[Lightscreen]
[For an emperor, seizing money is in fact exceedingly simple.
Mint a new coin, announce that one new coin can be exchanged for ten old ones, then melt down the collected old coins and recast them into new currency.
Li Zhi did exactly this. He proclaimed to the realm that everyone should hurry to exchange their money—by the end of the year, the old coins would be completely abolished!
The state treasury filled at breathtaking speed, and Li Zhi beamed with delight.
Prices, meanwhile, skyrocketed, and the common people wailed in misery.
This single edict caused the prices of grain and cloth in the markets to more than triple. Waves of public cursing rose higher and higher across the land.
Markets in various regions either reverted to barter outright or simply shut down altogether.
Merchants whispered among themselves, dimly recalling that the last time things looked like this had been at the end of the Han dynasty. Had their Son of Heaven been possessed by someone surnamed Cao?
Only after half a year did Li Zhi, with great reluctance, issue another edict abolishing the new coin and restoring everything to the old system.
Throughout Gaozong's reign, the court used every possible trick to scrape together money on one hand, while on the other repeatedly slashed the benefits and treatment of soldiers.
The emperor's life grew ever more luxurious; the lives of those in uniform grew ever harsher. Under such circumstances, a decline in combat effectiveness was all but inevitable.]
Li Shimin felt the headache he thought long gone beginning to return.
Only now did he understand why, when he had first seen Li Zhi conscripting three hundred thousand troops, his emotions had been so complicated.
I never lived so extravagantly!
This is all wealth I painstakingly accumulated!
At this moment, Li Shimin found himself agreeing more than ever with the later saying: "A grandson sells his grandfather's fields without a pang of pain."
"I never imagined," Li Shimin said coldly, "that the cost of the Fengshan sacrifices would be wrung directly from the people!"
"The ancients knew that the people are water and the ruler is the boat—how dare my son forget this?"
A certain urgency in Li Shimin's heart grew ever stronger.
If I can't beat sense into Xuanzong or Xizong, he thought grimly, can I at least beat some into you, Gaozong?
He had once believed that this century-long age of prosperity was the result of successive generations of worthy ministers and enlightened emperors. Yet—
"I've only been gone—gone—for a little over ten years! How dare that brat behave like this!"
Speaking of his own death using words like "gone" sounded strange at first, but Li Shimin had grown increasingly fond of these curious later expressions.
To the assembled ministers in Ganlu Hall, however, it was rather jarring. One moment the emperor was raging, the next he casually said he had "gone," leaving everyone unsure whether to laugh or cry.
Du Ruhui chose to ease the mood:
"During the Zhenguan era, the state pressed forward in expansion. Soldiers and officials alike shared one purpose—opening territory and extending borders. Campaign after campaign brought abundant military merit, and rewards were correspondingly generous.
"In later times, however, the regions west of the Congling Mountains lay too far from the Central Plains, and Liaodong endured thirteen years of prolonged warfare. The gains there could hardly compare to the spoils of the single campaign that destroyed Jieli."
Li Shimin nodded. This was precisely what he had just been considering.
According to the light-screen's account, recruit ten and gain a hundred could certainly be praised as winning the people's hearts, but more bluntly put, it was because rewards for military service during Zhenguan had been extraordinarily rich.
Under Prince Zhi's rule, the empire had shifted from expanding frontiers to guarding its inheritance. It was impossible to reproduce the lavish rewards of Zhenguan—but still—
"That does not mean there should be no compensation at all!"
This was what Li Shimin found utterly unacceptable.
Even setting aside the bond of comrades-in-arms among soldiers: when returning veterans saw that those who had fought bravely and died for the state received not a single coin, nor even the courtesy of acknowledgment, who, putting themselves in others' place, would still dare to charge forward without fear?
To neglect those who died for the country was to dig up the very martial roots of Tang.
To toy repeatedly with the currency was to destroy the people's trust.
