My father, Li Shimin, please call me Crown Prince

Chapter 427 The Emperor's Responsibility

East Palace.

After yesterday's court assembly, Li Chengqian has essentially seized all power.

However, power also means responsibility.

"Your Highness, Fang Xuanling requests an audience."

Wen Zhong bowed and said.

Li Chengqian nodded: "Summon."

This can also be seen as a transfer of power between him and Li Shimin.

Fang Xuanling, who oversaw the administration of the court, was extremely clear about the situation in various parts of the Tang Dynasty. Yesterday, Li Chengqian asked Fang Xuanling to go back and prepare, and today he came to report on the overall situation of the Tang Dynasty.

According to reports, Fang Xuanling went to pay his respects to His Majesty after the court assembly, and Li Chengqian did not stop him. The content of the conversation between the emperor and his minister had naturally already reached Li Chengqian.

They didn't talk much; Li Shimin simply asked Fang Xuanling to cooperate more with the Crown Prince's work.

Fang Xuanling arrived today.

"Greetings to Your Highness."

Two minor officials accompanied Fang Xuanling, carrying a large number of documents.

"This old minister greets Your Highness."

Fang Xuanling's voice was hoarse from the early morning: "This is the national treasury's general register from the twentieth year of Zhenguan. This old minister has checked it three times and dares not make the slightest mistake."

Li Chengqian nodded: "Thank you for your hard work, Minister Fang."

Then Shi Yiwenzhong took all the documents and began to look through them on the table.

Public finance is a very important component of a country.

Li Chengqian is now practically an emperor, so naturally he needs to know the details of his own family's situation.

Li Chengqian was fairly satisfied with the situation in Chang'an.

The treasury in Chang'an was full, with three million shi of millet, two million bolts of cloth, and five hundred thousand guan of cash. Judging from these figures alone, it was even more abundant than when he left the capital.

But Fang Xuanling's next words were like a bucket of ice water poured over his head.

"What Your Highness sees are the account books of Chang'an and Luoyang."

Fang Xuanling explained: "In Chang'an, foreign merchants in the East and West Markets can earn thousands of strings of cash a day. In the Persian mansions in the West Market, pearls and agates are piled up like small mountains. In the Hanjia Granary in Luoyang, new wheat is piled up on top of old grain, and even mouse holes are filled with grains. But a hundred miles outside of Chang'an, in the homes of farmers in Hu County, it is considered well-off if you can find three liters of grain stored."

"Your Highness's eastern expedition against Goguryeo and the pacification of the three kingdoms of Liaodong are unparalleled achievements."

"However, during the Eastern Expedition, a total of 700,000 troops and 1.2 million laborers were mobilized. The oxcarts transporting grain alone stretched from Youzhou to the Yalu River. For every shi of grain transported to Liaodong, three shi were consumed on the way. One million shi of military rations consumed the hard-earned money of three million shi of the people."

“On the journey from Youzhou to Liaodong alone, more than 3,000 laborers starved to death by the roadside, and more than half of the oxcarts were destroyed. The prefectures and counties along the way had exhausted their grain reserves in order to supply the army with provisions.”

Fang Xuanling did not continue speaking, but Li Chengqian knew what was going on.

The Tang Dynasty's campaign against Goguryeo was extremely costly, but the one who reaped the benefits was the Crown Prince.

After Li Chengqian occupied Liaodong, he purged the old nobles of the Three Kingdoms period and became extremely wealthy. In order to win over the people, he introduced many local tax reduction policies.

However, at the same time, no taxes were paid to the imperial court.

The responsibility for pacifying the Tang army's forces also fell to the imperial court.

During the campaign against Goguryeo, the Tang Dynasty did not suffer much loss in terms of soldiers. Li Chengqian's troops broke through cities one after another, and the imperial army seemed to have only played a supporting role.

But that's not how it works. From the moment 700,000 troops and millions of laborers were mobilized, the national treasury's funds and grain were being consumed at an alarming rate.

Even setting aside the war, the cost of nearly two million people traveling back and forth is an enormous astronomical figure.

