My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 598 One shouldn't be too idle

Thus, this bizarre scene unfolded naturally.

—Normally, the marquises do not need highly skilled guards, nor do they need to maintain a powerful private army reserve.

Therefore, the servants under the Marquis of Gong were primarily loyal, with intelligence being a secondary consideration.

Those who are quick-witted will be more favored; those who are dull will be ignored.

The main focus is on affordability, satisfying the needs of nobles and nobles to the greatest extent possible at the lowest cost, and never spending a single extra penny for unnecessary needs.

But when it comes to war, on the battlefield, in order to protect their 'floating kill' data, the nobles become strangely generous again—providing armor and crossbows, as if afraid of harming their hundred or so rabble.

Saying that this is because poor students have too many stationery items doesn't seem to be an accurate description.

The description of it as "a treasured collection of rice cakes" is quite fitting.

The logic behind this seems bizarre at first glance, but upon closer examination, it is perfectly reasonable.

For these noble families, supporting others was a continuous and long-term expense, like having a cut on one's body that kept bleeding.

Although each expense is not much—one person eats a meal, ten people share a pot of rice, one meat meal every year or two, and a new piece of clothing every few days—over the years, it becomes a bottomless pit.

As the saying goes: "An army is raised for a thousand days, but used for only one."

When the country needs them, they must go to the battlefield. Once on the battlefield, they must obtain military merit as a KPI, which makes the nobles and marquises need to "use troops for a time".
However, the noble dignity and enormous expenses corresponding to the huge expenditures of the fiefdom of the Marquis made the Marquises unwilling to bear the cost of 'raising an army for a thousand days'.

—As a meritorious marquis, it's not enough to just support an army!
Do you keep servants in your household?

Should we keep geisha who entertain guests?
What about the many wives and concubines in the backyard, and whether or not to support the children and grandchildren?
Money is flowing out like water.

In addition, there are social obligations, weddings and funerals, eating, drinking and entertainment, cockfighting and dog racing...

It is no exaggeration to say that if the more than one hundred marquises still existing in the Han Dynasty relied solely on their fiefdoms, almost everyone would be unable to make ends meet!

Taking a fiefdom of 500 households as an example, the annual tax revenue is 5,000 shi of millet, which is worth about 200,000 coins.

Correspondingly, there are at least ten servants, a total of two hundred bushels of food per year, and various miscellaneous expenses of no less than ten thousand coins per year.
This expense will cost approximately 20,000 yuan in total.

In addition, there is the wife of the Marquis, three or four concubines, and seven or eight singing and dancing girls—a total of more than a dozen female relatives. Their food, clothing, daily necessities, and cosmetics require at least 50,000 coins per year.

Then there are the children.

With sons and daughters combined, there are at least five or six children—the sons need to be fed and dressed well, and they might even have to go out and play with other spoiled brats;
My daughter needs to be dressed well and have plenty of nice things, and she also needs all kinds of jewelry.

No matter how much you cut back, this will still cost at least 30,000 yuan per year.

With these three items combined, half of the annual tax revenue of a marquis with a fief of 500 households would be gone.

And this is just the daily expenses of the Marquis's children, family members, and servants.

He's a marquis after all; surely he should travel by carriage?

If you're going to ride in a carriage, you'll definitely need to keep a few horses, right?

Why would someone throw a bar for their son's wedding or their daughter's marriage?

When other people have weddings or funerals, you have to give a gift, right?

If a poor relative comes to your door, shouldn't you offer them some assistance?
My good-for-nothing son has gotten into trouble, so I'll have to spend money and pull strings to settle things, right?

There were also gifts given to the emperor on the birthdays of the empress dowager and the emperor, the births of princes and princesses, and festivals...

Even after calculating these scattered expenses, just the food, clothing, and daily necessities for his wives, concubines, children, and servants, plus the most basic social obligations, meant that the 200,000 coins of rent from his fiefdom were already barely enough to make ends meet.

What's most baffling about this calculation method is that the above expenditures are calculated entirely based on the lifestyle of ordinary people, with absolutely no extravagant expenditures 'exclusively for the nobility'.

Nobles need to support wives, concubines, and children, but don't ordinary people do the same?

The sons and daughters of noble families need to eat and wear clothes, but don't the old farmers also need to eat and wear clothes?

Nobles need to maintain social relationships and give gifts, and even country folk have to give gifts in return.

If there were any extra expenses that differed from those of ordinary people, it would be the maintenance of servants and horses.

However, the actual cost has not yet been factored in.

