The Kong family had engaged in this kind of land enclosure movement many times in the past dynasties, and they often took advantage of the chaos to collude with other people to enclose and annex land.
That's why there were more than 10,000 hectares of farmland. Each dynasty granted them only more than 3,000 hectares, but they occupied and annexed more than 10,000 hectares.
Now the Kong family came to ask for land again, and even pointed out a few pieces of land that did not belong to them, claiming that it was given by the Emperor of Heaven in the past, and asked the emperor to issue an order to give it to them.
"I have a couplet that I want to give to Kong Yanzhi.
First couplet: Yesterday we surrendered to Yuan and Meng, and today we descended to Manchu and Qing Dynasties, how can we be so virtuous? Only then can we understand, and we can encourage you to have more happiness when you enter your home.
Second couplet: Confucius said Cheng Ren and Mencius said Qi Yi. I have forgotten them all. I only remember that those who know the current affairs are heroes.
Hengbiao: Shixiu surrenders!"
When Huang Zongxi and Ruan Dacheng heard this, they were stunned on the spot.
Although the descendants of the Kong family did some bullshit, not only did they surrender, they also often fought internally. They went to court several times to fight for the heir, and even attacked the other party for not being a member of the Kong family.
There are also legends among the people that in fact, when the Kong family moved south and the Yuan Dynasty destroyed the Jin Dynasty, they established an obedient Duke Yansheng. In fact, this person was not a real Kong family at all. There were even rumors that that person was actually the illegitimate son of Emperor Yuan.
Therefore, the Confucius family has been worshiped for more than a thousand years based on blood, but it may not necessarily be true blood.
The Confucian family was granted the title of Holy Duke for generations, and was even granted the title of Magistrate of Qufu County, which was the same level as Jingxian County. In addition, there were also scholars who were granted the title of Doctor of Five Classics from the Hanlin Academy.
There is no tax on their land.
It is no less harmful to the country than the Zhu Ming clan.
And before, the Kong family persuaded Li Zicheng to join, and they persuaded Dorgon to join, and they took the lead in shaving their hair and mending their watches. It was so fucking disgusting.
Now he still has the nerve to come to Zhu Yihai to ask for Duke Yansheng back, and he also wants to seize the opportunity to enclose the land.
Do you really think your bloodline is noble?
"There should still be some disciples of the Southern Sect who traveled south with Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty. One of them should be found and given the title of Sacrifice Officer for the Most Holy Master. From the seventh rank, he will be hereditary.
In addition, the Confucius Temple is equipped with four twelve philosophers, each of whom chooses a direct descendant to be awarded a doctorate in the Five Classics of the Hanlin Academy, starting from the eighth grade, and promised to inherit it."
"The gifted officials were given 2,000 acres of land, and each of the sixteen Doctors of the Five Classics were given 200 acres of land."
Ruan Dacheng was still shocked by the couplet that the emperor had just given to the Kong family. At this time, he was not surprised that the emperor demoted the Kong family Yan Shenggong to a seventh-grade sacrificial official.
Officials from the Jiajing Dynasty of the Ming Dynasty reported that Confucius' title of king was unjust and unreasonable, so Jiajing removed the title of king and the title of Dacheng Wenxuan, and changed his posthumous title to the Most Holy Master.
In the Song Dynasty, Duke Yansheng was actually an eighth-rank official, but due to his orthodox relationship and his detached status, he was highly respected.
In the Ming Dynasty, ten descendants of Confucius inherited Duke Yansheng. Two of his eldest sons died early and were given posthumously.
The contemporary Kong Yanzhi (Yinzhi) inherited it in the Tianqi year. His uncle's second son died early and had no grandchildren, so he adopted his younger brother's son to himself.
In the Ming Dynasty, Duke Yansheng was a relatively special duke, with a royal title but no certificate.
Zhu Yuanzhang gave the Kong family two thousand hectares of land (a large hectare, 720 acres, one acre is equivalent to three acres), and the annual harvest was used for sacrifices, and the rest was Yanshenggong's salary.
Yan Shenggong was the first among the civil officials in the class and was awarded the title of Guanglu Dafu. He was given the same title as a first-grade official and was given the three silver seals.
