Early the next morning, Li Ye and his family got on more than 20 carriages, followed by hundreds of female guards and maids, and moved to the Daming Palace. They walked along the city walls and basically did not disturb the people.
Their luggage and belongings had been moved there a few days ago.
Xingqing Palace will not be empty in the future, and Li Ye plans to give it to his father Li Dai and his mother Pei Sanniang.
There are 2,500 maids in Daming Palace and Taiji Palace, including 2,000 in Daming Palace and 500 in Taiji Palace. Taiji Palace is mainly inhabited by homeless old palace concubines, with a total of more than 70 people.
The concubines also had money, and many of them had shops, with five hundred maids to serve them.
There are thousands of old and white-headed palace maids who also live in Taiji Palace. They are also homeless. Li Ye treats them well and allows them to live in Yeting Palace for retirement. Each person gets two buckets of rice and one pound of salt per month.
There are five hundred coins.
There are also more than 300 eunuchs, who mainly do menial jobs.
All the maids and eunuchs in the Daming Palace were newcomers who entered the palace fourteen years after Tianbao, and most of them were from Luoyang. This ensured that Yang Yuhuan no longer had to wear a mask or worry about being recognized by anyone, and could live freely.
.
Li Ye carried out major reforms to the palace maids and eunuchs half a year ago. Speaking of which, the palace maids and eunuchs are actually a type of slaves. Once you enter the palace and go deep into the sea, you don't know what year and month it is.
Li Ye implemented three reforms on these palace maids. First, there was a time limit for entering the palace. They had to leave the palace and go home to get married before they were twenty years old. Unmarried old palace ladies in their thirties and forties were not allowed to appear, even if some experienced palace maids were needed.
The maids in charge of palace affairs were hired back after getting married.
The second is the contract system. The maids of the palace are the same as the maids of wealthy families. They enter the palace to sign a contract, are paid every day, and go home after the expiration of the term.
The third is the ban on eunuchs. Children of good families are not allowed to be castrated as eunuchs.
When these three provisions came out, there was a lot of controversy. There were supporters and opponents, which is very interesting to talk about. The opponents were mainly based on the royal family and the powerful, and believed that this undermined the majesty of the royal family.
However, most of the supporters were court officials, who were relatively pragmatic. During the Tianbao period, the palace's expenditure was second only to military expenditure. The annual amount was so huge that the court was overwhelmed, but no one dared to say anything.
Emperor Ming of the Tang Dynasty had more than 40,000 palace people, hundreds of concubines, food, clothing and housing, as well as money for cosmetics, travel money, money for lamp oil, money to save relatives, delicacies from all over the world, fruits and vegetables of the four seasons, as well as pear orchards, religious workshops, and palace overhauls.
, daily maintenance, etc., as well as monthly payments for concubines and maids.
What's even worse is that the emperor often gave lavish rewards, squandered various banquets, etc. The annual expenditure was in the millions. The Tang Dynasty's finances were basically dragged down by Li Longji's arrogance and extravagance.
So after Li Ye came to power, he had to learn a lesson. After the recruitment system was implemented for palace maids, the palace maids were the invited maids. They were paid a hundred cents a day, only three guans a month. Two thousand five hundred palace maids, seven dollars a month.
Fifteen hundred dollars, and then the most is food and clothing benefits, nothing else.
After one year, the annual expenditure of the imperial palace was only a few hundred thousand guan, and less than 200,000 guan. Compared with the millions of guan spent by Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, it was a world away.
Even though Suzong was already very frugal, he still had to spend millions of dollars every year, mainly to support a large number of people.
When Li Ye arrived, he no longer supported him. Everyone worked with wages. Once the top-level system changed, the bottomless pit of palace expenses turned into a shallow pool. How could the court not welcome it?
There was also the ban on eunuchs. Li Ye and the imperial court hit it off immediately. He learned the painful lessons of the eunuchs' monopoly and banned eunuchs from the ground up. The current eunuchs can continue to be used, but new ones will not be available.
