I saw Li Yuanping say something, that is, "replace the army with salt, disrupt the salt law, and trap the imperial court."

In summer and June, in the west ear room of the Zichen Hall of Daming Palace, in the thunder and lightning roar of the white horn, the heavy rain poured down in thousands of straight lines, the rain gathered up, and went down along the upturned eaves corner, the head of the white jade hook bar stretched out slightly raised, and the water continued to drain out of its mouth and poured into the churning dragon's head canal.

Gao Yue stood on the side of the pillar of the ear chamber with an uneasy face, feeling the roar of the wind and rain outside.

Just before the rain, when the sun was still very bright, several servants of Yiyang found him in front of the palace gate and told themselves that Yiyang (in fact, Lingxu) had just given birth to a boy named "Wang Chengyue".

Lingxu is always a person who does what he says.

Gao Yue could only accept the fact that his son's surname was Wang.

And in the center of the ear chamber, the emperor was thunderous and angry, and there were some goods on the long table in front of him.

These are all the Yanzi Patrol Academy's salt-iron and Jianghuai transport envoy Zhang Pang, who has just been sent to Beijing in the name of "salt profit".

Among the three divisions, the most important task of the salt and iron division is to transfer the salt profits from the southeast to the imperial court.

During the great calendar of Emperor Daizong, salt profit was half of the world's taxes, and the imperial court relied on it very much.

But this year, when the emperor saw the so-called "salt profit", he was completely furious.

I saw him angrily twist up a tortoiseshell, "This is the so-called discounted light goods sent by Zhang Peng, and the price is actually marked on the book, and one costs four dollars!" ”

Then the emperor picked up a small lacquerware, which seemed to be a bowl, and roared at Gao Yue, Lu Zhen, Jia Tan and Dong Jin present, "This lacquerware, one is a consistent money." ”

What made the emperor rage the most was that there were shoddy rolls of clay silk piled up on the long case, and such goods were actually worth two hundred dollars a horse - the emperor burst out with divine power, and in extreme anger, he actually tore the clay silk cloth to shreds.

The crisp sound suddenly echoed in the hall.

Everyone knew that the emperor was real, and they were very angry.

Dong Jin didn't dare to say anything directly, but Lu Zhen stepped forward and said: "This is Zhang Peng bullying the king with an imaginary number." ”

Hearing this, the emperor nodded helplessly, then sat on the rope bed, and said to everyone weakly, compared to the actual salt profit verified by the Ministry and the Imperial History Observatory, this year is only 1.9 million guan, which is 800,000 less than in previous years.

Hearing this number, the ruling ministers were all surprised.

That's a lot of shrinkage!

Gao Yue spoke at this time: "The salt law implemented by Yan Xiang in the southeast in the past has now been completely corrupted by all the towns in the eastern part of the country. This matter really has nothing to do with the responsibility of the salt and iron transfer envoy Zhang Peng, and he must have nothing to do. ”

After speaking, Gao Yue picked up the torn handkerchief on the floor and said to the people present, I know this kind of cloth pattern, it is something woven by Huaixi Town itself.

In addition, Gao Yue also made a judgment: this time the salt law is bad, the salt profit has decreased sharply, and there are also the black hands of Wei Bo and Ziqing, as well as the troublemakers of salt merchants and officials in the southeast.

The emperor raised his hand and motioned to Gao Yue to "peel off the cocoon" to the ministers in person.

So Gao Yue spoke.

Liu Yan and Xiao Yi have replied to him in detail about these matters, so he still has a deep understanding of the salt law problem in the Tang Dynasty, and it is naturally not difficult to see through Li Yuanping's tricks.

"Now there is a strange phenomenon in the salt law of my Tang Dynasty in the southeast, that is, the price of salt is 350 Wen, but the market price is only 200 Wen, but the salt merchants are still making huge profits in it, the princes may feel strange, why is the price of salt merchants buying salt much higher than the price of selling salt, and they can still have such a big profit?"

That's right, Gao Yue then pointed out that this is the evil result of the deterioration of the "false valuation method".

How did this thing come about? To put it bluntly, the state forcibly made this natural resource a monopoly, and the common people had to pay the state if they wanted to eat salt, which constituted the most important indirect tax in ancient times.

The process is roughly like this, the state sets up hospitals, prisons, fields, pavilions and other institutions to take care of the production, sale, transportation, and storage of salt. Salt is different from the grain produced in the field, and the cost of growing food is actually very high, manpower, animal power, water power, seeds, fertilizer, etc., what do you need for salt? There is everything in the sea and lake, at most it costs a boiling cost, seven calculations and eight calculations, the cost of a bucket of salt in the Tang Dynasty (that is, the so-called salt book) is seven yuan, plus the foot power money of transportation, on average, it is also ten yuan, the annual sea salt production in the Tang Dynasty, just in the southeast alone, there are more than six million stones.

Is scarcity expensive? What does not exist, salt profits exist completely out of the laws of the market, just like the current housing prices (this article deletes).

But when the salt was sold from the pavilion to the field, the price of a bucket of salt became one hundred and ten cents, which soared eleven times at once.

The salt merchants bought the salt from the state at a price of 110 cents per bucket according to the price of the salt market, and you must buy it from the market, otherwise you will be "smuggler of salt" and will be beheaded.

Then the salt merchants transferred the salt to the market and sold it to the common people, two hundred yuan per bucket, and the salt merchants earned ninety yuan in the middle, and the government made one hundred yuan, in short, the officials and businessmen ate the common people.

During the calendar year, the imperial court was in financial difficulties, everything was expensive, especially the border army in the northwest had to give clothes every spring and winter, but the original main production area of clothing, Heshuo was divided, Henan was devastated by the war, and the cloth and silk of the imperial court continued to rely on the southeast - Liu Yan, who was in charge of the national economy at that time, made a false valuation method, stipulating that when the salt merchants bought salt, half of them used money to pay, and half of them must be paid with cloth, in order to improve the enthusiasm of salt merchants to cloth, Liu Yan said that the price of cloth was fixed at a horse and four money, and then the cloth was exchanged for salt, and then raise it up by 200 dollars for each consistent money.

The calculation formula in the middle is not difficult, but it is a bit cumbersome, simply put, when the salt merchant buys salt from the cloth, he can earn 800 yuan by taking out a piece of cloth.

In this way, in addition to the purchase and market sales, the salt merchants can earn a fixed amount of 90 yuan per bucket of salt, and they can also earn a part from the false valuation method, and the salt merchants have become fattened;

In the era of Liu Yan, the annual salt profit was claimed to be six million;

For the common people, although they are absolutely undoubtedly exploited class, the price of 200 wen per bucket is not too expensive, and they can also ensure their salt intake.

However, it should be clearly seen that Liu Yan's 6 million guan salt profit is not pure money, according to the false valuation method, half of that is, 3 million guan is money or light goods, and the other half of 3 million guan is cloth, according to the price of the Great Calendar year, it should be 3 million divided by 4 (one piece of cloth 4 guan), that is, 750,000 horses.

These 750,000 pieces of cloth were given to the border army in the northwest and the Guandong town soldiers to prevent the autumn, which effectively strengthened the Tang Dynasty's defense against the invasion of Western Tibet at the most critical moment.

Originally, if this continued, Liu Yan's salt law was agreeable to the imperial court, salt merchants, and the common people, which could be described as the most perfect balance.

So why is it that today, the pillar of militarism, has become the pile of silk, tortoiseshell, and lacquerware in front of the emperor?