Chapter 1: The Ming Dynasty Royal Family is Worse than Dogs

Chapter 1: The Ming Dynasty Royal Family is Worse than Dogs

Chapter 1: The Ming Dynasty Royal Family is Worse than Dogs

Pingyang Prefecture, Shanxi.

I don’t know when it started, but winter is coming earlier and earlier and the weather is getting colder.

Compared with Taiyuan Prefecture in the north, snow in Pingyang Prefecture has always fallen a little later, usually after the Frost Descent.

But just after the Mid-Autumn Festival, snowflakes began to fall intermittently from the sky and the temperature dropped suddenly.

Zhu Shenzhui was walking towards home with one foot high and one foot low. Because it was the first snow, the snowflakes on the road, which were not very good to begin with, quickly melted into snow water, making the ground muddy.

As the sky gradually darkened, there were fewer pedestrians on the street, and the bustle of the day was about to end.

In inconspicuous places, ragged refugees and beggars huddled against the corners and hid. Just like the Ming Dynasty today, it looked so prosperous and powerful, but in fact it had already been riddled with holes.

Zhu Shenzhui has been in this world for several years.

A member of the Ming royal family, he was the grandson of Zhu Meiwan, Prince of Jiaocheng, and the second son of Zhu Jihui, the second Prince of Jin. He was given the title of Lieutenant of the Auxiliary State. According to the family tree, he was of the same generation as the current emperor, the Wanli Emperor.

This is Zhu Shenzhui's current identity. Compared with his previous life, this identity cannot be said to be noble. Unfortunately, after Zhu Shenzhui understood this era, he was completely speechless about his identity.

Logically speaking, as a member of the royal family, Zhu Shenzhui has been a superior person since the day he was born. According to the royal family's title, even if he was only a low-level lieutenant of the auxiliary state, his rank was fifth grade.

People often talk about the seventh-rank county magistrate, but in fact, in the Ming Dynasty, people from the seventh rank could be county magistrates, so what is the concept of the fifth rank? According to the level conversion, it is equivalent to the deputy department level.

When Zhu Shenzhui first worked in the government, the director of their county bureau was only at the section level, which was two levels lower than the county magistrate's rank of director, not to mention the high-ranking deputy director.

Now, Zhu Shenzhui, who had not even been a deputy section chief in his previous life, has become a deputy director in a blink of an eye. Isn't this a good thing? But the fact is not so at all. Being a royal family member in the Ming Dynasty is the most unfortunate thing in the entire feudal dynasty.

During the era of Zhu Yuanzhang, the royal family of the Ming Dynasty had the best days. The princes and ordinary royal family members at that time lived a really good life. They had soldiers and territories, as well as generous treatment from Zhu Yuanzhang. They were almost local emperors.

Unfortunately, the good days did not last long. Zhu Yuanzhang died and the young and inexperienced Jianwen came to power as emperor, and the world changed.

The bunch of liars around Jianwen can only brag and talk big, and are incompetent at everything. But Jianwen just likes to listen to them. Jianwen, who has been deceived, wants to become a sage king, so he starts to reduce the power of the princes and sharpen his knife to attack his uncle.

In just one year, the princes including the King of Zhou, the King of Qi, the King of Xiang, the King of Dai, and the King of Min were imprisoned or killed by their nephew. For a time, the people in each princedom were in panic and everyone was in danger.

Next, Jianwen prepared to attack the most powerful Prince of Yan, Zhu Di.

Zhu Laosi was also a ruthless person. Before Jianwen could take action, he pretended to be crazy, with disheveled hair and nonsense. In the summer, he lit the stove and covered himself with a quilt. He also snatched food from people on the street... I heard that he even ate dog shit?
To put it bluntly, this is nothing new. Zhu Laosi is not the first one, and he will definitely not be the last.

Sun Bin, the one whose knee was cut off, did this. Song Jiang, the brother of Song Gongming, did this. After Zhu Laosi, Tang Bohu, the erotic painter, did this. Even Wu Sangui, who was only seven years old at the time, did this before he fell out with Kang Mazi decades later.

The trick was an old one, but it worked well and it actually fooled the young Jianwen.

Just when Jianwen thought that Zhu Laosi was crazy and screaming like a madman, who would have thought that Zhu Laosi would take advantage of Jianwen's carelessness and find an opportunity to suddenly rebel. He raised the banner of "Surrendering the Nanxi" and rolled up his sleeves to prepare for a fight with his nephew.

When Jianwen heard that Zhu Laosi had raised an army, he was stunned at first, then he burst into laughter and applauded.

Rebellion? Oh my goodness, Fourth Uncle, you are so good! I was originally thinking about how to deal with you if you were crazy, how to put a hat on you, and now you jump out? Isn't this courting your own destruction?
How many people do you have, Zhu Laosi? Only a mere 100,000. How many soldiers do I have, nephew? A full 600,000! 600,000 versus 100,000, the advantage is mine!
Jianwen immediately ordered troops to quell the rebellion, intending to take this opportunity to kill his disobedient and iron-headed uncle.

Unexpectedly, Li Jinglong, the first generation of the god of war who was carefully selected by Jianwen, led the army to the battle. Not only did he fail to defeat Zhu Di, but he was defeated again and again. The 600,000-man army was wiped out in the blink of an eye. Zhu Di's troops became more and more numerous, and he actually fought from north to south to Nanjing City in one breath. When Zhu Di's troops entered the city, Jianwen still did not come back to his senses. He racked his brains to figure out how his 600,000-man army was defeated by Zhu Laosi's 100,000 men, and how the other side could break the so-called impregnable capital.

