Why do Fengyang people hate Zhu Yuanzhang?
Unexpected consequences of Zhu Yuanzhang's "special policy" towards Fengyang.
Hongjie Zhang
Fengyang, Zhu Yuanzhang's hometown, which was called Zhongli in ancient times, is an inconspicuous small place in the Huaihe River Basin. Although the Yuan Dynasty was promoted to Haozhou, it only governed four counties. Be unknown in the national political layout. Apart from the replacement of dynasties or the division between the north and the south, when the two sides of the Huaihe River became battlegrounds for military strategists, few people mentioned it. However, with the rise of Zhu Yuanzhang, Fengyang's position has undergone earth-shaking changes.
( 1)
As early as the first year of Wu recovered Haozhou, Zhu Yuanzhang promoted Haozhou to the government. In order to cooperate with the construction of Zhongdu and Hongwu for four years (137 1), Zhu Yuanzhang expanded the territory of Haozhou and expanded the territory of Lin Hao from four counties in Kyushu to eighteen counties. In the seventh year of Hongwu, it was renamed Fengyang House. This new government governs Bozhou, Yingzhou, Taihe, Yingshang, Huoqiu, Shouzhou, Huaiyuan, Mengcheng, Suzhou, Lingbi, Tianchang, Xuyi, Sizhou, Hongxian, Wuhe, Dingyuan, Fengyang, Linhuai and other counties 18. It is a vast administrative region across the Huaihe River and has a great political position.
Shortly after the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zhu Yuanzhang put forward a plan that shocked his ministers: take his hometown Fengyang as the capital. The reason is that Nanjing is "far away from the Central Plains and difficult to control (north)", while "those who win the world cannot control the treachery of the Central Plains". Fengyang is very close to the Central Plains. "After the Huaihe River in front of the river, there are dangers to lean on and water to trough", which can remedy the shortage of Nanjing as the capital.
All the ministers looked at each other except some heroes from Huaixi. Isn't it ridiculous to designate a little-known remote place as Zhongdu? Fengyang is economically backward, with "flat terrain and no danger to defend". From any angle, it is not a place with a capital. Liu Ji, who is straightforward in character, directly expressed his opposition to the establishment of Fengyang, saying that "the establishment of the capital is romantic and not the son of heaven."
But Zhu Yuanzhang is stubborn and everyone has to obey. As we all know, Zhu Yuanzhang listed so many arguments, but there is only one reason, that is, "the sacred heart misses the emperor's hometown and wants to live in Fengyang for a long time."
In the second year of Hongwu (1369), in September, Zhu Yuanzhang officially sent a letter to Lin Hao, the capital, saying that "the company was ordered to build the palace of the city as the capital system". In Zhu Yuanzhang's vision, his hometown will become the official capital in the future, and Nanjing will become the capital. Zhu Yuanzhang has always been frugal, but this time he devoted himself to the whole country, set high standards and strict requirements, mobilized millions of civilian workers, selected fine materials, and demanded that Zhongdu be built magnificent and magnificent.
In the eighth year of Hongwu (1375), the project was basically completed, and Zhu Yuanzhang personally inspected the quality of the project in Fengyang, "rewarding". After visiting this beautiful new capital, Zhu Yuanzhang made another important decision that surprised the whole empire: give up Zhongdu!
It turned out that in this acceptance, Zhu Yuanzhang heard an unexpected news: because the labor was too hard and the wages could not be paid, the craftsmen who were forced to transfer jobs were dissatisfied and implemented the "war-weariness law." In some key parts of the palace, some charms, clay figurines, wooden figures, bows and arrows, scissors, paper figures and other things are buried, which is said to bring bad luck to the residents. The buildings have been completed. If you want to clean up these towns, you must tear them all down. Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to kill all the thousands of craftsmen who built the palace (explicitly "kill all"). Guo Xiang, the minister of the Ministry of Industry, risked his life to suggest that only carpenters could go down to the town, and blacksmiths and masons were not responsible. "Thousands of people have lived." However, Fengyang can no longer be the capital.