The main purpose of recruiting eunuchs was that women could not do some heavy work, but in fact, they could also recruit strong women. The strong women in the Tang Dynasty were all strong and powerful, and ordinary men could not beat them.
Therefore, among the 2,000 maids in the Daming Palace, there are 500 strong women who are proficient in cooking, lifting heavy objects, and doing rough work.
To ensure the safety of the Daming Palace, the inner guards are responsible for the outside. There are 500 female guards with high martial arts skills in the palace. Especially in the residential area of Longshouyuan, there are 300 female guards. There is also Aunt Gongsun who is in charge. She and ten apprentices
Specifically designed to deal with top players.
In the past, the security of the Daming Palace was the responsibility of the guards. Nearly 10,000 guards were recruited. The monthly salary and welfare expenses were 70,000 to 80,000 yuan. In fact, it was the most meaningless. The guards had nothing to do every day, just patrolling and standing guard.
If the assassins are killed, they won't be able to do anything.
Therefore, by laying off the guards, millions of dollars can be saved every year.
There are also Li Ye's 10,000 personal guard cavalry, which are now reorganized into the Longwu Army and are responsible for the security of the imperial city.
The biggest advantage of the top-level system design is that Li Ye's descendants don't dare to make random changes. At most, they can only use some small tricks, such as increasing the number of people and increasing wages, but that's it at most.
The general manager of the inner palace is Zhao Baozhong, an old eunuch. He used to be the general manager of Xingqing Palace. Now he has followed and became the general manager of the inner palace, but he is mainly responsible for Taiji Palace.
On the Daming Palace side, there is Aunt Wu, the deputy general manager. She is Li Ye's current housekeeper of the inner palace. Dugu Mingyue likes her very much and insists on taking her away. Li Ye simply makes her the deputy general manager of the inner palace.
The Daming Palace occupies a large area, and the harem residential area is mainly concentrated on Longshou Plain in the southeast of Taiye Lake. The palace complex here covers an area of several hundred acres and is mainly composed of six major palace areas: Penglai Hall, Zichen Hall, and Lingqi Hall.
Bath Hall Hall, Xuanwei Hall, Greenhouse Hall, each hall is a group of buildings.
The Zichen Hall here is the Emperor's Bedroom, where the Emperor's imperial study is located, also called the Inner Dynasty. The Emperor handles government affairs, convenes important ministers to discuss military and state affairs, and rests at noon, all in the Zichen Hall.
To the north of Zichen Hall is the Queen's Penglai Hall, where the Emperor's inner study is also located.
If a minister wants to see you at night, he cannot go through the main entrance. Instead, he must enter from the right Yintai Gate on the west and pass through the Hanlin Academy to the Linde Hall.
Linde Hall was the place where the emperor handled government affairs and received ministers at night. There was also a study there, which was the emperor's outer study.
The other four palace areas are where the concubines live.
Yang Yuhuan and Qing Yu have a good relationship. They live in the Bath Hall, Shen Li and Dugu Taiwei live in the Lingqi Hall, and Shen Zhenzhu is more independent. She lives with her son and Aunt Mu in the Greenhouse Hall.
Shen Zhenzhu was named Liang Yuan, but she no longer valued her status. She just wanted her son and found a place to raise her son quietly.
Li Ye brought her to the Daming Palace mainly because he did not want his son to become an illegitimate child.
Aunt Mu is happy with the situation. As long as she is given a place to recite the Buddha's name, she can live anywhere. Therefore, not far from the greenhouse is Mingde Temple, which is a nun's temple mainly dedicated to Guanyin Bodhisattva. This makes Aunt Mu very happy.
Li Ye moved his family to Daming Palace. He did not rest, and his family went to clean up their own residences.
He returned to his court room again. His court room was in the Zichen Hall, but it was not in the imperial study room of Li Longji and Li Heng, but in a courtyard outside.
He returned to the court room and sat down. Du You bowed and said, "Just now, Xiangguo Wei said that he had something to ask for."
Li Ye nodded, "Xuan him to see you!"
Li Ye took a sip of hot tea and flipped through the memorials on the table. One of the memorials aroused his interest.
