The rise of the prince

Chapter 736
The light in the room was dim, and Li Xingzhou took a cup of refreshing tea made by the maid, casually took a few sips and then put it down, quietly listening to Yan Kun's report. stop.

Slowly put down the teacup in his hand, and someone brought Yan Kun a cup of hot tea, but Yan Kun didn't drink it, and looked at him with frowning, waiting for the next sentence.

Li Xingzhou grinned: "Well, I was preconceived and miscalculated."

Yan Kun didn't understand what he meant by preconceived ideas. Since two years ago, Li Xingzhou has cooperated with various merchants to repair official roads from the capital to various government offices with cement from the palace.

At this time, it has been relatively secretive and slow, which is also an important part of his future plan, road construction.

"Building roads first to get rich" does make sense, but it's just one of them. More importantly, he wants to connect the capital and other places unconsciously. Once he succeeds, it means the most elite and most loyal to his central government. The imperial army can move quickly along the flat concrete road to all parts of the country within a few days, and quickly respond to emergencies.

Li Xingzhou had a long-term vision for this. China has a lot of historical experience. Any dynasty, as long as it is more than 200 years old, there will be turmoil. The most important issue is land annexation.

Land is the primary productive force. After every great turmoil of dynasty change, most of them have land equalization measures, so that most people have land to grow.

But slowly, these lands will be gathered into the hands of a few people in the way of boiling frogs in warm water. Most people can't survive, so social turmoil, turmoil erupts, and dynasties change.

This is almost a cycle. In every dynasty, people have fought to reverse this trend, but most of them are unsuccessful.

But now, as the big families in Jingguo grow bigger, this kind of situation has also begun to appear. An example is the Wu family in central Shu who indirectly buried tens of thousands of troops without being severely punished.

Because the Wu family has gathered a lot of power in Shu and in the court, they are powerful in the local area. There are a group of Wu family members in the local officials, and there are queens in the court. It is inevitable for them to annex a large amount of land.

There are also Jingxitian family, Tang family, Guanlong gentry and many other well-known big families. Over time, they will follow the Matthew effect. The strong get stronger and the weak get weaker, until it is difficult for the people at the bottom to survive.

Emperor Yongzheng once worked hard for this, but after he died of overwork, his son Qianlong immediately reversed his actions.

The reason is simple, to fight against the upper class, to fight for the living space of the lower class, in the end, it is not a human being, so Qianlong is highly praised by the nobles, because he followed the preferences of the big family, and the emperor was at ease, he was complacent, and also He felt that everyone was flattering him, which was good, but it ruined the hope of the people at the bottom and ruined the Qing Dynasty.

On the contrary, it was Yongzheng who was scolded the most, tortured to the point of being mentally tense, and exhausted to death. His actions really won space for the lower classes, such as returning the fire to the public, reforming taxes, and removing the offerings of the children of the bannermen, etc.
It was also because of this that he died a miserable death, and what was even worse was that most of the common people didn't even know who was good to them, because they didn't have the right to speak, and when the literati and dignitaries scolded Yongzheng, they followed suit.

For the big clan, they naturally don't want their own interests to be damaged.The lower classes have no way to study, and their cognitive level is limited. The upper class has the right to speak, so they are easy to be used and fooled. Few people really understand who is good to them.

Now Li Xingzhou is in this state. Some of the measures he plans to do in the future are actually almost the reforms that Yongzheng wanted at the beginning.

The two most important measures are to reduce the offerings of the royal relatives and relatives. Royal members who have not entered official positions for more than three generations can no longer be supported by the state for free. The large amount of money saved can be used for national defense, disaster relief, and infrastructure instead of Raising useless nobles for nothing.

The second, and most important, is the tax reform. Taxes are no longer based on headcount, but on the basis of acres of land.

Those with a lot of land should pay more, those with little land should pay less, and those without land should not pay.

In the past, taxes were paid according to the number of members of each family, regardless of the number of acres of land in the family. However, a considerable number of families have either voluntarily or been forced to sell their land to large households. Difficult, they have to pay taxes, so they can only ask the big family to let them work.

Those rich families own countless fields and pay taxes according to the number of people in the family, which is not superficial to them.

If the tax is paid by the number of acres, the big gentry households with more fields will inevitably pay more, and it will also prevent them from continuing to merge land, because more fields will pay more taxes.

The burden of ordinary people with little or no land will be greatly reduced.

Li Xingzhou's road construction was prepared for the second item. This was to fundamentally curb the land annexation of the great clans and curb their expansion. When the time comes, both inside and outside the court will inevitably jump up, and local turmoil is likely to occur.

