The assessment and inheritance system is actually nothing new in the Tang Empire, because the previous clan title inheritance system had an assessment and inheritance system.
The royal title is also a hereditary system of reduced grade, and there is no provision that it can be inherited directly after the reduction, and there is no provision that can be specially authorized to be hereditary for several generations and then reduced to hereditary title. They are all hereditary with reduced grade to Fengguo.
After becoming a general, if the eldest son of General Fengguo can pass the examination, he will be able to inherit the title. If he cannot pass, he will be deprived of the title, and the other sons of General Fengguo will all be deprived of the title.
Basically, this so-called assessment system also gives the emperor great flexibility. When he thinks it is necessary, he will be hereditary, and when he thinks it is not needed, he will reduce his rank.
In fact, there is no need to make it so complicated. After all, in the Tang Empire, the emperor can make you a duke with just one sentence, and can directly deprive you of your title with the same sentence. What about reduced hereditary, hereditary assessment, to a certain extent?
It is unnecessary. In fact, this is just to give future emperors a decent and legal excuse to reduce the titles of certain nobles or retain their titles.
After all, you can't always just open your mouth and cut your head or something, it would be too ugly.
Li Xuan granted fiefdoms to five nobles, and also gave Wang Shanxi the grace of 'assessment and inheritance', which instantly made the upper-class dignitaries of the empire feel like they had been given blood.
Because they knew that this was just the beginning. The enfeoffment of Wang Shanxi and the others was just the beginning, and thousands of other nobles would be enfeoffed one after another in the future.
But they soon thought of a serious problem, that is, in today's enfeoffment, the Baron is a state and county, and the Viscount is a state larger than an ordinary mansion.
From now on, those counts, marquis and even dukes will not be allowed to enfeoff the area of a large mansion, half a province or even a province.
But how could the empire have so many overseas territories?
What, you said there is still a lot of land in the empire that can be entrusted!
It sounds nice to think that those nobles are also enfeoffed in prosperous places in the country, but is it possible?
Impossible!
In the future, at most, the miserable places like Northeastern Province will be used for enfeoffment, and even the Hefeng Province will not be used for enfeoffment. In other prosperous places in the Central Plains, don't expect even an inch of land.
But other overseas territories are not enough. The empire now has more than a thousand nobles, and there may be more in the future. What should I do?
What else can we do? Just expand externally and regain more overseas territories!
For a time, the empire's top officials were very excited. A large group of nobles, regardless of whether they were generals or civil servants, and even scientists and nobles from the Royal Institute of Technology, were all clamoring to regain lost overseas territories!
"The Western Region has been the territory of the empire since the beginning of the world. Whether it was the pre-Tang Dynasty or the pre-Ming Dynasty, it was the land of the people of the empire. Later it was stolen by barbarians. Now it is time to regain the lost land in the Western Region!"
"Now the Northwest Railway is under rapid construction and will be completed in a short time. At that time, hundreds of thousands of troops will be dispatched to the west to annihilate the Tatars in one fell swoop and recover Tubo and the Mobei region."
These people who are clamoring for the Western Expedition are all army generals!
However, the Navy side shouted: "Fuso has always been an imperial territory. Now the Chinese survivors on the Fuso Islands are looking forward to Wang Shi's eastward crossing day and night. Now that ships have matured and been widely used, there is no obstacle to a large-scale eastward crossing of the Fuso Islands.
It’s time to send troops to land in Fuso and take the Fuso Islands back into the arms of the empire!”
In addition to the two major schools of the Western Expedition and the Eastern Crossing, there are many people who support various other messy plans, such as attacking the Nanyang Peninsula, or completely eliminating the remaining indigenous countries on the Nanyang islands, and completely destroying the Nanyang islands.
Incorporate into imperial rule and carry out immigration and development.
There are also people who support immigrating to Australia and building Australia into the empire’s second home!
In such a wave, it is natural that there will be people who support large-scale immigration to occupy the Americas.
Although the common purpose of these different plans is to expand the territory of the empire, obtain more land for the empire to survive, and allow the nobles to have land to seal.
However, the groups behind these plans are different and clearly hierarchical, because different plans represent different interests and demands.
The army supported the Western Expedition, and the navy supported the eastward crossing to Fusang. This was nothing. Behind the plan to support Australia, the promotion of the second prince, King Zhao, was also indispensable.
Although the current King Zhao is the vassal of Wandan Mansion, he has long known that this Wandan Mansion is just his transitional fiefdom, and his fiefdom is in Australia!
Australia is now completely included in the empire's territory, but it also faces the dilemma of a small population and a low level of development.
Nowadays, in Australia, which is such a large country, the empire has only established a dozen immigration points in total, three of which are in northern Australia, and the rest are in southeastern Australia.
This is because although Australia is vast, there is actually only a small amount of land suitable for farming in the southeastern region. Therefore, Australia's immigration plan mainly targets the southeastern region of Australia.
