Established a thousand-year family from the end of Qin Dynasty

Chapter 665 The Republic and the Emperor (24)

Autumn of the fifth year of the Republic of China 460 (675)

A centipede is dead but not stiff, and a lean camel is bigger than a horse.

Although in recent years, Datang has begun to intensify due to land annexation, resulting in the destruction of the military system and the decline of national strength.

However, Datang is still not a giant that can be easily challenged by the Zhou Kingdom, the Western Turks, and the Republic!
Whether it was the Battle of Pyongyang or the Battle of Dafeicheon, it was essentially because the Tang army was fighting in an enemy country and was not familiar with the terrain. In addition, the Tang army was too strong to be united. In order to compete for the credit for destroying the country, the generals of the Tang army always went their own way. I especially like to follow my own thinking, regardless of the entire team.

Tang Jun generals, everyone thinks that they can fight five with one, and finally lose with the wind and waves.

The war in the Western Regions, which lasted for more than a year, ended in a disastrous defeat because Zhou State lost the terrain advantage for home battles and the Western Turks preserved their strength.

The [-] Zhou army was almost wiped out, the Western Turkic cavalry fled, and the Tang Dynasty recovered the four towns of Anxi.

The Khitan people and the Kumoxi people heard the disastrous defeat of the [-] troops of the Zhou State. They immediately stopped the looting of the Youyun area, returned to the Tang Empire, and paid tribute to the Tang Empire. They killed the envoy of the Yan State and dedicated the head of the envoy To the Tang Empire, in order to beg the forgiveness of the Tang Empire.

In the blink of an eye, the Khitans and Kumoxi people suddenly changed from allies of the Republic to enemies of the Republic.

Yan State did not make much progress in the Shandong area. It just captured a few county towns in the Guangzhou area, demoted all the people in the city to slaves, and sold them to guild plantations.

Now that the Tang Empire has defeated the main force of the Zhou Kingdom, it can finally turn around and solve the war in the East.

Di Yu simply gave up the several counties he occupied in Shandong, and withdrew all his troops back to Liaodong, so as not to be accidentally hit by the large Tang army.

Zhou Guo and the Republic have been able to survive until now, mainly because of natural dangers.

The snow-covered plateau and the vast sea, no matter which one, are very difficult to conquer.

In the Tang Dynasty, after recovering the four towns of Anxi, Emperor Li Zhi's health became weaker and weaker, and he actually handed over all important affairs of state to Empress Wu Zetian.

And Da Zhou, after the disastrous defeat in the Western Regions, had to shrink the line of defense, gave up the huge land and population in Tianzhu, and instead concentrated on defending the Hehuang Valley to prevent the Tang Empire from launching another war of annihilation.

Changes have also taken place within the Republic. The Fuyu State, which had been completely transformed into Yan, was merged into the Yan State. All Buyeo people are automatically regarded as free citizens of the Republic.

This is an annexation without war and resistance. The annexed are even very happy and have been waiting for this day for a long time.

The Fuyu Kingdom has been subtly influenced by the Yan Kingdom for 400 years, and they have intermarried with each other for 400 years. Most of the people in Fuyu think that they are from the Yan Kingdom in their hearts.

At the same time, the Jurchen Kingdom was once again requested by the Yan Kingdom to move north, and sold the successfully developed North Bank of the Black Water to the Yan Kingdom.

The king and nobles of the Jurchen Kingdom naturally have no objection. They have become members of the ruling class of the Republic. According to the [Republican Reform], even if the Jurchens are dead, they will still be the nobles of the Republic.

The low-level Jurchens were forced by the Jurchen nobles to migrate to the colder north to continue to open up wasteland, and gave up the land they had worked so hard to open up for the Yan people to live in.

They migrated from the southeast of the Sushen Mountains (Little Khingan Mountains) to the west of the Sushen Mountains.

The rivers here freeze over in spring, autumn and winter, and only thaw in summer.

It is also full of swamps and dense forests, suitable for growing wheat and soybeans, as well as hunting and fishing.

In addition to planting wheat and soybeans, hunting and fishing, the Jurchens who migrated here also had an important income, which was to capture the local aborigines and sell them to Yan.

The king of the Jurchen Kingdom submitted a proposal to the Republican Assembly, requesting that the Jurchen Kingdom be merged into the Yan Kingdom.

But they were rejected by the nobles of Yan Kingdom, Xingfan Kingdom, and Jurchen Kingdom.

After all, Yan State is not a fan of coloring maps, and Fuyu State already has a lot of things to deal with. If Jurchen State is merged into Yan State, there will be many troubles.

