A Good Landlord in the Tang Dynasty: Starting from the Village Chief

Chapter 741 Advertise it widely

Political Hall.

In the afternoon, the prime ministers returned to their respective offices, and Li Yi was on duty.

It just so happens that Imperial Censor Ma Zhou is also on duty at the Inner Palace today, so he can summon Liu Shiche, the Secretary of the Imperial Secretariat.
Open a brick of tea and brew it.

The tea wasn't ready yet, and we were chatting when the Chief Clerk of the Military Affairs Office came in with a document.

"Reporting to the Minister of Works,"

An urgent report arrived from Shazhou in Hexi: the powerful local lords Zhang Hu and Li Tong had launched a rebellion. Commander He Ruohuai Guang was defeated and retreated to Zicheng, seeking aid from the Liangzhou Commandery. Liangzhou sent troops, but they were defeated by Zhang Hu and the rebels. The rebels then attacked Zicheng again, which fell, and He Ruohuai Guang was killed.

The rebels attacked Guazhou again, and Zhao Xiaolun, the Prefect of Guazhou, appealed to the imperial court for help!

Li Yi took it and looked down to examine it.

The Hexi Corridor is not peaceful either.

After the imperial court sent An Xiuren back to Hexi, he used the influence of the An family in Liangzhou to overthrow Emperor Li Gui of Western Liang.

The Tang Dynasty managed the Hexi region for several years, and appointed Yang Gongren to pacify and guard it.

Yang Gongren performed quite well, defending against the Turks and Tuyuhun, and pacifying the local Sogdian tribes.
The deployment of troops and the suppression of rebellions weakened the local forces in the west and enhanced the prestige of the central government in Hexi.

Yang Gongren was also summoned to the court for his meritorious service in pacifying Hexi, and was appointed Minister of Personnel and later Prime Minister.

However, Hexi was not entirely peaceful.

For example, He Ruoxingwei, the governor of Guazhou, rebelled in the third year of the Wude era, and the rebellion could not be quelled for a long time. It was not until last year that Wang Gan, a powerful figure in Guazhou, killed He Ruoxingwei that the three-year rebellion was finally quelled.

This year, another rebellion broke out in Shazhou.

These rebellions stemmed from conflicts between local powerful clans and the central government over the redistribution of interests, and also involved conflicts between the Sogdian tribes and the Han Chinese.

Fortunately, this rebellion is only localized and will not spread too much for the time being, so the court can only deal with it as it comes.

"Send it to the Ministry of War first, and have them draft a regulation before submitting it."

The chief scribe of the military office withdrew in response.

Li Yi shook his head and said to Ma Zhou and Liu Shiche, "The Duke of Yongkang has not yet reported any victory in his campaign against Liang Shidu in Shuofang."

Rebellions continued unabated throughout the land.

He pointed to the pile of documents on the table, "Feng Sanguan, the prefect of Gangzhou in Lingnan, rebelled in Xinhui."
Zhang Dazhi, a native of Yuzhou in Sichuan, rebelled, and the governor Xue Jingren abandoned the city and fled.

Then Deng Tongying, a native of Zouzhou in Shandong, killed the governor Li Shiheng and rebelled.

The Lizhou Governor's Office also reported that the Liao people of Shizhou had rebelled.

The Liangzhou Governor's Office in Hanzhong reported that the Liao people of Yang and Ji prefectures had rebelled and captured Jincheng in Longzhou.

Wanzhou reported that the Liao people had rebelled.

The Yizhou Grand Commandery was also known as the Liao Rebellion.

Among those reports were rebellions in more than a dozen states, involving either the killing of governors or the capture of prefectures and counties.

It was either local powerful clans rebelling, or the Liao, Qiang, and Hu tribes causing trouble.

Li Yi was used to it.

Just like in Lingnan now, those chieftains and fox spirits have split into two major camps and are attacking each other, but Li Yi didn't take them too seriously and let them fight for a while.

The Guanzhong region was the core of the Tang Dynasty.

First, stabilize the Guanzhong Plain and Longxi region, then the Guandong and Sanhe regions, then the Shannan and Jianghuai regions, and finally the Jiannan, Lingnan, Hexi, and Shuofang border areas.

Their rebellion,
This is also due to the fact that the imperial court's reach is too limited, and the resources deployed to the border areas are still insufficient.

When Liu Lancheng went to Lingnan to serve as the Governor of Guangzhou, he brought several thousand soldiers with him.

Previously, when Qiu He, the governor of Jiaozhou, was old and returned to the capital, the court sent Wang Zhiyuan to succeed him as governor, but only gave him five hundred soldiers.

These places rebelled,

Let the regional governors handle it.

Anyway, we'll deal with whatever comes our way, whether it's water, earth, or soldiers.