It was the Ministry of Industry that issued a memorial. The Ministry of Industry discovered the iron ore and smelting ground of Anlu Mountain in Pingzhou.
Li Ye carefully looked at the map attached to the memorial and found that it was indeed Qian'an in later generations. The ore ships carried iron ore south along the Luan River to Qianjin Yecheng for smelting.
An Lushan's army was very well-equipped. His most elite river cavalry were all wearing iron helmets and armor, and even their horses were also covered in iron armor.
Some of his weapons were delivered by the imperial court, and some were made by himself. More importantly, he supported his army mainly by mining ore and smelting iron, which he sold to various parts of Hebei and made a lot of profits.
In the past, the Goguryeo people mined and smelted iron specifically for him.
Pingzhou is the Tangshan of later generations, a famous steel city, rich in coal and iron, with a long history. In particular, the Qian'an iron mine is shallow, high-quality, large in reserves, and easy to mine, making it one of the four major iron mines in the country.
What the Ministry of Industry wants to do is to exploit the Qian'an Iron Mine in large quantities. Coal is also produced there, and it would be convenient to use the coal directly to make iron.
The use of coal to make iron was not fully promoted until the Song Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, some coal was used for smelting, and most of it was firewood. However, the consumption of firewood was too high. It took eight thousand kilograms of wood to make one thousand kilograms of pig iron, so deforestation was very serious in the Tang Dynasty. .
After Li Ye came to power, he vigorously promoted three changes, one from wood to iron, one from wood to coal, and the third from hemp to cotton.
At this time, Li Ye thought of a question. He was planning to go to Tianzhu to seize iron ore in two years. He would definitely smelt pig iron locally and then transport it away, but was there coal in Tianzhu?
There seem to be quite a few, and they are all open-pit coal mines, but the quality is relatively poor. But you can give it a try. If it doesn't work, just transport the ore to Nanyang for smelting. There are high-quality coal mines on Sumatra.
However, as the ancients said, ‘There is no woodcutter for a hundred miles, and there is no purchaser for a thousand miles’.
This means carrying firewood hundreds of miles away to sell it, and transporting grain thousands of miles away to sell it. The meager profit earned is not even enough for the freight, and the gain outweighs the loss.
Therefore, transporting iron ore to Nanyang for smelting is indeed not worth the gain. We still have to find a way to smelt it locally in Tianzhu.
At this time, the officer reported at the door, "Wei Xiangguo is here!"
"Invite him in!"
Li Ye casually drew a circle on the memorial from the Ministry of Industry, indicating that the memorial was accurate.
The memorial must be placed in the basket and must be stamped with the regent's seal by Du You, the official in charge of the memorial service, before it can take effect.
At this time, Wei Jiansu hurried in, bowed and saluted, "See you, Your Highness!"
"Xiang Guo, please take a seat!"
Wei Jiansu sat down and said with a smile: "Your Highness, how do you feel about moving into a new residence today?"
Li Ye smiled and waved his hand, "I haven't felt it yet, I guess it's about the same! It's no different from Xingqing Palace."
"With more people, I'm afraid there will be more rules."
"This is true!"
"In addition, all our officials hope that His Highness will have more concubines. Your Highness's lineage is too weak and is not good for the country!"
Li Ye nodded, "Take your time with this! There's no rush at this moment."
Wei Jiansu took out a memorial and handed it to Li Ye, smiling and saying: "These are the six reign names drafted by the Zhengshitang. The final reign name will be decided by His Highness."
Of course, the era name has a profound meaning. For example, Wu Zetian's era name is often changed, which actually represents different meanings.
Li Ye had previously expressed his thoughts to the Zhengshitang, "Auspicious celebration brings newness and revitalizes the country." The year name must be decided based on this meaning.
Li Ye opened the memorial and looked at it. There were five alternative era names, Jiaqing, Jiaxing, Renhe, Tianxing, and Longqing. He took a fancy to 'Jiaxing' at a glance. Although it was a place name, it was also his most ideal one.