For example, according to the "Republic Act", the parliaments of various countries can freely dispose of their own freemen and can formulate their own "Freeman Act".

Within the republic, each entity country has its own laws and does not have to abide by the same law.

In other words, the nobles of the Jurchen Kingdom could treat their people as slaves and sell them to the Yan Kingdom and Xingfan Kingdom.

Once the Jurchen Kingdom merged into the Yan Kingdom, according to the laws of the Yan Kingdom, the free people could not be forcibly turned into slaves. Then, the nobles and guilds of the Yan Kingdom and Xingfan Kingdom could no longer buy Jurchen slaves.

In order to prevent the Jurchens from being unable to crazily suck blood from them after they become their own people, it is necessary to prevent the Jurchen Kingdom from being merged into the Yan Kingdom, and not turn too many Jurchens into their own people.

What the Republic wanted was a population of slaves who could work, not a population of freemen who wanted to divide their fields.

Naturally, the more slaves the better, the more slaves, the higher the efficiency of land reclamation.

But the republic has no interest in increasing the population of the freedmen who divide the land.

The more free people there are, the more people will divide the land, and the more nobles and guilds will lose.

For the free people, the nobles wished that they would have as few births as possible.

"These unscrupulous people refuse to serve corvee or pay poll tax. What use are they for?"

"Don't give birth to free people! There are too many people and not enough land!"

"Slaves, give birth quickly! There are still many wastelands overseas waiting for you to reclaim! Countless plantations are waiting for you to enter and work!"

There are only hundreds of thousands of free people, but the nobles feel that there are too many, and it seems that the population is already too large to explode.

The number of slaves is already in the millions, but the nobles still feel that there are too few, and even 1000 million slaves are far from enough.

People who just want to work, people who don't want to eat!
Simply increasing the population has no meaning or interest for the Republican Assembly. Increasing the population only means more people to eat, which is a waste of food.

Instead of letting the free people live too many people, causing too many people to eat, and wasting too much food, it is better to go abroad to capture and buy slaves. The slaves work more and eat less, and the dead slaves can be used as waste and continue to become Food, used to feed other slaves who are still alive, is simply the perfect population!
On the one hand, the nobles of the Republic do not want the people of the country to have too many children. On the other hand, the nobles of the Republic want to buy more cheap slaves from abroad.

Want population, but only slave population, not the free population of the country who refuses to pay the corvee poll tax.

The root cause, after all, is cost.

The cost of hiring a free citizen of the country is too high, and you have to bear various legal risks. In case of accidents such as death, it is very troublesome.

And directly enslaving the slaves bought from abroad, even if they are directly used to death, the laws of the Republic will not control, there is no need to bear risks, and there is no need to pay wages, let alone guarantee basic human rights, and the cost is very low.

Capital will always flow spontaneously to places with high profits.

Increasing the population of the country's people is a burden. I wish that none of the people in the country would give birth. However, increasing the number of slaves purchased is not only not a burden, but can also create a lot of asset value. Naturally, I hope that the slaves will have more and faster births.

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The empire on which the sun never sets seems to have never really cared about the population. Whenever the Central Plains dynasty ended in troubled times, the new dynasty would encourage births, hoping to quickly increase the population, so as to quickly increase the national strength, and then because of the large population, it fell into a new crisis. Contradictions between land and earth, and finally a new dynasty reincarnation.

However, the empire on which the sun never sets never thought of restoring its population after each population loss.

The rulers of the empire seem to have regarded the population as a double-edged sword from the very beginning, because the increase in the population can not only enhance the national strength, but also increase the potential rebels.

"People are not machines, people will resist!"

Obviously, the rulers of the empire understood the truth of this sentence very well. They understood that the people would rebel and resist. They understood that the people were not machines that could only farm and work every day, so they did not want the people to suddenly increase in population. , causing these populations to escape the control of the empire and eventually become rebels.

In other words, the rulers of the empire were not confident in their own governance from beginning to end, thinking that their own governance would make the people miserable and that the people might rebel.

They firmly believe that sooner or later, the people under their rule will suddenly rebel one day, so they must curb population growth in advance, so as to weaken the scale of the rebels. This is called preparing for a rainy day.

The rulers of the Central Plains are very confident in their own governance. They always think that under their own governance, the country will be prosperous and the people will be safe, so there is no possibility of rebels. Since there are no rebels, the more people the better. ——"General History of the World Song Dynasty Li Qingzhao"

……

The empire on which the sun never sets does not regard people as a tool to strengthen its national power, nor does it use administrative means to force people to marry and have children like the Han and Tang dynasties.

They never cared about population growth, which just shows that they are the most humane. ——"General History of the World Song Qin Hui"

(End of this chapter)