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The birds are gone, the good bow is hidden, the cunning rabbit dies, and the lackeys are cooked. Your Majesty treats me like hands and feet. I have to find a plan to protect myself. Wu Sangui, King Wu, and Han Xin have turned against me. Now the tombs are lush. How is the Marquis of Wu Shen Yue? His loyalty can be seen in the sky and the sun is still in the wind and wave pavilion. I dare not compare it to me. I only want to be safe for a lifetime. I hope Your Majesty forgives me. The ancients said that those who rule the world with filial piety will not harm others' relatives; those who exercise benevolent policies will not stop others' worship. The survival and death of the old mother and wife is also in the hands of Your Majesty…”

"Bastard |.., and uprooted the salt merchant. He always wanted to save Song Bingce and Zhao Gang. However, Song Bingce's farewell broke his wishful thinking, and Song Bingce's book left Zhao Gang a little more heartache while being angry.

In the thousands of years of history of the Chinese Empire, such things have always been repeated, making people feel helpless. When Zhao Gang read these historical facts, he always sighed because of these strange behaviors of self-cutting. Therefore, after he came to power, he did not restrict his military power, but instead chose his talents with confidence. In this case, China recovered his youth at an astonishing speed, and the long-term empire became an active and enterprising new empire. Zhao Gang once thought he had found a way to allow China to smoothly unfold its bow and spear until it became the strongest country.

But sometimes, history is a vicious circle. No matter how hard you struggle, you can't get out of the circle. Zhao Gang's mood is like the Great Sage of the Monkey King who cannot jump out of the palm of the Tathagata Buddha, anxious and helpless. The relationship between the heroes and the emperor is now a shadow of a archer and snake, both sides are walking on thin ice, for fear of accidentally falling into the abyss.

Before becoming an emperor, Zhao Gang always believed that the emperor was in charge of the whole world, and all the local ministers were slaves of the emperor. Of course, these concepts were obtained by watching those braided plays. In the play, the emperors worked day and night, looking diligent and loving the people, and often visited privately to deal with corrupt officials and others. Of course, they had to accept several concubines later. However, that could be completely explained by the explosion of the king's aura. In short, why the emperor did not live long is mainly because of being tired.

After becoming the emperor, Zhao Gang learned that the emperor was not the case at all. The relationship between the emperor and the meritorious officials was regarded as a entrusted agency relationship. As the owner of the empire, the emperor was nominally the owner of the empire and had all the property rights, but please note that this is only a theoretical property rights.

An emperor is a person and cannot directly govern the country. He must entrust one or several agents to help him manage the country. Under such a entrusted agency relationship, the emperor gives high officials and generous salaries to the meritorious officials, and his requirement for them is to work hard and serve the emperor. This brings many problems. First of all, the emperor is the emperor regardless of whether it is good or bad. Therefore, the emperor's main job is not to please the people, but to maintain his own rule. That is, to require the meritorious officials not to rebel. Whether the meritorious officials work hard is not within the emperor's consideration. In other words, a treacherous minister or cruel official can be promoted and made a fortune as long as he is beneficial to the emperor's rule.

However, although how to prevent the rebellion of the heroes is an old topic, the emperor racked his brains for thousands of years but failed to solve it. This is a problem. Looking at the rise and fall of the dynasty over the past thousands of years, Zhao Gang only saw that Emperor Taizong of Tang and Emperor Taizu of Song did better. But it was just better. After Emperor Taizong of Tang, the country of Li Tang changed color briefly, while Emperor Taizu of Song was intercepted by his brothers inexplicably, and he was barely redeemed until the 9th generation later. The key to solving the problem of whether the heroes rebelled was to identify who would rebel, but this was a pattern of information asymmetry: the ministers themselves knew whether they rebelled, but the emperor did not know who was a treacherous minister and who was a loyal minister.

Although Tang and Song Zu handled these problems very well, from a certain perspective, this is because they were actually usurpers, so they were very careful about successors. For example, Li Shimin and Li Shimin were very smart and had no fantasies. They decisively launched a military coup, killed their brother, younger brother and nephew, imprisoned their own father, occupied their younger brothers and sisters, and became the only example of founding heroes in Chinese history to seize the world (it must be strictly followed by Confucian standards. Li Shimin, who was called a wise ruler of the generation, was definitely a person who was unfaithful, unfilial, unkind and unrighteous, and the double standards of Confucianism can be seen from this). However, Li Shimin was probably successful because he was a royal family.

What happened next was much more interesting. Under Li Shimin, Li Tang was charged with treason, from princes to monk Dengcao to imprisonment. In the end, Li Tang had been treasonous and rebellious for the time being, which was related to Li Shimin's bad intentions, and Zhao Song's approach to handling was also very interesting.

Emperor Taizong of Song had a famous saying, which means that the country either has external troubles or internal troubles. External troubles are tangible, but internal troubles cannot be detected (the original text is treacherous and uncharacteristic). This sentence appears a bit ridiculous in Taizong's mouth with the sound of axes and candles. A treacherous confession reveals the helplessness of the emperors: he must have any way to identify who is a treacherous and who is a loyal minister. Taizu lost his life because of this matter not done well, so Taizong naturally had to be careful.

After Taizong obtained the throne, one thing he did was to separate the army and form an elite imperial guard, and the chaotic army. The emperor used the amount of military power to determine a separation condition so that loyal and treacherous ministers could be separated without being confused. In economics, due to the civil servants' disposal of military power, those who are ambitious can automatically show their true colors.