(2)
Although it failed to become the capital, as a land of Longxing, Fengyang's position is still extraordinary.
In the fourteenth year of Hongwu after the capital was established (138 1), Zhu Yuanzhang stayed in the company in this setting, and the positions he set were all advanced, such as "the royal family cooperated with him" and "the minister was not in the family and could not be with him". In addition, Fengyang also has government agencies such as the imperial court governor's desk and the Henan provincial governor's desk, as well as a series of imperial tomb sacrificial institutions. In addition, Fengyang is also the place where four provinces and three states in the north of the Yangtze River took the provincial entrance examination. All kinds of officials 1400, tens of thousands of officials at all levels.
Zhu Yuanzhang also used Fengyang as the educational base of the prince. "The king's country ordered them to resign from the royal mausoleum before going. "The princes went to Fengyang to recall the bitter experience and became a" statute "in the early Ming Dynasty. Zhu Yuanzhang also used Fengyang as a place to imprison criminal clans. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, 1 16 royal families had been held here.
Due to the above facilities, Fengyang, with underdeveloped economy and culture and inconvenient transportation, became the political, economic and cultural center of the Huaihe River Basin, which has always had a great impact on the political, economic, military and social life of the Ming Dynasty. This pattern continued until the end of the Ming Dynasty and spread to the Qing Dynasty.
How to revive Fengyang, the "hometown of Longxing", protect the "fundamental place" of this country, make the economy of my hometown develop faster, and make the villagers live better, Zhu Yuanzhang has no less trouble. After careful consideration, he provided a series of "special policies" for Fengyang.
(3)
The first is the great immigration.
In April of the 26th year of Yuan Dynasty, he took time out of the war to go back to his hometown, which left a deep impression on Zhu Yuanzhang. He was deeply shocked by the destruction of his hometown by the war. Later, he talked with ministers about the feelings of this trip and said, "The fields are barren. Since the war began, people have died or moved to other counties, so they can't go back to their hometown. Separation of flesh and blood, career dried up. This generation would rather have no complaints? " At that time, the history books also recorded: "North of Huaihe River, south of Huaihe River, where depressions are located", "North of Huaihe River, commonly known as Xu Qiu" because "many people fled, the city was empty", and a large area of land was barren. By the time Hongwu changed to Yuan Dynasty, Fengyang House was already "a place where mulberries were planted became a place full of grass in ten years".
According to records, when the Ming Dynasty was founded, there were only 3,324 local residents in Fengyang County, less than16,620. The population of Fengyang Prefecture does not exceed130,000, and the population density is only five people per square kilometer. Ruins are everywhere, villages are sparse, and the whole Jianghuai area is "ten rooms and nine virtual". It is simply a hell scene of "everyone sings a song", which of course makes Zhu Yuanzhang feel very uncomfortable.
To revitalize the economy, we must first have a labor force. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zhu Yuanzhang organized several large-scale immigrants in Fengyang in order to quickly change the face of his hometown. The biggest one was Zhu Yuanzhang's "One hundred and forty thousand people in the south of the Yangtze River moved to the real capital" in the seventh year of Hongwu (1374). This is the largest number of government immigrants in the history of the Ming Dynasty. In addition to this time, there are large-scale immigrants from Shanxi. In the sixth year of Hongwu (1373), in October, "Jiang Wen was ordered to immigrate its people (Shanbei people) to the middle of the country, with 8,238 households and a total population of 39,349". Generally speaking, the number of immigrants during the Hongwu period has reached six times, and the number is between 200,000 and 300,000. Such a huge number is extremely rare in the immigration history of the Ming Dynasty and even in the immigration history of China. In addition to ordinary immigrants, Fengyang has a huge garrison. According to the military records of the Ming Dynasty, during the Hongwu period, there were about 64,960 troops stationed in Fengyang Prefecture. Together with their families, there are188,000 military immigrants. In this way, the total number of immigrants accepted by Fengyang government during the Hongwu period was nearly 488,000 (including 300,000 citizens and military immigrants188,000). As mentioned earlier, at the beginning of Hongwu, the population of Fengyang House was only130,000. The immigrant population is more than three times that of the local population, and * * * accounts for 80% of the total population of Fengyang House after immigration.
