The film and television world begins with the battle for the throne in Kowloon

Chapter 944 Five Million Taels of Gold
Li Yan had a deeper intention in doing this, which was to help the Tang Dynasty and protect Li Shimin.

The core contradiction of the Tang Dynasty was still the struggle between imperial power and aristocratic families. Relying on the momentum of the great victory after the Battle of Dingxiang, Li Shimin strengthened his control over the army and, through this control, carried out a series of actions.

The land reform and the strengthening of the imperial examination system will affect the relationship between the royal family and the aristocratic families. As the conflicts intensify, who knows what will happen?
From the perspective of reform, these measures, including resisting the Turks, collecting grain to fight drought, merging officials, cutting down the army, and moving people from narrow villages to wide villages, cannot be considered as Li Shimin's personal interests. As the general manager, these things are all beneficial to the company.

Those aristocratic families may not necessarily want Li Shimin to govern the Tang Dynasty better. As long as Li Shimin does not specifically target the aristocratic families and takes appropriate actions to reduce burdens and increase efficiency, he will be able to gain the support of the aristocratic families.

Li Shimin was also careful to hide his intentions in open and aboveboard actions.

The nobles may not be unaware of these small actions, but they have not yet touched their bottom line and will not trigger a strong backlash from them.

Li Yan led the Turkic army to threaten the Hexi area and control the vital roads, which affected the interests of the noble families the most. Because the Silk Road was not a trade route for ordinary people, but a trade route for the noble families.

It is their source of income and one of the core interests of the family.
The Turkic army threatened this place, and the Tang army in Hexi and the Western Regions was compressed back. Without the protection of the army, the aristocratic caravans would face huge risks once they went out of the customs. In order to open up all the links, a huge price must be paid.

Regardless of the Han and Tang dynasties, the so-called towns and protectorates in the Western Regions were nothing more than military towns set up to protect the Silk Road.

Promoting national prestige and demonstrating the influence of the Khan are just incidental effects.

This is also one of the reasons why the Central Plains only retained a long and narrow passage and did not expand north and south to the Western Regions.

To a large extent, it was due to this factor that the aristocratic families saw the Turks growing stronger on the grassland and hurried over to offer gifts and make friends with them.

But it was precisely because of this that Li Yan saw more things and even felt that the Hexi area was a weak point for the aristocratic families.

Leading the Turks to station here would actually greatly weaken the interests of the aristocratic families.

The agreement not only restricts Li Shimin, but more importantly, it restricts the aristocratic families.

Of course, to be precise, there will be no complete restrictions. With a piece of paper, it is certainly impossible to restrain the Tang army from crossing the Yumen Pass. The Tang Dynasty can still import other armed forces and forces in disguise and secretly intervene in the Western Regions.

In addition, the agreement does not restrict the movement of caravans.

If the Turks set up a large army in the Irtysh Valley, it would be a real threat. With such a large army, the Tang Dynasty would be under great pressure and would not dare to openly violate the agreement.

As for the Western Regions, sending too few people would be useless, and if too many people were sent, Li Yan would attack the Tang Dynasty's pass in the name of an agreement.

Under such pressure, the conflict between Li Shimin and the aristocracy, although important, became less timely and turned into an internal conflict;

The conflict with the Turks rose to the level of a major and pressing contradiction.

Whether it was Li Shimin or the Turks, they were both powerful enemies, and fighting on both sides put a lot of pressure on the aristocratic families. Although Li Shimin was hateful, they still had some overlapping interests. Once the Turks took control of the Central Plains, the aristocratic families would lose their base.

Under this circumstance, if the nobles killed Li Shimin again, the company would be in danger and could easily be annexed by the Turks.

In turn, the aristocratic families also had to protect the stability of Li Shimin's regime, support the company's structure, and jointly resist external competition from the Turkic Limited Company.

Therefore, the greater the pressure from the Turks on the Tang Dynasty, the more tolerant the nobles were of Li Shimin, and the more space Li Shimin had. The nobles would choose to compromise with Li Shimin's small actions and strive to join hands with Li Shimin to jointly deal with the tigers and wolves on the grassland.

Finally, there is another important factor, that is, Li Yan creates problems in order to leave room for solving them.

By controlling the main roads, Li Yan can collect tolls for a long time. At that time, the caravans of the noble families who bring gifts to him can pass unimpeded. As for those who don't pay the gifts, he can send out cavalry to plunder from time to time to make his presence felt.

If they were to give me gifts every year, wouldn't that become a long-term source of income?

Li Yan's operation can be said to kill several birds with one stone, taking into account both public and private interests. Li Shimin probably could not have imagined that Li Yan was so scheming.

Li Shimin held his breath and said in a gloomy tone, "I'm afraid that by then, the Tang Dynasty will have to pay a sky-high price to buy back the Western Regions, right?"

"Hahaha"

Li Yan said straightforwardly: "Of course, my grassland tribe will shoulder this shit pot for you. You just need to be good people and pay some money. Even if the landlords hire people to do temporary work during the busy farming season, they should give some benefits."

