Carefree Prince In Tang Dynasty

At the beginning of the founding of the Tang Dynasty, a lot of titles were actually conferred. Take the group of elders who came to Li Xin's wedding today as an example, one is counted as one, and all of them have titles, and they are always the founding of the country or something.

There is no way to do it, because after all, it is to conquer the world. If you don't play well, you will lose your head. If you don't give enough chips in advance, who would want to follow you to conquer the world?

However, everything has two sides. Perhaps when it comes to conquering the world, generously granting so many titles is beneficial to the establishment of Datang, but when it comes to ruling the world, having too many titles is very detrimental.

Bear the brunt of the tax issue. You know, these sealed-off sites could have collected a lot of taxes, but once they were sealed to a nobleman, these taxes have nothing to do with the country, and they are all the property of the landlord. This is not a small loss for the treasury.

Besides, land fief, you can't seal a barren mountain to others, can you? Don't be afraid to make people feel cold. Therefore, fiefdoms are generally distributed tightly and well, the greater the credit, the larger the territory to be distributed, the better. In this way, the loss of the national treasury will be greater.

In addition to the taxation of the fief, the salaries of these nobles are not cheap. A dignified Duke, how low can his salary be? You can't be too poor, can you?

Finally, there is the issue of the rule of law. Although China has said since ancient times that "the emperor breaks the law and the common people are the same crime", in fact, this statement comes from the Legalists, not the Confucianism that China has always respected. The most common saying of Confucianism is: the law is not respected, and it evolved to the extreme status quo in the Song Dynasty that "the punishment cannot be punished by a doctor".

These rewarded nobles and their descendants are undoubtedly a group of people who are beyond the law. When Li Xin was still a dandy, he always rode horses in the streets and so on. If you don't die, you have to shed your skin.

So, the aristocracy is the privileged class. Not only does it have a considerable negative effect on the country's finances, but it is also difficult to produce any positive effects even on the governance of the country. Therefore, each generation of dynasty followed the same trajectory: at the beginning of the founding of the country, there was a large amount of rewards, and as the country's governance stabilized, those titles and lands that were sealed out were gradually taken back.

Today's Datang is precisely in such a shrinking stage. Li Shimin hasn't conferred any title for a long time. In fact, if he really wanted to confer a title, Fang Xuanling, Chen Yin, Du Ruhui, Wei Zheng and other thoughtful ministers would try their best to prevent him from doing such a thing.

However, Fang Xuanling and Xiao Yu were sitting at Li Xin's wedding banquet at this moment, but they didn't object to Li Shimin's seemingly generous reward. What's the reason? It lies in the restriction of "no land, no food".

The biggest problem with titles is that fiefdoms and euphemisms cause damage to the country's finances. Apart from this point, the others are a bit innocuous.

If Li Shimin did not impose the restriction of "no fiefdoms, no eunuchs" today, and just said that Li Xin would give him an extra title every time he had a son, Li Xin would be the first to kneel on the ground and beg The emperor withdrew his order.

The reason is also very simple, just eight words - the wood is beautiful in the forest, and the wind will destroy it.