Not only did he build Yanshenggong Mansion in Qufu for the Confucius family, he also gave him two large houses in Beijing for him to live in Beijing. During the Jiajing period, the Confucius Mansion in Qufu was fully expanded, with more than 130 rooms in the east and west.
There are even more pavilions and houses in the inner courtyard of the back house.
The eldest son of "Yanshenggong" can use the second-class uniform at the age of 15. The second son can inherit the hereditary doctorate of the Five Classics from the Hanlin Academy at the age of 15 and preside over the worship of Zisi (Kong Ji Zisi, the grandson of Confucius).
At the age of 15, his son inherited the doctorate from Taichang Temple and presided over the rituals of Shengze Academy in Wenshang County. The doctorates of his second and third sons were handed over to him by the "Yanshenggong" of the generation.
"Your Majesty, are you granting an additional two thousand acres of land to the Kong family?"
Zhu Yihai shook his head.
"These two thousand acres of land are given to the sacrificial officials of the Holy Master for worship, and the rest is for salary."
"What about the original place of the Kong family?"
Zhu Yihai glanced at Ruan Dacheng and said, "Although Taizu once gave the Confucius family two thousand hectares of land, didn't Taizu also give land to the vassals? I also gave land to the ministers. How did I deal with the land of the vassals? How did I deal with it?
From the land owned by Duke Wei?"
Although Ruan Dacheng thought about it, he didn't expect that the emperor would be so direct.
The status of a duke becomes an eighth-grade official.
These more than 1.3 million acres of land, or three acres at one time, are all going to be confiscated and brought into the government?
This is the Kong family.
But thinking about the couplet the emperor just gave to the Kong family, we also know how resentful the emperor was towards Kong.
"From now on, the eldest son of the Confucius family will inherit the title of sacrificial official, and the second son will inherit the doctorate of the Five Classics of the Hanlin Academy. There will be no other special treatment. I respect the most holy teacher, but his descendants have performed too poorly after more than two thousand years.
, don’t deserve to enjoy it like this anymore.”
"Two thousand acres of land is enough for worship."
All the more than 1.3 million acres of land must be recovered.
Zhu Yihai even took over the land of the Ming dynasty kings and took away their titles. Will he still reserve a duke for the Kong family?
Why?
Zhu Yihai was not used to Duke Xu and other princes who had surrendered before. Not only did they seize their titles but also their lands.
One emperor and one courtier.
Xu Da and others did indeed contribute to the founding of the country, but enjoying the country's favor for more than two hundred years is enough. If future generations have no future, who is to blame?
For example, Liu Kongzhao, a descendant of Liu Bowen, was granted the title of Duke of Qingtian County by the Jin Dynasty because of his meritorious service in serving the dragon.
Huang Zongxi didn't say anything either.
Although this person has not experienced the Ming and Qing dynasties, the turmoil of the world, and the suffering of the people, so he did not have serious thoughts of underestimating imperial power when he got old as in history. He recruited villagers to build Shizhong Camp and raised troops from
Long, his official career is going very smoothly. Now he is the governor of a province at a young age. He has won the holy will and is focused on the local area. He does not think about saying that imperial power is too important. Instead, he feels that the current saint Qiangang is arbitrary and true.
The Holy King.
In fact, scholars all over the world respect Confucius, but many have opinions about his descendants.
After all, the Kong family behaves no differently from ordinary princely families, so they can't help but bully others, especially since their family is the hereditary magistrate of Qufu County. In that three-acre land, their family is the real emperor.
The Confucius family revised the surrender form for the Tatars and encouraged them to advance. The Tatars also recognized all the privileges of Duke Yansheng in the Ming Dynasty. Kong Yinzhi, the 65th generation of Duke Yansheng, still served as Duke Yansheng, plus the crown prince and tutor, and was still listed in the cabinet during court meetings.
Above the ministers.
Last year, the Tatars also gave another Yanshenggong Mansion on Taipusi Street in Beijing.
But Zhu Yihai would not give them those rewards and privileges again.