Not many people want to come to Fengyang where rabbits don't shit. Zhu Yuanzhang has his own way. Hu Gan, a native of Hongwu, mentioned this immigration in the epitaph of Wu, a native of Zhejiang. Wu is from Lanxi, Zhejiang. "In the spring of the eighth year of Hongwu, one purpose was to send the poor landless to Fengyang in Zhongdu to raise them. The people who sent them didn't get in the way and the machine didn't work well. I couldn't bear to part with it. I was sent away by the office alone and fell down the aisle. As a public servant, forbidding children is morally justified and can't be selfish. There are many kinds of public affairs. " From this record, we can see the compulsion and cruelty of this immigration.
The second policy is tax reduction and taxation. At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zhu Yuanzhang announced a 10-year tax relief for indigenous people in Fengyang and Linhuai counties. In the sixteenth year of Hongwu (1383), Zhu Yuanzhang reread Liu Bangzhuan and found that Liu was exempt from hard labor in his hometown. Think about the last time I only forgave my fellow villagers for ten years, obviously not as generous as Liu Bang, so I sent another imperial edict:
Fengyang is a real village, and the mausoleum is there. Yesterday, Emperor Gao Han was born in Fengxian County, the head of Peixian County. Later, it came to the world, avoiding the poor food of the people in Fengxian and Peixian. Today, the people in Fengyang and Linhuai counties, although different from our towns and villages, are separated by the same clock as the people in a city. I started from Lin Hao and the whole city was singing. Fengyang mansion is blessed to be my parents, and the old son was born in our land, so it will never be levied. Every day, Yong Yong learns to eat wine. Every season, he buys good incense, presents it to heaven and earth, forms a righteous society, and abides by the drinking ceremony in the countryside.
Ming History contains the content that Zhu Yuanping was exempted from taxes in his hometown. If we carefully scrutinize this imperial edict, Zhu Yuanzhang is exempted from the tax of the indigenous population "all ages were born in our land", excluding later immigrants.
The third is to build water conservancy projects. Building water conservancy is a national policy, but Zhu Yuanzhang paid special attention to Fengyang's water conservancy construction. As early as the eighth year of Hongwu (1375), he specially sent two Marquis Kang Duo and Yu Chunyuan to personally grasp Fengyang water conservancy construction. After Zhu Yuanzhang, emperors of all dynasties also paid special attention to Fengyang's "the foundation of imperial industry, the location of ancestral graves, depending on other places."
The fourth is to develop transportation. Zhu Yuanzhang opened a post road from Fengyang to Nanjing, with 20 stops. Liu customs clearance at the end of the narrow road has been rectified, greatly improving the traffic situation in Fengyang.
In addition to various special policies, Zhu Yuanzhang built a large number of projects here, which also played an important role in promoting the local economic development.
After Zhongdu stopped building, Zhu Yuanzhang continued to build the imperial tomb, the tombs of ten kings and four princesses and the longxing temple in Fengyang, with a huge project and a large number of people.
When Zhu Yuanzhang was building Zhongdu, he had "built the first residence of the Lord in Zhongdu" in November of the fifth year of Hongwu (1372). After the construction of Zhongdu stopped, because Zhu Yuanzhang encouraged the founding fathers to retire and return to their hometowns, the construction of the vassal government did not stop. In August of the 18th year of Hongwu (1385), Zhu Yuanzhang specially bought Qi Huangong 10,000 pieces of silver and 520 pieces of silver for carpentry, so as to "return home to build the first house". Fengyang was hundreds of miles away at that time. "The story of the wind and cloud is scattered everywhere. For hundreds of miles, the princes' homes are relatively crowned like clouds ... it can be said that they are full. " A large number of Huaixi heroes come to live in Fengyang, and their daily consumption is huge, which will inevitably promote the development of local commerce, architecture and service industry in Fengyang.
