Chapter 1173 Wandan is in danger, Nanyang is in danger, the empire is in danger
After conquering the barbarian areas, you can obtain fiefdoms overseas. Although this statement is just a rumor, there is not even any official statement. Even the ministers and even senior generals have maintained a denial and silent attitude towards this.
But there is no smoke without fire, and everyone will never believe that there is a rumor coming out of nowhere. Since there are such rumors, there must be some clues.
Therefore, many people, especially the current nobles, are looking forward to this and are working hard towards this goal.
Who are the nobles of the Tang Dynasty today? Naturally, most of them are military nobles. Among the hundreds of officially first-named nobles in the Tang Dynasty, more than 90% of them are in the military.
There are active generals who want to work hard towards this goal. How to work hard? Naturally, they must actively prepare for war and then launch a war of expansion.
If you don't create enough overseas territory, you still want to hope that the Emperor Huisheng will entrust the land to the nobles!
Besides, even if you conquer enough overseas territory, if you don't have high enough military merit, you can't expect to get an actual fiefdom, let alone a large and rich fiefdom.
As the supreme ruler of the empire, Li Xuan also knew that there were such rumors, because the rumors actually came from his mouth, and he did not stop them from spreading, because he really planned to do this.
In the past two years, he has been thinking about how to continue to maintain the combat effectiveness of the army in order to conquer the world.
And relying solely on these current measures, although the results are good, will not be able to maintain the initiative of the military in the next five, ten, even twenty, or one hundred years.
After all, war is something that people will eventually get bored of. Even those officers in the military who have received professional military training cannot guarantee that they will not develop various types of boredom and fear of war during the long war, and at the same time lead to social consequences.
There is also a war-weary and even anti-war mentality.
He can almost imagine that in five or ten years, after the empire has initially completed its industrialization, the entire empire will be prosperous and the people's living standards will be greatly improved. By then, people will think about us.
I'm making a lot of money, and my life is pretty good. Why go overseas and fight the barbarians to death? Isn't it better to just let the barbarians continue in their ignorance?
The world is so big, why do we have to conquer it all?
This kind of mentality can be said to be the normal mentality of a person or even the entire society. No one wants to go to war if they can live a good life. There are not many born war madmen.
And Li Xuan is one of them, but his war is to let others fight life and death, but he himself will never go into battle in person to fight, at most he will supervise one or two battles from behind.
If Li Xuan wants to complete his great cause of conquering the world, he naturally needs to prepare in many aspects!
In agriculture, he continued to reform agricultural taxes. With the implementation of many policies such as the "Unified Agricultural Tax," the "Reclamation Order," and the "Rent-to-Purchase Order" in the early stage, the agriculture of the entire empire, especially the rural society, has experienced great changes.
Compared with the pre-Ming Dynasty, the lives of farmers are like heaven and earth.
Although limited by factors such as more people and less land, low productivity, and low food output, the vast majority of farmers still find it difficult to have enough to eat every day. But even so, for contemporary farmers, that is what they spent hundreds of years ago.
Years, or even thousands of years, have never been better.
Otherwise, Li Xuan would not have such a deep status in the vast rural areas and in the hearts of the farmers!
If you give them a mouthful of food, even if it is not enough to satisfy them, as long as you give them even a glimmer of hope, they will regard you as a saint.
The continuous reform in agriculture can be regarded as one of the most successful reforms in the Tang Dynasty over the years. However, Li Xuan felt that it was not enough. He also wanted to introduce a stepped agricultural tax, so that people who owned more land would pay more.
More agricultural taxes will prevent the land from being concentrated and annexed by a small number of people. At the same time, it is also to further stimulate the landlords and wealthy people. Stop investing money in land. Buy the land and invest the money in the industrial and commercial industries.
Agricultural reform can be considered to be initially effective, and education and the imperial examination system are also key reforms in the Tang Dynasty, and Li Xuan has never relaxed.
After these two aspects have achieved results, as long as the government provides a little stimulus to industry and commerce, mainly policy support, then based on the current social environment of Datang, the development of industry and commerce will naturally take place.
The rapid rise of Shanghai is actually the most obvious example!
In addition to the official policy of giving Shanghai a trading port, it also invested more than 100,000 silver in the early years for the construction of infrastructure. The subsequent rapid development of Shanghai was mostly due to the stimulation of the overall social environment and people's profit-seeking nature.
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When people see those who open factories making money, they will naturally follow suit.
Just like the "gold mining crisis" a few years ago, when a few people speculated on stocks to make money, a large number of people quickly rushed in.
The development of today's industrial and commercial industry is also in a state where some people make money and a lot of people follow suit.
This state was crucial to the empire's industrialization process.
If the Tang Empire wanted to complete industrialization, the official leading force represented by the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises was certainly important, but if the people did not participate, no matter how fast the development was, it would be limited, because the enterprises of the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises could not do everything, they needed
Concentrate on the defense industry, but don't have much thought for participating in ordinary industries.
