Prosperous Tang Dynasty

Chapter 157

After the prince Li Heng's incident, although Yang Guozhong had the intention to continue to suppress Li Heng, Li Heng did not make mistakes, Tang Xuanzong no longer cooperated, and he had nothing to do.Moreover, about another month later, when the news of the war in Nanzhao Kingdom came, Yang Guozhong's energy was immediately involved again.

A few months ago, Yang Guozhong got the permission of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty and ordered Jiannan to stay. Li Mi led [-] Tang troops to attack Nanzhao Kingdom for the second time.

Nanzhao country is small and the people are small, and the soldiers in the whole country are only 6 to [-], and the weapons and armor are not complete.

Therefore, at the beginning of the war, Li Mi led the Tang army like a broken bamboo and captured many cities of Nanzhao Kingdom.

It's a pity that this is just a strategy of the Nanzhao Kingdom to lure the enemy to go deep. When Li Mi attacked Dahe City, the Nanzhao Kingdom's coach He Luofeng no longer fought with Li Mi, but ordered the Nanzhao Army to stay behind closed doors. Li Mi Unable to attack for a long time, and the Nanzhao Kingdom was full of miasma, many soldiers of the Tang army were infected with miasma, and it was not easy to transport food and grass when they went deep into the Nanzhao Kingdom. Soon Li Mi’s Tang army’s food was also eaten up, and the combat effectiveness was greatly weakened. Li Mi had no choice but to order withdraw troops.

Because of Li Mi's lack of experience, the Tang army was quite chaotic when they evacuated. As a result, He Luofeng led the Nanzhao army to sneak attack at night. But more than ten thousand.

"Trash! Trash!" Yang Guozhong cursed angrily.

Li Mi is the general recommended by him. His majesty will definitely blame him for this disastrous defeat and the last fiasco of Xianyu Zhongtong. Some people in the court may attack him and shake his position as prime minister. Must not let His Majesty know.

Yang Guozhong chose to conceal the disastrous defeat. He is the Jiannan Jiedu envoy and the current prime minister, and the battle report was sent to him first. It is not difficult for him to conceal the disastrous defeat in the battle with Nanzhao.

To the outside world, Yang Guozhong only said that he had won a big victory and killed 2 enemies, and that Nanzhao would be destroyed if he went one step further.

Fudged Tang Xuanzong and the civil and military forces of the Manchu Dynasty, Yang Guozhong continued to order Jiannan Road to send more troops, horses, food and grass, and continued to attack Nanzhao Kingdom.

The first thing to spend in war is money, and Yang Guozhong is devastated.

In the palace, Tang Xuanzong's expenses could not be stopped. After all, he was able to be the prime minister because Tang Xuanzong saw his ability to "make money". Tang Xuanzong no longer felt constrained when spending money. For the cost, maybe Tang Xuanzong would think that he is useless and would not let him continue to be prime minister.

The fierce battle between Longyou and Tubo cannot be stopped, nor can Anlu Mountain's conquest of the Xi and Khitan peoples in Fanyang Youzhou area.In addition, we will continue to increase our troops and conquer Nanzhao Kingdom again.

The money from the household department is spent like running water.

what to do?The only way is to search for supplements from the common people, but it is impossible for the gentry and nobles. After all, the consequences of offending too many gentry and nobles are very serious, so it can only be ordinary people.

Ordinary people during Tang Xuanzong's period may have had enough rice to eat, and there was a lot of surplus accumulation, but it does not mean that these ordinary people could withstand several times of crushing.

Yang Guozhong originally promulgated many policies to scrape money from the people in different ways, and basically squeezed out those ordinary people. There is nothing left of the previous accumulation, and now he is squeezing even more, especially in Jiannan and Shannan. Dao, he didn't even bother to use the excuses of beating around the bush, and directly collected the war wages from the local people in a blatant manner, and asked fifteen families of the people to pay a small one.

Because he came from a later age, it's not that Li Fei didn't know Yang Guozhong's defeat in the three conquests of Nanzhao, so he certainly wouldn't believe Yang Guozhong's so-called 'big victory'.

However, Li Fei did not have direct evidence to prove it. Even if he found evidence and told Tang Xuanzong, Tang Xuanzong might not believe it, and Li Fei was quite entangled.

Li Fei's life seems to be peaceful, but his heart is not peaceful at all. He can say that he watched the prosperous Tang Dynasty degenerate step by step.

What makes Li Fei most helpless is the attitude of Tang Xuanzong, a king who is tired of governing and greedy for pleasure.A king who has been living in the illusion of the peak of Kaiyuan, a king who fell asleep and refused to wake up.

There is a good saying that you can never wake up a person who pretends to be asleep. If you wake him up forcefully, you will only be greeted with his monstrous anger. Li Fei is very selfish and does not want to test Tang Xuanzong's monstrous anger.

"There are more beggars in Chang'an City." Lin Siming just came back from business outside, and said to Li Fei with a sigh.

"For His Majesty, Yang Guozhong's greatest use is to 'increase' the national treasury. But—" Li Fei shook his head with a wry smile.But Tang Xuanzong, who was once a Ming emperor, didn't he know that the only way to 'increase the revenue' of the treasury was to search the income of the people and make the people poorer and poorer?
Maybe Tang Xuanzong was really old, his eyes were hazy, he couldn't see many things clearly, and he didn't want to see clearly with his eyes.Li Fei thought to himself.

In September, a large-scale drought broke out in Henan and Hedong, and the autumn grain could be harvested soon, but this sudden drought reduced the grain production by [-] to [-]%.

Although Yang Guozhong did not conceal the drought, he also 'minimized' the disaster, so that the court hardly took any action to relieve the disaster.

Not only that, in order to avoid reducing the "income" of the treasury, Yang Guozhong also forced the people in the drought-stricken areas to continue to pay various taxes. The local people did not even have enough to eat.

Winter is coming soon, and a large number of hungry victims came to Chang'an City.

Li Fei called Cao Chong.

"You lead people yourself, and spend one hundred guan a day to set up porridge sheds inside and outside the city to help some victims." One hundred guan a day is not worth mentioning to Li Fei, and he can help some people within his own power. Do the math.

"Yes, my lord." Cao Chong refused to do business with Cao Xiaozhong and Xiao Ruoshui, so he became the big housekeeper in Li Fei's duke's mansion, and also took care of Li Fei's properties in the south of the Yangtze River.

Speaking of Li Fei's property in Jiangnan, in the past two years, Li Fei has spent more than 100 million yuan to buy fertile land in the Jiangnan area. Most of the land closures are in Yuhang County in the south of the Yangtze River. Li Fei's property in the south of the Yangtze River exceeds 6 mu of land. Target.

"My lord, the farms in the south of the Yangtze River have harvested a lot of grain in the past two years. Will it be shipped to Chang'an?" Cao Chong asked.

"No, all of them are stored in a warehouse, and not a single one is allowed to be sold!" Li Fei shook his head and said.More than two years later, there will be the Anshi Rebellion. By then, the price of grain will rise several times, and now he is still selling grain, unless he is a fool.
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(End of this chapter)