Chapter 321: A Lord of Dynastic Restoration

The Chongzhen Emperor knew well that the Ming imperial clan's more than two hundred years of unchecked behavior had by now become a tail too big to wag, accumulating too much popular resentment—if not dealt with promptly, it would surely endanger his own position.

Compared to the Chongzhen Emperor, who used several great victories and various obvious changes to gradually influence the common people's view of the court, the imperial clansmen stood entirely on the opposite side of the people, and the contradictions accumulated over centuries could no longer be reconciled.

The clansmen's stipends came directly from local fiscal revenues, and the geometric growth of the imperial clan population meant fiscal expenditures increased by dozens, even hundreds of times over.

The Jin Prince's mansion in Shanxi required only an annual stipend of ten thousand shi of grain during the Hongwu era, but by the Jiajing era it had grown to nearly nine hundred thousand shi; the Zhou Prince's mansion in Henan grew from ten thousand shi to—

All the most profitable industries locally were monopolized by these clansmen and wealthy merchants. Many regional princes used their privileges to control local salt sales—for instance, one of the Five Princes, "Prince Rui" Zhu Changhao, had long since taken complete control of both official and private salt trading within his fief.

These clansmen raised salt prices arbitrarily without regard for what the people could bear, so that the lowest strata of commoners could not afford to buy salt for years on end. They also colluded with wealthy merchants to manipulate grain, rice, and cloth prices at will, reaping exorbitant profits.

As for all scarce natural resources—land, forests, and mines—as long as they proved profitable, the clansmen would seize them through petitions to the emperor or every manner of extortion and plunder.

The lands enclosed by princely mansions across the realm were "all taken from the most fertile fields of the prefectures and counties."

For example, the Wanli Emperor granted Prince Fu twenty thousand qing of land, originally designated in Henan—but when even the best lands of Henan were fully enclosed and still insufficient, they went on to Shandong and Huguang to seize the finest farmland. Local officials naturally dared not interfere in the affairs of the Zhu family.

Princes across the realm constantly pleaded poverty to the emperor, demanding all sorts of special privileges.

According to what the Chongzhen Emperor knew, by now—this nineteenth year of Chongzhen—tax collection rights in many places had in fact already slipped from the court's hands, gradually transferred to the various princely mansions.

Absurdly, in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, the tea tax for the entire province of Shandong was only twelve taels, and the great city of Jinling collected a mere eight taels in commercial taxes last year.

These utterly ridiculous occurrences precisely demonstrated how the imperial clansmen, noble relatives, and financial magnates now dominated everything with one hand covering the sky in the localities.

The Zhou Prince held the tax collection rights of Kaifeng; the Lu Prince occupied twenty-six river tax stations; the commercial tax of Lucheng County was granted to the Qingyuan Prince, while that of Tunliu County belonged to the Liaoshan Prince.

In the early Chongzhen years, the Pingyao Prince claimed his household was too large and his circumstances not comfortable. The historical Chongzhen Emperor, mindful that he was of imperial noble blood, allocated three years of commercial tax from Licheng County to the Pingyao Prince's mansion.

It was through this kind of extortion and plunder that the imperial clan amassed the greatest wealth in the world, piled mountain-high.

Prince Fu, whose wealth surpassed the realm—"pearls, jade, goods, and bribes piled like mountains," with millions in gold—referred to the deceased old Prince Fu, Zhu Changxun; the Qin Prince of Shaanxi, likewise wealthy beyond compare, "possessed several million in assets"; and Prince Dai of Datong, Zhu Chuan, though historically resolute in resisting the bandits, upon closer examination still owned more than eleven hundred houses through his mansion.

No matter how sincere each regional prince's resolve to resist the bandits, the mountain-high wealth amassed by their mansions was not one bit less.

Apart from the reigning emperor himself, the clansmen were virtually petty emperors in every local government office, holding countless privileges. The monopoly blocs they formed with the financial magnates rolled in profits, but the direct consequence was the ever-worsening livelihood of the people and the fiscal exhaustion of the Great Ming court, until total collapse in the Chongzhen years.

Beginning with the Tumu Crisis, the expansion of the imperial clan accelerated sharply, adding frost to snow for the already heavily burdened commoners—some peasants even "abandoned their chopsticks, sold their homes, and gave away their wives to supply the princes' stipends."

That said, whatever the peasant armies now burning like prairie fires across the land did to the common folk, their greatest distinguishing feature was their utter ruthlessness toward imperial relatives and clansmen—resolute, decisive, and thorough.

Li Zicheng carried this policy to its extreme: anyone who was a descendant of Zhu Yuanzhang, whether they surrendered voluntarily or were captured passively, whether they refused to kneel or begged desperately for their lives, whether they stubbornly refused to reveal their treasure caches or cheerfully handed over all their wealth—the result was the same: extermination, without exception.

Beginning in the Chongzhen years, memorials reporting that clansmen's mansions had been "completely," "entirely," or "by whole clan" exterminated appeared repeatedly on the Chongzhen Emperor's desk. When Zhang Xianzhong captured Changde, "the Rong Prince's clan was nearly wiped out"; when the Great Western Army invaded the heavenly kingdom of Sichuan, the old Shu Prince Zhu Zhipeng "perished with his entire clan."

Whenever the peasant armies committed such earth-shaking acts, the court's incompetence and darkness became all the more apparent—when the people heard the news, they set off firecrackers and celebrated with competitive joy, as if it were the New Year.

That the clansmen joined hands with wealthy merchants and had connections reaching to heaven was an open secret in every dynasty—but it was not until the morning court session of the second day of the second month in this nineteenth year of Chongzhen that it was openly laid on the table for discussion by the Eastern Depot and the Western Depot.

The Chongzhen Emperor's response did not disappoint the many members of the imperial party or the common people. After the court deliberation, the Embroidered Uniform Guard of the Northern Provost's Office rode out in all directions, bearing arrest warrants in the Chongzhen Emperor's own hand, galloping to every locale to seize the clansmen.

When the people of every region heard that the capital's mounted agents had ridden out in all directions to arrest the clansmen, they beamed with joy and praised the reigning emperor as a sage and enlightened Son of Heaven, a lord of dynastic restoration. According to reports from local officials, every prefecture, department, and circuit that received the news celebrated as if at a festival—whenever passersby in teahouses and wine shops spoke of the matter, they were thoroughly delighted.