Xiao Hua said goodbye first, but Wei Jiansu and Zhang Li stayed. King Nanzhao had come north to Chang'an to apologize, and they needed to understand the emperor's attitude towards Nanzhao.
Wei Jiansu said: "Your Majesty, Nanzhao is now a piece of fish on the chopping board. What are you considering to do with it?"
Li Ye smiled and said, "I would like to hear the opinions of the two prime ministers?"
Wei Jiansu smiled slightly and said: "Before the Northern Expedition, Zhuge Liang was still trying to appease the barbarians in the south. But now we are not in the Three Kingdoms era. It is not a taboo to cross the Lu River and go south. Nanzhao is also mainly about farming, not traces.
The wandering nomadic Hu people are easier to manage, so it is not impossible to destroy Nanzhao and establish states and counties, but what! Leaving a harmless Nanzhao to manage various ethnic groups for us, Weichen thinks it is also a good strategy. The key is
You have to balance the gains and losses!”
"In accordance with Zhang Xiangguo's opinion?" Li Ye asked Zhang Li again.
Zhang Li bowed and said: "Wei Chen believes that the harmless Nanzhao in Wei Shangshu's opinion is extremely important. There are not many Han people in Nanzhao, almost all of them are barbarians. Some are better Hanized and are basically the same as the Han people.
But some are still in the barbaric era. If the imperial court directly establishes prefectures and counties, it is actually not easy to manage. I still support the Hexi Dudu Prefecture model and ethnic minority autonomy, but the imperial court has garrisoned troops in key cities and the whole belongs to the imperial court."
Li Ye nodded, "You two are right, and they basically agree with me. I put forward four opinions, and then the political hall will discuss them based on my four opinions and come up with a plan!"
"Your Majesty, please speak!"
Li Ye said slowly: "First, in principle, the Nanzhao Kingdom can be retained, but it cannot have an army. The army can only be the imperial garrison; second, restore the boundaries of Tianbao nine years ago, and the imperial court will establish Yaozhou and Kunzhou, appoint
Provincial officials were responsible for managing Han-populated areas; third, Nanzhao's heirs must live in Chang'an before ascending the throne; fourth, the imperial court did not need to collect taxes from the Nanzhao autonomous area, but all mineral deposits in Nanzhao were owned by the imperial court, including salt wells.
, Nanzhao’s salt price must also be unified with that of Bashu.”
The four plans proposed by Li Ye were completely in line with the interests of the Tang Dynasty, especially the prohibition of the existence of troops, which actually ruled out the possibility of Nanzhao's re-emergence. Nanzhao eventually became an agent, managing the Nanzhao area for the Tang Dynasty.
Wei Jiansu and Zhang Li resigned, and Li Ye stood in front of the sand table with his hands behind his hands for a long time without saying a word. The Nanzhao issue is a problem that any ruler of the Tang Dynasty must face and solve. It is actually an extension of the struggle between Tang and Bo.
The invasion of Xichuan has always been a line for Tubo to peek into the Tang Dynasty. In addition to Longyou, Hexi, and Anxi, Xichuan was the fourth point of Tubo's eastward invasion, and the control of Nanzhao was part of Tubo's invasion of Xichuan.
However, Tubo's investment in Xichuan and Nanzhao was far less than that of the Longyou area. This time it lost Nanzhao and lost 50,000 troops in Jianchuan. For at least ten years, Tubo would not dare to touch Xichuan again.
However, Li Ye's eyes were not just on Nanzhao, but also on the more distant south.
In the hinterland of Indochina, there is a plain of 250,000 square kilometers. The land is fertile and the water and heat are abundant. That vast land can support hundreds of millions of people.
Advancing southward from Nanzhao was blocked by mountains and virgin forests, which was obviously unrealistic. Li Ye turned his attention to Jiaozhou. Jiaozhou is the Red River Delta, a fertile alluvial fan plain with sufficient water and heat, but its area is slightly smaller.
a little.
But the biggest advantage is that it is the territory of the Tang Dynasty. It can be used as a foundation to build a huge naval base in Halong Bay at the mouth of the sea.
Walking south along the coastline, you will soon reach the Mekong Delta. From here all the way to the northwest, there are endless plains with sufficient water and heat to produce three crops of rice a year.
How could Li Ye not be tempted?
But this is not a great undertaking that can be accomplished in a short time. It will take at least twenty years for the Tang Dynasty to completely annex this rich and fertile land.
Li Ye took out a red flag and planted it on the land of Jiaozhou.
At this time, Wei Gao reported at the door, "Your Majesty, the inner guard Li Dutong wants to see you!"
Li Ye nodded, "Announce her appearance!"
Not long after, Li Chenghua hurriedly walked in, bowed and saluted, "See Your Majesty!"
"What's important?"
Li Ye knew that Li Chenghua's request to see him must be urgent.
