The Sui Dynasty's chess game

Chapter 781 Forced to Sue for Peace
Not long after, General Dou Wei was summoned by Li Yuan for questioning.

Li Yuan asked coldly, "I just want to know, has the Dou family sold their grain reserves?"

Dou Wei quickly shook his head, "Reporting, the Dou family has never stored any grain!"

"Really? Then where did you get the 200,000 shi of grain that you used to support the army?"

"What I mean is that from then on, the Dou family stopped storing grain. The grain from the estate was sold directly after the harvest and was not kept."

Li Yuan snorted, "Five days ago, in front of the Dou family's trading company in the West Market, you sold 180,000 shi of wheat at a price of forty wen per dou. How do you explain that?"

"I'm not familiar with this situation. I need to investigate. Perhaps it's because the newly harvested wheat can't be stored, so they're selling it quickly!"

"boom!"

Li Yuan slammed his fist on the table, his face contorted with rage, and said, "Do you think I'm a three-year-old child, so easily fooled? I'll be blunt! You knew about the Sui army's attack on Fengyi County three days in advance, didn't you?"

Dou Wei shook his head again, "How could the Sui army tell us such an important secret? It was Yuan Xiaozhe who sent us a message by pigeon, suggesting that we sell our grain. If we didn't sell, we would end up like the Yuan family, with our land and grain confiscated. We thought it made sense, so we sold all our grain. If Your Highness wants to confiscate the Dou family's land, then I have nothing to say!"

Dou Wei took this opportunity to express his dissatisfaction with the confiscation of the Yuan family's land. Although everyone had withdrawn from the Wuchuan Association and were no longer part of the same group, they had all been brothers after all. Li Yuan had even sold off the most powerful Yuan family's million acres of land. What about the other families? They could be easily taken away. This is what is meant by "if the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold".

"Just say what you want to say! You can speak your mind today!"

"Since that's the case, I'll be frank. There's a saying circulating in Chang'an: Chang'an is like a chicken egg, and the Sui Dynasty is like a hammer. When will the hammer fall?"

"Get out! Get out of here!"

Li Yuan could no longer contain his anger and slammed his fist on the table, roaring.

Dou Wei bowed with a livid face, then turned and left.

Li Yuan pressed his hand to his forehead, sighed deeply after a long while, and said to Pei Ji, who had been silent all along, "Chief Secretary Pei, have I really reached the end of my road?"

Pei Ji remained silent for a long time before saying, "The Sui Dynasty did not take Chang'an in one fell swoop. The key is that Your Highness still has 70,000 troops. This is Your Highness's last asset. Therefore, the Sui Dynasty will definitely use grain as a weapon, and may even use psychological warfare to try every means to disintegrate our army. They will not attack Chang'an before most of our army is disintegrated. So Your Highness still has a chance at this time!"

"What should I do?"

"I have three suggestions for Your Highness. First, you must stabilize the morale of the army. If Your Highness still has land, quickly distribute it to the soldiers and tie their fates to Your Highness's. Second, I suggest Your Highness abandon Tianshui County and Longxi County and retreat the army to Fufeng County. This will strengthen Your Highness's control over the army. Li Xiaogong is still young, and his prestige in the army is not enough to control the troops. Once the Sui army uses psychological warfare, it is easy for a large number of soldiers to desert."

Li Yuan nodded. "And the third suggestion?"

"The third suggestion is to negotiate. This time, the prince should not make demands, but listen to the other party's conditions and under what circumstances the prince's family's lives can be guaranteed. I suggest that Chai Shao and his wife negotiate. They have a good personal relationship with Xiao Xia, and perhaps Xiao Xia can give them some face."

Pei Ji took his leave, and Li Yuan paced back and forth in his room with his hands behind his back. It was Pei Ji who had advised him to take the two northwestern prefectures before, but now it was Pei Ji who was advising him to give up the two northwestern prefectures.

Li Yuan was starting to distrust Pei Ji, so he convened another family meeting.

As expected, the entire family unanimously opposed withdrawing troops from Tianshui and Longxi prefectures, including Li Shimin, who believed that the two prefectures were their strategic retreat and should not be easily abandoned. Li Jiancheng also believed that if the Sui army were to attack the two prefectures, they might as well attack Chang'an directly, since they would all end up turning against each other anyway.

