing downhill, which is an inevitable law of the development of traditional society.

The ignorant are fearless, Zhu Yuanzhang does not lack the courage to challenge the law.Annexation is due to the greed of the landlord class, and corruption is due to the nature of the bureaucratic class.For the fundamental interests of the empire, he must crack down on the landlord class and the bureaucratic class.Based on this idea, the early Ming Dynasty showed a sandwich style of governance. The emperor and the peasants at the bottom joined hands to jointly squeeze the living space of the middle class of society, that is, the landlords and officials, thus creating a novel landscape unprecedented in Chinese history.

Under the guidance of this idea, Zhu Yuanzhang carried out an incomplete land reform, using administrative power to deal a heavy blow to the interests of the landlord class, almost wiped out the big landlords in the country, and made the land of farmers all over the world roughly equal.He launched the most severe corruption punishment campaign in human history. For thousands of years, officials who have been accustomed to riding on the heads of the people have become the most unlucky profession in the empire. They were once swept away by the mass movement. He cared for the common people, worked hard on state affairs, spared no effort to develop production, lightly paid taxes, and continued to provide disaster relief. Under his governance, the problem of food and clothing for the people at the bottom was effectively solved.He established guidelines and disciplines, so that the people of the whole country have rules to follow and rules to abide by, and people of every class know how they should live.

He severely cracked down on local hooligans and punished idlers and idlers, making "hooligans" almost extinct in Zhu Yuanzhang's era.He also carried out creative ideological education actions, vigorously changed customs, and reversed the bad social atmosphere.He even tried to promote primary cooperatives in the countryside and implement a certain degree of planned economy. Under his rule, most of the officials in the empire were honest and did not dare to treat the common people lightly. orderly. Generally speaking, if an emperor is not stupid or insane, and doesn’t ask farmers why they don’t drink meat porridge when they can’t eat; he can be mentally normal, and he won’t be obsessed with "secret dramas" all day long or cut open pregnant women’s stomachs to see the fetuses; The peasants can basically be satisfied with the emperor if they can control the government by themselves, instead of not going to court for decades or handing over power to eunuchs.And Zhu Yuanzhang actually exceeded all the dreams of the farmers.Isn't it the greatest happiness for farmers to be born in the era of Zhu Yuanzhang?