Spoiling History: Starting from the Three Kingdoms

[The problem of false population during the Wu and Zhou Dynasties is difficult to prove. Here we only quote a section of the household records from 701.

According to "The First Year of Dazu in Xiaogu Township, Dunhuang County, Shazhou", the husband died in Tuntun, Handan, after the account was taken in the third year of the Holy Calendar; the male Changsheng died after the account in the third year of the Holy Calendar; the father's teacher died after the account in the second year of the Holy Calendar. Death; Mu Si died after accounting for three years in the Holy Calendar.

The content of this record is also very simple. It talks about a local man named Fuhan Tuntun in Dunhuang. The eldest son, parents, and himself all died shortly after the census.

This record was unearthed from the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, and the Dagu Document No. 2835 unearthed at the same time, titled "The Emissary's Emissary's Emissary and Dunhuang County's Emissary in March of the Third Year of Zhou Chang'an" further reveals the current situation of this family evacuation.

The content of this unearthed document is too long to go into details. It reflects two problems. The first is that the local officials in Shazhou are not willing to cooperate with the work of the Kuo household envoy.

The reason for the non-cooperation is the second point: any household envoy who requests to escape must be repatriated back to the place of his previous registered residence.

Faced with the uncooperation of local officials, the envoy attributed the reason to "being seduced by the master", and even said that "the people of Gan, Liang, Gua and Su fled together and knew each other, falsely claiming to have seedlings", which made it difficult to implement the work of enforcing the household.

In fact, if you think about it in a feudal society, since everyone has become a fugitive, they will no longer be able to survive in the local area.

Since the fugitives who have changed to a new environment have been able to put down roots, most of them have already married, had children, and acquired land and property. It is obviously unkind to ask the fugitives to give up these and return to the original place with nothing.

On the basis that Awu was not well received, in the ninth year of Kaiyuan, Li Longji ordered Yu Wenrong to preside over the household work.

Yu Wenrong no longer forcibly repatriated the fugitives, but ordered the fugitives to naturalize on the spot. Not only were the fugitives exempted from land tax for five years, but the fugitives who were naturalized within five years only had to pay a small tax of 1,500 wen per year.

Until the 16th year of Kaiyuan, Li Longji still issued an order: petition for resettlement of fugitives in border areas, "where they will be resettled with good and fertile land, and they will still be given eternal life and good recovery." 】

"This Xuanzong... is really not as good as..."

Li Shimin shook his head. At this moment, he deeply understood the sighs of future generations, but after thinking about it, he didn't feel comfortable cursing his descendants, so in the end he could only shake his head in confusion, with mixed emotions.

Empress Changsun didn't have so many thoughts, but she felt deeply about this family. After all, in troubled times, she had seen many children traveling thousands of miles with their daughters, just to find a place to live.

Thinking about how he worked for several years cultivating fields and building houses, and his life finally improved, the officials said that they would track down the fugitives, order you to return to your original place, and exempt you from taxes for a few more years at most - it is unacceptable to think about it.

Du Ruhui next to him became interested in the Mogao Grottoes again.

At least as far as we can see, the Mogao Grottoes contain various documents on the plans of the Guiyi Army, including documents from Hexi Province, and manuscripts of Buddhist scriptures.

"I wonder how the Mogao Grottoes were sealed? It can make the paper and silk immortal for thousands of years."

Fang Xuanling didn’t believe this:

"Rather than saying that the method of building caves is brilliant, it is better to say that the method studied by later generations is magical."

But he still remembered the mural about the discussion he had seen. If it had not been restored by later generations, he would never dare to recognize it as the same painting.

"Look back and look for it. Even if the wall is mottled for future generations, it is better than the ruins."

Du Ruhui was very optimistic and planned to find an opportunity to visit the temple master to see if there was such a way to build a cave and preserve it.

Nodding, Fang Xuanling ignored the discussion. Instead, he summarized what he had transcribed and said:

"It seems that the suspicion that this population is false is probably related to this household."

After all, I knew that the sandbank must be short of population, so it could be said that it would welcome the fleeing households.

If these fictitious people are left, the fugitive households can be ordered to temporarily replace their land to pay taxes.

It's no wonder that local officials in Shazhou have such strong opinions on Kuohu envoys. After all, the border areas still need to face bandits, and population is definitely a problem.

If you look at it this way, Yu Wenrong's census can be used to crack down on powerful people.

After pondering for a while, Fang Xuanling became more and more sure of this idea.

If this household census is done well, it will definitely be able to crack down on powerful powers and prevent mergers and acquisitions to benefit the people, thus making the people prosperous and the country prosperous.