Zhu Yuanzhang's special policy has indeed received obvious results. The population of Fengyang has increased greatly, and the long-lost land of Fengyang has once again seen the prosperity of "one county, Sang Ma". Many barren land has been reclaimed, and the number of land has reached 400 thousand hectares. In the Ming Dynasty, the level of counties and counties was divided according to the amount of taxes and grain, with more than 200,000 stones as the upper government, more than 100,000 stones as the middle government and less than 100,000 stones as the lower government. In the eighth year of Hongwu (1375), Fengyang government still earned more than 200 million yuan a year on the basis of reducing taxes and grain, and became a rich and prosperous government. Linhuaiguan in Fengyang has become an important commercial town with dense residents and businessmen.
(4)
But no one expected that Zhu Yuanzhang's special care for his hometown eventually caused unbearable consequences for his hometown.
Fengyang's environment has deteriorated for a long time under the pressure of the population of past dynasties. Zhu Yuanzhang's immigrants provided sufficient labor for agriculture for a period of time, but the influx of such a huge number of immigrants at once caused great damage to the environment.
At that time, the best part of Fengyang's land had been occupied by honor circle, and Fengyang locals occupied medium land. Immigrants get mostly low-yield fields left by people. Fengyang's new book seven says, "Those on the field belong to the army and have made meritorious deeds." Among them, there is one aborigine and one tenant farmer, but if they stay, they will be barren, so that they can actually cultivate the people. Volume 5 also contains the land that immigrants have acquired. "The hills are all true, the earth and stone are all wrong, the valleys and rivers are all empty, and the mountains and rivers are all empty. "
The population explosion suddenly intensified the local contradiction between man and land. In the case that traditional farming methods can't make a breakthrough, the food problem in Huaihe River Basin with many flat ports can only be solved by extensive farmland expansion methods such as land reclamation and lake building. Without good land, the new immigrants near the mountain went up the mountain to destroy forests and open up wasteland, which soon caused obvious soil erosion, and the water falling with the sand aggravated the deterioration of the ecological environment in the Huaihe River Basin. Immigrants around the lake began to fill the sea around the lake, and many lakes and ponds dried up into fields. On the surface, this kind of activity increases cultivated land and relieves the pressure on people and land in a short time, but in fact it makes the storage and discharge of water inappropriate and destroys the self-circulation of local ecology.
In addition, to build a series of buildings such as Zhongdu, Fengyang Mausoleum, Sizhou Zuling and Xunguifu, it is necessary to mine a large number of forests in nearby mountainous areas for fuel supply and building materials. Ming Hui Dian in the early Ming Dynasty clearly stated: "The initial supply of firewood was learned from Luzhou (Hefei) along the river." It was said that during the construction of Zhongdu and Nanjing in the early Ming Dynasty, large-scale logging was carried out in Dabie Mountain, which turned many mountainous areas into barren hills.
Most importantly, in order to protect the geomantic omen of Zuling, people have further destroyed the local ecological cycle.
Sizhou, located on Hongze Lake, is the location of the Ming Zuling. Zhu Yuanzhang's grandfather Zhu Chuyi was buried here. Fearing that the ancestral graves would be flooded, leading to "the king fled in anger", the Ming government formulated such a water control strategy in the middle of the Ming Dynasty: "consider the ancestral graves first, then the traffic, and then the people's livelihood." In other words, the first is the ancestral mausoleum, the second is the waterway to ensure the transportation of grain into Beijing, and finally the people: "The Huaihe River is more important than the waterway. When wealth is more than ancestral graves, ancestral graves are particularly heavy. " Therefore, the Ming government often ignored people's livelihood and decided to release water from Gaojiayan, artificially lowering the water level of Hongze Lake to protect the mausoleum. The threat of Huaihe River to Zuling was temporarily reduced, but the nearby rivers became extremely chaotic, which had a profound impact on the surrounding ecological environment.
