Wugong City is less than a hundred miles away from Chang'an. This city is the gateway to Xijing and was once a prosperous city.
But today's Wugong City is in ruins everywhere, and there is still a large scorch mark on the city gate.
The prosperous city has already suffered several rounds of military disasters. The young and middle-aged people in the city have either fled or been captured by the rebels as young men. Now only the old, weak, sick and disabled are left in the city.
Wugong City has been robbed many times. Just last month, the Tang Army finally recovered Wugong, but the people of Wugong City did not have a good time.
Officials are constantly coming to arrest people. As long as they can walk, from 70-year-olds to 10-year-old children, they have to provide logistics for the army.
Each household had to carry a bundle of firewood to the military camp every day, and also accepted other corvee services arranged by the military general.
This day was even more uncomfortable than being robbed by the Anlushan rebels!
The generals of the Tang army tentatively attacked Xijing, but the city of Xijing was high and strong. The Tang army advanced as far as Baqiao in the west, but was beaten back by An Qingxu's army.
An Qingxu also recently accepted the advice of his counselor Yan Zhuang, stopped indulging in drinking and having fun, and personally led his troops to win several battles.
The Tang army could only retreat to Wugong and wait for the 150,000 troops of Crown Prince Li Chu and Guo Ziyi.
The Tang army was full of confidence. As soon as the crown prince's 150,000 troops arrived, An's thieves would collapse.
At this time, the crown prince Li Chu was also very proud. He was the crown prince of the East Palace appointed by his father, and he was also the marshal of the world's soldiers and horses. He had 150,000 Tang elites at his disposal. Compared with when his father was the prince, his life could be said to be much better.
It's much more comfortable.
However, nothing in this world is perfect. What Li Chu is most worried about now are his two younger brothers.
Before the second year of Zhide, Li Chu's biggest enemy was Li Yan, King of Jianning.
Li Yan was outstanding in both literary and military talents. His father liked this son very much when he was still the prince. He even personally asked Guo Ziyi to be Li Yan's teacher and teach him the art of war and martial arts.
On the way to Lingwu's ascension to the throne, Li Yan performed outstandingly. He escorted his father to Lingwu with all his strength, and used his identity as a disciple of Guo Ziyi to subdue the unruly generals of Shuofang. He was once named the deputy marshal of the world's soldiers and horses, just under him.
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Li Chu naturally felt threatened, but fortunately, the court ministers, especially the important ministers headed by Secretary Li Mi, advised his father not to change the crown prince easily in troubled times, so King Jianning was sent to Longyou Road by his father.
The threat of King Jianning had just been eliminated, and Li Chu welcomed a new younger brother.
Empress Zhang's son Li Dong was born. He was the youngest son of his father. He was born to Empress Zhang during his escape, which made his father very fond of this son.
This Empress Zhang was originally her father's favorite concubine. She was quite scheming. When she was fleeing Lingwu, she deliberately left all the delicious food for the emperor to eat, and even ate chaff while she was pregnant.
Three days after giving birth to her son Li Dong, Queen Zhang got up and sewed clothes for the soldiers. She was favored by her father and was officially canonized as queen.
Empress Zhang also made good friends with the eunuch Li Fuguo and took complete control of the harem.
Nowadays, there are rumors in both the government and the public that the emperor takes pity on his young son and wants to confer a royal title on his newborn son.
When he thought of this, Li Chu felt even more uncomfortable.
It is not an easy task for a prince of the Tang Dynasty to be crowned king. Empress Zhang's son was crowned king before he was even one year old. Empress Zhang doted on the harem, colluded with the eunuchs in power like Li Fuguo, and led troops outside. I'm afraid her father would be indispensable.
The emperor's suspicion.
Li Chu sighed, even if King Jianning was already in Longyou, Li Chu was not at ease.
In this bloody battle for the throne, only the dead are truly eliminated.
When Prime Minister Fang Guan requested the release of the Hexi Jiedushi envoy, Li Chu secretly exerted his strength.
When Fang Guan went to Hexi, he would inevitably have a conflict with the "good brother" who was in charge of Longyou. As long as they fought, Li Yan would lose.
Li Chu knew his father very well. In short, it was his father who was most afraid of trouble.
Perhaps it was because he became the crown prince under the eyes of the emperor's grandfather. Ever since he was established as the crown prince, his father had been very careful in his conduct.
Even when Yang Guozhong was cornered, he didn't dare to do anything outrageous.
Under such pressure, Emperor Li Heng's character was very fond of escaping.
Li Heng was jealous, hated trouble, and hated risks. If any prince made trouble, the emperor would dislike him.
Li Chu smiled and thought that as long as his younger brother had a conflict with Fang Guan, his father would definitely dislike Li Yan.
His father was a very honorable emperor, and even though Fang Guan suffered such a huge defeat, Li Heng did not deal with him immediately.
This was not because Li Heng missed his old relationship with Fang Guan. King Yong Li Lin was raised by the emperor. When he ordered to put down King Yong, the emperor had no trace of his old feelings.