As for the three immigration points in the north, one is a typical gold immigration point to develop local gold, and the remaining two are supply ports purely for supplying passing ships.
Although King Zhao will be re-enclosed in a large area like Australia in the future, he knows that it will not be easy to develop this place.
Even the third prince Li Tan, who had not yet taken the vassalship, knew early on that he might be granted the title of America in the future, because it was almost certain that he would be the vassal of the Sandalwood Islands. Li Xuan had said this in private many times.
.
You don't have to joke, what you say becomes the constitution. What Li Xuan has said will inevitably be fulfilled.
Next year is when he will conquer Sandalwood Island, and after the development of the Americas, it is highly likely that he will conquer North America.
So he spared no effort to promote the Americas plan!
These are some of the reactions of the upper echelons of the empire to Li Xuan's feudal nobles, but the middle-level groups in the empire are also shocked by a series of policies recently issued by the empire.
Many middle-level people in the empire, including officials at all levels, mid-level generals in the army, and middle- and high-level core members in various fields, have paid more attention to another point, which is the establishment of a Lordship system.
The establishment of a brand new lord means that the Tang Empire has another title level. Even if it is one level lower than baron, it is the lowest level of noble title, but it is still a noble title.
And if it is one level lower than that of Baron, it means that it is less difficult to become a Lord.
It is becoming more and more difficult to obtain knighthoods in the empire. After the Unification War in the early years, many generals obtained knighthoods after the war through their military exploits during the Unification War. However, since the end of the Unification War, in the past ten years,
Here, the empire has newly canonized just over 200 nobles.
Most of them are from the military generals, a few are from the scientific research field, and a very few are from the civilian field.
As far as the military generals with the largest number of titles are concerned, it has been extremely difficult for a general to obtain a title in recent years, even for the lowest-ranking baron at that time.
You have to achieve great military exploits, and those who can achieve such great achievements often climb up the ranks of the military very quickly. Therefore, the military generals who have been awarded barons in recent years are basically all the same.
above the rank of major general.
This does not mean that every or most generals can be awarded the title of nobility, but that the military generals who were awarded barons were generally at the rank of major general or above at that time.
As for scientists, the starting standard is associate professor at the Royal Institute of Technology, and they must make huge scientific research achievements.
As for civil servants, don’t expect anything from ordinary civil servants, that’s the minimum standard for high-ranking officials!
Because the candidates for civil service titles in recent years all have one characteristic, that is, they serve in the imperial study room, either as a walking minister in the imperial study room, or simply as a minister on duty in the imperial study room.
Needless to say, the minister on duty, let’s talk about the minister who walks in the imperial study. Although there are no strict standards for this assignment, sometimes third-grade or even fourth-grade officials have the opportunity to enter, but most of them enter the imperial study as ministers of various ministries and serve as walkers.
In addition, Li Xuan would also grant the governors or Taoist officials of some important provincial roads the virtual title of "Walking Minister in the Imperial Study Room".
Therefore, unless there are special circumstances, the second level is basically the minimum standard for entering the Imperial Study Room.
This is only the minimum standard. In fact, not every civil servant will be awarded a noble title in a year, even the lowest baron, and it is often awarded when he becomes an official.
These days, whether you are in the military, politics, or scientific research, it is actually very difficult to obtain a noble title. Only a dozen new nobles have been conferred in recent years, and the number depends on how many old nobles have been demoted.
Basically, the number of nobles in the empire has always been maintained at a thousand people. Ten years ago, it was a few thousand and a few, but now, it is only more than 1,100 people.
Of course, some of the low-level old nobles had their titles reduced due to natural deaths, and a very small number were deprived of their noble titles because they committed crimes. Otherwise, the total number of nobles should be more than 1,200.
The number of nobles under the old system was scarce and it was difficult to ennoble them, so that most of the middle-level generals and officials in the empire had no hope of being canonized as nobles.
But now that the Lordship System has been introduced, it has given the core, middle and high-level leaders of these empires a new opportunity.
It is definitely easier to become a Lord than a Baron, and the number of people should be relatively larger. For many people, this is an opportunity.
Therefore, many of the empire's core middle- and high-level generals or officials, scientists, and even some outstanding talents in other fields are eagerly looking forward to it, hoping that they will also have the opportunity to join the imperial aristocracy.
What this caused was a turmoil in the middle and upper levels of the empire. Almost every day, people wrote to Zhezi, asking for a westward expedition, an eastward crossing, or a southward voyage to Southeast Asia.
In short, we need to expand and fight!
If you go to war, you will have more chances to be granted nobility. In the same way, if you go to war, you will be able to occupy more territory, and then there will be enough land to be enfeoffed to existing and new nobles in the future.
But these turmoils in the empire have nothing to do with Wang Shanxi!