Under the combined effect of these factors, in the Ming Dynasty, the surrounding area of Fengyang gradually became barren hills, the forest was completely destroyed, the lake was silted up, the Huaihe River was often flooded and floods frequently occurred, and people on both sides of the strait were miserable. "Soil fertility is exhausted, vitality is exhausted, natural disasters are prevalent, and personnel are repeatedly changed." Fengyang has been starving for nine years since this decade. "It rained for three days, and then it was bitter and I couldn't work in the mud. A little yang is scorched earth. " According to Fengyang New Book, there were six droughts and floods in Fengyang * * * from the 17th year of Wanli to the 2nd year of Taichang (1589- 162 1), with an average of more than once every five years. This is only a calculation that takes into account the greater impact of disasters. If you count the general disasters, then "Fengyang has been in famine for ten years, and if there is no drought, it will rain." By the end of the Ming Dynasty, it was "more than ten years without disasters, and no disasters are not heavy." The soil quality in Huaibei, a famous rice producing area, is getting worse and worse. By the Qing Dynasty, there were many records in local chronicles in this area that "it is not suitable to grow rice", and rice was changed to wheat.
The descendants of immigrants who were persecuted by Zhu Yuanzhang fled to other places in successive famines. For example, in the third year of Jingtai in Ming Dynasty (1452), Fengyang Prefecture was flooded, and "Tian He failed to harvest and fled for many years, and all of them migrated to Jining and Linqing to occupy grain and migrate tens of thousands". In the eighth year of Chenghua (1472), there were many exiles in the north and south of Jianghuai. The population of Fengyang will decrease rapidly after the middle of next year. According to Fengyang New Book, there were 40,000 people in Hongwuchu county. Since then, there have been more than 47,850 old volunteers in Dingkou, and only13,894 in Wanli six years. "
The rest can't settle down normally, and many people gradually take begging as their profession. They "tend to be lazy, floods and droughts are frequent, middle-aged people are bankrupt and have less than two years of reserves." In case of famine, many people take care of their children, abandon their homeland and adapt to other places. "Fengyang Flower Drum has spread all over the country with the footprints of these refugees. Wei in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties once wrote in a poem "Yangko Trip": "Fengyang women, in the first month of each year, sing Yangko across the Yellow River. The north wind blows snow and sand, and the waist is encouraged in winter. I have been out for a long time, and my clothes are tied on my head. It didn't rain in Shouzhou the year before last. This year, Sizhou decided to open the estuary ... singing yangko in poor years, but renting and farming. Flying from south to north like a swallow. Poor thing! "
Fengyang agricultural economy therefore bid farewell to the temporary prosperity and reappeared the appearance of depression and decline. It turned out that after Zhu Yuanzhang's vigorous management, the land volume of Fengyang House once reached 400,000 hectares. By the fifteenth year of Ye Hongzhi's reign in the middle of Ming Dynasty (1502), the cultivated land area in this state had dropped to only 6 1263 hectares. In less than 150 years from the 26th year of Hongwu to the 15th year of Hongzhi, the cultivated land area of Fengyang Prefecture has decreased by more than 300,000 hectares. "Phoenix Huai is sparsely populated. If it is flooded, the people will flee, and two thousand miles will become grass. " Zhang Han, a former magistrate and official minister of Luzhou, made a detailed account of the barren land in the Huaihe River basin. When passing through Fengyang, he witnessed the barren and depression of the land there: "When you taste Huai and Feng, you can see that it is red and thin, and most of it is uncultivated land. Occasionally there are cultivators, and the weather is very bitter. Sometimes there is drought and sometimes there is flood. If there is too much rain, it will be flooded and there is nowhere to go. If it doesn't rain, it will scorch, get no relief, often go hungry, migrate awkwardly, and the land is vast and sparsely populated. " Today, the economic development in most areas of the Huaihe River Basin is not as prosperous as that in southern Jiangsu or central Shandong. They are all coastal development zones, and the difference is so great. One of the important reasons is that the local ecological environment was seriously damaged in the Ming Dynasty. Zhu Yuanzhang never dreamed that his kindness would cause such consequences.