GBP Chapter 92: The One Who Destroyed Qin Is Hu
Chapter 92: The One Who Destroyed Qin Is Hu
Han Dynasty.
Liu Bang looked at Empress Lü with a smug smile: "Although I don't understand how important this thing is, I know Xiao He must know how important it is."
"So I just ignored it and handed all these matters over to Xiao He. I am so smart, hahahaha."
Since the couple had already reached an agreement, it was not easy for Empress Lu to refute Liu Bang in person, so she could only roll her eyes silently in her heart.
Throughout history, probably only Liu Bang could be so confident in saying that he knew nothing and was a hands-off boss.
However, Empress Lu had to admire Liu Bang for this point. He really took the principle of trusting people when employing them and not doubting people to the extreme.
She believed that if she were in power, she would probably not be able to be as free and easy as Liu Bang.
……
reality.
As students who had gone to the bathroom, smoked, or bought water returned to the classroom one after another, Teacher Zhao cleared his throat and continued the class.
"Okay, everyone should be back now, let's continue with the class."
"Where were we talking about just now? The unification of the track, right? Once the track is unified across the country, it means that the track marks in all places will be the same."
"This means that the country's vehicles and resources can be mobilized more quickly, which is equivalent to the earliest railway tracks."
"Imagine that if you drive to Zhao State and enter northern Ji, the locals tell you to change cars because the road ahead is impassable and the wheels can't go in."
"You spent time and money to change cars, and you rushed all the way to Qi. When you entered Lu, the locals told you that you couldn't go any further. When you changed cars, you couldn't go any further in Chu. How can the whole country be united?"
"This also explains why we often say 'no way' is called 'no way'."
"Different sizes of ruts, from a small perspective, will cause inconvenience to people's travel and production and operation; from a large perspective, the size of the ruts is directly related to the country's ability to allocate resources."
"If I need to transport a million dan of grain to the front line, where can I find so many different vehicles? By the time I find all the vehicles, the soldiers will have starved to death."
"The influence of wheel ruts continued until modern times, when the invention of rubber tires gradually phased out the traditional wooden wheel."
"At the same time, on the basis of unifying the wheel tracks, Qin Shihuang also ordered the construction of a highway with Xianyang as the center, leading to all parts of the country. This was also a major project."
"Since then, the Qin Dynasty's influence has reached the extremes of Yan and Qi in the east and Wu and Chu in the south. It has truly reached the level of strategic deployment, and it can attack wherever it wants."
"Of course, once the road is built, you can use it and others can use it too. Later, the petitioning delegation led by Chen Sheng and Wu Guang also benefited greatly from it."
The students below smiled knowingly when they heard this.
"However, no matter what, the strategy of standardizing the wheels completed the second step of Qin's assimilation of the six kingdoms."
"After talking about the first two steps, everyone should be able to guess what the third step is."
Teacher Zhao clicked the mouse and the PPT turned to a new page. Five big words appeared on the screen - "Unify Weights and Measures".
At this time, a student raised his hand and asked: "Teacher, why don't we unify the currency first? Logically speaking, unifying the currency is more important than weights and measures."
"Don't worry, that's exactly what I'm going to talk about next."
As he spoke, Teacher Zhao turned to another page of the PPT, on which were pictures of various copper coins.
“As this student said, on the surface, it seems more urgent to unify the currency, after all, currency is the medium of transaction.”
"You hold the knife coins, and I hold the copper coins. You insist on telling me that your knife coins are treasures that can be exchanged for a horse. But I just think that your thing is weird in shape and worthless. It can only be exchanged for a steamed bun at most. So there is no way to trade."
"At this time, we can only use other things to settle the bill, such as food. But if we encounter a large-scale transaction, we can't exchange it all for food. The cost of transporting food is very high."
"In this light, a unified currency seems to be a top priority."
"However, the actual situation was not like this. In the Qin State, after years of war, the commodity economy was not well developed, and ordinary people rarely participated in large-scale transactions, so the urgency of currency was not high."
"But what was the situation in Qin at that time? After more than ten years of war, the commodity economy was extremely underdeveloped, and the people had no chance to conduct large-scale transactions. Therefore, the significance of currency was not great, or more accurately, it was not urgent."
"But food was different. It was directly related to the country's tax revenue. The tax at that time was not like paying money like now, but a tax in kind."
"That is, we have to hand over grain and cloth."
"At this time, the problem of inconsistent weights and measures emerged. A dou in Chu might be the size of a washbasin, while a dou in Yan might be the size of a water tank. Or they didn't use a dou at all, but used a sack, which caused great trouble for tax collection."
"When the whole country is unified, it will be extremely difficult to collect the data. It will be difficult to calculate and collect. Moreover, it will provide loopholes in the system for illegal officials to exploit the people."
"For example, when an official sent to Qi to collect taxes saw that everyone used ladles to carry grain, he might say, 'You can't do that. We say one dou means one basin. Stop talking nonsense and go home to get grain.'"
"Then when he reports back, he will say that in Qi, a dou is measured with a small bowl. This way, he will pocket a lot more money."
"Will the people curse this official when they are wronged? Maybe, but they will mostly curse you, the Qin Dynasty, for being a piece of shit."
"Therefore, the inconsistency of weights and measures will greatly increase the tax costs of the country and the people. Not only that, if the text mentioned above is the basis of the entire bureaucratic system, then unified weights and measures are the basic tools of the bureaucratic system."
