Established a thousand-year family from the end of Qin Dynasty

Chapter 143 Zhaoxuan Prosperous Age ([-])

Two years later

Emperor Liu Bing already wanted to give Liu Che a temple title and consolidate his orthodoxy, so he issued an imperial edict to let scholars and officials all over the world write a letter and express their suggestions.

In the past few months, Liu Bing has received a large number of letters, but most of them are perfunctory, and it is as good as no suggestion.

But there was one letter that caught people's attention, and that was Xia Housheng, Changxin Shaofu.

A year ago, Xia Housheng handed over the family's ancestral book "Shangshu" to the Empress Dowager, so he was appointed by the imperial court as the Changxin Shaofu to preside over the affairs of the Empress Dowager's palace.

In this day and age, there are some books that even rich people may not be able to buy.

Because many books are handed down from families, the families of these family books are often nobles in the Zhou Dynasty, but now they are down and down, and they can be said to be old Zhenghaojing people.

Most of these family heirlooms had to hand over the ancestral books to the imperial court because the family had no money, and for the sake of the family's livelihood, the imperial court added officials to ranks and rewarded them with gold.

Then, the imperial court arranged for people to transcribe these handed-in family books on a large scale, and sold the transcribed copies to enrich the treasury, and it was impossible to sell the original books.

In the end, the wealthy tyrants bought the copied books from the imperial court at a high price, and copied the copies themselves.

In the end, the children of the Haoqiang family relied on studying these books to enter the official career and gradually transformed into a noble family.

In the Royal Academy, some books come from this way.

But most of them were snatched from the Central Plains gentry.

For example, during Wang Tairan's period, after the Hejia Manor was destroyed, more than 20 books of different types were robbed.

These books were later transcribed by the Wang family on wadding paper and bamboo slips.

Although the He family is very weak and has few tenant farmers, as a scholarly family with a long history, there are still quite a lot of books.

The copies of books sold by the imperial court are very expensive. A book costs 300 gold. This is just a copy. A self-cultivating farmer has to eat or drink for [-] years before he can afford a book. Basically, it is for those who want to learn culture. , the money of the tyrants who have ideals and want to transform into gentry.

Tyrants are not stupid, just buy one copy of the same book, and after bringing it back to the family, they will also arrange for people to copy more.

Over the years, from time to time, some ancient families had to hand over their ancestral books to the imperial court due to bankruptcy, and then the royal family would spend a lot of money to buy copies from the imperial court and transcribe them.

But these copies of books also have some problems, that is, there are often typos and the like.

Even in copies transcribed by the court itself, typos often appeared, causing the meaning of some passages to be altered.

After marrying Zhang and Li, two old Liaodong families, the Wang family was able to obtain dozens of copies of books from these two families, and the Wang family also donated dozens of copies of books they had collected to the two families in return.

Everyone shared and copied each other, and the general category of books increased.

As soon as they learned that the imperial court had included the "Shangshu", the Wang family couldn't wait to buy a copy of the "Shangshu" from their embezzled money, and arranged for the children of the family to copy it. Dozens of copies were transcribed day and night.

In this way, another different book was collected in the Royal Academy.

Xia Housheng relied on the contribution of "Shangshu" to become a Changxin Shaofu, but now he boldly criticized Emperor Wu, thinking that Emperor Wu was "wasted at home and his household registration was halved", so he was not worthy of the temple name.

Liu Bing was already a little angry, although what Xia Housheng said was true, but Emperor Wu was his great-grandfather after all, how could he criticize him so excessively?
The halving of household registration is not the death of half of the people in the whole world.

But in the later period of Emperor Wu, he was aggressive and cultivated the immortals. Taxes and corvee were too heavy, which caused many self-cultivated farmers to become refugees after bankruptcy. Only a small part of these refugees were exterminated by the court or powerful people, and most of them were absorbed into their own manors by the powerful people. , became a tenant farmer, and was still a hermit.

