During the Zhu Yuanzhang period, all large, medium and small battles had basically ended by this time.

After the battle is over, let's talk about something else.

Let’s talk about the issue that concerns us all the most.

salary.

I have written before about the salaries of officials in the Yuan Dynasty.

In the Ming Dynasty, especially during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, the salaries of officials were very low.

It's so low that it's pitiful, and it's so low that it's heartbreaking.

With this salary, let alone treating guests to dinner, it is very difficult to support myself and my family.

I personally believe that the reason why officials were corrupt during the Zhu Yuanzhang period had a lot to do with low wages.

But what I want to talk about today is not them.

But another group of people.

They are neither officials nor meritorious officials, but their identity and status are much higher and more noble than all officials and meritorious officials.

They are descendants of the Zhu family.

That is, all the blood relatives of the Zhu family.

Zhu Yuanzhang's miserable experience of poverty since he was a child told him that the life of eating chaffy vegetables was enough for him alone. He could be poor and tired, but he could never let his descendants suffer the same hardship.

So the old man thought of a trick.

Zhu Yuanzhang issued an administrative order.

All descendants of the Zhu family do not need to work or work. As long as they reach the age of ten, they will begin to receive their salary, and all expenses will be borne by the state.

Let's take a look at a few examples.

On the day of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zhu Yuanzhang determined the specific annual salary for his descendants.

The eldest son, Zhu Biao, was granted the title of Crown Prince and received an annual salary of 50,000 dan in grain.

The second son, Zhu Xi, was granted the title of King of Qin, with an annual salary of 50,000 dan of grain.

The third oldest, Zhu Fan, was granted the title of King of Jin, with an annual salary of 50,000 dan in grain.

…

The list is very long, including both men and women, and there are many of them.

It is worth mentioning that Zhu Yuanzhang had a total of 26 sons and 16 daughters.

As long as the sons over ten years old are all crowned kings, everyone will start to receive wages when they are crowned kings.

Although his daughters were not qualified to be crowned kings, they were all crowned princesses and their salaries were not low, 10,000 shi of food per year.

More importantly, this salary can be hereditary.

In other words, if his sons and daughters die, the salary will naturally be inherited by his grandchildren.

And so on.

Continuous cycle.

It should be emphasized that these wages are not fixed. As the country's income increases, their wages will continue to increase. According to historical records, during the Zhu Yuanzhang period, the prince who was given a salary of 10,000 dan per year, by the Jiajing period,

The salary finally increased to 870,000 stone.

This is a terrifying number.

In addition to the above immediate family members, there are many other people on this salary list.

Including but not limited to his son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, grandson, nephew, niece, nephew, niece, etc. many people.

If you think the list ends here, you are totally wrong.

While announcing the order, Zhu Yuanzhang had not forgotten another group of people.

the descendants of these descendants.

For these people, Zhu Yuanzhang also shared the benefits.

As the head of the Zhu family, Zhu Yuanzhang can be said to have done everything possible to protect all members from hardship.

He will release funds for various imaginable or unexpected reasons.

It can be said that as long as they are descendants of the Zhu family, they all enjoy the highest salary in the country.

In addition to the fixed annual salary, Zhu Yuanzhang has not forgotten one thing.

Grant land to all his descendants.

The food grown on these lands is all freely controlled by the landowners and does not need to be handed over to the state.

It doesn't stop there.

Some people may say, don’t we start paying wages only when we are ten years old?

Those under ten years old can save a lot of money!

If you think so, you are underestimating Zhu Yuanzhang.

Zhu Yuanzhang has never been stingy when it comes to distributing money, especially to his sons, daughters and future generations.

In order to allow future generations to fully enjoy the fruits of victory, Zhu Yuanzhang would also give additional rewards every special festival such as a holiday or a child's birthday.

To put it bluntly, all people born in the Zhu family do not have to do anything all year round and can enjoy high salaries that are several times or even hundreds of times higher than any first-rank minister.

During Zhu Yuanzhang's time, he had never considered the family planning policy. He seemed to be afraid that his family would be cut off. Every time a newborn was born, Zhu Yuanzhang would distribute a large amount of funds and a large area of ​​land as a reward.

In order to obtain as many court rewards as possible, these descendants began to marry wives and concubines unscrupulously, and then gave birth to children as quickly as possible.

To some extent, this method has become an effective means for some people to continuously generate income.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, an official named Xu Guangqi made a rough calculation.

According to the number of people officially included in the imperial archives of the Ming Dynasty (Royal Family Tree), there were 58 people receiving state salaries during the Zhu Yuanzhang period, but during the Yongle (Zhu Di) period, the number instantly increased to 127, more than doubling.

By the 32nd year of Jiajing, things started to become outrageous.

The number of people increased from more than 100 during the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty to 19,611, an increase of more than 100 times.

I'm just afraid that the gap between the two dynasties is less than a hundred years.

In less than a hundred years, it has increased more than a hundred times.

The scarier thing is yet to come.

In the thirty-second year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty, the population increased again to more than 80,000 people.

In about 150 years, it has increased nearly 1,400 times.

By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the number of Zhu Yuanzhang's descendants even exceeded one million.

The horror is that this is only the number of high-level royal families listed on the jade certificate, and does not include the more numerous lower-level royal families.

If all the people with the surname Zhu at the bottom are included, I am afraid that the Zhu family tree alone could be compiled into hundreds of Yongle canons.

The number of books has almost exploded by dozens or even hundreds every year, which is unbelievable to us descendants.

But at that time, especially for all the people named Zhu, they were very excited.

Because for every additional person, the state must allocate land and funds to them.

As the size of the prince continued to expand, land in various places continued to be allocated and merged. Many princes later owned land worth tens of thousands of dollars!

For example, King Jing and King Lu had 40,000 hectares of farmland in Huguang and other places; King Gui, King Hui, and King Rui each owned 30,000 hectares of farmland. King Ji had 700,000 to 800,000 hectares of land in Changsha.

It's difficult to make a comparison based on numbers alone.

We might as well put it another way: with the continuous expansion of the land of these descendants of the Zhu surname, 40% of the land in Changsha and Shanhua counties alone was owned by King Ji.

And this situation continues to evolve.

There are more terrible things behind.

We have mentioned before that the royal family receives salary every year.

These descendants of the royal family are no exception.

They also enjoy the same treatment.

For example, in the late Jiajing period, Shanxi's local fiscal revenue was 1.52 million shi, while the Shanxi princes' annual salary consumption was 3.12 million shi. Henan's annual fiscal revenue was 840,000 shi, but the princes needed 1.92 million shi.

In other words, the country's entire fiscal revenue every year is less than half of the princes' salaries.

By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the country's population was about 50 million, and there were only 1 million members of the royal family, which is equivalent to one royal family member for every 50 common people.

The problem is that it is impossible for these fifty people to support the lives of the extravagant and lustful princes.

Later, some officials couldn't stand it, and even said something specifically: "Our dynasty's care and favor for the royal family can be said to take into account all aspects, and it is more generous than any previous dynasty!"

In the end, after the peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong entered Beijing, they acted more decisively against the rebels who had long hated the descendants of the Zhu family.

They sent all these royal nobles to the guillotine, and most of them were massacred by the rebels. After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, coupled with the Manchu and Qing sieges, one million royal nobles were almost wiped out.
To be continued...