"Without unified weights and measures, not only is it difficult to collect taxes, but you also have no way to evaluate the performance of officials, no way to judge whether officials are doing their job well, and even no way to pay their salaries."
"In ancient times, the salaries of officials were all paid in grain at the beginning. Even when they started to pay money and silver later, they still had to use grain as the unit of exchange before they were paid."
"So the unification of weights and measures was the top priority. Once the weights and measures were unified, Qin Shihuang could more accurately understand the country's financial situation, and infer the country's fields and grain production, as well as what grand projects these resources could support him to complete."
"Not only that, the unification of weights and measures was equivalent to a thorough financial reform. From then on, whether in Chu or Qi, officials' taxation became clear and unambiguous."
"The people paid what the court stipulated, and the people had a clear standard in mind, so they no longer had to worry about being cheated or exploited. Of course, it was impossible to avoid being exploited, but at least on the surface, the fairness of taxation in various places was guaranteed."
"The pen pointed the direction for the empire, and the scales calculated the weights for the empire. The unification of weights and measures completed the third step of Qin's assimilation of the six kingdoms from a financial perspective."
"If Qin Shi Huang had died after completing these three achievements, he would undoubtedly have become an unrivaled emperor among emperors in Chinese feudal history, with no one to surpass him."
"But unfortunately, he lived a few more years, which not only profoundly affected the evaluation of him by later generations, but also largely laid the groundwork for the collapse of the Qin Empire."
"Now let's talk about how the Qin Dynasty fell."
After hearing this, Ying Zheng, who had been flattered for dozens of minutes, immediately perked up and listened attentively.
Li Si, Meng Yi and others were also staring at the sky curtain intently. They held a pen in one hand and bamboo slips in the other, ready to take notes at any time. They looked more focused and serious than the students in the classroom.
Teacher Zhao took a sip of water, moistened his throat, and then spoke slowly: "The time was traced back to 215 BC. After the construction of the Great Road, Qin Shihuang began his tour across the country."
"He climbed Mount Tai to perform the Fengshan ceremony; he traveled to Langya to look out over the boundless sea. After conquering the earth, a new pursuit sprouted in his heart - becoming an immortal."
"In fact, if you look closely at Ying Zheng's life, you will find that every step he took was very well planned. For example, after finishing things on earth, he could think about things in heaven."
"However, Qin Shi Huang was completely clueless about becoming an immortal. Therefore, he could only listen to the sweet words of the alchemists. They told him that there was an immortal mountain above the East China Sea, so Qin Shi Huang ordered people to build a boat and sail east to find the immortal."
"The most famous story is that Xu Fu took 3,000 boys and girls to sea, but they never returned. It is said that they became the ancestors of Xiaoshi. "
Ying Zheng: "???"
"Whose ancestor is he saying he is?" Ying Zheng looked at Li Si and Meng Yi in disbelief.
"It is said that he is the ancestor of Xiao Ri's life." Meng Yi answered seriously.
"It is said." Li Si added two words.
"I originally planned to have him go out to sea to find those barbarian countries, but it turns out that he himself is the ancestor of the barbarians?"
Ying Zheng was furious. He was not angry because Xu Fu had become the ancestor of his easy life, but because this bastard had dared to be disloyal and said he was going to find a magic medicine for him, but turned around and never came back.
"Meng Yi, go and make some arrangements to erase all traces of Xu Fu in this world."
"I obey!"
……
"In fact, in addition to Xu Fu, there were other famous alchemists in the Qin Dynasty, such as Lu Sheng. He claimed that he encountered immortals when he went out to sea to search for immortals, and he also brought back a precious book "Lu Tu Shu" that he got from the sea."
"When Qin Shi Huang opened the book, he saw five striking characters written on it: 'The one who destroyed Qin was Hu.'"
"The appearance of this book became a turning point in the era. When Qin Shihuang saw these five characters, he immediately thought of the northern neighbors of the Qin Dynasty - the Xiongnu. Therefore, the Xiongnu became the main target of the Qin Dynasty."
"To be honest, although Lu Sheng was a mysterious person, he was indeed quite capable. At that time, the only forces that Qin had not eliminated were the Xiongnu in the north and the 'barbarians' in the south. The 'immortal book' he 'found' pointed in the right direction."
"In any case, Qin Shi Huang had the intention to drive the Xiongnu away, and he started the plan vigorously. In the end, it was this decision that dragged Qin into the 'quagmire of war'."
Qin Dynasty.
Ying Zheng was a little embarrassed. Although he had already known through the sky curtain that the saying "The one who will destroy Qin is the Hu people" was totally wrong, he knew it too late. In the spring of this year, he had already asked Meng Tian to take action against the Huns.
Now it seems that the war was unnecessary.
"Your Majesty, since we are in the quagmire of war, it would be better for us to get out of it as soon as possible." Li Si saluted and said.
Li Si could clearly feel that since the scholar in the sky curtain talked about his contributions, His Majesty's attitude towards him had become much softer, which made him feel much more at ease.
"Read on and listen to the reasons." Ying Zheng said to Li Si indifferently.
……
"The reason why nomadic peoples often come to harass us is because they cannot make many things, but they are all necessities of life. In order to survive, or to live better, they can only rob."
"Because their crime costs are relatively low, they enter the village, rob and run away, and you can't catch up with them, just like a green-headed fly buzzing in your ear, but you can't hit it."
"But even so, in that era, the destructiveness of nomadic peoples was limited to this. Because stirrups had not yet been invented, the impact of cavalry had not yet been fully exerted."