Chapter 10: Rebellion

In fact, strictly speaking, there is another department that is also independent of the three provinces and six ministries, that is, the emperor's secretariat, which is a hidden department and is not known to the world, of course, the court officials know this department. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

This department was small in scale, with only a few people, and had been previously in charge of Guo Youzhi, whose main responsibility was to help the emperor with paperwork. Now that Guo Youzhi has been promoted to cabinet elder and handed over most of the political affairs to the cabinet, the emperor has a lot less to deal with, so the size of this department has also shrunk and its importance has decreased.

After Guo Youzhi was promoted, Zhuge Wang served as the secretary general of the secretariat. In the battle to destroy Wu, although Zhuge Wang's performance was not as old and spicy as Sima Yi, it was very good to have such a performance at a young age.

So, after the war, Liu Hou transferred him to work in the secretariat, which can be regarded as a key training object. The other members of the Secretariat are also basically the sons and daughters of the powerful. Don't underestimate this secretariat, this is a place close to the emperor, maybe the future pavilion elder was born from here.

After setting up a cadre organization, Liu Hou can be lazy again, but this time, the chaos brought about by the institutional reform is obviously much stronger than the last time.

This chaos not only happened in the court, but also spread to the people. The chaos in the court is expected, and this chaos is not short-term, but medium- and long-term, and it will last for months or even a year.

It will take at least a few months to a year for those officials who go to their new posts to adapt to their new jobs, and even some officials have never been able to adapt to their new jobs and can only be adjusted to their posts in the end.

In the two or three months after the imperial court implemented the institutional reform, chaos gradually arose among the people. Of course, the chaos among the people is not only due to the lack of government control, but also because the society of the Han Dynasty is in the midst of a drastic transformation.

In the past, the Celestial Empire was a purely closed agricultural society, due to a series of technological innovations brought by Liu Hou, some new technologies have spread to the people, resulting in the emergence of a large number of handicraftsmen among the people, and some small workshops, and the society is rapidly changing from an agricultural society to a semi-agricultural and semi-handicraft society.

Of course, we are still far from the big industrial production and the industrial revolution. Although it is far from large-scale industrial production, the large number of small workshop production still causes rapid changes in society.

Since the profits generated by the production of industrial products were far greater than those of agricultural production, a large number of peasants, driven by profits, abandoned their land and turned to handicrafts.

In addition, the previous Celestial Empire was very closed, and even if it produced goods, there was no place to sell them, so the more goods were produced, the more losses were lost. But now it was different, and with the advance of the army in three directions, the trade route to the Western Regions was unexpectedly opened.

The goods produced in the Central Plains could be exported to the Western Regions through the Silk Road, and then to the Middle East, and then to the West. A vast and boundless market was presented in front of the Han merchants, and this vast market seemed to be filled with many goods.

Export commodities brought a large amount of gold and silver, and also brought a large amount of goods from the Western Regions, but they could not bring grain. Not as stupid as that merchant, who traveled thousands of miles to transport low-value things such as grain to sell in the Central Plains.

The biggest impact of the large number of people engaged in handicrafts is that a large amount of land has been abandoned and food production is insufficient. Food shortages will inevitably lead to an increase in food prices, followed by the possibility of famine.

Of course, there are other problems, for example, the emergence of a large number of proletarians, the concentration of the population in the towns, and the concentration of the population will lead to the problem of public order becoming prominent, due to the great increase in the transportation of materials into and out of the city, the pressure on road transportation inside and outside the city has surged, and the city's educational resources, medical resources, social services, housing supply, and so on have become in short supply.

These problems are all headaches. The biggest problem in all this confusion is the problem of food shortage, in fact, there has always been a shortage of food during the Three Kingdoms.

War is inevitably accompanied by famine, because the devastating effect of war on production is enormous. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the world was in turmoil, the princes were fighting, and the whole world was full of disaster victims and refugees. At that time, scenes of starvation could be seen everywhere.

It was not until the pattern of the three countries was basically established that the situation improved. The founders of the three countries were all promising rulers, and they all took some measures to a greater or lesser extent, such as resettlement, recuperation, and so on.

For example, Cao Cao's tuntian system is a representative of this, and these measures have led to a certain recovery of production in the three countries and some improvement in people's livelihood. It is a pity that the three countries cannot coexist peacefully, and they have been fighting each other for many years, so that the supply of food is always in short supply.

Among these three countries, except for Shu Han, who could transport a large amount of grain from Lingnan and Jiaozhou, the other two countries were in famine. After Liu Hou unified the whole country, a large number of population pressures in Wei and Wu were all pressed on the Han Dynasty.

Population is a resource, but it is also a pressure. On the premise of solving the problem of food and clothing, population is a resource that any ruler likes, but if the problem of food and clothing cannot be solved, then population will become a burden, and at this time, the more people there are, the greater the burden, and the more worried the ruler is.

After Liu Hou unified the world, he obtained a large number of people from Wei and Wu, and among these populations there were a large number of refugees who could not solve the problem of food and clothing.

Although the Great Han constantly imported some materials from the battlefields in the three directions, in the north and west, the imports were mainly the products of animal husbandry, and the things that could be eaten were mainly meat and milk.

These things do not belong to the staple food category, and the price is high, mainly for some people with better economic conditions as dietary supplements. That is to say, these are complementary foods, and they cannot fundamentally solve the problem of food shortage among the people in China.

The south is a little better, the area south of Jiaozhou in the south belongs to the tropics, the rice here is three crops a year, and a large amount of grain is transported back to the Central Plains from here every year. However, after all, the place here is relatively small, and no matter how high the grain yield is, it cannot fully meet the needs of the vast and densely populated Central Plains.

Although there are still a few construction corps that can help make up for it, not all of them are agricultural production corps, some are mining and some are road builders, and these people are not only unable to produce food, but also consume a lot of food.

And don't forget, along with the supplies transported into the Central Plains from the three battlefields every year, a large number of prisoners are also imported at the same time, and these prisoners also need to consume food, which also increases the food burden in the Central Plains.

The situation is compounded by the conversion of a large number of agricultural people into artisans. The social changes are so great, at this time the government is most needed to guide, organize, and resettle, but at this time, the court is in chaos, and the officials at all levels are not adaptable, so that they cannot make a correct response to the chaos of the people in time.