If you are the emperor, the rebels will come to the city immediately, you need 1 million to quell the rebellion, and you have a lot of private money, enough to deal with it, what will you choose?
I think that as long as there is a normal person's thinking, they will not make a wrong choice, but in real history, there is such an emperor who made a wrong choice!
In 1644, the rebel army led by Li Zicheng quickly established power in Xi'an after the first month of the Jiashen year, and attracted a large number of people to join his ranks. In a short time, his army numbered in the millions. The army then captured Pingyang and Taiyuan and approached the Ming capital, Beijing.
Chuang Wang Li Zicheng.
In the face of this huge rebel army, Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty felt an unprecedented panic. In order to protect the safety of the capital, he hurriedly summoned Wu Sangui's father Wu and the ** of the military department and the household department to discuss countermeasures, and finally planned to transfer Wu Sangui outside the gate to the Guannei to quell the rebellion.
However, counterinsurgency requires a lot of military spending, and Wu Xiang calculated that if Wu Sangui is to be transferred into Beijing to protect the security of the capital, at least one million taels ** will be used as military expenses. However, due to the emptiness of the treasury and the lack of sufficient military salaries, only 400,000 taels** were available. Although he barely scraped together some silver taels through various means, Wu Sangui did not come to the rescue as promised, but turned to the Qing court, which made the Ming Dynasty quickly overthrow.
Wu Sangui and Gao Yuanyuan.
However, the strange thing is that after Li Zicheng captured Beijing, he actually found a lot of ** in the palace of Emperor Chongzhen. The specific amount of these ** has been mentioned before in the book "Chronicle of the Use by the Ministry of Labor" by Zhao Shijin, a member of the Ministry of Labor"The thief carried to Shaanxi gold and silver ingots on the number of the years, heard since the eight years of Wanli, the silver in the treasury has not been moved. There are more than 30,000,000 taels of silver and 1,500,000 taels of gold. "Such a huge amount of ** came from?
In 1627, when Emperor Chongzhen Zhu Youzhen succeeded to the throne, in order to save the country's expenses, he greatly abolished the border post station and exempted official taxes. He advocated that the masses be diligent and thrifty, and he himself set an example and was very simple. When his underwear was torn, he asked the maid to mend it and wear it again; Three meals a day are just a common thing, without royal luxury. However, he has a large amount of ** in his private pockets.
For the thrifty Emperor Chongzhen, letting him take out the silver he had worked so hard to accumulate as military pay was tantamount to stripping his flesh and drinking his blood. The military salary is imminent, but the treasury has no money, and Chongzhen is unwilling to pay for it himself, crying poor"The money has been exhausted. "
On this huge funding gap of 600,000 taels, Chongzhen started to think crookedly, he wanted the ministers to come up with this money. Going to call on the ministers to raise funds for this campaign, although Chongzhen is stingy, but his brain is not stupid, he knows that he is reluctant to pay, and it is even more difficult to let his subordinates pay, in order to set an example, he decided to take the lead in setting an example. So, he sent the eunuch Xu Gao to inform Zhou Kui, the father of Empress Zhou and the national abbot Jiadingbo, and asked him to donate 100,000 taels**, which means that the royal family has paid for it.
Unexpectedly, when the father-in-law saw his son-in-law's danger, he refused to lend a hand, claiming that he had no money, and the two sides were deadlocked, and the eunuch Xu Gao could only stand up and say a fair word:"The old emperor is so stingy, the court is in a difficult situation, and major events must not be done. Even if you are prolific, what good will you do later? "
A eunuch understands that the danger of the court is imminent, and as the emperor's father-in-law, he should bravely take responsibility, which is not only for the emperor to relieve the siege, but also for the world's major events.
When it came to this, Zhou Kui had no choice but to agree to take out 10,000 taels of silver. Everything is difficult at the beginning, and since someone has started, it will be easy to do the following. Seeing that the emperor's father-in-law had donated money, the others were embarrassed not to pay out of their pockets, so each family took out hundreds of thousands of taels to use as military salaries.
Everyone may already know the ending, in 644, Li Zicheng's army broke through Beijing and hanged himself in Coal Mountain, at the age of 34, reigning for 17 years.
In order to save this 1.5 million ** and lost the country that could not be estimated in silver, Emperor Chongzhen couldn't even calculate this simple account, and even said sadly to the civil and military officials a year before the fall of the Ming Dynasty:"I am not the king of the lost country, but you are the minister of the fallen country. I don't treat people well, so far today, why don't any of the ministers follow? "
Emperor Chongzhen was smart and studious since he was a child, but he expressed such feelings to the civil and military officials a year before the fall of the Ming Dynasty. Perhaps it can be seen from the fact that he forced the minister to donate money in order to save 1.5 million **.
February** Dynamic Incentive Program