"Having the Ministry of Civil Affairs set up additional household census envoys to visit prefectures and counties every few years to reform the household registration and conduct an inventory of acres, might this be a policy that benefits the people?"

During the Wude period, the Supreme Emperor did issue an order to expand household registration, but at that time he only ordered all states and counties to report their household registrations, which would be sorted and reviewed by the central government. The intensity was not even as strong as that of the previous Sui Dynasty.

The intensity of household registration checks in the former Sui Dynasty was not as strong as that in the Wu Zhou period. During the Kaihuang period, Linghu Xi, Qi Fuhui and others were only allowed to patrol Hedong, Shandong and other places. It was not as strong as the Wu Zhou Dynasty when Xuanzong used envoys to search the whole country.

After Fang Xuanling explained, Du Ruhui also understood and even became a little excited:

"This Kuohu envoy patrols the world on behalf of the central government to govern the four directions!"

…

Kong Ming was also sensitive to the fact that the envoy had a lot to say.

At the same time, a blueprint has been planned in my mind.

When the world is settled, appoint the governor to depose the governor and investigate the affairs of the world; then order the Kuohu envoy to inspect the nine provinces and inspect the hidden households and the hidden fields.

Why worry about not being able to make the people recuperate?

Pang Tong was alerted by another incident. This younger generation talked about Wu Zhou's literary rule and said that "A Wu" paid unprecedented attention to literary talents.

But looking at the dilemma of the poet Li Bai and the ugly appearance of the villain Song Zhiwen, being talented in literature does not mean having the talent to govern.

When the imperial examinations are held in Chang'an this year, I should advise my lord. The candidates selected for the imperial examinations are not literati who are good at rhetoric, but those who have the ability to govern.

[In addition, Awu left quite a lot of political ills.

Although the imperial examination system was established, in fact, the main method of official promotion during the Wu and Zhou Dynasties was still the election, and the imperial examination did not shine brightly in this era.

Even because of the inherent disadvantage of women becoming emperor, Awu directly promoted bureaucrats who were loyal to him regardless of the cost to quickly dilute the legacy of Li Tang in the court, leading to the direct erosion of the selection system.

In addition, he was too crazy in the early years of proclaiming himself emperor, which caused considerable financial problems in the middle period of Wu Zhou. More than one prime minister mentioned "insufficient state resources" in his memorials.

Another main reason is that the Khitan rebelled and defeated the Wu and Zhou army. The Turkic Khan took advantage of the chaos to do something big and dealt a heavy blow to Hebei:

"When Zhao, Ding, Heng, Yi and other states were captured, hundreds of millions of silks, children, sheep and horses were taken away."

Therefore, there was also a series of actions in the late Wu Zhou Dynasty, including setting up pastoral supervisors in Denglai, setting up slaves in Jiangling and the city, adding customs and cities to tax merchants, and Hebei and the city of cattle and sheep. Criticizing the competition for profits with the people shows Wu Zhou's financial predicament.

Even the charity warehouse used for disaster relief has unknowingly become a decoration:

"In public and private embarrassment, people gradually borrowed money from charity warehouses to pay for their expenses. Since Zhongzong Shenlong, the funds for charity warehouses all over the world have been exhausted."

"The Empress Dowager Wu, Xiao Hechao, Princess Taiping, Wu Sansi, and the rebellious common people indulged themselves in extravagance and indulgence...thus the farm work was wasted and the treasury was depleted."

From this point of view, it is really not easy for Li Longji, who has to wipe the butt of many people.

But to say that Awu is a foolish king is obviously far from enough.

After all, as we said before, even Di Renjie took the lead in persuading Awu to shrink his strategy and abandon the Western Regions and Liaodong.

Under this situation, Awu still held his neck tightly to stabilize the defenses of Anxi Fourth Town and Hexi Longyou, which is worthy of recognition.

Wu Zetian's struggles throughout her reign were actually due to the lack of reasonable legal support due to her female origin. Although she had many shortcomings in domestic affairs, she still had her own set of rules for acting, which was far different from that of a coward. From this point of view, Zi Zhitong The review summarizes it better.

"To gain the hearts of the world with salary and position, but those who are incompetent will be deposed if found, or they may be punished with additional punishments, and they can control the world by using punishments and rewards, and the government will be governed by themselves."

In addition, Lao Wu was already sixty-seven years old when he ascended the throne. It is an inevitable trend for elderly emperors to become fatuous. In this case, Lao Wu did relatively well.

After all, those of us who have read history also know:

Although there were emperors such as Emperor Qin and Emperor Wu of Han who were trying to show off their upper limits, it is undeniable that most emperors for thousands of years were trying to show off their lower limits.

A typical example is Adou, who has defeated 80% of the emperor's qualities just by following the steps. 】