Chapter 59 The Root of Disaster

Chapter 59 The Root of Disaster

Chapter 59 The Root of Disaster
Sun Keding sighed, "My dear brother, since you know who the enemy is, you must also understand why they are trying their best to stop you from escorting the tax silver this time."

Pei Yuan was silent for a while, and did not hide it, "It is because the taxes on the people in Jiangnan are too heavy. The current situation does not allow the court to open up new sources of revenue in Jiangnan."

Sun Keding shook his head. "It's not just about taxes."

Pei Yuan certainly knew that it was not just a matter of taxes. The land tax set in the Ming Dynasty was not high. It didn't make sense that the North could survive after years of war while the South could not.

There is actually a very important reason for this. Most of the land in Suzhou, Songjiang, Jiaxing and Huzhou belong to official fields confiscated when the Ming Dynasty was founded.

As a result of land nationalization, the money that the people in these places had to pay to the Ming court was divided into two parts: "less taxes" and "more rent."

If it were just taxes, the amount might not be large, but when the two are combined, the number is unacceptable to the people.

So the question is, did the people in the north have an easier life during the same period?
No.

However, in the social environment of land annexation, most people in the north paid their rent to landlords.

Therefore, under the same life pressure, the people in Jiangnan had a hard time living, so they cursed the Ming court and hated it for being too greedy.

When the people in the north became unlucky, they began to curse the landlords and hated them for being too greedy.

A landlord in the north was able to gain the hatred of more than ten households, and not only was he able to do so steadily without causing any big waves, but when he was in a bad mood, he would even take his dog to beat up the people.

Live this life with your hands on your hips.

But it was different in Jiangnan. There were tens of millions of people who hated the imperial court.

It would be too scary if hundreds of thousands or even millions of people were united in their hatred of the imperial court...

Of course, there is a problem here.

Since the lives of ordinary people all over the world were almost as difficult, why did officials in the south love the people so much that they not only created public opinion everywhere but also rushed to the front in everything? In the end, when people mentioned it, the first impression was that the Ming Dynasty was madly sucking blood from the south, causing the people in the south of the Yangtze River to live in misery.

This question is also very simple.

Because..., there are many officials in the South.

This conclusion may seem strange, but it is actually not normal at all.

Its causal chain is as follows.

There are many officials in the south, which leads to more people enjoying tax-free privileges. Coupled with land annexation and land donations simply for tax evasion, more and more people do not pay taxes, and the burden on those who pay taxes becomes heavier.

For example, there was the famous official Xu Jie, whose family owned 200,000 acres of land.

As polarization becomes more and more serious, even the privileged class who are well-fed and well-fed are beginning to be afraid.

——The people are suffering so much, something bad is going to happen!

They were afraid of the last straw that would break the camel's back, but they also did not want to see the loss of their greedily accumulated wealth, so they could only desperately oppose the court.

Therefore, this creates the illusion that officials in the south are particularly people-loving.

Some people may be puzzled. There are many people in the south who hold official positions. That is due to the ability of scholars. It is a bit far-fetched to blame the problem of economic structure on this.

Moreover, the marking standards have been the same for so many years. Sometimes, people in the North have to look for their own reasons. The number of Jinshi has not increased over the years. Have they reviewed seriously?
This issue came to light in the 30th year of the Hongwu reign, when a sensational case of the North and South Lists completely exposed the dark side of the matter.

At that time, the imperial court admitted 51 Jinshi candidates, and all of them were from the south. Zhu Yuanzhang was shocked and ordered a thorough investigation. The official in charge of the investigation came to the following conclusion.

The examiner was an upright gentleman. The reason why the northerners were not admitted was because they were not good enough. Not only were they not good at literature and science, but they also used taboo words. The deeper reason might be that the northerners had been assimilated for a long time, and their overall cultural level was not good.

This conclusion completely angered Zhu Yuanzhang.

Because this was not the time when Zhu Yuanzhang had just taken back the world from the Northern Yuan Dynasty, and this was not the first imperial examination held by the Ming Dynasty court.

In the previous five imperial examinations, the Ming court admitted a total of 826 Jinshi, of which 209 were from the north, accounting for about 25%. In these five imperial examinations, this ratio was relatively uniform.

At that time, the total population of the five northern provinces was more than 19 million, accounting for 27% of the world's total population.

In other words, although culture and education were not well developed in the North, with 27% of the population, about 25% of the candidates passed the imperial examinations for five consecutive years, and the overall level was still maintained around the national average.

Then in the 30th year of Hongwu, this number became zero.

So, did all the people in the five northern provinces die in the 30th year of Hongwu?
This is not an insult to the five northern provinces, but an insult to Zhu Yuanzhang's IQ. What a direct insult to Zhu Yuanzhang's IQ.

And what happened next was even more magical.

Zhu Yuanzhang died a year after the North-South Case. In the next exam, in the second year of Jianwen, the top three in the first class were all from Ji'an Prefecture in Jiangxi Province.

Then, in the second year of Yongle's reign after the North-South List case, not only the top three in the first class, the top scholar, but also the top four in the second class, were all from Ji'an Prefecture in Jiangxi.

So, in a liberal arts exam, is what is really being tested the talent of the scholar?

No, what is being tested is the right to interpret the national ideology.

It doesn’t matter who answers the questions; who marks the papers is the key.

So, the Nanbeibang case was a wrongful case?
If the North-South List case was an unjust case, the people who should really cry out for justice should be the people of Nanzhili, Huguang, Sichuan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, and Guizhou.

Because people from the five northern provinces fought hard and raised their share from 25%, which was originally based on their own abilities, to 40%.

The southerners in the above-mentioned provinces not only had to take the blame, but also got nothing in return, and a large portion of the quota was taken away by them.

In this way, the Jiangnan gentry, who controlled the infinitely expanding officialdom, enjoyed the pleasure of reproduction and growth while forcing the people under their rule to death, and at the same time frantically opposed the imperial court, fearing that the last straw would appear and break the camel's back.

So Pei Yuan clearly told Sun Keding his judgment.

The enemies of this expedition to escort the tax silver were everyone from the six ministries, nine ministers, and the cabinet who were born in Jiangnan, followed by the prefects and county magistrates along the way who were also born in Jiangnan, and then the Jinshi and Juren who had passed the imperial examinations in Jiangnan over the past hundred years.

As for the imperial court, they had no control over the huge land tax that was swallowed up by privileges, and they dared not provoke the people in the south of the Yangtze River who were full of hatred. They could only carefully target commercial taxes and mining taxes.

Business in the South was so prosperous that there was almost no commercial tax.

Minerals on the land were dug at random, and there was almost no mining tax.

By starting with these two things, we can always spare some money to deal with the increasingly huge expenses.

As a result, this wishful thinking was immediately hit hard, and the tax inspector in charge of escorting the tax silver was killed by the Plum Blossom Society that suddenly appeared.

And now, Pei Yuan is the one who bears the blame.

(End of this chapter)