"Reporting to Your Majesty, when the internal guards were investigating the largest underground slave market in Chang'an, they discovered a shocking incident. This underground slave market not only sold people from abroad to Chang'an, but also sold a large number of people from the Tang Dynasty abroad, especially girls.
It has been going on for twenty years, and the number of girls being sold has reached an alarming level."
One of the key points in the abolition of slavery is to close the slave markets in various places. However, it is easy to close the official or public slave markets, but it is the underground slave market that is difficult to close.
The underground slave market has always existed, mainly for tax evasion, and the number of slaves it buys and sells every year far exceeds that of the open slave market.
Almost everyone knows about the underground slave market in Chang'an. There are several, the largest one is in the West Market. Young women smuggled from Japan and Silla are sold to major brothels in Chang'an through the Chang'an West City underground slave market.
Therefore, after the promulgation of the abolition of slavery, many industries have been greatly impacted, such as brothels and brothels. Now there is no such thing as selling one's body. Contracts are signed once a year. When the one-year contract expires, prostitutes can leave whenever they want. There is no need to
If the madam dares to stop him from redeeming his body, the defendant will be given a light punishment when he goes to the government. He will be sentenced to three thousand miles of exile, basically to guard the border.
Therefore, the only way to keep people in a brothel is to improve the treatment and share the money. In the past, prostitutes had no money to sleep with them, so they could only rely on their patrons to give them extra rewards and save some savings.
It doesn't work anymore. If a brothel receives a customer's five hundred pence, at least half of it must be given to the prostitute. It also has to take care of the prostitute's food, drink, accommodation, makeup, and clothes. If the treatment is not good, the prostitute will just change jobs after the expiration of her term.
Therefore, the abolition of slavery is easy to deal with the slaves on the surface, but the more difficult part is the underground human trafficking.
It is impossible for them to implement the abolition of slavery and cancel the human trafficking, so they need to rely on internal guards to crack down severely.
In the past, there were two ways for Western women to come to the Tang Dynasty. One was that human traffickers bought slaves from Persia and then resold them to the Tang Dynasty. With the abolition of slavery in the Tang Dynasty, this method became less and less common and eventually disappeared.
.
Another way is for girls from Sogdian countries to voluntarily come to Chang'an to work. This is just like people going to the West to work now. They come to Chang'an and Luoyang to work for more than ten years, save a sum of money and return to their hometown to marry.
This approach is actually the mainstream. This trend of yearning for the prosperous land in the East lasted for nearly a hundred years throughout the prosperous Tang Dynasty. It did not gradually subside until Tubo occupied Hexi and Anxi. The fundamental reason was the decline of the Tang Dynasty.
Li Ye supports this method. Whether it is Hu Niang from the West, or a girl from Silla or Japan, Li Ye hopes that everyone can come in a spontaneous way, so that everyone can work happily and go home happily.
Don't leave any humiliation or tears.
Therefore, Li Ye has always had a clear-cut attitude towards cracking down on the black market slave trade, leaving no room for ambiguity and no alternative explanations.
"Are you saying that you found that a large number of Han girls were trafficked to the West?"
Li Chenghua nodded, "Exactly! And it has lasted for nearly twenty years, and there are signs of getting worse in recent years."
At this time, Li Ye suddenly thought of the young lady Xiaokang he met in Kang State, who was sold to the Hu people by her uncle and brought to Kang State by the Hu people.
Li Ye frowned and said, "Tell me more about it, how did you find it?"
"Reporting to Your Majesty, there was a slave trader named Xu Wuliang who continued to secretly buy and sell slaves after the abolition of slavery was promulgated. He was caught by the internal guards. In order to reduce the crime, he explained the situation of selling girls to the internal guards. This has been going on since the Tianbao period.
Yes, the Anshi Rebellion was the most rampant in the past few years. In recent years, it has been slightly less frequent, but it still exists.
According to his account, there are five or six gangs in total. They buy girls from remote mountainous areas and train them in music workshops in the same way as musical girls. When they reach the age of twelve or thirteen, they use the excuse of learning Hu Xuan dance to train them.
If these girls are sent to the West, each person can make a net profit of more than a hundred guan, which is much more than selling them to buyers in Luoyang, Chang'an."
"How many people have been sold?" Li Ye asked.
"There must be at least ten thousand people!"
There were so many people. Li Ye took a breath of air and immediately asked: "Do you know which bands are involved?"
Li Chenghua bowed and said: "Your Majesty, there are many music studios involved. Some are run by them themselves, and some are hired by other music companies to train them on their behalf."
Li Ye immediately ordered: "Immediately inventory all music studios and dance studios in Chang'an and Luoyang, and strictly investigate the origins of all underage girls. If there are more than three girls in a music studio whose origins are unknown, the music studio owners will be arrested and rigorously interrogated."