In other words, the imperial court no longer knew which powerful manor they went to for these tenant farmers, and it was very troublesome to trace them, or some of them could not be traced at all.

There are even some refugees who were said to have been exterminated on the books and died in the statistics, but in fact they became slaves and tenant farmers of the powerful, such as the [-] refugees who surrendered in Liaodong.

This also reduced the imperial court's household registration in half, and reduced the number of self-cultivated farmers who could pay taxes by half.

Liu Bing already felt that Xia Housheng's attack was too much. After all, Emperor Wu's achievements in fighting the Huns cannot be denied, so how could Emperor Wu's attack be useless.

Therefore, Emperor Liu Bing had already imprisoned Xia Housheng on the grounds of "disputing the imperial edict; destroying the former emperor, which is immoral".

After dealing with Xia Housheng's attack on Emperor Wu, Liu Bingji dealt with Yingchuan again.

Although Huo Guang controlled the government, he allowed him, the emperor, to deal with some trivial matters, such as putting Xia Housheng, who had no background, into prison.

But when encountering some major events, he still had to seek Huo Guang's consent.

For example, the replacement of the prefect in Yingchuan County is a major event.

Previously, the prefect of Yingchuan County was Zhao Guanghan.

After Zhao Guanghan took office as the prefect of Yingchuan, he imposed severe punishments and laws, and encouraged powerful people to report each other, and there were huge rewards for successful reporting.

These tyrants in Yingchuan County are all new tyrants in the late period of Emperor Wu, so they are not as united as the previous Yingchuan tyrants, and they have not yet had time to marry each other and form an alliance.

Under the policy of the prefect Zhao Guanghan to encourage reporting, these tycoons frantically reported other tyrants to each other, and even ordinary people began to report local tyrants.

However, in a few years, these emerging tyrants in Yingchuan County were all killed by the prefect Zhao Guanghan, their family properties were filled into the treasury, and the good land was distributed to the landless refugees for farming.

But what followed was the deterioration of the social atmosphere in Yingchuan County.

The common people in Yingchuan tasted the sweetness in reporting, so the scale of reporting became larger and larger, and finally even middle-class rich peasants were frequently reported.

In order to protect themselves, the middle-class rich peasants also began to report on other middle-class rich peasants and ordinary people.

Throughout Yingchuan County, it has become a fashion to report each other, and everyone is saying: The order of the Emperor Wu's time is back.

Confucian scholars were very disgusted with reporting such things, so they wrote letters criticizing Zhao Guanghan, the prefect of Yingchuan.

Seeing the critics from the scholars, Liu Bing has decided to transfer Zhao Guanghan back to Chang'an, and then let the well-known celebrity Han Yanshou go to Yingchuan as the prefect, so as to improve the bad atmosphere of reporting each other in Yingchuan County.

It's not that Emperor Liu Bing does not approve of Zhao Guanghan, but his administrative style is such that he can use the domineering and cruel official Zhao Guanghan, and he can also use the domineering moral education Han Yanshou.

Regardless of domineering, easy to use is the truth.

After deciding to remove Zhao Guanghan from the prefect position of Yingchuan and let Han Yanshou take over as prefect, Liu Bing ordered the eunuchs around him to inform General Huo Guang of the matter, and Huo Guang made the final decision.

As an emperor, even a puppet emperor, he can forcibly change officials without the consent of the powerful ministers, after all, the righteous name is still there.

But Liu Bing has been cautious. Before he is absolutely sure of bringing down the Huo family, he will never do this kind of thing, so as not to anger the Huo family. If the Huo family jumps over the wall in a hurry, it is not impossible to forcibly abolish the Huo family and establish a new emperor.

After all, Liu He was deposed as emperor because too many officials were replaced at one time.

With the precedent of the idiot Liu He, Liu Bingji will naturally not make the same mistake.

(End of this chapter)