Historically, when Li Shimin was about to launch his second eastern expedition against Goguryeo, the large-scale construction of ships and the collection of taxes from various regions had already triggered numerous peasant uprisings.

If Li Shimin hadn't passed away, the impact would probably have been even greater.

"The score for the Eastern Expedition is not yet settled."

"An army of 700,000 consumes 300,000 shi of grain every day, not including the bean feed for warhorses, the repair of armor, and the medicine for wounded soldiers. In order to raise these funds, the imperial court levied an additional 'military tax' on Henan Province last year, ten coins per household. It doesn't seem like much, but there was a tenant farmer in Chenzhou who only had two mu of poor land. In order to pay the tax, he sold his only ox. This spring, he could only use manpower to pull the plow."

This was the Achilles' heel of agricultural dynasties.

Taxation is based on land and population, but war is like a locust plague; after it has devoured the land's produce, it will begin to devour the land itself.

The Reign of Zhenguan was built upon the foundation laid by the elimination of the accumulated problems of land annexation caused by the wars at the end of the Sui Dynasty, and the iron-fisted suppression of bureaucratic corruption by Emperor Taizong of Tang (Li Shimin).

However, as long as the power structure remains unchanged, land will always be concentrated in the hands of a few, and officials will always find new ways to amass wealth. Just like ant holes on a dike, the visible ones can be blocked, but the invisible ones will eventually collapse in a rainstorm.

"Your Highness," Fang Xuanling said, looking at the mountain of documents on the table, as if he were lecturing a successor who had just inherited a mess.

"The dynasty is like a carriage, with Chang'an and Luoyang as the magnificent carriages and the people as the horses pulling them. In the early years of the Zhenguan era, the horses were fat and the carriage was light, so they could run very fast; but now, the saddles on the horses' backs are getting heavier and heavier, and the whips are being lashed harder and harder. Some horses have started to limp, and some have even fallen on the road."

"Last year, Runzhou was flooded, submerging tens of thousands of acres of fertile land. The imperial court distributed relief grain, but the governor sailed the grain ships to his own estate and distributed only moldy grain seeds to the tenants. The people complained to the Censorate, but the censor accepted a bribe from the governor and suppressed the complaint. It wasn't until this spring that the disaster victims rushed into the granaries to loot the grain, which turned into a 'popular uprising' and was reported to Chang'an."

This is the fatal flaw of an authoritarian system: the transmission of information is always a step behind the spread of a crisis. When local officials write "starvation" as "occasional poor harvest" and "popular uprising" as "troublemakers causing trouble," what the central government sees is always a whitewashed picture of peace.

The 'incompetence' of many emperors during dynastic eras was also because what they actually saw was different from what they perceived.

The reason why Li Shimin did not fight the Crown Prince to the death was because he knew the true nature of the Tang Dynasty.

Fang Xuanling actually knew something about the crown prince, or rather, which emperor throughout history didn't want to expand his territory and leave his mark on history?

However, these achievements require countless bones to be shed.

When Fang Xuanling laid these bloody account books out in front of Li Chengqian, the trembling of his fingertips concealed three profound meanings.

It was a veteran minister's guarantee for the dynasty, a powerful minister's test of the new emperor, and a testament to the awe of those who had experienced chaos towards the word "peace."

He knew all too well the cost of concealment.

In the twelfth year of the Daye era of the Sui Dynasty, when Fang Xuanling was still a minor official in Luoyang, he saw county officials write "thousands of starving corpses" as "abundant autumn harvest" and change "popular uprisings" to "bandits gradually subside".

Those embellished memorials piled up on Emperor Yang of Sui's desk. Even after the banners of the Wagang Army were planted on the walls of Luoyang, the emperor on the dragon boat was still asking, "Why is there no report of famine in the Eastern Capital?"

This is also a secret explanation to His Majesty.

His Majesty's instruction for him to "cooperate more with the Crown Prince" was not a simple transfer of power, but rather tacit approval for him to hand over the real empire to his successor.

