manynovel Chapter 165
Chapter 165
Chapter 165
Moreover, although the Song Dynasty did a good job of decentralizing power, the emperor began to relinquish power again after concentrating it.
The Secretariat and the Privy Council were in charge of civil and military affairs respectively, while the Three Offices were in charge of finance, and they were independent of each other.
It is good in essence, as it has achieved the independence of military, political, and financial powers.
With all three being completely independent, it is difficult for a true powerful minister to emerge.
Even those who were able to control the government did so by gaining the emperor's trust.
Unlike some other dynasties, where the emperor was simply sidelined and became a puppet.
However, the fact that the three are not subordinate to each other also has a major drawback.
The Privy Council was alright; it managed the military.
The Council of State Affairs was in charge of government affairs, which were often linked to finances.
For example, the prime minister has a good policy he wants to implement, but this policy requires money.
Then it can only be implemented with the consent of the three departments.
However, if both are of equal status and share the same political views or are dedicated to public service, there is naturally no problem.
However, if the two sides disagree on political views or have any conflicts, the three officials will completely ignore the prime minister.
As for the government, it's too simple; they can't do anything about it if you just say you have no money.
Normally, this centralized system of decentralization requires the emperor to act as a mediator.
But the emperors of the Song Dynasty were quite comical. Despite having centralized power, they seemed to be constrained in everything they did.
Not to mention coordination.
Besides the imperial court, at the local level, the duties of officials at the circuit, prefecture, and county levels overlapped, and supervisory officials (such as transport commissioners and judicial commissioners) wielded excessive power, often leading to conflicts with local officials.
"What does this have to do with the Imperial City Guard?" Zhao Sheng asked, puzzled.
"Your Highness, any system is good at the beginning, but over time, power will be concentrated in the hands of a few."
Wang You said, "This principle is the same as land annexation. The imperial court wanted various local institutions and government offices to check and balance each other's power, and initially, this had a check-and-balance effect."
But no one wants to be checked and balanced, so they will naturally fight each other for power and profit. Over time, a winner will emerge, and power will naturally fall into the hands of one person.
If this is the case in local areas, how much more so in the Imperial City Guard?
According to the Emperor's ideas, the Imperial City Guard became the embodiment of the Emperor's will and a tool in the Emperor's hand.
But the Imperial City Guard is not an inanimate object. With such great power in its hands, surely it has no other thoughts?
As time goes on, it becomes difficult to say whether the knife is truly in the hands of the government, or whether someone is using the government's name to act.
"What if we use it and then discard it?"
Zhao Sheng said, "Although the national treasury is short of money, it was a show of force by those officials to Emperor, but in reality, the national treasury is indeed running a deficit."
The problems plaguing the imperial court were so severe that they had reached a point where no change was possible.
Didn't you say last time that if reforms are to succeed, it's impossible without killing people and using ruthless methods?
I've been thinking about what you said carefully these past few days, and I find it makes more and more sense.
The problem of redundancy, redundancy, and redundancy is well-known, and the causes and solutions are quite simple.
But why can't it be solved?
You previously said that the power of the military governors in the Tang Dynasty expanded too much, and that the Tang Dynasty was unable to control those military governors at that time due to the An Lushan Rebellion.
Later, it became necessary to appoint more military governors to check and balance each other.
The Tang Dynasty did this out of necessity, but the Song Dynasty's problem of excessive bureaucracy had not yet reached the point of being forced into this situation.
The reason it couldn't be resolved was simply because the late emperor was too lenient.
There are some things we know how to solve, but we can't do them, so we have to find other ways to solve them.
However, the problem of redundancy in the Song Dynasty was obvious and easy to solve.
The so-called "three redundancies" refer to redundant officials, redundant soldiers, and redundant expenses.
Simply put, the government had too many officials and soldiers, and the expenses were too high, resulting in a deficit.
The solution is simply to reduce the number of officials and the military. This would reduce expenditures and naturally increase the national treasury.
The problem is that the officials won't agree, and there's nowhere to put the laid-off soldiers.
This brings us to the source of the soldiers in the Song Dynasty.
Many people believe that the Song Dynasty maintained so many troops because there were no natural defenses in the north, but this is completely wrong.
During the reign of Emperor Zhenzong, the total military strength of the Song Dynasty was around 900,000, including 600,000 imperial guards and about 300,000 local militia and village troops.
By the time of the late emperor, this number had surged to 1.25 million.
Of these, 800,000 were imperial guards and 450,000 were local militia and village soldiers.
However, no war broke out between the Song Dynasty and the Liao Dynasty during the reign of the late emperor.
The war with Western Xia was also initiated by the Song Dynasty.
