Chapter 410: Preparing to Migrate the Marquises
Establish a county.
The interests involved are extremely huge. It is not just an ordinary county governor with a salary of two thousand stones, but at least a marquisate!
We have already talked a lot about how good it is to be a marquis in the Han court. As long as they don't commit suicide or rebel, they can at least guarantee top wealth and glory for a family for more than a hundred years. Compared with ordinary officials, it is really a golden rice bowl.
In the process of the Han Dynasty's feudal system from its inception to its gradual perfection, the supporting system of enfeoffment gradually took shape, which was adapted from the system of Shangqing in the Zhou Dynasty. In the counties directly under the imperial court and in the kingdoms of the princes, a system of division of rule between counties (kings) and marquises was formed, with three marquises in the upper county (country), two marquises in the middle county (country), and one marquis in the lower county (country).
Although the emperor did not mention the enfeoffment of marquises, it is the current political iron law that where there is a county, there must be a country. Unless the emperor is willing to risk the world's disapproval and break this iron law, the emperor will definitely not do such a completely useless thing.
As soon as the emperor's edict came down, everyone in the hall knew that the world would no longer be peaceful. There would be a huge debate just about whether to build a county, and not everyone had such courage and vision.
Gongsun Hong brought the imperial edict to the prime minister's residence. The prime minister had enormous power, and the emperor's edict needed to be stamped by the prime minister before it could be sent to the counties and kingdoms. If the prime minister disagreed, he could even directly reject the emperor's edict. However, a prime minister who did this would be close to stepping down or dying once he encountered a strong emperor.
However, if the emperor really issued an order and forced the prime minister to death.
Given the atmosphere in this world that has been influenced by the Luo family, someone might directly assassinate the emperor to set the world straight.
Although no emperor has been assassinated yet, there have been seventy-three marquises, county governors, and princes who have been assassinated within fifty years!
This is an extremely terrifying number. On average, one and a half senior nobles die from assassinations every year.
This behavior is of course a serious crime, basically equivalent to treason. Once caught, at least one family will be killed. If the crime is serious, the entire clan will be exiled.
But at this time, something terrible happened.
Among these seventy-three people, the imperial court only investigated thirty-three assassination cases. After the truth of the other forty cases was uncovered, the only thing to say was that they deserved to die. This was completely in line with the moral spirit of repaying grievances with justice and killing tyrants, so in the end, no investigation was conducted.
Among these people, the one with the highest status was one of Liu Che's younger brothers. He was notorious among the counties and states for his cruel treatment of his subordinates and his repeated wanton insults. As a result, he was killed by his subordinates. Naturally, Liu Che was furious and wanted to punish him for this act of regicide.
However, this incident was so consistent with the Confucian concept of righteousness and interests between the ruler and his subjects that people led by Jia Yi used force to save the man. Not only that, they also gave the princes a bad posthumous title, commended the murderer, and recorded it in the classics.
How could Liu Che accept this?
He naturally rejected Jia Yi's suggestion.
Then when Liu Che met Jia Yi, he saw Jia Yi looking at him with some disbelief, as if he didn't understand why he would favor the princes.
Liu Che understood at that time that he was not confronting Prime Minister Jia Yi, but was confronting a concept in the world.
In the end, Liu Che did not say anything else, but issued an edict asking the princes to pay attention to their own virtues.
Jia Yi finally resigned due to poor health, but the impact of this incident was too great.
This is the fashion of this era.
This is why Emperor Liu Che delayed appointing a prime minister, but he could no longer delay. A country cannot be without a king for a day, and a king cannot be without a prime minister for a day. This is the conclusion drawn from studying the classics of Su Wang.
After Gongsun Hong used the seal, he sent the imperial edict to all the counties and kingdoms in the four directions. Some of the counties and kingdoms were very remote, such as Jiangdong and Lingnan. It took at least a month for them to receive the imperial edict.
But the city of Chang'an was almost immediately attracted by this imperial edict. As the undisputed political center of the Han Dynasty, here were one-fourth of the world's marquises, the Three Dukes and Nine Ministers, countless officials of the two thousand stone level and the thousand stone level, as well as the two thousand stone county governors who came to Chang'an to report on their work, and many virtuous and upright people who did not have official positions but were recommended by various counties and kingdoms, as well as the leaders of various schools in the Imperial Academy. People of all kinds were here.
This imperial edict was like a huge rock hitting the lake, instantly causing huge waves.
The first is the issue of establishing counties. Although it cannot be compared with the rank of marquis, the position of two thousand stones is still very tempting, especially for people with sharp minds. They all realize that the court will definitely vigorously develop horse affairs in the future, so these two counties established in Henan are very critical.
And that is the horse administration. Even though the current horse administration is so small in scale, it is already one of the most lucrative and powerful departments. If a large-scale horse farm can be established in Henan, the power and lucrativeness of the county governors of the two newly established counties will increase sharply.
Ordinary officials were thinking about how much benefit they could get from establishing a county, while the top group of people were wondering what the emperors and marquises of the two counties were going to do?