Instead of letting the crown prince continue his militaristic expansion in a false sense of peace, it's better to let him see the scars and learn to temper his arrogance.

More importantly, he was betting on Li Chengqian's true character.

Throughout history, there have always been two paths to the ascension of a new emperor: either being coerced by the old nobles to create a facade of peace and prosperity, or tearing away the facade to confront deep-seated problems.

Fang Xuanling had witnessed Li Chengqian's governance of Liaodong. He observed that Li Chengqian did not massacre surrendered soldiers when he captured a city, and provided ample food and pay when he incorporated Goguryeo soldiers. These details revealed a pragmatism beyond his years.

He deliberately placed glaring phrases like "three thousand laborers starved to death" and "the Runzhou peasant uprising" in the most conspicuous place, just to see if the crown prince, who had just returned from the battlefield, only saw the glory of "pacifying Liaodong" or could see the bones behind the glory. He had calculated the crown prince's weakness: what the crown prince cared about most was never the "military achievements" in history books, but whether he could escape the cycle of "filial piety and parental love".

The estrangement between Li Shimin and Li Yuan, and the power struggle between Li Chengqian and Li Shimin, were essentially a conflict between power and human nature.

Fang Xuanling's meticulous accounting was a reminder to Li Chengqian: if he wanted to avoid "conflict between the emperor and the crown prince," he had to ensure the people's survival first.

When farmers have stored grain and refugees can eat porridge, who would follow the clamor of ambitious people? A stable country is never built by blasting away thunderbolts, but by piling up bowls of millet that can fill people's stomachs.

"Your Highness."

Fang Xuanling slowly stood up and pushed the last list of refugees over.

"This old minister does not mean to spoil Your Highness's mood. It's just that this country, though it looks like a dragon throne on the Golden Palace, is actually just a hoe in the hands of the common people."

This is the wisdom of Fang Xuanling: he neither became a sycophant who whitewashed the truth nor a reckless man who spoke out against the emperor; he simply became the one who quietly handed the mirror to the new ruler during the transfer of power.

What is reflected in the mirror is both the scars of the dynasty and the possibility of new life.

Li Chengqian remained silent for a moment.

If you don't become a householder, you don't know that firewood, rice, oil and salt are expensive.

Li Chengqian repeatedly stroked the words "Three thousand laborers starved to death" with his fingertips.

He suddenly remembered that on the Liaodong battlefield, when he stood on the top of Gaimu City and received the kneeling of surrendered soldiers, the granary behind him was piled with grain confiscated from the Goryeo nobles.

At that time, he thought that "pacifying Liaodong" was the greatest contribution to the Tang Dynasty. Only now did he realize that the amount of grain he had was far less than the half-eaten wheat cake clutched in the hands of the starving laborers by the roadside in Youzhou.

Fang Xuanling's spread-out account books resembled a scale, one end bearing the glorious military achievements of "pacifying the Three Kingdoms," and the other end weighing down the heavy price of "the blood and sweat of three million people."

He used to think that "expanding territory" could consolidate power, but now he understood that if the people's stomachs were empty, the foundation of power would crumble. The tax reduction policy in Liaodong won the hearts of the local people, but it shifted the burden entirely onto the imperial court. This was not "winning the hearts of the people," but rather robbing Peter to pay Paul.

An emperor's achievements are never measured by the size of his territory, but by whether the people within it can survive.

If the people of Guanzhong and Henan are forced to rise up in rebellion, no matter how tightly they hold onto the land of Liaodong, it will be nothing more than a shard of porcelain that will break your hand.

When Li Yuan was placed under house arrest by Li Shimin, there were disaster victims outside Chang'an City gnawing on tree bark.

During the three years that Li Chengqian and Li Shimin were secretly fighting, many people in the Tang Dynasty couldn't even get a full meal.

The cycle of fatherly love and filial piety is rooted not in the inherent coldness between fathers and sons, but in the fatal flaws within the power structure.

When the emperor's eyes are only focused on the crown prince's movements, and the crown prince's mind is only on how to ascend to the throne, who will even glance at the famine reports submitted by the prefectures and counties?