—He's a marquis, after all. Doesn't he need to light a few heaters in the winter?
The firewood burning in the stove is money, and the spices are no less valuable than burning money directly!
Don't you need some ice to cool off in the summer?
That's another large sum of money.

Not to mention nowadays, the Marquis of Chang'an is dressed in expensive Shu brocade, and his wife tacitly agrees to wear gold and silver, with pearls and jade everywhere.

Each of the纨绔子弟 (sons of wealthy families) owns a fine horse, and the pampered young ladies also have several respectable figures and rare cosmetics.

When Liu Rong had nothing to do, he once did some calculations.

A marquis with a fief of 500 households receives an annual tax revenue of 5,000 shi of millet, which is equivalent to 200,000 coins.

But if this Marquis wants to provide a decent life for his entire family in Chang'an, he would need at least 500,000 coins every year.

Is this because the fiefdom of 500 households is too small, leading to a serious imbalance between income and expenditure?

If the Marquis of Che had a larger fief and higher income, would it not be so exaggerated?

No.

The imbalance between the taxes and living expenses of a fiefdom with a fief of five hundred households is also considered entry-level.

Those who truly suffered from a severe imbalance between income and expenditure were precisely the top nobles with five or six thousand households, or even tens of thousands of households.

Even if a Marquis of Che, whose fiefdom consists of 500 households, kept slaves, he would only have a dozen or so at most.

However, a Marquis of Che, whose fiefdom consists of 5,000 households, needs a huge servant team of hundreds of people, just to keep his mansion in Chang'an running!

In addition, the manors and residences scattered around Chang'an and in the fiefdoms all required a small number of servants to stay behind to clean and maintain them.

In summary, a high-ranking marquis with a fief of 5,000 households has ten times the number of fiefs as an entry-level marquis with a fief of 500 households, but the number of servants he keeps is often twenty, thirty, or even fifty times greater.

The same applies to servants, wives, concubines, and female relatives.

A Marquis of Che, with a fief of five hundred households, having one wife, two concubines, and three mistresses, would be considered quite content.

However, the Marquis of Che, whose fiefdom consisted of five thousand households, not only had a principal wife, the Marquis's wife, but also dozens of concubines who were exclusively his own, as well as about a hundred singing and dancing girls who were shared with his guests.

This represents a difference of several tens of times in the number of people, and an incomparable difference in 'quality,' or rather, a difference in price and cost. The number of children, however, is roughly the same for both groups.

However, in terms of the cost of raising children, they are worlds apart.

—A marquis with a fief of five hundred households could at most provide each of his sons with a horse.

Each person has one horse, and they have to take good care of it on a daily basis, feeding and caring for it as if it were a precious treasure. They are reluctant to ride it.

But the Chehou family, with its fiefdom of five thousand households, was capable of raising an epic spendthrift son who treated horses like toys and disposable items.

Putting aside other matters, every year in Chang'an City, there are ten or eight cases of "sons of marquises causing trouble by riding wild horses," and the troublemakers are always the same few familiar faces.

Whenever these little devils caused trouble by riding their horses recklessly, the procedures used to be the same as those in the Imperial Secretariat/Court/Prime Minister's Office.

Fines, compensation for the injured or killed, confiscation of horses, and verbal warnings.

But these little devils didn't care at all.

The horses were confiscated—we can just buy more.

Fines and compensation—just take it from your allowance, or have your mother contribute her own money. If all else fails, just get a good beating from your grandfather. In any case, you'll be able to get the money out of him.

After getting beaten up and recovering from the injury, he'll find another horse, go to the bustling city as usual, ride the horse as he pleases, and run people over as he pleases...

It can only be said that the saying "a half-grown boy eats his father out of house and home" applies only to ordinary people and farming families.

For these noble families—especially the top-ranking marquises whose fiefs often numbered in the thousands or tens of thousands—a half-grown boy was no longer a threat to his father's livelihood.

Instead, it's about 'ripping off' my father.

Based on this calculation, the difference between raising a son when the fiefdom is 5,000 households and raising a son when the fiefdom is 500 households is tens or hundreds of times greater.

If the son is like this, the daughter won't be much better.

—Just in terms of preparing dowries, the extent to which the two were concerned with "saving face" and "making a grand show" is on a completely different level.

Even when a Marquis of Che, whose fiefdom comprises five hundred households, marquises still value pomp and circumstance and the dignity of being a 'meritorious nobleman,' they still maintain a degree of rationality.

To put it more bluntly, there are still marquises above them with fiefs of thousands of households, which makes them a little more rational.

At least he could check his pockets and say with a slight blush: "Although my family is a noble family, we only have five hundred households of fiefdom. Everything should be kept within reasonable limits."

