Chastity Layman

  Chapter 289 Upstart

  Back to Chang'an, Li Shimin brought Qin Lang back to Tai Chi Palace.

  In the Hall of Liangyi, the emperor took out a booklet and threw it in front of Qin Lang, showing off, "Look."

  Qin Lang picked it up, flipped through it, and found that it was a ledger, and the numbers recorded were a bit astonishing.

"Since you eliminated Chang'an monks and Taoists last year, over the past year, more than 4,600 temples have been demolished in the world, more than 40,000 temples have been recruited, and more than 40,000 temples have been recruited, and more than 300,000 lay monks and nuns have been returned, and more than 200,000 slaves and maidservants have been released. More than 500,000 benefactors were used by the temple's Afutai, and hundreds of thousands of hectares of the temple's land were confiscated."

"The demolition of monasteries, bronze statues, and bells and chimes in various places, and the gold, silver, and copper obtained from the transshipment department were handed over to the transshipment department. Casting iron into agricultural tools..."

   Li Shimin stood there very proudly and recited the great achievement of the eliminated monk.

The transshipment department plus the township department, coupled with the joint action of local states and counties, the action is fast and the efficiency is extremely high. The emperor's account book does not record Taoism, so it can be seen that Li Shimin is also selective in this action, although at the beginning It is said that it is the way of killing monks and Taoists, but Taoism is not very powerful at this time, so Li Shimin is the master of killing monks, and he is much more gentle with Taoism.

  Zhaoti and Lanruo privately built temples. There are more than 40,000 privately built temples, and nearly 5,000 official temples have been demolished.

  There are more than 300,000 monks and nuns who have been ordered to return to the secular world, and this does not count those who have better morals or are older but have not been ordered to return to the secular life.

  According to what the emperor said, there are only three temples left in Chang'an, and a newly built nunnery was authorized not long ago. There are a total of 360 monks and nuns in Chang'an. As for the rest of the world, 30 people will be left in the upper state and 20 in the lower state. In big cities such as Yangzhou, Taiyuan, Yizhou, and Jingzhou, 50 people will be allowed to stay.

  There are more than 300 states in the world. Calculated, the emperor retained more than 7,000 monks, less than 8,000. Each person returned 20 mu of land, 10 mu for temple property, and 10 mu for public distribution, which were recovered after death, and these fields were to be rented and adjusted like other common people's fields.

  The three monasteries in Chang'an are special because they are all famous eminent monks, so the emperor gave each of them 50 mu.

   "There are more than 300,000 monks and nuns, more than 200,000 slaves, and more than 500,000 monastery tenants. The combined population exceeds one million." Li Shimin was almost gritting his teeth.

  A population of one million is a very large number for Li Shimin, and the official household registration in the ninth year of Wude in the Tang Dynasty was only less than three million.

   "This has not counted those who privately ordained ordained to escape taxation."

Those people mentioned by the emperor are mainly rich and powerful households in those places. The powerful and wealthy households have three households, and they must order one to be shaved. Even many so-called shavings are simply shaving privately. Donate some money to the temple, and then shave off their hair. If you have become a monk, you can report to the government as a monk, exempt from taxation, and do not perform hard labor.

   But in fact, these so-called monks don’t practice in the temple at all, they still live at home, even marry wives and have children as usual, and some of them don’t shave their hair.

  Most of the privately built Zhaoti and Lan Ruoli were built by these fake monks.

  This kind of situation is very common in localities. The so-called monks are actually state tax evaders, and the number is extremely alarming.

  Those people were not included among the 300,000 monks and nuns who returned to secular life this time. They were specially investigated and all ordered to return.

   Not to mention hundreds of thousands of hectares of land, that is tens of millions of acres of land.

  One-tenth of the land in the world was actually controlled by these temples before.

  This time Li Shimin really beat up a big local tyrant. He went to the temple and the court was full. It was more than when the Li family captured Chang'an, took down Guanzhong, and obtained more money left over from the Sui Dynasty.

  At the beginning, Li Yuan first started his fortune with the Sui Dynasty money and silk from the Taiyuan Palace, and then after he invaded Chang'an, he took the wealth from the treasury to make his fortune, so that he could win the world.

  The money of the Sui Dynasty has been used up in recent years, and now Li Shimin has found a fatter pig than the Sui Dynasty.

In addition, those bronze statues that were dismantled in the temple, the bronze wares obtained were melted into copper material, and handed over to the coin miner, they could cast five million guan coins. Now the imperial court can only cast coins in a year with one hundred coin furnaces. About 500,000 guan, which means that this batch of copper materials can cast money for ten years.

   Gold and silver also won millions of coins.

  The emperor still didn’t write it down, and there were also many temple properties that went directly to the imperial inner workshop, mainly the workshops and quality warehouses that the big temples originally controlled. This was also a large sum of money, all of which were embezzled by the emperor.

Of course, Qin Lang has reasons to believe that the numbers on the ledger are definitely not complete. The local states and counties, and even the transshipment department, the town and the Fusi, etc. must have intercepted some of them. As long as it doesn't go into personal pockets, they are not afraid According to the above check, they are all in the public treasury anyway.

  It's nice to have money.

  That's why Li Shimin is so impatient to beat Liang Shidu, he has money to burn.

  The original plan was to spend three years accumulating reserve wars, and then destroy Liang Shidu, but now the emperor is rich, very rich, very rich, and he can't wait for a day when he is rich.