In other words, during the decades of the late emperor's reign, there was absolutely no pressure to defend against foreign enemies, forcing the court to increase its military strength.
However, the Song Dynasty's military strength increased by more than 300,000 over the course of several decades.
Upon closer examination, this can be considered a malpractice left behind by the founding emperor.
Emperor Taizu used the military as a "shock absorber" to stabilize the country, mainly targeting famine and rebellion.
In times of famine, the imperial court would forcibly recruit displaced people into the army, transforming them into professional soldiers to prevent rebellions caused by famine.
Secondly, after the rebellion was assessed, in order to prevent a second rebellion, able-bodied men from the rebels would be recruited into the army.
Emperor Taizu remarked, "In years of famine and hardship, there are rebellious people but no rebellious soldiers."
This means that even if there is a rebellion, it is only among ordinary people and will not develop into an army.
That's right. All the able-bodied men had been conscripted into the army, leaving only the old, weak, sick, and disabled. Even Han Xin couldn't do anything about it.
Han Xin could lead an army that had been trained for several months into battle, but could he lead a group of old, weak, sick and disabled people into battle?
But during the time of Emperor Taizu, the country was in chaos, and soldiers were expendable resources.
A war can kill a huge number of people, directly depleting their resources.
Many people have done similar things during times of war.
The most famous example is Cao Cao, who quelled the Yellow Turban Rebellion in Qingzhou and selected the able-bodied men to train into a Qingzhou army.
However, since there was no war for many years, the soldiers did not suffer losses, and the military system of the Song Dynasty was still based on inheritance.
If the army is not fighting, it will not decrease at all. In addition, young men will be recruited from rebels and disaster victims, so the army will naturally increase.
That's not the key point. The most important thing is that these soldiers are all proletarians.
Once they are laid off, the soldiers will have no means of making a living and no land to cultivate, so they will not be allowed to rebel.
Therefore, even though the imperial court knew that cutting part of the army would reduce a lot of expenses, it was unable to cut the army due to the lack of resettlement options.
It is precisely because of these reasons that, despite knowing the root cause of the three redundancies problem, there is no way to solve it.
Influenced by Wang You's words, Zhao Sheng also came up with a solution that was hardly a solution.
Settling soldiers was also very simple; all you needed was land.
Most of the land in the country was in the hands of the gentry.
Asking them for it is pointless; they won't give it to you. So, the only option is to kill them.
Of course, directly targeting the gentry is not an option, as that would lead to their rebellion.
Although the Song Dynasty no longer had powerful clans, these gentry controlled vast amounts of land, and many tenant farmers depended on them for their livelihood.
Moreover, these gentry have money and grain, and can quickly raise an army.
They couldn't directly target the gentry, but they could target the officials.
Officials themselves were also gentry; even officials from ordinary backgrounds could acquire a large amount of land after serving in office for some years.
An agency like the Imperial City Guard could investigate officials throughout the land.
For those corrupt officials, once a charge is found against them, they should be executed or their homes confiscated.
In this way, money and land will come.
Wang You was stunned after hearing Zhao Sheng's words.
He never expected that his previous words would inspire Zhao Sheng so much.
Coming to his senses, Wang You quickly advised, "Your Highness, you mustn't!"
Why?
Zhao Sheng frowned and said, "Didn't you say that before?"
"What I'm saying is that I'll use this charge of treason to kill some civil officials as a deterrent."
Murder can solve problems, but it cannot be the sole solution.
Wang You shook his head and said, "In the later stages of a dynasty, land annexation was very serious. But has Your Highness ever seen any emperor in history books who used this method to solve the problem?"
The only one who did this was Wang Mang, but precisely because he did so, he quickly perished.
Wang Mang was later rumored to be a time traveler because he started implementing land nationalization more than two thousand years ago.
In addition, he abolished slavery.
To be precise, slavery was abolished in the Qin Dynasty; what it abolished was the buying and selling of slaves.
Before the Qin Dynasty, ordinary people were slaves of kings and nobles.
After the abolition of slavery, people could sell themselves into slavery or sell their children.
Wang Mang abolished this system.
However, if you interpret Wang Mang's actions as an attempt to consolidate his power, then his actions become much easier to understand.
Wang Mang usurped the Han throne, becoming the first emperor in history to seize the throne through usurpation.
Previously, the struggle for power was always achieved through war.
Wang Mang, however, usurped a unified regime.
He was vastly different from Yang Jian and Emperor Taizu.
There was a similar figure to him, Sima Zhao, but Sima Zhao's usurpation of Wei was based on Sima Yi's management and the Nine-Rank System.
Moreover, the state of Wei at that time was not yet internally corrupt.