The Ming Dynasty had given their family more than two hundred years of privileges, but they didn't cherish it.
Now that Zhu Yihai is still a descendant of Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, and his country is still called the Ming Dynasty, how can he reward this guy who persuaded Li Zicheng and the Tatars to surrender?
Why?
"They can continue to live in the house of Kong Mansion in Qufu, but the first gate, second gate, instrument gate, etc. must correspond to the seventh-grade official rank. If it exceeds the specifications, it should be demolished.
Except for the large house in Qufu that has been retained, all other houses, shops, and the occupied mountains, forests, lakes and pastures have been inspected and recovered."
There is no need to be polite to this kind of worldly cultivator.
The land of the Confucius family includes temple land, sacrificial land, and private land. The temple land does not pay rent, but labor is required, and the sacrificial land pays rent. The Kong family's land, and even private land, does not pay taxes.
The rent collected by the Kong family for offering sacrifices to the fields was divided in half with the tenants. The imperial court used square buckets with small mouths and large bottoms to collect grain, and a bucket of wheat weighed 120 kilograms. However, the Kong family collected rent in rectangular buckets, filled with
After the wheat, there are seventy-five kilograms. They are scraped with a wooden board, and only fifty kilograms are left in the bucket. The scraped off is called bucket-point grain, which is distributed to the first class of the village, but only fifty kilograms are collected as rent.
In addition to collecting land rent, the Kong family also collected taxes from markets in front of various temples and academies in Qufu, as well as from markets held in tenant villages.
The Kong family also has fifty acres of academic land, equivalent to fifteen thousand acres, which is used for the expenses of several academies.
Sacrifice fields, academic fields, temple fields are tax-free fields stipulated by the imperial court, while private fields actually have to pay taxes, but the Confucius family is given preferential treatment, and a large number of private fields only need to pay one-third of the tax, which is light grain land.
In addition, the fields brought by the Dukes of Yansheng and others in the past dynasties when they married into the Confucius family were called powdered fields. They accumulated tens of thousands of acres over the dynasties and were basically tax-free.
But even for the light grain land that only paid one-third, the Kong family had already tried their best not to pay or to pay less.
As a second-grade official, Yan Shenggong also had a good salary.
It is easy to earn more than ten thousand taels a year by just making land income, and then engage in lending, business, mining, building workshops, etc., and the profits are even greater. Therefore, after more than 200 years of the Zhu family's clan in the Ming Dynasty, many lower-level clans were not as good as beggars, but they
Yan Shenggong's Mansion, even after more than two thousand years, is still very prosperous. This is the difference.
During the Tianqi period, the Kong family divided each clan branch into fifty-seven clans, and the number of descendants of the Kong family exceeded 20,000.
Yan Shenggong's branch is the largest clan, and there are fifty-six other clans.
Zhu Yihai became furious.
Ruan Dacheng was about to retreat, but he stopped them again.
"I haven't finished speaking yet."
"I heard that the Kong family has grown to include dozens of households with more than 20,000 men. For a family with such a large population, it would be too harsh to take away all the land at once."
"In this way, the more than 1.3 million acres of land collected by the Kong family can be distributed to the members of each clan of the Kong family on priority. Males of the Kong family who are over 16 and under 60 can be allocated ten acres of land.
."
"If there is still land in the family's name, the land that exceeds ten acres does not need to be divided. If it is less than ten acres, it can be made up."
The more than one million acres of land collected this time are actually mainly under the name of Yanshenggong Mansion, some private fields under the name of the Kong family, and the powdered land where the wife brought her dowry, etc. are not included.
Zhu Yihai gave the Kong clan a patch of ten acres, which would ensure that they could become small farmers and be self-sufficient.
If they had a lot of land in their own names, they wouldn't need the emperor's ten acres of land.
The main thing is to take care of those with low status in the clan and little property.
The main target is the Yanshenggong sect.
"The saint is merciful!" Huang Zongxi couldn't help but praise him, suppressing but not forgetting the basic guarantee.
Zhu Yihai waved his hand and said, "Let's do it like this for now." It wouldn't hurt to take away 1.3 million acres and divide it into another 1.2 million acres.