There were two different management models for the land granted to princes in the Ming Dynasty.

One is to manage the business by yourself, and the other is to have a company manage it on your behalf.

Self-management of business means that the palace operates the business itself.

The royal palace rented the granted land to tenants and collected rent and taxes from them. (Taxes were not paid to the court, but to the royal palace. Although the court exempted the princes from taxes, the princes did not exempt the tenants from taxes.).

How to collect, how much to collect, and when to collect are all decided by the palace.

Management by the government means management on behalf of others.

The government rented the land to the people and then transferred the collected money to the royal palace.

The rent and taxes for the lands managed by the officials were particularly low. During the Chenghua and Hongzhi years, according to the "Da Ming Hui Dian", the rent and taxes for the granted lands were three cents per mu, and during the Wanli period, they were changed to three cents for upper land, two cents for middle land, and one cent and a half for lower land.

What Fan Jingwen meant was that although the fiefdoms would no longer be granted, the court would still pay the rent and taxes from the fiefdoms in the name of the princes' clan salaries.

There was not much loss for the vassal kings.

"What's the point?" Chongzhen was very puzzled. "Although they won't give land, they will still give money. With money, you can buy land. With land, all kinds of chaos will occur."

Fan Jingwen smiled slightly: "The purpose is to let them buy land! Buying land requires money, so that money can flow from the palace to the people. In the process of buying land, there will definitely be various acts of bullying and market domination, and these acts will be the handle of the princes."

"The problem of the vassal kings cannot be solved once and for all! Give the vassal kings the opportunity to make mistakes. Once they make a mistake, Your Majesty can find a handle to punish them."

"Your Majesty, you should reduce the number of vassal states only if they are guilty, not all of them! Your Majesty can punish the vassal kings and royal family members who have problems. Your Majesty does not need to care about the vassal kings and royal family members who have no problems. The good things they do will not only maintain your Majesty's reputation, but also stabilize the rule of the Ming Dynasty."

"The same goes for the nobles!"

"If we forcibly reduce the power of the feudal lords and expand the scope of reduction to include the nobles, the situation during the Jianwen period where some generals worked but did not contribute will happen again. Once the war breaks out, it will be very disadvantageous to the court."

(In the 23rd year of the Wanli reign, Emperor Shenzong Zhu Yijun of the Ming Dynasty issued an edict to restore the Jianwen era name.)

Fan Jingwen's words gave Chongzhen a feeling of enlightenment.

yes!

It is enough to just reduce the number of guilty vassals!

There is no need to weaken the vassal kings who are not problematic!

The good things they did were equivalent to the good things done by the emperor in the eyes of the people.

In particular, one should not blatantly demote nobles.

Once their interests are harmed, the generals will start to have wild thoughts.

This results in not putting in enough effort, or deliberately being defeated and surrendering to the other side.

During the Jingnan Campaign, there were several powerful people in the Southern Army who openly pretended to be Zhu Yunwen.

Chongzhen could not repeat the old path of Zhu Yunwen.

Fan Jingwen added: "This is how Emperor Shizong reduced the power of the feudal lords."

Chongzhen nodded without comment.

Shizong is the temple name of Jiajing, during which the most vassal kings were deposed.

How did Jiajing reduce the power of the feudal lords?

Some feudal lords were deposed because of their lack of an heir, while others were deposed because of crimes.

Fan Jingwen's words are very profound.

Although he didn't say it explicitly, Chongzhen understood it.

Especially those situations where the fiefdom was abolished due to extinction of the family line were very abnormal.

The prince is not only rich, but also has many wives and concubines. How could he not have a son?

It is easy to give birth to a child, but difficult to raise him.

The sons of the princes would die inexplicably, leading to the extinction of the family line.

There's a conspiracy theory here.

Regardless of whether there was a conspiracy or not, Jiajing achieved his goal of reducing the power of the feudal lords.

Unfortunately, Jiajing's descendants completely forgot this ability, which led to them being controlled by ministers and princes.

It was already late when Fan Jingwen left, and Chongzhen personally sent someone to escort him back home.

No one expected that the fate of hundreds of thousands of princes and royal family members of the Ming Dynasty would be changed after discussion between the emperor and his ministers.

This fully demonstrates that important meetings do not have many participants, and meetings with many participants are not important.

In the following days, Chongzhen only did two things.

The first thing was to deal with the countless question books sent from Nanjing.

Most of these petitions were to impeach Li Banghua, accusing him of various crimes such as arbitrary rule, disregard for human life, disrespect, embezzlement of public funds, etc.

A small number of memorials came from local officials, but most of them were written by censors.

The Ming Dynasty has laws that censors will not be punished for their words.

Therefore, the censors became guns for the southern court officials!

Chongzhen did not ignore it, but wrote replies to all the petitions carefully.

What he meant was probably that I understand. As an imperial envoy, Li Banghua holds great power and it is not convenient for him to act rashly. We should wait until he returns to Beijing.

At the same time, he wrote down the names of all the impeached people in a small notebook.

The purpose of replying is to calm these people down and prevent them from continuing to cause trouble.

Remembering names is for killing people.

The little notebook was filled with names, with the handwriting clear and neat.

If we kill everyone in the book, there might be some innocent people who were wrongly accused, but if we kill every other person, there will definitely be some who slip through the net.

The second thing Chongzhen did was to look for someone to propose the reform of the princes' clan salaries.

Although the policy has been formulated, someone needs to propose it.

Who would be more appropriate to propose it?

None of the court officials were willing to get involved in this mess.

Chongzhen didn't want them to take the lead either.

After all, these court officials were all capable and ambitious people whom he had selected with great difficulty. Once a policy is not implemented smoothly and causes backlash, the person who pointed it out will be the first to be held accountable.

Court officials, military generals, and nobles cannot be mentioned.

After much deliberation, Chongzhen found a suitable candidate.

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