But Wang Mang usurped a corrupt Western Han dynasty.
Having seized the throne, he certainly couldn't purge his court officials at first, since his position was already precarious. To do so would be tantamount to court suicide.
But the Western Han Dynasty was corrupt at that time, and in order to stabilize his rule, he needed to do something.
Since officials cannot be touched, the only option left is to win over the hearts and minds of the people.
Wang Mang's solution was simple: abolish private land ownership, nationalize all land, and prohibit the buying and selling of slaves.
He demanded that families with no more than eight members and more than 900 mu of land must distribute the excess land to other people.
If they won't give it to us, that's simple: kill them!
But how could the gentry who controlled large tracts of land be willing to do so?
The gentry of that time wielded far more power than those of the Song Dynasty.
They all maintained a large number of guards. With these guards as a base, and by drawing some able-bodied men from the tenant farmers, they could form an army.
Moreover, natural disasters were frequent at the time, and rebellions broke out everywhere, so the gentry supported the rebels.
Wang Mang eventually perished.
Relying solely on killing to intimidate is definitely not going to work.
Later emperors, even knowing the severity of land annexation, would simply kill the gentry and the land would be released.
But which emperor ever did that?
It's not that they lacked courage; some dynasties did produce capable emperors at the end of their reigns.
But none of them dared to do that.
Because once this tendency is revealed, the gentry will immediately rebel.
No one is willing to give up their family fortune, especially when they have the ability to resist.
"But isn't this exactly what you meant by the method you mentioned before?" Zhao Sheng asked.
"Your Highness, that is indeed what I meant, but the pretext is that those people were involved in the rebellion. Even if everyone knows that this is aimed at the land and money, others will feel safe as long as they are not implicated."
Wang You said with a wry smile, "It's not scary that those gentry are acting alone, what's scary is that they unite."
As long as they have a choice, they will not be willing to risk rebellion.
"That's why we need to make good use of the Imperial City Guard. As long as the Imperial City Guard finds evidence of those officials' illegal activities, they will naturally have a legitimate reason," Zhao Sheng said.
"Your Highness, these are two different things."
Wang You shook his head and said, "In other people's eyes, the main thing is to investigate and punish traitors. Killing some officials and getting some money and grain is just a side thing."
Following Your Highness's method, initially removing some officials didn't cause any problems.
But once they move around too much, they'll realize what's happening.
Secondly, the pretext of purging rebels was offered up willingly. Your Highness using the Imperial City Guard to investigate officials is deliberately seeking trouble; they are completely different matters.
"Is this really not going to work?" Zhao Sheng asked, unwilling to give up.
"Definitely not."
Wang You said, "It's very simple for Your Highness to take action against the officials. You just need to do some things to make them come forward on their own, and then Your Highness will have a legitimate reason."
"But this is too slow," Zhao Sheng said, shaking his head.
We can't always resort to large-scale collective punishment, as that would only provoke opposition from the court officials.
"Reform is actually very simple. First, seize military power. Once you have military power, then formulate some practical and feasible systems, and use the effectiveness of the implementation of these systems as the main evaluation for promotion."
"Then, strictly deal with some uncooperative officials, and it will naturally be done," Wang You said.
There's a saying: "Those who obey me prosper, those who defy me perish."
Ultimately, it's about showing officials the different outcomes of following the rules and going against them, which will naturally make them behave.
The problem with the Song Dynasty now is that the costs of compliance and resistance are completely disproportionate.
On the contrary, sometimes going against the grain is better than going with the flow.
Take the previous new policies as an example. They were formulated by Fan Da Xiang Gong and others under the instruction of the late emperor.
In the end, those who supported the government were demoted, while those who opposed it continued to enjoy high positions and generous salaries.
Who would still be willing to risk their life?
"What about the fields?"
Zhao Sheng asked, "No matter how things change, the land has already fallen into the hands of a few people. Why would they be willing to give it up?"
"This requires some systems. The imperial court can formulate a detailed tax system based on the amount of land owned."
Using the current tax standards as the basic system, based on the family unit, taxes would be doubled for those exceeding 300 mu and several times higher for those exceeding 1,000 mu.
When taxes exceed the benefits the land can bring, naturally no one will covet that land anymore.
The reason why land annexation was so serious in ancient times was largely due to the underdeveloped economic system.
Take ordinary officials as an example. If they do not engage in business, their usual salary surplus is limited.
Moreover, any surplus money left at home is just sitting there doing nothing; it won't grow at all.
Unlike in later generations, you can't just deposit your money in a bank and earn interest.
Regardless of the interest rate, at least there's an increase.
In ancient times, money kept at home was essentially worthless.
Therefore, buying land is the best option if one is not engaged in business.