But for things like rebellion, the benefits of the emperor are so high that any cost is dwarfed. As long as there are some risk preferences, the rebellion may be successful.

People are not ill-hearted. Faced with the emperor's throne with almost unlimited benefits, the cost-benefit situation determines a separation condition, and the emperors can only make a simple judgment based on a certain signal. So what signal can the emperor identify a treacherous minister?

The first thing people think of is to strengthen the punishment threats, such as the destruction of the Nine Clans and Lingchi, so that those who have risk aversion will choose not to rebel. However, when the emperor's land is so high, risk enthusiasts will always try it when they have the opportunity. The heroes, especially the founding heroes themselves, means they are risk enthusiasts. Otherwise, who would "work the revolution with their heads"?

Those who really want to rebel will still be respectful to the emperor. An Lushan only had a heartless absolute obedience to Emperor Ming of Tang, which is still fresh in memory. This signal has no meaning. Can we think in reverse? I think that those who dare to argue with the emperor are loyal ministers, and those who dare not argue are treacherous ministers? Unfortunately, in history, powerful ministers dared to argue with the emperor. Those who dared not argue with the emperor are still loyal and treacherous.

Every founding emperor faced such a dilemma: he could not separate loyal ministers and treacherous ministers from the group of heroes, but he had to try his best to ensure that his children and grandchildren could inherit the throne smoothly. For this reason, the emperors naturally had their own separation signal to separate. Eliminate those who might rebel and ensure that the country was permanent. "It would be better to kill three thousand by mistake than to let one go." When the emperors could not distinguish between loyal and treacherous, they actually had only one separation signal:

Those who have the ability to rebel and those who are not able to rebel. For the emperor, as long as they kill the remaining people who have the ability to rebel, they will not have the power to rebel even if they have the will to rebel. Every generation of emperors faces the same dilemma and faces the same unique choice. In the end, they make the same choice, allowing our descendants to experience farces. Don’t ask what you want to do, but ask what you can do. The heroes are naturally guilty, and who makes them have the ability to rebel. Scholars say that China is Confucianism outside and law inside, at least in treating heroes, this is correct. All emperors pursue the philosophical thought of preventing heroes like guarding against thieves.

At this point, Song Taizu's historical achievement was to remove military power without bleeding. "Releasing military power with a glass of wine" in history is a classic case of this plan. It should be admitted that this plan is a great way to make a large number of heroes lose the ability to launch a coup. But for a person who has had power, this kind of suicide of political life is not an easy choice. Moreover, for those founding heroes who have extremely high prestige, it is still impossible to reassure the superiors just by handing over military power.

For example, Han Xin, when the Han Dynasty was founded, he was deposed as the Marquis of Huaiyin, and his military power was gone. He stayed in Chang'an and did nothing. Even so, Han Xin was eventually destroyed. Another example is Li Shimin, because the Tang Dynasty implemented the military system of the government. After Li Shimin pacified the world, he actually had no military power. His strength in Chang'an was not as good as Li Jiancheng. After Li Jiancheng was killed, Li Jiancheng almost defeated the Qin Palace. Later, he was thrown out Li Jiancheng's head to destroy the morale of the other party to establish a victory. However, Li Jiancheng did not relax his vigilance against Li Shimin because of this. Why did the heroes who handed over military power and still had to be cleansed?

In fact, it is easy to explain this phenomenon using economic theory. In addition to tangible assets such as official positions and military power, the local assets of the heroes also have intangible assets such as prestige, talents, interpersonal relationships and power groups that cannot be separated from their bodies. The heroes handed over military power, but these intangible assets cannot be handed over together.

Intangible assets in Han Xin, Li Shimin and other places were enough to make their superiors sleep. For example, Han Xin, although he was idle at home, was similar to house arrest. However, when he visited the house of Fan Kuai, another great hero of Liu Bang, Fan Kuai was respectful and said, "The king is willing to be a minister." Fan Kuai ranks fifth among Liu Bang's heroes, and is also the brother-in-law of Empress Lu. Liu Bang has always known each other. This attitude towards Han Xin shows Han Xin's prestige in the Liu Bang group.

In history, handing over military power should be said to have raised the threshold for rebellion, so that the emperors could only separate a small number of meritorious officials such as Han Xin and Li Shimin. Most of them really lost the ability to launch a coup after they had no military power, and they could save their lives.

Liu Bang, who killed Han Xin, Peng Yue, Ying Bu and other heroes who had been the ones he once stood alone, imprisoned Xiao He who had guarded the rear alone, and Zhou Bo and other generals escaped the purge because Liu Bang knew very well that it would be difficult to form his own power group without being the ones he had been alone.

For founding heroes like Han Xin and Li Shimin, there is no signal to reassure the superiors, unless they hand over their intangible assets, of course, this means destroying their own body. If Han Xin committed suicide, I believe that Liu Bang would not destroy his three tribes. On the contrary, he would fall a few tears in front of Han Xin's tomb, and maybe he would also be appointed as the son of Han Xin and be appointed as the son-in-law.

As long as it is a family, massacre of meritorious officials is a deadlock that cannot be escaped. Only under the modern democratic system, on the one hand, the development of private forces is restricted through various systems, and on the other hand, through the election of leaders, the generals can legally run for the supreme leader, that is, the legalization of rebellion can get out of this deadlock. Under the electoral system, through the signal of running for election, generals with ambition and unambitious can be separated.
Chapter completed!