How did the Ming Dynasty fall?
The Ming Dynasty did not fall overnight. Today, we're going to look at this question from a financial perspective.
The expenses of the Ming Dynasty** were mainly paid by the silver taels of the Ministry of Officials, which were set up during the reign of Emperor Yingzong of the Ming Dynasty in order to limit budget revenues to 2 million taels in order to avoid excessive taxation of the common people. From 1442 to the first year of Orthodoxy (1567), these 2 million taels lasted for more than a hundred years.
It was not until the Longqing period that the income increased to 2.3 million taels. The largest increase was during the Wanli period; In the fourteenth year of Wanli (1583), Taicang's silver income reached 3.7 million taels. In the thirtieth year of Wanli (1602), this number rose to 4 million taels.
In the forty-eighth year of Wanli (1620), the fiscal revenue increased to 9.2 million taels due to the payment of the Liao salary in three installments. In the fourth year of Chongzhen (1630), at the suggestion of Liang Tingdong, the secretary of the Ministry of War, the salary was increased again, and the financial revenue increased to 12.88 million taels. In the fourteenth year of Chongzhen (1642), on the eve of the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the financial revenue exceeded 20 million taels, which was ten times that of the Yingzong period.
As can be seen from the above, the tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty mainly increased during the period from Wanli to Chongzhen. However, an unusual phenomenon is that although fiscal revenues increased significantly from Wanli to Chongzhen, there was an overall deficit. The deficit in the eleventh year of Wanli (1583) was 1.93 million taels, and in the second year of the Apocalypse (1622) the deficit was about 1.01 million taels.
Increasing revenues on the one hand and deficits on the other can only mean faster growth in spending.
Not only that, but the Ming Dynasty also accumulated a lot of wealth in the early years of Wanli.
Taicang Silver has been implemented since its establishment"Three provinces and one use"policy, that is, two-thirds of the money should be used and one-third of the money should be saved. In the fourteenth year of Wanli, there are still about 6 million taels ** for maintaining the old treasury, in the thirteenth year of Wanli, the Nanjing Internal Affairs Office also used 15 million taels **, and at this moment, the Taicang Temple Terracotta Division, which is responsible for raising horses, has also seen an amazing surplus, the state allocated some pasture land for raising horses, and raising horses can generate income, such as turning some pastureland into farmland for rent, etc., saving a lot of silver, in the statistics of Wanli 13 years, Wanli Temple actually saved 10 million taels of silver.
In other words, during the reign of Emperor Wanli, the state still saved more than 17.5 million taels, how surprising is this figure? From Jiajing to the early years of Wanli, the state spent about 4 million taels per year, which means that the savings of the Ming Dynasty were enough for the state to spend four years.
The country has a lot of savings, but in the last year of Wanli, not only did the savings run out, but Liaohua's Yulu had to be increased in three times, what happened in the middle?
In the middle of this period, the famous took place"The Three Great Marches of Wanli": The Ningxia Rebellion, the Baozhou Rebellion, and the War to Aid the Japanese Invaders, which cost a total of 11.7 million taels, depleted most of the country's savings. In the war of aggression against China, which suffered the greatest losses, the Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi's aim was to reach the capital of the Ming Dynasty, not to fight.
The wedding of the emperor's eldest son cost 11.84 million taels. Yes, the wedding of the emperor's eldest son than that"Three expeditions"More money spent. At that time, the three major halls were destroyed and had to be rebuilt. It cost more than 2 million taels to clean the palace alone.
Since not all expenditures had already been budgeted, additional expenditures were required and savings from previous years were fully utilized.
And the emperor at that time was also very tired, Wanli's son Fu Wang got married, the jewelry alone was as high as 300,000 taels, and the jewelry for the prince's wedding was as high as 700,000 taels, and all the money was given to the household, and the household had no choice but to negotiate with the Wanli emperor.
The emperor of the Ming Dynasty had his own silver treasury, called the inner treasury, and every year the silver collected from all over the country was converted into silver taels and sent to Beijing to become the emperor's income. Wanli felt that it was not enough, so he asked the household department to allocate 200,000 taels to him every year, but it was still not enough. On the concubine's birthday, Wanli once received a reward of 200,000 taels, which was certainly not enough.
But what if that's not enough?
Wanli then considered mining and raising taxes, and the emperor bypassed the cabinet and the six ministries and directly sent eunuchs to various places to mine and collect taxes. In the twenty-eighth year of Wanli, the governor Wang Dewang reported that these eunuchs had collected a total of 2.56 million taels**. If you estimate according to this figure, the income in twenty years may be as high as 50 million taels.
With so much money raised, isn't the problem of lack of money solved? Not really. Emperor Wanli raised a lot of money, but because of this, the country's income fell. Regarding this issue, Zhu Geng, minister of the first auxiliary department, said: Since the introduction of the mining tax, many local supplies have been encroached upon, salt has been congested, and tariffs have been reduced, and in less than 10 years, the loss has reached 4.6 million yuan.
In other words, the household department was supposed to collect the money, but Wanli sent a eunuch to collect the money. Household income has decreased, but household expenditure has not. Take the dragon sons and grandsons of the Zhu family as an example, they are a parasitic class that is constantly reproducing. In the forty-first year of Jiajing, the bureau paid four million stone in taxes to Beijing every year, which was the country's annual income, but the descendants of the Zhu family could get 853 stone rumi, and in the thirty-second year of Wanli, due to the increase in the number of clans, the annual rumi reached an astonishing 243,770,000 stone. Faced with such staggering figures, the Ming Dynasty had to reduce the amount of rice and grain paid to the royal family. As a result, the deficit of the household sector is increasing almost every year.
Wanli transferred all the money collected to the inner treasury, the inner treasury was very full, and the war in Liaodong in the forty-sixth year of Wanli was tense, and a group of ministers asked the Wanli Emperor to take money from the inner treasury to pay salaries. Emperor Wanli symbolically took 100,000 taels of silver, of which 59,000 taels were stored for too long, or black as lacquer, or broken as earth.
There is no way to verify how much money is in the Wanli Inner Treasury, but there are a few details that can be mentioned: the Wanli Emperor died earlier than three days, and the first assistant of the cabinet used his authority to issue an edict to pursue him, and the Inner Treasury received 2 million taels ** as the salary of the Liaodong army. Emperor Tianqi reigned for seven years, the war in Liaodong was in full swing, from Liaoyang to Nurhachi Guangning, the military salary was basically supported by the inner treasury, see the inner treasury silver.
The financial collapse of the Ming Dynasty occurred ten years after Wanli, when the state still had savings, but the profligacy of the Wanli Emperor, the huge salaries of the three wars of Wanli, and the huge expenditures of the imperial family eventually destroyed the Ming finances. The escalation of the Liaodong War depleted the Ming Dynasty's fiscal surplus, eventually leading to the collapse of the Ming Dynasty's finances and triggering a series of chain reactions that eventually led to the demise of the Ming Dynasty. Ming dynasty.
Ming and Qing dynasties. Ming Dynasty - Table of Contents.
Prev: The Ming Dynasty was so anti-corruption, don't worry about it.