Only when the people are at peace can the succession of power be secure.

Li Chengqian recalled that when he was incorporating Goryeo soldiers in Liaodong, an old soldier said, "If you give them enough food, who would want to fight?"

These words were churning in my mind at that moment.

The disaster victims didn't want to rebel, they wanted food; the farmers didn't want chaos, they wanted to survive.

Fang Xuanling presented the glaring account books not to deny his achievements, but to point him in the right direction.

"Wen Zhong."

When Li Chengqian looked back, he no longer had the sharpness of yesterday, but rather a sense of maturity.

"Issue my order to stop collecting 'military funds' from Henan Province. Any amount already collected must be returned in full. Transfer 200,000 shi of grain from the Chang'an treasury to cover this shortfall."

"The Ministry of Justice and the Censorate shall jointly investigate cases of embezzlement of disaster relief grain in various places. Prefects and censors who have accepted bribes shall be arrested and brought to the capital, and their property shall be confiscated."

"Issue an order to Liaodong: starting next year, 30% of the yield per mu shall be paid to the imperial court, and 70% shall be reserved for the army and the people."

After speaking, Li Chengqian looked at Fang Xuanling.

"The imperial treasury is now quite abundant, with most of the money coming from coal. From today onwards, 80% of the coal revenue will be deposited into the national treasury."

"The promotion of triple-cropping rice still requires a lot of effort from Fang Xiang. Anyone who dares to make a move on this issue should be dealt with immediately."

Fang Xuanling bowed deeply and said, "Your Highness is wise."

The foundation of a dynasty lies in agriculture.

After Fang Xuanling left, Li Chengqian began to prepare for the new policies.

Li Chengqian didn't care much about money; with the nascent industrial development, acquiring wealth wasn't difficult.

Standing at the top of power, one can easily manipulate anything and money will flow in like water.

No amount of money can produce food; food is the foundation.

Tai Chi Palace.

The Imperial Guards did not prevent the King of Wei and the King of Jin from meeting His Majesty.

"Father."

Li Zhi's voice came in first, with a cautious, tentative tone.

When Li Shimin looked up, his gaze lingered on Li Tai's trembling shoulders for a moment before landing on Li Zhi's tightly clenched fist.

"Sit down," Li Shimin said, pointing to the low stool opposite him.

Li Tai had just sat down when he tried to get up, his knee hitting the wooden edge of the low stool with a dull thud. "Father!" he cried, his voice trembling with emotion, tears streaming down his face without warning.

"The Crown Prince wants to kill us! Qingque can't hold on any longer!"

Li Shimin's voice was calm: "Whether you can endure it or not, you have to endure it."

Li Zhi knelt down: "Father, Zhi Nu and Fourth Brother are willing to resign their titles and only ask to remain as idle members of the imperial clan in Chang'an."

Li Shimin looked at his two sons carefully and said, "The Crown Prince hasn't said anything, why are you in such a hurry?"

“If you stay in Chang’an and behave yourselves, burning incense and reading books every day, and don’t even leave your courtyard, even if he wants to kill you, he won’t be able to find fault with you.”

"Behave yourself and keep to your own business?" Li Tai's voice was trembling. "Like the Prince of Huainan, locked in a cage waiting to die?"

Li Shimin said calmly, "Liu Chang brought this upon himself. He hoarded weapons, made friends with other lords, and even dared to use a yellow-roofed carriage in his fiefdom, which led to his death. As long as you adhere to the principle of 'not acting rashly,' no one can touch you."

He paused slightly at this point: "I am still alive. As long as I am alive, the Crown Prince will not harm you."

In fact, Li Shimin did not want to say these things, but he had already seen Li Tai's condition.

Ultimately, they are still the children I love.

In fact, Li Shimin had been considering how to arrange things between Qingque and Zhinu these past few days.

But he knew that the Crown Prince would not talk to him about these things now. He would wait until the 100,000 troops from Liaodong arrived in Chang'an and until the Crown Prince felt he had control of the court before discussing the handling of Qingque Zhinu.

(End of this chapter)