Li Shimin could not understand how, in barely over a decade since his death, this son of his could wield a knife against the Tang—and strike true at its vital points every single time.
Zhangsun Wuji spoke up again:
"Now that the prince has Your Majesty's personal guidance, when he one day ascends the throne, he will inherit Your Majesty's open-mindedness and receptiveness to remonstrance within, and be assisted without by loyal Tang ministers willing to die for righteousness. Why should the affairs of state not be stable?"
Hou Junji, lurking in the back, silently sneered at Zhangsun Wuji's back.
The Duke of Qi's implication was far too obvious—wasn't he subtly saying that if Prince Zhi had problems, then he, the Duke of Qi, must naturally be Tang's great loyal minister?
A pity, indeed. Those involved are often blind.
Look at Zhenguan veterans like Zheng Rengtai, Su Dingfang, and Xue Rengui being heavily employed—it was clear that Prince Zhi had inherited something of His Majesty's old sentimentality and respect for senior figures.
So why was it that only you ended up executed, sent all the way to Lingnan and forced to hang yourself?
To drive one's own nephew to such an end—one could easily imagine how arrogantly the Duke of Qi must have abused his authority back then.
By comparison, old Hou here—letting troops loot might have been poor discipline, and being swept up in a treason case could well have been collateral damage.
Your Majesty, look at me—old Hou is the real loyal minister of Tang!
Unfortunately, Li Shimin had no time for either of them. At that moment, he was instructing Fang Xuanling:
The Book of Jin should be compiled as soon as possible. He no longer had any expectations for that Model for Emperors.
[Lightscreen]
[Another major reason for the decline in Tang soldiers' combat effectiveness was the neglect of horse administration.
Speaking of this, one cannot avoid mentioning an unsung but absolutely crucial contributor during the Zhenguan era: Zhang Wansui, Director of the Imperial Stud.
During the Sui–Tang transition, war ravaged the land, and the Sui dynasty's state horses were almost entirely seized by the Turks. Only three thousand remained, which Li Yuan relocated to Longyou for grazing.
Later, Li Shimin appointed Zhang Wansui to manage the horse pastures. He did this work for his entire life.
By the end of Zhenguan, the warhorses Li Shimin left to Li Zhi numbered seven hundred thousand.
This was the fundamental guarantee of Tang military strength during the Zhenguan era.
Zhang Wansui's talent for horse breeding was plain for all to see.
After his death, Tang horse administration began to decay. By the time Xuanzong took over, only two hundred and forty thousand horses remained.
The shortage of horses was something Wei Yuanzhong had also memorialized about during Gaozong's reign. His final proposal was to abolish the horse prohibition edict.
In the early Tang, horses were divided into three grades by shoulder height: the highest were "great horses," next came "small horses," and the lowest were Shu horses, basically usable only for turning millstones.
Because horses were scarce in the early Tang, the limited-horse edict stipulated that great horses could not be used by commoners; they were reserved solely for military use or as mounts for officials of the third rank and above.
Wei Yuanzhong proposed abolishing this ban, allowing commoners to ride great horses as well. This would give the people an incentive to raise good horses, after which the state could purchase them from private owners.
Li Zhi approved the proposal—but as usual, unless it involved spending money on himself or his wife, he was unwilling to spend even a single coin.
As a result, one could hardly say the policy was useless—only that it was useless as hell.
Later, it fell to the "half-brilliant ruler" Tang Xuanzong to add a patch to this policy, granting tangible benefits to private horse breeders. This eventually produced the distinctive scene of the Kaiyuan era:
"Conscripts all possess private horses."
That is to say, soldiers summoned for service arrived riding their own great horses.
Xuanzong's policy was largely modeled on Emperor Wen of Han's horse-restoration edict, encouraging the populace to raise private horses through subsidies and incentives, thereby increasing the empire's overall horse stock.
This was also why the Song dynasty's later Horse Preservation Law was utterly useless. In the Han and Tang, private horses truly belonged to the people, whereas the Song horse policy was, in plain terms, "the people raising state-owned horses."
