Whenever there is a change of dynasty, society will fall into turmoil, and this turmoil will become the root cause of a force to overthrow the previous dynasty.
Due to the corruption of the Yuan Dynasty court, the seizure of land by a large number of Mongolian nobles, the large number of harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, the weakening of the country, coupled with successive years of famine, the desperate poor peasants, under the orders of Han Shantong, the leader of the White Lotus Sect in the north, and his friend Liu Futong, rose up one after another, wrapped in red scarves, and unfurled the banner of "three thousand tigers and three thousand, straight to the land of Youyan; dragons flew ninety-five, reopening the heavens of the Great Song Dynasty", launched a fierce attack on the bureaucratic landlords, and had a huge impact on the rule of the Mongolian Yuan court, and finally, Causing its rule in the Central Plains to collapse...
So, what was the most fundamental cause of the outbreak of the peasant revolt at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty?
The first inducement: the annexation of land by the Mongol nobles.
After the Mongol Yuan entered the Central Plains, a large number of nobles from the grasslands began to plunder the land of the common people with their superior status, using the thousand miles of fertile fields as grazing grasslands, a phenomenon that continued until the end of the Yuan Dynasty. Not only that, but these Mongol nobles also learned a good recipe for plundering the people's wealth from the landlords in the Central Plains - collecting rent from tenants.
Of course, this kind of plundering was official, and yuan ting called it "Shi Tian". From this point of view alone, the phenomenon of noble annexation of land by the nobles in the Yuan Dynasty was not serious, and some Mongolian yuan ministers who made great contributions to the founding of the country would at best obtain hundreds of acres of good land, but in the late Yuan Dynasty, the rulers often gave thousands of acres of land, and even more so, there would be a situation of giving thousands of acres of land.
Usually, the land rent of these nobles was as high as four stones per acre, which was a heavy burden on the people in terms of grain production at that time. This kind of exploitation, which is squeezed into the bone marrow, is also justified incuring public resentment.
The second inducement: the annexation of land by temples, landlords, etc.
The Mongol rulers had many means of controlling the Central Plains, and religion was one of them. In order to enable the people to be "educated", the imperial court opened countless temples and Taoist temples throughout the country, making the number of monks and Taoists in the Yuan Dynasty period reach a record high. By the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the number of these monks increased to an outrageous degree.
For example, during the reign of Emperor Renzong, the number of monks of the Baiyun Sect exceeded 100,000. Of course, most of these monks were full-fledged tenants. In the third year of Chengzong, Zhongshu Province counted about 500,000 monasteries in the Jiangnan area. From these figures, we can see that the monasteries of the Mongolian Yuan period were very powerful.
The imperial court would often expand the land for the monasteries, for example, during the Yuan Shun Emperor's reign, the imperial court allocated 160,000 hectares of land to the DachengtianHusheng Temple in Shandong. What is even more heinous is that the land rewarded by the imperial court is only part of the source of the monastic land, and the monks will also rely on the deterrent power of the imperial court to plunder the people.
In addition, do not ignore the original Han landlords in the Central Plains. These people had fixed assets at the beginning of the dynasty, and some of the rich even had hundreds of thousands of slaves (many even tens of thousands). Every year, these serfs had to supply millions of stones of grain, so that the gap between rich and poor became wider and wider, and finally reached its peak at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.
The third inducement: the enormous burden on the people at the bottom.
As mentioned above, the common people of the Yuan Dynasty (mainly Han Chinese) were exploited by nobles, bureaucrats, monks, and landlords, and the vast majority of peasants did not even have their own land. According to historical records, even in the rich Jiangnan region, there is no one peasant household with land, and the vast majority of peasants have become tenants who cultivate land for others.
Every year, more than half of the peasants' harvest had to pay taxes and rent, and the remaining grain was difficult to even make ends meet. In the event of a lack of access or disaster, they simply cannot afford the huge rent and taxes. In desperation, the common people can only borrow money from merchants or landlords, and then repay all the harvests they have earned in the following year when the harvest is harvested in the coming year.
If you can't pay off your profits, you have to sell your children and daughters, and sell your ancestral property to repay it. What was more poignant was that the law at that time stipulated that if the landlord killed a tenant, he only needed to be sentenced to one hundred and seventeen rods and pay fifty taels of "burned silver", and most of this buried silver also went into the pockets of local officials. Killing people does not require compensation, which also widens the status gap between farmers and landlords.
The fourth inducement: the national oppression of the Han Chinese by the Mongolian Yuan.
Speaking of this, many people may retort that there are many Han and Nan people in history textbooks who are qualified to enter the DPRK as officials. However, this situation only occurred during the reign of Kublai Khan, and during the reign of later rulers, the status of the Han gradually decreased, even to the point where the Han did not have the right to enter the dynasty as an official:
"Juvenile beauty.
Embroidered white jade belt, horse gold saddle.
Holding the whip to the right, the spirit of the hill is light.
Ziyun Jin Zhang, grandfather is Zhu Wan.
No need to read, twenty are high-ranking officials.
The people of the city consulted together, and the road was divided.
How poor alleyman, buried in the books.
Shoot every year, and come to the old Juju Crown. ”
How much humiliation did the Han people suffer at that time?
They were not allowed to hold iron, so much so that even kitchen knives had to be shared with several households under the management of the Mongol head of households. Without the permission of the local government, Han Chinese were not allowed to leave their hometowns, and those who violated the order were immediately beheaded and paraded to the public.
Just as the so-called "officials force the people to rebel", if it were not for the rulers who compressed the living conditions of the common people, so that the Han people had no room to live, such as the Red Turban, it would be impossible for them to take risks and sing the opposite tune with the imperial court. When the people are dead, it only takes some of the leaders of the uprising to gather them together, and with two shouts, they can be turned into a force strong enough to overthrow the old times.
Resources:
【History of the Yuan", "Peasant Revolt at the End of the Yuan Dynasty"】
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