The prime minister at the central level is in charge of major policies and is responsible for the country's systems and major policies.

Just like right now,

The main task was to establish and implement the system of unified government and gentry, the system of charitable granaries with a tax of two liters of millet per mu, the system of primary and secondary households, and the commercial tax system.

We should strive to complete the population and land census as soon as possible.

This is what prime ministers should do to assist the monarch.

Ma Zhou said, "I've heard that some governors and prefects in remote areas, far from the emperor's reach, have acted recklessly and audaciously. Some have plundered the people, others have extorted land, engaging in all sorts of extortion and even seizing farmland."
Some even treated the barbarian and Rong people under their rule as less than human, openly abducting and selling people into slavery.

In those remote areas, rebellions broke out among local powerful families and barbarians, but most of them were actually forced into rebellion.

Li Yi was certainly aware of these things as well.

Take Jiaozhou for example,

The court officials were most afraid of it. The mountains and seas were far away, and Lingnan was plagued by miasma, heat and humidity. They felt that going there was like being exiled.

But if one is forced to become an official in Jiaozhou, one can make a fortune.

Even during the Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties, it was common for some officials to be so poor that they would ask the emperor to send them to Jiaozhou for a term, where they could endure hardship for a few years and then return with a fortune.

In fact, most of the officials who went to Jiaozhi (Vietnam) made a fortune.

Those who went to Guangzhou also made a fortune.

How do they get rich? Of course, they do it through various forms of corruption, bribery, smuggling, and even human trafficking.

Some ruthless ones would directly send troops or form their own slave-hunting teams to attack those barbarian tribes, capturing people and selling them as slaves.

Or they might take advantage of their position to buy up goods such as spices, ivory, and rhinoceros horns from foreign merchant ships and then resell them.

Anyway,

In that godforsaken place

These officials appointed by the imperial court, lacking proper oversight and checks and balances, were simply lawless.

It seems that the Tang Dynasty almost unified the world in just six or seven years.

But in fact,

The world is still riddled with holes, like a sieve, full of leaks.

In many places, it's all just a makeshift operation.

"To create a prosperous era is a long and arduous task," Li Yi sighed.

It is precisely because of this situation that Li Yi and the emperor could not govern by doing nothing.

For a serious illness like this, strong medicine is necessary.

After finishing a pot of tea,

Li Yi summoned the three chief scribes of the household office.

"How are the statistics coming along?"

"Reporting to the Minister, since Li Yizong was executed at Gouji Ridge and his body was dismembered and displayed at the city gate, many imperial relatives, nobles and powerful families have actively declared their land holdings and voluntarily handed over grain to the granaries."

Prince Yi'an, Li Xiaochang, donated fifty hectares of land and ten thousand shi of grain to the imperial court.

He also sold fifty hectares of fertile land around Chang'an and Luoyang to his own landless tenants.

Several princes of the imperial clan, including Prince Zhao (Li Xiaogong), Prince Huai'an (Li Shentong), and Prince Xiangyi (Li Shenfu), have also declared their land holdings and paid taxes to the public granary.

They also sold a considerable amount of land to landless tenants. After the last emperor demoted a prince of the imperial clan who had not rendered meritorious service to a county duke, a total of eighteen princes were still retained.

now,

Li Yi, Li Xiaochang, Li Xiaogong, Li Shentong, and others were all leading the way.

They proactively declared the amount of land they owned and actively paid grain into the public granary.

There were also those who donated land and grain to the imperial court.

Some of their land was sold.

The eighteen princes all exceeded the land limit, each owning more than a thousand hectares of land.

Proposing those 10,000 to 20,000 mu now is really just a gesture.

But this stance is very important.

After all, the new policy has just been implemented.

Fortunately, the short-lived Li Yizong broke the deadlock.

Li Yi had already taken the lead in paying taxes and selling land, and now Li Xiaochang was forced to follow suit.

The other princes had no choice but to follow suit.

Although within the royal family, there are the sons of the retired emperor and the current emperor, as well as more than twenty princes.

But these princes were still young.

In terms of influence, they are not as influential as the eighteen princes who were preserved.

Once they took the lead,

That's the weathervane.

The twenty-four meritorious officials who were granted official titles last time certainly couldn't sit idly by, since a large portion of them were the emperor's confidants.

So Fang Xuanling, Du Ruhui, Hou Junji, Qin Qiong, and others followed.

Li Yi looked at the list compiled by the household registration officials.

Looking at the long list,

Li Yi became more and more satisfied as he looked at it.

Eighteen princes,
Twenty-four meritorious officials who were actually granted fiefs.

Eight prime ministers

Every single one of these people in the first tier has already shown their commitment through their actions, truthfully reporting the number of their own land, slaves, and tenants within just a few days.