The advancement of industrialization is not as simple as a few factories, but the advancement of the entire society. Its core is the "substantial increase in productivity" rather than just a few factories that can build guns, battleships and the like.
Of course, the advancement of industrialization will inevitably bring about other positive impacts, such as the improvement of people’s living standards!
For example, take the issue of eating!
After the empire is fully industrialized, unless there is a very large-scale famine, otherwise, if you want to starve to death on a large scale, it is estimated that it will be more difficult to happen, and at most it will be a small-scale starvation to death.
It's just that the improvement of living standards is not about happiness index. In fact, workers in the industrial age are still very hardworking, and farmers are also hardworking. In fact, they also don't enjoy the word happiness.
This happiness cannot be realized even in future generations, because in different eras and with different productivity, people have different definitions of happiness.
In the past, they felt that they were starving to death, but perhaps it was a very happy thing that their children could still survive.
In the future, they may feel that they don't have enough to eat, but if their children have enough to eat, it will be a very happy thing. If people starve to death again, they will definitely feel very strange.
In a few hundred years, they will feel happy to have a house. If they don't have a house, they will feel very dissatisfied.
Or, thousands of years later, they will feel that being alive is the greatest happiness!
These relatively illusory words like happiness or satisfaction have different definitions in every era. Li Xuan naturally will not mess with these ghosts. Li Xuan feels that judging from the current technology and future technological development.
It would be quite difficult to be able to initially solve the food problem within twenty years without causing large-scale famine.
Fifty years later, if we can initially solve the poverty problem to the extent that as long as we are willing to work, we will never die of hunger, then it will be a great achievement.
To achieve all this, industrialization is needed.
Industrialization requires resources, resources from all over the world!
This is also the secondary purpose of why Li Xuan needs to conquer the world.
As for the main purpose, it goes without saying that it’s just pretentious!
If he has conquered the world, Li Xuan feels that he should be regarded as unprecedented and unprecedented. This later refers to the fact that human beings are still trapped on the earth and have not entered the interstellar era. After all, in the interstellar era, conquering a planet is different from conquering a planet now.
Planets are not the same concept.
As for other great men, they cannot be compared with Li Xuan who accomplished such a feat.
Conquering the earth and becoming the head of the global village is Li Xuan's current dream. At least until something unexpected happens, his dream will not change easily.
In addition to the people's livelihood economy, the same is true for the reform and promotion of the military, of which fiefdom is a major measure.
If you want the horse to run but don't let it eat grass, how can it be such a good thing?
However, it is still not suitable to announce these things now. Li Xuan thinks that in a few years, when the military's taxis are not so expensive, they can use it as the ultimate move.
Now, it is too early to use this method and it is a waste.
After all, the situation in the military is pretty good now. The army has been preparing for war in the north for many years, just waiting for the Northern Expedition, and the navy has been making frequent moves recently.
No, in late March, the Navy sent a report. This report was about Banten. The Navy requested increased domestic support to Banten in order to completely control Banten Island and other islands.
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Why did the navy send a special report? Because although the navy attaches great importance to the affairs of Bantenfu, it is actually the matter of the cabinet, the army and the navy. It is necessary to thoroughly control the Bantenfu islands, even if it is just a Bantenfu island.
To clear the island, at least several thousand troops would be needed. And with so many people, the navy does not have them, so the army can only send them.
At the same time, after this military attack, immigrants are also needed to take over these lands and evict the local lands. Otherwise, even a military attack on the local indigenous troops will be of no use. Without actual control, it will not take long for these indigenous people to
The army will be reorganized for confrontation. If this continues, it will fall into an endless cycle of suppression, rebellion, suppression, and rebellion.
Therefore, sending immigrants to Banten Island is a must!
And the issue of immigration has something to do with the cabinet.
Whether it is to increase troops or to immigrate, the Navy cannot decide on its own. Therefore, although it wants to completely control Banten Island, the Navy can only use its own power first. Before this report came out, the Navy had already
A marine battalion was mobilized to prepare for stationing on Banten Island.
In addition, we also used a number of transport ships and took the initiative to propose to the Immigration and Reclamation Department of the Ministry of Agriculture that these transport ships can help you transport immigrants to Nanyang for free and without charge!
However, due to the differences between military and political affairs, all the navy can do in the matter of immigration is to provide ships, but they do not have this authority to recruit immigrants.
Therefore, this is the report submitted by the Navy to the Bandan Prefecture, requesting the Holy Emperor to consider the overall situation and coordinate various departments to organize materials and personnel to reinforce the Banten Prefecture!
In order to express the seriousness of this matter, the navy also said that once Banten is lost, the Portuguese will definitely take the opportunity to completely control the Banten islands. By then, Banten will be in danger, Nanyang will be in danger, and the empire will be in danger!
After Li Xuan read it, he was speechless to these people in the navy: Should it be so exaggerated? There must be a limit to alarmism!