Emperors of past dynasties hated corrupt officials and punished them severely. Especially in the Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang's period, Zhu Yuanzhang hated corrupt officials most, because he was a civilian and had seen many examples of landlords colluding with the government since he was a child.
The laws of the Ming dynasty are also the most cruel. For corrupt officials, Ming Taizu punished them by "peeling real grass", completely peeling off their skins, filling them with straw, and then parading the streets to make an example. Even with such cruel punishment measures, corrupt officials in the Ming Dynasty still emerged one after another, even more than in the Song Dynasty. Why?
This is about the salary of ancient officials. Officials in ancient dynasties, like civil servants now, received the emperor's "death salary", and each official's salary varied according to his official position. Most officials in dynasties received annual salary, just like today's annual salary, and they were paid once a year.
However, this annual salary is not necessarily money. For example, in the Qin dynasty, the government mainly distributed rice to officials every year, and occasionally gave some gold and silver during the Chinese New Year. At that time, the lowest salary of court officials was 50 tons of rice a year, and 30 kilograms of rice was eaten by his family, which could be sold for another family to eat. This is the prime minister with the lowest rank and the highest rank, just like Reese's annual salary 1000 tons of rice, when life was already very rich.
In the economically developed Sui and Tang Dynasties, officials were paid with real money instead of rice. The salary of a senior official in the Tang dynasty is about 2 million now, not including the various rewards given by the emperor on holidays, which shows the strength of national strength.
In all dynasties, the most generous treatment for officials was the Song Dynasty. In the Song Dynasty, a county magistrate paid a fixed salary of 1.80 taels a year, and the emperor's various incentives and subsidies added up to 360 taels, which was equivalent to 750,000 RMB. Nine sesame officials can get so much salary, not to mention being the prime minister of the dynasty. The salary of the prime minister in Song Dynasty was 3600 Liang a year. If the subsidy is 7,200 taels, he can get more than150,000 a year. Today, he is a multimillionaire. Which civil servant can earn more than 10 million a year now?
However, the Ming Dynasty was different in different dynasties in China, and it was often compared to the negative object of the Song Dynasty by later generations. In the Ming Dynasty, the salaries of officials were extremely low, even lower than those of some farmers at that time. The salary of the county magistrate in the Ming Dynasty was only 10,000 a year, less than one month in 900 yuan; Even the etiquette of the emperor can only get 90 thousand a year, which is not as good as the salary of a senior official in the Song Dynasty in a month. However, the Ming dynasty was not too poor to get the salary of officials. Where did all the money go?
After Zhu Yuanzhang came to power, he formulated the policy of vassal king, enfeoffed his son to all parts of the country, and Wang Fu was not allowed to do business in farming. He can only shock the people as a political representative. He was mean to courtiers, but generous to captaincy. Every year, he allocates a lot of money from the national treasury to support these Mi Chong. In this case, the state treasury will naturally be empty, and there will naturally be less money to reward the minister.
In this case, although Zhu Yuanzhang implemented a high-pressure anti-corruption policy, there are still many officials who take risks for their livelihood and plunder oil and water from the pockets of ordinary people. In the Ming Dynasty, there was a corrupt official who cried bitterly on the execution ground, saying that he would be greedy, or he would starve to death if he was not greedy, and all the people watching the execution were moved.