In fact, when Yongzheng wanted to do this, there were almost all opposition from the whole country. They were either obedient and obedient, or made various generous statements. In the end, his arms could not twist the thighs of the powerful.

So Li Xingzhou wants to take the capital as the center and build concrete roads to several important places, such as the west of Beijing, Guanzhong, Taiyuan, Shuzhong, Jiangnan and other places. When the time comes, there will be a new law. As long as someone refuses to follow or jumps up, he will The most trusted new army can follow the waterway or land route, arrive in an instant, cut through the mess quickly, support their own changes with an iron-blooded attitude, weaken the monopoly of the aristocratic family, and create more living space for the people at the bottom.

But he never expected that the matter had only just begun, and it was going on in a secret way, yet someone had already seen the clues.

Yan Kun brought the news that in Guanzhong, Shuzhong, and Jiangnan, some people incited the people and asked Taoist priests to spread the word, saying that cement is a kind of "poisonous powder" that will destroy Fengshui, destroy local luck, and harm future generations.

As a result, when the road was built in the front of the palace, the people spontaneously destroyed the road in the back. The government couldn't catch people, because there were so many people, they ran away when they smashed it, and they couldn't scare people. Road construction in several places was blocked.

Li Xingzhou was speechless for a long time. He ignored the objective fact that people in this era have lost their cognition, few people can read and go to school, and they are too easy to be fooled.
In the Qing Dynasty, telegraph lines were also destroyed by the people, and the reason for instigation was also to destroy Feng Shui.

It seems that some smart people may vaguely see what he wants to do, so they take precautions and incite the people to do these things.

Those big clans who occupy one side definitely don't want a good road, as long as the road can be walked, if the road is too good and it is close to the capital, they will not be able to be the emperor of the land safely and exploit the local people at will.

"Let's put it down in advance, don't make a fuss, and don't conflict with the local people, so that the local government should not continue to act." Li Xingzhou ordered in a low voice.

It was too difficult to measure outside the window, and the dark sky weighed down, making his speech a little difficult. He walked to the door and looked at the dark northern sky. "At present, the main energy is to concentrate on the north and prepare for the big event of sending troops."

Yan Kun thought for a while, then nodded, "I'll reply right away."

A light cluster of orange lanterns hastily disappeared into the darkness, and Li Xingzhou was melancholy alone. Things were more difficult than he thought. Combined with this, it must not be a coincidence that some people have recently started to spread rumors that he sold arms to Xia Guo as "collaborating with the enemy and traitorous country".

There are still many smart people in this world, who should have vaguely guessed what he wants to do, and have already begun to be vigilant.

It's not a good sign, but it's just a try.

His biggest advantage is that he is the crown prince!future emperor!

Thinking of this, I couldn't help but feel confident again. When he regains the lost land in the north, the Liaodong Peninsula, and the Hexi Corridor, and becomes a figure like Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, he will have enough prestige and support to do this. .

If he does those things, his prestige will be as high as the sun, just like the Qin Emperor and Han Dynasty, the people all over the world will listen to him, and then he will be whatever he says cement is!
Thinking of this, Li Xingzhou was full of pride. He tried to walk a small path, but he didn't expect that someone would start to block the path, but they didn't know that he still had a path to walk.

It's just that this avenue is dazzling and extremely tragic.

"I don't know how many people will die again," he muttered to himself, and then put all his emotions aside.

Looking at the vast night, Li Xingzhou felt that he was becoming more and more like the old emperor. After so many experiences, human life could no longer stir up waves in his heart.

He used to have a repulsive attitude towards the old emperor. First, he was not used to his cold-blooded and ruthless, and second, he had a psychological barrier because a mature person somehow recognized a stranger's grandfather.

It's just that slowly, after experiencing so much, he understands the old emperor's actions more and more.

He had always had a kind of arrogance before, a kind of superiority and arrogance of being a modern man.

But now that arrogance or ignorance is being worn away by the cruel reality.
People are stupid, and they haven't changed at all for thousands of years. If a thousand years later, he only knows to look down on this era, blindly criticizing and mocking.

Then, will his descendants, after decades or hundreds of years, have to spit and laugh at his tombstone again?
He suddenly understood that this era has its rules, this era has its helplessness and last resort, he was too conceited before.

But now, he must do things in a down-to-earth manner so that his name will remain in the hearts of future generations.

The kingdom of Jin in the north, the kingdom of Xia in the northwest, and the kingdoms of Dali, Baiyi, and Jiaozhi in the south, he clenched his fists tightly, as if he wanted to hold them tightly.
(End of this chapter)