The Ming Dynasty was notoriously corrupt.
There is a word called: collapse corruption, as the name suggests, the metaphor of corruption is like a landslide, the scale is very large. But in the Ming Dynasty, corruption was all-encompassing, and one word came up to describe it: air-like corruption! As the name suggests, corruption is as pervasive as air.
There were a total of 16 emperors in the Ming Dynasty, take the Chongzhen Dynasty as an example:
Shoufu Wen Tiren's home was stolen twice, but he handled it in a low-key manner and did not dare to squeak;
Chongzhen's father-in-law, Zhou Kui, has a family of **530,000 taels;
After Li Zicheng entered Beijing, Chen Yan, a university scholar, took the initiative to donate 20,000 taels;
After being imprisoned, Xiong Tingbi, the governor of Jiliao, took out 40,000 taels of ** to dredge the joints;
After Chen Xinjia, the secretary of the Ministry of War, was imprisoned, he took out a lot of money to ask the official to excuse him;
Wuqing Marquis Li Guorui's family has **400,000 taels;
Li Yuzhi, the secretary of the ministry, was tortured by Li Zicheng with a salary of 41,000 taels;
Shoufu Wei Zaode was copied by Li Zicheng with 17,000 taels of silver;
Shoufu Zhou Yanru was ordered to commit suicide by Chongzhen because of the corruption of his son, and the Zhou family returned 120,000 taels of stolen silver.
The above is only a few, in fact, even in the Ming Dynasty, even in the Hongwu Dynasty, which was the most powerful anti-corruption, corruption was extremely serious. In Guo Huan's case, the corruption of the ** group was as high as 24 million taels, and the country's annual income was only 29.43 million taels at that time, plus the amount of their corruption, the national income will directly increase by 80%.
As for the corruption of the Ming Dynasty, what we see can be described as shocking. But what I want to talk about today is not some cases of corruption in the Ming Dynasty, but some deeper content, which is likely to subvert some of your inherent cognitions.
After corruption appears, it is common sense to fight corruption, because if these moths are allowed to hollow out the country, the Ming Dynasty will be finished.
The emperors of the Ming Dynasty did the same.
Liu Jin was a eunuch during the Zhengde Emperor's period, and his power was monstrous, and Shangshu had to kneel down when he saw him. There were countless people who came to send money, and when Emperor Zhengde knocked him down, he personally took people to raid his home, and found millions of taels of gold and silver from his home, and there were counterfeit seals, jade belts and other contraband, a few feet high coral was extremely rare at that time, and Liu Jin's family copied out more than 20.
Here is a question: why did the emperor fight corruption, and what was the purpose of doing it?
This is a question, in fact, Emperor Wanli can tell you.
Feng Bao was the great eunuch during the Wanli Emperor's period, Zhang Juzheng was the first assistant of the cabinet, and the two formed a political alliance. The reason why Emperor Wanli raided Feng Bao and Zhang Juzheng after defeating them was because he heard that the two had a lot of money in their homes, and the final result was indeed the case, and Feng Bao's house found more than one million dollars.
And there is a tax supervisor named Chen Zeng who was reported, and his subordinates *** 400,000 taels. His subordinates were greedy for 400,000 taels, and Chen Zeng himself was naturally even more greedy. After his subordinates were executed, Chen Zeng was afraid of implicating himself, and he was so frightened that he died of illness. When Emperor Wanli learned of this, he immediately issued an order to send someone to search Chen Zeng's property and send it to the palace as soon as possible.
The money eventually went into the Wanli Emperor's inner treasury, that is, the emperor's private money.
It's strange here, the whole world belongs to the emperor, how can the emperor have private money? It turned out that the income of the Ming Dynasty was divided into two parts, one was owned by the emperor, and most of the expenses in the palace came from this, such as the clothing, food, housing and transportation of the palace personnel. One piece is the state revenue, which is used for the state's expenses.
The line here is, **first from the common people to scrape the people's fat and people's ointment, and then** was knocked down, and their money was taken by the Wanli Emperor. This kind of anti-corruption cannot be called anti-corruption, but plunder, which does not help the common people in any way, because the money looted from the common people ends up in the emperor's pocket.
This is not the case with Emperor Wanli alone.
In the second year of Chongzhen, Yuan Chonghuan guarded Liao and asked the imperial court for food, and Emperor Chongzhen had no money, so he convened the ministers to discuss countermeasures, but the household department had no money, and finally Chongzhen asked the criminal department to take the money, because the criminal department investigated the case, and the stolen money would be found.
Qiao Yunsheng, the secretary of the Criminal Department, didn't expect the emperor to still worry about the silver in the Criminal Department, so he hurriedly replied: Some received 40,000 yuan of stolen silver from Zhang Lingyun, and the rest had 40,000 sporadic silver, totaling 80,000 taels.
It can also be seen from here that the money confiscated by ** is actually an income of the Ming Dynasty.
* Knocked down, the stolen goods are confiscated, and the matter seems to be over.
In fact, the matter is not over, in the Ming Dynasty's anti-corruption matter, there are three parties: the people, the ** emperor. The biggest beneficiary of this is the emperor, because he has gained a good reputation for punishing corruption, gained support, and at the same time obtained the money scavenged from the people, fame and fortune. The biggest victims are actually the people, they have been looted by **, and they can't help but applaud for the fall of **, don't you know that they are the biggest victims.
We all know that after He Shen was knocked down, there was a folk song called: He Shen fell, Jiaqing was full. Pigs have to be fattened and killed, and ** must be greedy to check, so as to ensure that the money that finally reaches the emperor is the most.
And one more question: Why can you be corrupt?
*In essence**, his power comes from the appointment of the emperor, for example, Liu Jin's eunuch position was appointed by Emperor Zhengde, and Wei Zhongxian's position was appointed by Emperor Tianqi, and their power comes from the emperor, so they are also dependent on the emperor.
The reason why they are corrupt is because the emperor gives them power and does not supervise them effectively, so corruption happens naturally.
Therefore, the corruption of the Ming Dynasty came from the failure of the power and supervision mechanism given to them by the emperor.
So why can't the emperor effectively supervise? The reason is very simple, **centralization causes all the power to be in the hands of the emperor, and the emperor alone supervises so much in the world**, is it possible? Therefore, corruption in the Ming Dynasty could not be prohibited at all, and even if Zhu Yuanzhang adopted a cruel punishment such as peeling the skin and filling the grass, it could not prevent the emergence of corruption.
The Ming Dynasty was like this, under the slogan of anti-corruption, the money of the common people was taken away, **was knocked down, and the money finally got went into the emperor's pocket. Moreover, the people have to cheer for the emperor to defeat **, which is also the most ridiculous joke in the world. What's even more ridiculous is that the emergence of ** was caused by the emperor giving ** power and no effective supervision mechanism.
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