It's just that Fang Guan's appointment as prime minister was led by Emperor Li Heng. If the prime minister he promoted was dismissed because of incompetence, it would be a loss of the emperor's face. Therefore, Li Heng has been looking for other problems with Fang Guan and wanted to use other reasons.
Move the house down.
If Fang Guan hadn't actively requested to be released, Fang Guan's position would have been lost long ago.
Next, we are looking forward to the fight between Fang Guan and Li Yan. Thinking of this, Li Chu finally becomes happy.
After solving one brother, there is still another brother left.
For Crown Prince Li Chu, the upcoming war to recapture Xijing is not important. His father's health is getting worse. The most important thing at this time is to keep the crown prince's position.
But even when Li Chu was making plans, Li Yan was in the Governor's Mansion in Shazhou City, looking at the moon in the distance, feeling a little emotional in his heart.
With the help of players, it can be said that Li Yan struggled to develop. It took several months to occupy the three states. He did not control Beiting and Anxi, and the four counties in Hexi only occupied one county.
Li Yan opened the player forum. The hot topic discussed by players recently was naturally what happened in the north and east.
To the north is the annihilation war in which the Uighurs wiped out the Geluolu. Now the player's military advisory group has taken the seals of the Bafu and Beiting Protectorate and headed north to search for the various Geluolu tribes.
The Geluolu tribe is composed of small tribes. They usually live scattered on the grassland and live in pursuit of grass.
The player's military advisory group is to lead these tribes to avoid the Uighur army and lead these tribes to hide and seek on the grassland!
As long as the Uighurs never have any spoils of war, then the Uighurs will lose this war.
The change of horse to mulberry in the east also received unanimous criticism from players on the player forum.
Regardless of the corruption issues that would arise during the implementation of the policy of converting horses into mulberries, simply selling off the imperial horse farm would have serious consequences.
First of all, horses are not ordinary commodities, they are strategic materials.
Strategic materials means that these things cannot be purchased at market prices at any time.
Now that the Uighurs have a good relationship with the Tang Dynasty, they can naturally buy horses from the Uighurs.
But once the Tang Dynasty and the Uighurs turned against each other, the supply of Uighur horses would be cut off immediately.
Therefore, this strategic material must be self-sufficient, just like the food of later generations. If food cannot be self-sufficient, then once there is any disturbance in the world food market, it will not escape the fate of being harvested by capital.
Later generations will be harvested by capital. If the Tang Dynasty does not have war horses in this era, it will be harvested by the wolves in the four realms.
The second problem with changing horses to mulberry is selling the racecourses that originally belonged to the imperial court. This would lead to the decline of the government's control, making it even more difficult to curb the powerful aristocratic families formed.
Although the pastoral supervisors of the Hexi group were subordinate to Taipusi Qing, they were also controlled by the Hexi Jiedushi.
Although the Hexi Jiedushi Mansion cannot sell military horses at will, the Hexi Jiedushi Mansion can dispose of the meat and skins of dead horses, and this is a large source of wealth for the Jiedushi Mansion.
Relying on this financial source, the Jiedushi government was able to have money and food to provide disaster relief and money to run schools.
Without this public revenue, the power of the entire Hexi government will decline.
If there is no money for disaster relief, there will be homeless people. If there is no money to run schools, private schools will prosper. When private schools prosper, knowledge comes from private schools, and the students they train will only serve as sycophants to powerful families.
One player made a vivid metaphor for this. Changing a horse into a mulberry means selling off state-owned assets at a low price. It seems that the country is retreating and the people are advancing, and the people seem to have no losses.
In fact, it intensified the concentration and merger of wealth. The government sold off the imperial property that originally belonged to the whole people. In the end, it was the ordinary people at the bottom who really paid the money.
Li Yan also nodded. He knew the behavior of these powerful clans best. They all seemed to be sanctimonious. If they really needed to help the victims, these guys would shirk the blame faster than anyone else.
For example, the old nobles in Gaochang City often enslaved thousands of people, but what contribution did they make to the people of Gaochang? It would be good if they did not bully the people.
These powerful families also have various ways to avoid taxes. The taxes they evade will eventually be borne by the people.
Sure enough, after the new pastoral supervisor Dou Shen took office, the first order he gave to various places was to change horse donations to mulberry donations.
However, the horse donation has already been paid once. The so-called change of the horse donation to the mulberry donation is actually another attempt to plunder the people.
The yamen of Zhangye City acted quickly. This time the mulberry donation was even greater than the last horse donation. The money was said to be collected by the Jiedushi government to purchase mulberry seedlings and tidy up the mulberry fields.
Even the most cunning subordinates took a breath when they saw the amount of donations.
This Jiedushi Mansion also searched too hard!
Now that May has not yet arrived, the summer grain has not yet matured, so the people have to sell their sons and daughters to get this mulberry donation!
However, the governor of the governor's office asked the tax collectors to carry out the tax collection to the letter and collect mulberry donations again according to the tax list for the last horse donation.
When the four members of the eastbound group entered Zhangye City, it could be said that every house was crying and people pawning their property were everywhere.