Raising state horses was a form of forced corvée. Any so-called subsidy was determined only when the horse was handed over, based on its quality. Under such circumstances, forcibly conscripted commoners naturally just went through the motions.
Of course, the Song dynasty's failure in horse breeding was not due to policy alone—it was a failure on all fronts.
For example, the Song writer Wang Yucheng once told an utterly absurd story. It began, as usual, with "I have a friend." This friend visited a horse ranch and saw breeders mating a mare. Afterward, the mare committed suicide.
Why? Because she discovered that the stallion was her own offspring.
This was very much the style of certain Song pedants—incapable of discussing matters plainly, they had to drag in a "friend" and then use the incident as a moral allegory.
In reality, what this so-called great scholar was criticizing was simply inbreeding—a perfectly normal practice in modern animal husbandry, part of selective breeding.
Selective breeding and genetic preservation have always been weak points in the Chinese horse-breeding tradition.
Some argue that the Song dynasty's horse problems stemmed from the loss of pasturelands and the inability to crossbreed with Western Region horses. But from the perspective of modern breeding science, horses of the same lineage can normally differ in shoulder height by up to twenty centimeters.
The purpose of selection and preservation lies in artificial choice of superior stock and controlled breeding, improving the breed generation by generation to better suit civilian and military needs.
As lamented in antiquity, Emperor Wu of Han imported Ferghana horses, yet their bloodlines gradually died out. This can be seen as a failure of preservation—no superior hybrid breed was cultivated, a failure of selection.
Moreover, compared to the Han and Tang, Song horse feed standards even included beans and bran. In theory, horses should have been stronger.
Yet the opposite occurred. Put bluntly, the people raising the horses were the problem.
As for the Ming dynasty—raising horses entirely on beans and still managing to breed Ferghana horses in Hebei—compared to their predecessors, that was simply bullying.]
"These Tang people are utterly unreasonable," someone muttered. "If they needed a term for the lowest grade, nag would have sufficed—why call them Shu horses?"
Zhang Song, a native of Shu, felt a surge of malice directed squarely at him.
Zhang Fei immediately stepped forward, full of righteous indignation, to console him:
"But didn't the Sage of Poetry come to Shu? And wasn't Li Bai also from Shu?"
"There are many outstanding talents here—Shu's reputation is well earned!"
Thinking this over, Zhang Song broke into a broad smile. Being from the same region as the Immortal of Poetry—well, it was a little exciting to think about.
Zhang Fei pressed on:
"And Xuanzong, and Xizong too—didn't they both flee to Shu, seeking a place to cling to life in troubled times?"
Zhang Song's expression immediately turned complicated. That… didn't really feel like something to be proud of.
Liu Bei glared at Zhang Fei, nearly rising to his feet.
Zhang Fei hurriedly changed the subject and turned to the strategist:
"Strategist, isn't it strange? These Song scholars talk about human ethics with livestock, and call bandits their brothers!"
Zhuge Liang, deep in thought over the matter of selection and preservation, merely nodded slightly without looking up, lost in his own reflections.
Fa Zheng leaned over and added:
"I wonder whether these great Song scholars eat pork. If so, do they lecture the pigs on ethics as well?"
In the Han era, an uncastrated pig was called shi, a castrated one tun.
Zhang Fei shook his head knowingly:
"Xiaozhi, you don't get it. Great scholars still have to eat meat. They don't need to ride inferior horses into battle."
Then he sighed:
"This Great Song… why does serving in the army seem so difficult?"
Fa Zheng quietly retreated. Why was it that from Yi De's mouth, he could never get the title of Military Strategist Fa?
After glaring at his third brother, Liu Bei found himself genuinely envious:
"How is it that Li Shimin's fortune is so good, with talent in every post?"
Seeing that his elder brother had not gone for his sword, Zhang Fei spoke up:
"Maybe he traded the throne itself for that fortune."