After the conspiracy between the Turks and the Tang Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty took over the Liaodong Three Kingdoms and easily gained the acceptance of the remaining people. In less than a year, it had been completely transformed and looked not much different from the Central Plains. This gave Li Yan great encouragement. It seemed that his own way was the most efficient.

In this case, when facing the vast Western Regions, it is natural to adopt new strategies and methods, rather than the previous Tang Dynasty's strategy of controlling and tributary forces.

Li Shimin could see the benefits of this, but he was a little unhappy about being led by the Turks. In addition, Li Shimin felt insecure about pinning the future of the Tang Dynasty on outsiders.

Li Yan looked at Li Shimin's stinky face and shook his head: "The Tang Dynasty is now facing internal and external troubles. I also know that your internal reform projects are not that easy. Especially the land tax and the unified tax payment for officials and gentry, which almost made all the noble families in the Central Plains stand against you."

"Under this pressure, it is impossible for you to manage the Western Regions."

“You can only choose one between reform and expansion. If you give up the other, and you are reluctant to let go of both, both goals will fail in the end.”

Then Li Yan took out the gift list that Wu Yuanhua had compiled earlier and placed it in front of Li Shimin: "Do you know how many people have come to visit me in the past half month? Just look, in just half a month, the gifts I received amounted to three million taels of gold alone."

"The rest of the jade, treasures, silks, and other valuables are countless."

Li Shimin was stunned. He had also heard some rumors that some noble families were secretly contacting the Turks, but he did not know the real situation. He did not expect that the other party would be willing to reveal it to him.

Li Shimin took the gift list out of curiosity and looked at it. His face suddenly became extremely gloomy, and his whole body exuded a heart-pounding chill. The veins on his forehead were throbbing, his hands were trembling slightly, and his eyes were filled with anger that seemed to be about to spit fire.

The first thing that caught my eye was the congratulations from Jingzhao Wei on the wedding of the Right Wise King of the Turkic Khanate, presented as a gift ten carts of supplies including 200,000 taels of gold, 1,000,000 taels of silver, 800,000 dan of grain and fodder, 800,000 pieces of silk, and salt, iron, sugar, etc.

Then came the Li, Cui, Lu, Zheng, Wang, Xie, Yang, Xiao and other families. Almost all the well-known aristocratic families in the Central Plains and the upper echelons of power were among them, and the gifts sent by each family were extremely generous.

Finally, Wu Yuanhua also made a thoughtful summary, with the total value being five million taels of gold.

This word hurt Li Shimin deeply, making his pupils bloodshot and his face grim. He had been on the throne for eleven years, and the Tang Dynasty had been established for twenty years.

The gold in the entire national treasury was less than 100,000 taels. In his own treasury, there was only 200,000 taels that were seized from Jie Li and Youxian King by Zhangsun Wuji and Hou Junji during the last battle of Liaodong, and was secretly kept by Li Shimin.

It is my most precious treasure and I usually don’t want to use it.

Under this enormous pressure, each of these noble families paid out tens of thousands of taels of gold, and it took twenty or thirty families to collect one million taels of gold, not to mention the tens of thousands of taels in the national treasury.

But these aristocratic families, in order to please the Turks, gave gifts as much as 200,000 taels each at a time. This was really too much!

What the Jingzhao Wei family gave out alone was worth 40% of what the entire Tang Dynasty paid this time.

Five million taels of gold?
This was the total treasury revenue of the Tang Dynasty for five years, but now it was given to foreign enemies. Li Shimin was so heartbroken that it even overwhelmed his anger at these people who were secretly communicating with the Turks.

Those noble families were willing to pay such a huge price to please the Right Wise King. The outflow of wealth was a small matter. The most important thing was that these riches would greatly stimulate the Turks and arouse greater greed among the grassland people. If the Tang Dynasty wanted to negotiate an alliance in the future, it would have to spend a lot of money.

The aristocratic families used this method to restrict the imperial power from suppressing them.

At the critical moment, they could even lead the Turkic army into the pass to complete the procedure of replacing the emperor. As an emperor from a noble family, Li Shimin was very keen to guess the intentions of those people, as well as the chilling chill and pressure.

Li Shimin knew that the reason why the emperor controlled the world was because the powers were mutually restrained and he was at the top, able to take what he wanted and balance the two.

On the other hand, whoever is in this key position will be able to take the real initiative.

Those aristocratic families made friends with the Turks, no doubt because they wanted to use the Right Wise King to restrain Li Shimin and the Turks to restrain the Tang Dynasty. The aristocratic families were above them, balancing the left and right. As long as Li Shimin went too far, they would change the world.

Li Yan naturally understood this principle. Seeing Li Shimin's ugly face, Li Yan smiled and said, "During this period, there are millions of soldiers stationed on the border. These supplies have not yet been delivered. It is just a gift list. It will probably be handed over after trade is resumed in the future."

"If you don't want to, you can stop it."

Hearing this, Li Shimin's face was moved. Finally, after thinking for a long time, he looked up to the sky and sighed. He put down the gift list and shook his head: "Forget it, these properties are not mine. They are willing to give them to you. Why should I stop them?"

"Even if we stop you, we can't confiscate it. I can't do anything about it!"

(End of this chapter)