They also truthfully handed over this year's grain from the public granary.

They also sold off some of the land they had illegally occupied in the remote area.

They made a very good show of it.

Company Commander Sun Wuji,
They each contributed 3,000 mu of land to sell to their tenants.

His alcoholic elder brother, General Changsun Anye, also sold a thousand acres of land.

We must thank Li Yizong.

Giving away kills at crucial moments is incredibly effective.

However, that's not enough.

Next, we should capitalize on this momentum and strike while the iron is hot by conducting a census of the population and farmland, and implementing a primary customer system.

The relocation of people to Kuanxiang still needs to be done.
However, it should not be mandatory; policy encouragement should be the primary approach.

Those who migrate to Kuanxiang are allowed to sell their original Yongyetian and Koufentian in Xiaxiang. Their migration to Kuanxiang will not affect their land allocation.

One hundred mu for a male and one hundred mu for a middle-aged man, all granted in full, with two-tenths for permanent property and eight-tenths for personal property.

This must be ensured before people can be relocated.

In addition, other preferential policies should be provided, such as waiving rent for new immigrants for three years, and providing low-interest settlement loans, seedling loans, and cattle loans.

It also encouraged some people to go there to cultivate the land and work as laborers or tenant farmers.

Those who only want to cultivate land for landlords and merchants with guaranteed income regardless of drought or flood, of course, respect their choices. If they don't want the land, they become customers and don't pay rent or taxes.

Ma Zhou took the statistics booklet handed to him by Li Yi and couldn't help but gasp when he saw the amount of land owned by princes, meritorious officials, and prime ministers.

The princes all owned at least a thousand acres of land.

The meritorious officials who were granted fiefdoms also owned a considerable amount of land.
Apart from Wei Zheng, almost all of the eight prime ministers were large landowners with more than 10,000 mu of land.

"The land consolidation is so rampant."

The common people in the capital region couldn't even afford twenty acres of land, while princes and prime ministers each had hundreds or thousands of acres of fertile land.

Even if we sell a thousand or eight hundred acres this time, what's the point?
Isn't it still ten or a hundred times more than the limit?

If this is the case for princes and prime ministers, then it's no different for governors, prefects, and generals.

This land restriction order, in the end, is just a piece of paper with no real meaning.

Li Yi had anticipated this outcome. The princes and nobles would symbolically sell a thousand or eight hundred acres of land, but the lower-ranking officials would probably not be willing to sell even a single acre.

Anyway, if the sky falls, there are tall people to hold it up.

The princes and prime ministers are already ten or a hundred times more powerful, so what are they afraid of?

Liu Shiche said, "The imperial court can make officials and gentry pay grain together, with each mu (unit of land area) paying two sheng (unit of volume) of grain from the public granary. This can clear out all the hidden land, and in a year, it can collect millions, or even tens of millions, of shi (unit of volume) of grain."

Although land consolidation was severe, land tax revenue was still guaranteed.

Rather than trying to suppress land annexation, which is doomed to failure, it would be better to promote the practice of gentry contributing grain to the granary.

“Zhao, the chief clerk,” Li Yi said, pointing to the registration booklet.

"Your subordinate is here. What are your orders, Minister?"

"Add another clause above: Situ Li Yi sold another 200 hectares each of private land in Guanzhong, Longyou, Hedong, Henan, and Hebei."
One thousand hectares of land were sold entirely to people who did not receive enough land through the equal distribution system, as well as landless tenants, merchants, and other artisans.

The clerk, Zhao, stared in astonishment, his eyes wide as bull's.

"Does Situ want to sell another thousand acres of land?"

"Ah."

"Is it one, a thousand hectares?"

"That's right, it's 100,000 mu, with 20,000 mu in each of the five routes."

hiss!
Zhao Zhushu was truly astonished. Did this Minister Li really find the land too hot to handle? He had already sold off several thousand hectares of land, and now he wanted to sell another thousand hectares.

It turns out that within just two or three months, five or six thousand hectares of fertile land were sold off?

That's really generous of them.

Even Liu Shiche couldn't help but say, "Among all the princes, the Prince of Yi'an, who sold the most land, only donated fifty qing of land and then sold another fifty qing."

The other princes and prime ministers received either thirty to fifty acres or one or two dozen acres.

"Situ, do you really intend to sell another thousand acres of land, or even fields in the Guanzhong and Sanhe regions?"

"Yes, I'll sell," Li Yi replied with a smile.

He watched as Zhao Zhushu wrote down the order for him to sell another thousand acres of land, and said, "Zhao Zhushu, copy this register of the princes and prime ministers' grain payments and land sales, and then post it at all the gates of Chang'an."

Spread the word!

(End of this chapter)