But it was too late to think about it now. Jianwen had no chance to escape. Zhu Laosi's troops had already entered the city and surrounded Nanjing. Jianwen had no private plane to escape from the sky. Helplessly, Jianwen, filled with grief and anger, could only take his wife and children and burn himself to death.

After Jianwen's death, Zhu Laosi came to power and became emperor.

I originally thought that after becoming the emperor, Zhu Laosi would treat his uncles better than his young and naive nephew. After all, you are brothers. And the reason why you, Zhu Laosi, went to Jingnan was because your nephew had forced you to do something. Put yourself in his shoes. Now that you are the emperor, you will definitely set things right, right?
Unfortunately, ideals are beautiful, but reality is cruel.

To put it in one sentence, you princes and royal family members are really overthinking. Why don't you think about how Zhu Laosi came to power? How did he succeed in the Jingnan Rebellion?
The thing that those who rebel and come to power fear the most is that others will follow their example, and Zhu Laosi is no exception.

After ascending the throne, Zhu Laosi treated his brothers and nephews even more ruthlessly than Jianwen. Not only did he quickly and efficiently strip away all the power of the princes, but his methods of controlling the royal family were also the most severe in all dynasties.

In order to prevent any member of the royal family from emulating him and rebelling successfully in the future, Zhu Laosi directly kept all the royal family members in captivity, and also ordered local government, the Embroidered Uniform Guard and other institutions to supervise and monitor each other closely. Once there was any sign of trouble, the punishment would be extremely severe.

In this way, since the Yongle period, the Ming royal family has become a group of "pigs" kept in a pen. Apart from having the title of royal family and living on the salary provided by the court, they can do nothing else.

If it were just like this, it would be fine. After all, it would be fine to just lie down and get paid without working, eat and drink, hug beauties and concentrate on making villains. But as time went by, the royal family had more and more children, and the amount of salary given to the royal family by the court became larger and larger every year.

The landlords didn't have any surplus food either! The same was true for the Zhu family.

Therefore, starting from the Hongzhi period, the Hongzhi Emperor, who was known as a benevolent monarch, took action against the royal family and announced that the royal family's salaries would be cut in half. The so-called "cut in half" means a salary discount in layman's terms.

At first, the rule set by Zhu Yuanzhang was that the royal family's salary should be paid in the form of rice. Since the half-and-half rule was implemented, only half of the rice that should have been paid was received. What should be given for the other half? In the form of banknotes!

Baochao was quite valuable in the early days of Zhu Yuanzhang, but its value plummeted after it was over-issued. By the time of Zhuge Liang, the credit of Baochao was on the verge of bankruptcy. After Zhu Yuanzhang came to power, although Baochao was still considered an official currency, in fact, no one used it.

From Zhu Laosi to Zhu Pangpang, the Cricket Emperor, the second generation God of War Baozong, and then to the good guy Hongzhi who came to power, decades have passed in the blink of an eye, and the treasure notes have become completely waste paper.

The so-called half-and-half of the original salary is equivalent to a "fracture" of the salary. The other half of the treasure notes are useless. It's too hard to use them to wipe your butt. And according to the regulations, half-and-half refers only to princes. If you are a county prince or a royal family below the county prince, you can't even get half. It's directly cut to 40%.

That was not all. When the Taoist priest Jiajing, who was keen on spiritual practice, came to power, he went even further. First, he reformed the salary system of royal family members by paying them in silver. However, due to the high price of grain and the low actual purchasing power of silver, the silver ratio stipulated by the court was equivalent to another salary discount on the original basis.

The discount was not too big this time, and although there was a loss, the royal family could barely accept it. But who would have thought that the Taoist priest would calculate his own assets and feel that this was not enough. One year before the most famous Hai Rui petition in Chinese history, in order to solve the serious problem of the court not being able to pay wages, the Taoist priest once again took action against the royal family, and this time it was even more ruthless.

Two policies were directly introduced. The first policy was to raise the age of royal family members who could enjoy benefits from the original ten to fifteen. The second policy was to give three percent of the original color and seven percent of the discounted currency.

These two policies directly reduced the royal family's salaries again on the original basis, from 40% to 30%. The increase in age also saved a lot of time for young royal family members to receive salaries, thus once again stripping the royal family of their money.

The two tricks played by the Taoist priest made the royal family groan. Life is already hard for everyone, and you old man is doing this? Do you want us to live?
Fortunately, Hai Rui wrote a letter to him the following year, scolding him harshly. Perhaps the scolding was too harsh, which caused him to lose his mind and become obsessed. In the end, he failed to succeed in cultivating the Tao. He finally made it to the end of the year, but suddenly died.

When the Taoist priest made a noise, the clan members appeared to be sad but secretly clapped their hands and cheered. It was a blessing that Hai Rui had scolded the old man to death. If he had continued to do this, everyone would have had a hard time living.

But who would have thought that the peaceful days would not last for a few years, and when the fat boy Wanli came to power, he started to trouble the royal family again.

In the eleventh year of the Wanli reign, the Fatty issued an edict announcing a quota system for the royal family. This system was called "permanent quota", which meant that the imperial court would no longer pay salaries to the vassal states based on the number of people, but would directly pay according to the total amount specified by each vassal state. No matter whether the population of the royal family in each vassal state increased or decreased, they would be given money according to the specified quota every year. If there was more or less, they would have to figure out a way to get it themselves, and the imperial court would no longer care.

As a result, life of the Ming royal family became increasingly difficult.

After all, high-ranking royal family members, such as princes and dukes, have different statuses, and they have the right to distribute real estate and vassal states, so the impact is not big. But ordinary royal family members are having worse New Years every year, especially low-ranking royal family members like Zhu Shenzhui. It is said that their lives are not even as good as those of ordinary people!
(End of this chapter)