And what about the population of these two counties?
In Changle Palace.
Liu Che was also thinking about these two problems. The simplest way was to use the method that Gongsun Hong had hinted at before, to create a large number of criminals, and then send them to Henan to graze and guard the border in the name of exile.
However, if you want to migrate 200,000 people there, at least four or five princes must participate in the rebellion. It has to be said that this is a bit difficult. After all, the power of the princes now is far from what it was before.
"There are no more than 20,000 prisoners in Chang'an and other counties who are guilty of crimes worthy of exile. These 20,000 people will be relocated to Henan first. The key is to deal with the local tyrants who have committed crimes. There are thousands of relatives of these tyrants, plus those hidden farmers. Since we can't find them by surveying the land, we can just take these tyrants away. And the most important thing is to relocate some royal family members there."
Liu Che paced continuously in Changle Palace, thinking about the personnel composition of the newly established county. He attached much more importance to Henan than Lingnan. He simply moved prisoners there and then conferred titles on a few marquises, nominally ruling them under the command of the court, and then paid no more attention to Lingnan.
This is absolutely normal. The old Chu territory further north of Lingnan, namely the north and south of Dongting Lake, Jianghuai, and Jiangdong in later generations, have not yet been developed.
Liu Che's goal was to fully develop Nanyang and Han River in his lifetime, turning these two pieces of land into fertile soil and completely transforming them into granaries. If he achieved this goal, he would be considered successful, and the rest would be left to future emperors to handle.
With this strategic goal, there was no energy to develop Lingnan. The main reason was that the barbarians in the south posed no threat to the Central Plains. They could only occasionally attack the county and prefecture seats of the Han Dynasty. Once the imperial army was dispatched, they basically had to hide in the mountains and forests.
As for Henan, it is an important location that concerns the life and death of the Han court, so naturally we have to be extremely cautious.
Thinking of this, Liu Che's eyes began to turn cold. He stopped pacing and slowly sat down. He picked up the pen and slowly wrote down the key points he had just thought about.
“First, relocating the prisoners is a simple matter and no one will object.
Second, to relocate the powerful, we need to send people to Shandong. There must have been powerful people committing crimes in recent years. As long as we can find evidence of them and give them a way out, it will not be a problem for them to relocate.
Third, the enfeoffment of marquises still needs to be considered, but the city has not been built yet, so it can be considered later.
Fourth, the royal family needs to be relocated, but should they be sent there in a legal manner or should they be relocated directly? "
Liu Che listed these four points. The first two were very simple. With the current strength of the Han court, it was very easy to do these things.
This is not just about developing a new area, but also about weakening local power. There are many things that need to be considered.
"together."
After thinking for a long time, Liu Che finally wrote the word "Qi" on the paper.
The wealth of Qi is known to the world. Hundreds of years ago, Linzi was one of the richest cities among the various states. Qi was famous for its wealth. After the establishment of the Han Dynasty, Qi was one of the two places where the court was weakest, the other one being Chu.
Even though the Liu family was later enfeoffed as princes in Qi, the uncrowned king of this land was actually the Lu family. The Linzi Lu family, which inherited from Lucheng, is one of the only two dukes currently. The Jimo Lu family is one of the major shareholders in the founding of the Han Dynasty. The descendants of Lu Ze currently hold the title of Lu Hou. Their ancestors were posthumously conferred the title of Duke and buried with the rites of princes.
There are simply too many princes and marquises from the Lu and Liu clans in this land.
Other counties had countries within them, while Qi was a county that was mixed with the imperial court among other countries, like a small boat in the ocean.
This is not an adjective, but the imperial court really only has one county here, and the rest are all kingdoms and marquisates, one connected to another, and countless powerful people depend on the kingdoms and marquisates for survival.
During the reign of Liu Heng, the Qi Kingdom was attacked. The three marquises of the Lu family were punished for their improper conduct and committed unforgivable crimes, and were exiled from their countries.
Liu Che had long been dissatisfied with the current situation in Qi and wanted to make some changes. He wanted to at least increase the number of counties of the imperial court to half the number of kingdoms and the number of marquises in Qi. He couldn't allow the Lu family to gather in Qi, which was too terrible.
"Except for the main branches of the Linzi and Jimo Lü clans, all other marquises must relocate."
Liu Che quickly decided on the scale of the migration.
As time went by, the brothers who were originally from the same Lucheng lineage gradually became estranged.
Some are forging ahead courageously, and are becoming increasingly prosperous in the current situation, while others are just waiting to eat and wait for death, gradually declining, with some households being reduced today, and some tomorrow, until the country is eliminated.
Others commit crimes and end up being punished and exiled. Their consequences are different, but different choices will naturally lead to different results.
A thousand-mile long dike can be destroyed by an ant hole. There is never any sudden disaster in this world. Everything has a reason. Liu Che sent people to Shandong.
Luo Wuji arrived at Huo Qubing's residence.
There is another chapter in the evening, maybe later, maybe at ten o'clock
(End of this chapter)
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