  But Qin Lang was not very excited.

   Anyway, no matter how much money there is, it doesn't matter to him.

Although the nobles and dignitaries in Chang’an have long been on the move after smelling the smell, they attacked everywhere to plunder these temple properties. Although no one dared to rob them openly, but such a large amount of temple properties suddenly appeared in various places, and the imperial court wanted to realize it. Good time.

   Grab land, rob money, rob fields.

  Qin Lang didn't join in the fun.

   "Your Majesty, how will Your Majesty arrange the newly added one million monks and nuns, monastery slaves, and monastery tenants?"

  Although tens of millions of acres of land have been copied out, it will be distributed as soon as it is copied out. How can there be any leftover land to house these people?

   Sure enough, Li Shimin is not a kind person.

  After these more than 300,000 monks and nuns returned to secular life, the government acted as a matchmaker, matching monks and nuns to get married, and then they were either resettled on the spot, or moved to the frontier to grant land for farming.

   As for slaves, there will be no savior.

   They used to be slaves of temples, but now they have changed their status and become slaves of the government, and then they were either sold to private individuals as slaves, or sent to various official workshops or Huangzhuang to continue to serve as slaves.

  It is the more than 500,000 temple tenants who have little influence. Anyway, although the temple fields are confiscated, the fields are rooted. If the fields change owners, the tenants will change to landlords.

"Your Majesty, after the elimination of monks, the imperial court did get a lot of money, but the money has not been used yet. The money can only be converted into national strength after the imperial court spends it. For example, the bronze statue was cast into Money, the money is then bought into grain and stored in the warehouse, or traded into salt, tea, wine, cloth, etc., and then turned into money, and then exchanged into rice cloth, war horses, ordnance, etc., is strength."

"After the catastrophe last year, not only was there no food in the country's warehouses, but the people's tanks were also out of food. Now that there is a war, food will still become a big problem. If the war is only maintained in the Shuofang area, of course it can be supported, but if it becomes big, If the Turks get involved, the situation will get out of control, and the current fragile situation will collapse, and it will be even more difficult to turn around when the time comes.”

"Three years of abundance will lead to prosperity, six years of prosperity will lead to peace, and nine years of abundance will lead to peace. I dare not ask Your Majesty to wait another nine years until the world is peaceful before fighting wars, but please wait for three years of abundance until the people's faces are no longer pale. Wait until the common people have some food in their homes, and wait until my Datang has a certain risk defense capability before doing it."

   "Your Majesty, after all these years of waiting, why not wait?"

   Li Shimin's enthusiasm was extinguished.

   Originally, he thought that his loving son-in-law would support him and understand him, but he didn't expect that Qin Lang, who was always used to being reckless, also started to shout to hold on to the waves.

  Originally, he even wanted Qin Lang to be in charge of the military supplies, and then took Li Jing as the vanguard, and personally led the expedition to destroy Liang Shidu in one fell swoop.

   Seeing that Li Shimin's evil fire was blocked, Qin Lang also left.

   "I want to take a half-month leave to go back to the countryside to harvest wheat."

  Li Shimin looked at him angrily, "You have a lot of land, but you don't need to harvest wheat, do you?"

  Qin Lang thought to himself, don't you want to hold a summer harvest ceremony, your majestic emperor? As a big landowner with 100,000 mu of fertile land, of course I have to make a scene. Although I will definitely not go to the field to harvest the wheat in person, I also have to be responsible for the logistics supply and demand, right? I have to reward the people who harvest the grain. ah.

   "Today's two poems about pity the peasants, were you actually the one who wrote them?" Li Shimin threw the ledger back to the desk corner, and he sat on the couch with a playful smile on his lips.

  Actually, how could Li Shimin not understand his son, who is only nine years old. Although he read poems and rites with Lu Deming and Kong Yingda since he was a child, he could never write this poem of pity for farmers.

  Especially for a crown prince like Chengqian who was raised in a deep palace when he was young, how could he really experience the sufferings of the people and know the preciousness of food?

   "Your Majesty, I dare not **** the prince's poems!"

  Li Shimin snorted, "In front of me, you don't have to pretend, and I won't blame you for this matter."

  As a father, even though he knew that Cheng Qian's poems were written by Qin Lang, he was still very happy that everyone praised Cheng Qian's scene.

"You go to the countryside and bring Chengqian with you. The Chongxian Museum is also on holiday anyway. You, the prince's young teacher, take Chengqian, a student, to learn about the civil affairs in the countryside and let him see how hard every grain is. of."

  Qin Lang smacked his lips, he was not very willing to take the crown prince to the countryside, after all, he couldn't bear it if the heir apparent of a country made a slight mistake while going out.

   "I have six armies from the Baiqi Division, the Dianqian Division, and the Zhenfu Division, and each will send a team to you."

   "Thank you, Your Majesty."

   "Take good care of Chengqian, but if there is a problem, you are the only one to ask."

   "The minister obeys the order."

   "Is the 100,000 yuan given to Donggong earlier enough? Do you want to give you some more principal?"

   "If Your Majesty is willing, why not transfer the Kaiyuan Bank to the East Palace!"

  Qin Lang pushed his limits a bit.

   As a result, Li Shimin was not easy to fool around. He had already seen Kaiyuan Bank's ability to make money, so he refused politely.

   "I'll draw another 100,000 guan for you."

  (end of this chapter)