However, both Li Jiancheng and Li Shimin agreed with the idea of ​​psychological warfare. The best way to deal with psychological warfare was the first point proposed by Pei Ji: distribute land to the soldiers and form an alliance of interests between the soldiers and the Li family. Even if the other side used psychological warfare, it would not be effective.

However, land was a major problem. Guanzhong was the region with the highest rate of land annexation, and the government did not own any land at all, only some residential land in the city.

But there was a way. Li Shentong suggested, "Brother Wang, as everyone knows, there are three major landowners in Guanzhong: the first is the Guanzhong aristocracy; the second is the Sui imperial family; and the third is the Guanzhong gentry. We could confiscate the imperial estates."

"No!"

Before Li Shentong could finish speaking, everyone objected in unison, "Touching the imperial estate would give the enemy an excuse to send troops, and 100,000 troops would be at the city gates immediately."

Li Yuan also agreed. He had never intended to touch the imperial estates, as they were Xiao Xia's property. Touching his estates would have serious consequences. He actually wanted to confiscate the estates of other Guanzhong nobles.

Li Yuan said slowly, "Since we have already offended the Yuan family, we don't care about offending other families as well."

Everyone agreed with Li Yuan's thinking: since they had already offended one family, they were not afraid to offend a second or third.

Li Yuan said to Li Jiancheng, "Jiancheng, I'm entrusting this matter to you. Take a count and gather 1.4 million mu of land from those closest to Chang'an. Then, give each soldier 20 mu of land. This matter cannot be delayed; it must be done as soon as possible!"

Li Jiancheng was really at a loss, but he had no choice but to bow and say, "Your son will get started right away!"

Li Yuan also agreed to hand over the negotiation to Chai Shao, but Chai Shao did not participate in the meeting, so he sent someone to bring Chai Shao and his wife over.

Chai Shao was somewhat ostracized in the Li family, largely because he had offended the Li Shentong family. This was because Chai Shao's sister married Li Shentong's son, Li Xiaoyi, and the dowry given by the Chai family was Guangli Wine Shop, the largest wine merchant in Chang'an. This was a gift from Li Yuan to Chai Shao, who then gave it to his sister.

Last year, Chai Shao's sister died in childbirth, and the baby was also lost. In addition, Li Xiaoyi was a playboy who did not take good care of his wife and did not hire a midwife to correct the baby's position, which led to the accident. Therefore, Chai Shao was naturally extremely dissatisfied with his sister's death in childbirth.

Although the Li family did not treat Chai Shao's sister well, they were very interested in Guangli Wine Shop. According to custom, when a wife dies, the dowry should be returned to her family. However, the Li family refused to return it, and Chai Shao refused to give in either. So the case was taken to Li Yuan.

Li Yuan ultimately upheld the interests of his family and ruled that the wine shop should be given to Li Xiaoyi, on the grounds that the wine shop was not the ancestral property of the Chai family, and that the ownership of the wine shop had already been transferred to the Li family when Chai Shao's sister married Li Xiaoyi.

Such a biased verdict displeased Chai Shao, but there was nothing he could do. From then on, Chai Shao and the Li Shentong family fell out.

Secondly, there was the struggle for military power. Chai Shao was originally appointed as the General of the Imperial Guard, in charge of 10,000 troops, which he and his wife had recruited.

As a result, at the urging of Li Shentong and his brother, Li Yuan appointed Chai Shao as Minister of Personnel and gave the title of General of the Martial Guard to Li Shenfu, which was tantamount to stripping Chai Shao of his military power.

Chai Shao's wife, Li Sanniang, cried and complained to her father, but to no avail. Instead, her father severely criticized her for not understanding the bigger picture.

Chai Shao had only been serving as Minister of Personnel for three months when the court was dissolved. Chai Shao lost his position as Minister of Personnel, and Li Yuan did not assign him a new post. Chai Shao remained unemployed at home without a salary, and he and his wife lived off the rent from their three shops.

At this moment, Li Yuan finally thought of Chai Shao.

(End of this chapter)