How corrupt was the late Ming Dynasty? If the country is like this, it will not die

The fall of the Ming Dynasty was caused by a number of factors, one of which was corruption. It can be seen from the degree of corruption in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.

Xu Guangqi said that there were 10,600 militiamen in the Changping Plain in Tongzhou, but there were actually only 6,837 people who fled to help Liao, and 839 new people were recruited, and a total of 7,676 soldiers from the three battalions needed to eat food and pay military salaries. However, among these more than 7,000 people, the soldiers are divided into three classes, and there is not a single high-class soldier, so only 715 middle-class and upper-middle-class soldiers and 1,193 middle-class soldiers can only be selected from the middle and lower ranks, and these people can still be trained. Middle-class and low-class 2122, barely able to do some chores at the moment. The rest can't be used....What is an inferior soldier who cannot be used? That is, there are more than 7,000 soldiers in the three battalions, and more than half of them are old, weak, sick and disabled.

The factory warehouse took out the armor. Helmets are available. Its dark armor can be worn to perform exercises, and it is slightly accustomed to carrying heavy loads, and there is no one to worry about anything. The device aborts are available with steel quick knives. The rest can only be used by its ministers, such as the length of the hammer, the palladium, the gold, the sickle, the length of the stick, etc., are not prepared at all. In addition to borrowing the value of 1,200 miscellaneous wooden sticks purchased near the ground for temporary use. There are Henan leading troops to garrison Ding Lu to donate more than 100 taels. The officials bought guns and sticks in Song County and other poles did not arrive.

Firearms, such as bead guns, Franc machines, three-eyed guns, etc., most of them are blown and dare not be used. This is the case with firearms. Militarily speaking, systemic collapse corruption is staggering. The grassroots ** and the officers eat vacancies, make up the blame for the old and weak, make shoddy armaments, and deduct the ICBC. This kind of thing was very common in the late Ming Dynasty, and this is just one of them. The Ming army everywhere is like this, and it is impossible to be defeated.

In addition, Li Zicheng's Dashun regime was largely run by collecting stolen goods rather than taxing peasants. That is, the stolen money of the gentry class alone could sustain the running of an empire's court and its army. It can be seen that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the wealth was in the hands of the upper gentry and vassal kings, and the common people had no money in their hands, so they rebelled, and the state had no military funds in its hands and could not defeat the rebels.

In the war against Manchuria from Wanli to the early Chongzhen period in the later period, there was a huge corruption and a whole set of interest networks. Whether it is from the financial appropriation of the first imperial court, or the manufacture and distribution of military equipment, there is a large amount of corruption. The Ming Dynasty, which repaired fortresses, recruited soldiers, and repaired armor, planned to kill Manchuria alive with strong national strength, was bound to lose every battle, and if the battle was lost, the fortress was destroyed, a lot of ordnance was lost, and a lot of soldiers died, disappeared, and captured.

Then the cycle began, and the imperial court spent money to recruit and train soldiers, manufacture armor, weapons, and firearms, and then send them to Liaodong to continue to work. As the front line, and the military cantonment failed, everything had to be transported from the rear, which was too great a drag on the finances. After Xiong Tingbi passed through Liaodong, he opened a strategy of consuming the dead with a strong city. Xiong, who passed through Liaodong for the first time, took a series of measures after the new defeat of Kaitie, one of which was to severely punish the officer, and the guerrilla Chen Lun alone paid 3240 taels of military salaries, and Xiong beheaded him. Xiong Tingbi warned and put forward practical suggestions many times before the post-Manchurian Jin Xingbing, but none of them were adopted.

It can be seen that Xu Jie, a powerful minister in the Longqing period of Jiajing, is an expert in collecting money, and he has been up and down for decades, because he has annexed too much land, and was sniped by Hai Rui after retirement, and was found out by Hai Rui to occupy 2400 hectares of land and spit out part of it. His sons also ran rampant in the countryside and occupied a lot of land. Although he defeated Yan Song and smeared a lot of light on his face, he was unforgivable for this. In the last two months of Wei Zhongxian's jumping, in the last two months, Lao Wei only used the trick of sealing his sons and nephews to collect more than 50,000 taels of legal wealth, and the acres of land were 2,000 hectares. Although he was liquidated after his death, the head of Wei was really beautiful at that time.

In 1643, the total tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty was 3.3 million taels. In this year, the officers and soldiers of the three sides of Shaanxi were annihilated, and Li Zicheng captured Xi'an. On the eighth day of the first month of 1644, 100,000 Dashun peasant troops left Xi'an and marched directly to Beijing. Chongzhen wanted to transfer Wu Sangui and Guan Ning's army to guard Beijing. However, the required military salary is 1 million taels**. At this time, Chongzhen, who was shy in his pocket, only had 40,000 taels of silver in his pocket. Chongzhen, who was at a loss, set his eyes on the pockets of his courtiers.

donated money, and in the end only raised 250,000 taels of silver. Chongzhen's father-in-law, Zhou Guozhang, donated 3,000 taels of silver. After Li Zicheng entered Beijing, an edict suddenly appeared, "torture and loot", which directly pointed at the richest class of the Ming Dynasty, and was denounced by Chongzhen as a civil and military who should be killed. Since the Ming ** people have obtained ill-gotten gains, then the Da Shun Army for the Heavenly Dao has the obligation to force the Ming ** people to spit it out. Under torture and beatings, Da Ming ** spit out a total of 70 million taels of **.

The Ming History Chronicle records that Zhou Guozhang Zhou Kui, who had only donated 3,000 taels of silver, was tortured by the peasant army to copy 520,000 taels of silver, and there were "hundreds of thousands of precious coins". If the country is like this, it will not die

In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the development of the commodity economy stimulated the greed of the ruling class, accelerated political corruption, and the legal system became increasingly lax, and government was made by bribery. Many officials are lazy in government affairs, only to indulge in pleasure and indulgence, and to be proud of their fame and reputation, but the political style is corrupt, and the rivers are declining. At that time, from the cabinet chief assistant to the ordinary officials, except for some honest and promising people who cared about the people's welfare, most of them were greedy for ink and pleasure.

The poorer you are in the war, the more you have to fight, and the poorer you are. Reaching the decay level, the Ming Empire is basically defeated.

Lao Zhu frantically suppressed corruption during his reign, but he didn't know that the Ming Dynasty he established also died due to corruption.