Ming Dynasty: Traveling through the harem, Zhu Yuanzhang was dumbfounded

Chapter 4 Zhu Di is panicking. This guy is taking revenge on his own
Zhu Biao gave examples one by one about how many taels of silver the princes could take from the national treasury in a year.

So far, no one has had any problems.

Until Yang Chen continued speaking again.

“In short, according to the imperial precepts of the Ming Dynasty, a prince can easily take away items worth tens of thousands of taels of silver from the national treasury.

According to the ancestral precepts set by Your Majesty, the title of prince is hereditary, and except for the eldest son, the rest of the prince's descendants are demoted to the rank of county princes.

The treatment of a prince is not bad either. He can receive items worth nearly ten thousand taels of silver a year. Adding other things, it would not be an exaggeration to say that he can get fifteen thousand taels.

Your Highness, am I right?"

Among the three people present, Zhu Di and Yang Chen had already noticed that this guy didn't seem to be well educated, so it was useless to talk to him.

Empress Ma's status was too high and her emotions were extremely stable. Yang Chen knew that his words would definitely not affect her.

So he chose Zhu Biao as his target.

After Zhu Biao knew that his identity was not that of a commoner of the destroyed country, he no longer had any hostility towards him.

He could feel it, and Zhu Biao really wanted to know the truth about the demise of the Ming Dynasty.

Starting with him will help us better discuss the issue of the prince's support.

After hearing what Yang Chen said, Zhu Biao immediately nodded in agreement.

Then he frowned and continued to add.

"In addition to the expenses you and I have mentioned above, according to the ancestral precepts set by my father, princes and dukes need a certain number of people to take care of them. The royal family members will also be given fields and palaces to build in their fiefdoms, which require the Ministry of Works to send people to repair them every year. There are also mausoleums, etc. These must be calculated separately."

When Zhu Biao heard Yang Chen's clear calculations, he already had a bad feeling in his heart.

But he couldn't hide it, he believed that his mother knew these things better than he did.

But Empress Ma cannot say this, after all, he is the Crown Prince Regent. If he can't remember all this, how can he be qualified to sit in this position.

"In this case, a prince can get a lot of silver from the treasury every year."

Queen Ma seemed to realize something and murmured something.

After Zhu Biao's supplement, Yang Chen raised his finger, nodded as if he understood something:

"According to what the prince said, it seems to be true. I almost forgot about this.

So let's continue calculating.

If we calculate what the prince just mentioned and convert it into money, a prince can take away 70,000 to 80,000 taels of silver from the imperial treasury in a year.

Then I will calculate it based on 80,000.

In the future, Your Majesty should have more than twenty offspring. Excluding a few who die young, I would estimate the number of those who survive to be at least twenty.

One prince earns eighty thousand pieces of silver a year, and twenty princes earn one million six hundred thousand pieces of silver a year.

As for the princes below the prince, we also calculate the minimum number, that is, one person has ten heirs.

We also calculated the expenditure of each of these heirs at a lower price, about 10,000 taels of silver per person per year.

That is two hundred taels of silver.

In other words, in the future, the Ming Dynasty would need to spend 3.6 million taels of silver a year just to support these princes and dukes.

The key point is that this is only the first generation of princes and dukes.

According to the ancestral precepts of the Ming Dynasty, in the future the title of prince will be hereditary, and the same applies to the title of county prince. The titles of general guarding the country, general supporting the country, general serving the country, etc. will be inherited, with a total of eight levels.

These people can apply for a batch of funds from the imperial treasury. Excuse me, everyone, starting with your majesty, the princes will be passed down, and then when the next emperor inherits the throne, his children, except for the heir to the crown prince, will all be the new princes.

In the future, as the costs pile up, the Ming court will probably need to spend tens of millions of taels of silver a year on supporting the princes.

I don't know how much tax the Ming Dynasty court collects in a year, but I guess the court's annual revenue, whether in grain or money, is definitely no more than 30 million taels of silver.

In the future, the number of relatives of the Ming imperial family will reach tens of thousands. I wonder if the imperial treasury can support such a huge expense."

Yang Chen didn't even need paper and pen to calculate, he could figure it all out by mental arithmetic.

After he finished speaking, he noticed that the room was a little quiet.

The whole study was so quiet that one could hear a pin drop. He looked up at the three people and found that except for Zhu Biao and Zhu Di, two others were already counting on their fingers.

As I finished the calculation, beads of sweat the size of beans began to appear on my forehead.

The more Zhu Di calculated, the more frustrated he became, and finally he gave up because he found that he didn't seem to have enough fingers.

On the contrary, Zhu Biao appears to be more stable.

But only slightly better.

He kept making trembling sounds from his mouth, and even later on, he found that everything was developing as Yang Chen said, and his head was already dizzy.

Empress Ma was also shocked by Yang Chen's words. Zhu Yuanzhang once only wanted his descendants to live a good life, but he did not expect that this simple settlement of accounts would actually bring down the Ming Dynasty.

But she also discovered blind spots and pointed them out immediately.

"No, you are wrong. The inheritance of the title will not continue forever. In the future, when Di'er's descendants exceed eight titles, they will be automatically eliminated.

The imperial court will also stop paying salaries to these descendants."

After hearing what his mother said, Zhu Biao's original nervousness gradually subsided.

"Yes, Yang Chen, your calculation just now is that the descendants will inherit forever and can receive salaries, but my father has stipulated that no matter if the descendants are princes or dukes, if they exceed eight titles, their salaries will be cancelled and they will not be included in the support system.

In this case, isn't the Ming treasury enough to sustain it?"

Zhu Di was originally worried about his status as a prince.

What if the Queen Mother thought that what the other party said was correct and found her father to modify the ancestral precepts?

Wouldn’t the status of his descendants, including himself, be in jeopardy in the future?

Fortunately, his mother pointed out the problem to his elder brother, which proved that what Yang Chen said might not be entirely correct.

“The court will ignore those with more than eight titles. This is indeed useful and can reduce the court’s expenditure to a certain extent.

But there is one thing I remember very clearly.

According to incomplete statistics, in the late Ming Dynasty, there were about 60,000 to 70,000 members of the royal family still listed in the family tree.

It is hard to count how many princes and dukes there were among them.

But I know that in the last few years of the Ming Dynasty, the royal family took away one-third of the court's finances every year.

In other words, the Ming Dynasty court needed to pay one-third of the salaries collected from the people to clan members each year.

According to historical records, I remember some princes who found that the more sons they had, the more money they could make, so they began to get rich by having sons.

Some people even take concubines when they are sixty years old, and then continue to have them give birth to sons in order to increase their income.

As for how many children he had, I can't remember, but you can take Liu Sheng, the King of Zhongshan in the Han Dynasty, as an example, he had more than a hundred sons. "

(End of this chapter)