But the Marquis of Che, whose fiefdom consisted of five thousand households, was unrestrained and extravagant when it came to showing off his wealth and status.

They use whatever is expensive and buy whatever is considered "respectable," their main goal being to tighten their belts just to maintain a certain image...

At this point, there's really no need to compare anymore.

If a marquis with a fief of 500 households and an annual tax income of 200,000 coins would need an annual expenditure of 500,000 coins to maintain a respectable appearance;

So, a Marquis of Che, with a fief of 5,000 households and an annual tax income of 2 million, would probably have to spend tens of millions, or even more, of the annual amount to avoid being looked down upon or despised by his 'friends' in the circle.

Within the range of 500 to 5,000 households, the ratio of the basic expenses of the marquises to their tax revenue also generally increased linearly.

A fiefdom of 500 households has an annual income of 200,000 and an annual expenditure of at least 500,000, which is 2.5 times the amount.
A fiefdom of 5,000 households has an annual income of 2 million and an annual expenditure of over 10 million, which is five times the average.

Those numbering in the thousands, two thousand, and three thousand between the two are roughly two and a half to five times larger.

On the contrary, those noble families with seven or eight thousand households, or even ten thousand households, could barely control the income-to-expenditure ratio to three to five times—at most no more than five times.

Once you understand these points, and know that the marquises and nobles of the Han dynasty could not cover their expenses, or even their general expenses, with the taxes from their fiefdoms, it is not hard to understand why the marquises and nobles of the Han dynasty were so fond of 'doing business'.

Back then, when Liu Rong was in charge of stabilizing grain prices, why did so many meritorious officials emerge to oppose him?

High grain prices directly affected the accounts of these nobles that year, whether they could break even or even make a profit.

Liu Rongping's suppression of grain prices was not aimed at stopping them from indulging in lavish feasts or depriving them of the opportunity for extravagant enjoyment, but rather at them, artificially creating household financial deficits.

Back then, Liu Rong managed to settle the matter by virtue of his skillful maneuvering and the support of two legendary figures: Empress Dowager Dou and the late Emperor Liu Qi.

But after that, the nobles and relatives of the powerful families in Chang'an did not bid farewell to the 'business world'.

In Chang'an today, at least nine out of ten merchants have a powerful nobleman or relative standing behind them.

The remaining family wasn't any better—backed by either the Imperial Treasury, the Chief Commandant, or some high-ranking official in the court who wasn't a Marquis.

It is true that nobles had fiefdoms and received substantial tax revenue each year.

However, their extravagant lifestyle and the so-called 'grandeur' and 'respectability' of the nobility meant that their expenditures far exceeded the tax revenue of their fiefdoms.

Liu Rong has a very interesting explanation for this phenomenon.

Living in Chang'an is no easy task; becoming a Marquis of Han is extremely difficult.

Given such an extremely unhealthy and unbalanced family financial situation, it is understandable that the nobles would "poverty-free their servants" and be unwilling to invest in training their own armed forces, but would be willing to equip their servants and private armies with expensive weapons such as armor during wartime.

For nobles, servants were like carriages—consumable goods.

Like a car, servants are not something you can buy and use for free forever. They need to be fed, clothed, taken to the doctor when they are sick, and even arranged for marriage when they are lonely.

Armor and weaponry, however, are similar to houses—they are fixed assets.

Once you buy it, you can own it forever without needing to incur ongoing costs.

Most importantly, these armors and weapons were not purchased at great expense by the marquises to gain military merit and meet their KPIs on the battlefield.

—When the Marquis of Gong died, his burial goods should have included these expensive weapons that demonstrated his 'extraordinary military prowess'!

Therefore, the meritorious marquises' acquisition of expensive armor and other military equipment, and their lending of these weapons to their ragtag troops on the battlefield, were essentially preparing burial goods for themselves in advance, and maximizing the value of these 'burial goods' before their deaths.

All I can say is that when rich people get stingy and start calculating, they really do take every last penny.
It's truly outrageous that they wouldn't even spare their own burial goods...

As for why the Han dynasty—especially Liu Rong—tacitly approved, or even implicitly supported, the requirement for nobles to go to the battlefield and accumulate military merit to achieve their KPIs in order to avoid the demotion of their titles, it was naturally out of long-term considerations.

The nobility is a group of people who are truly prone to being "idle and bored".

Having achieved financial freedom and reached the pinnacle of social status, without any incentives like KPIs, these people would not only fail to become a community of shared interests and protectors of the Han people, but would instead become a destabilizing factor in society.

Moreover, they are an unstable factor who possess vast resources, wealth, connections, and high social status.

(End of this chapter)