Li Yu was the king of the subjugated country, and later generations evaluated Li Yu and often reproached him for only filling in words and composing poems, and could not govern the country. In fact, it is the same as the situation that many dynasties have accumulated and cannot be saved by the time of the last dynasty. After the Southern Tang Dynasty occupied the Magpie's Nest and established the Southern Tang Dynasty, it only passed to the hands of the second generation of Li Jing, and successfully made the dynasty show its defeat.
Of course, Li Yu and his father did not want to pit him, after all, no one wanted to do such a thing as the subjugation of the country, but the Southern Tang Had no money in his hands!
The financial crisis of the Southern Tang originated from Li Jing, at the beginning of his reign, with the accumulation of Xu Wen and Li Fu in two generations, and the occupation of more than thirty states in Jianghuai, the Southern Tang was actually very rich and strong. But when Li Yu took over, the Southern Tang Was a real mess.
There are three reasons for the financial difficulties of the Southern Tang Dynasty:
First, during Li Jing's reign, the Southern Tang Dynasty continued to use troops, exhausting the savings of the previous generation. First, in 945, taking advantage of the civil unrest in Min, the army attacked, although it successfully destroyed the Min state, but in March (947), the Southern Tang army was defeated outside Fuzhou when it liquidated the remnants of the forces, killing and wounding more than 20,000 people and seriously injuring the national strength. Secondly, in 951, when the western neighbor Southern Chu was in civil strife, he sent troops to attack, although he destroyed Southern Chu in one fell swoop, but the following year he was counterattacked by the Chu general Liu Yan.
Four years later, in 955, Li Jing fought against Chai Rong, and the Southern Tang and Later Zhou fought three major wars, losing their troops and eventually ceding all 14 prefectures and 60 counties in Huainan, with a population of 226,000 households. At the same time, the Southern Tang Dynasty went to the imperial title and was only called the Lord of Jiangnan. Jianghuai was originally a rich land, the most important source of wealth during the Tang Dynasty, and it supported the Tang Dynasty for a hundred years after the Anshi Rebellion. The loss of this place made the Southern Tang dynasty lose the rich profit of boiling salt, and not only was it directly cut off from a major source of finance, but it also had to spend huge sums of money to buy salt from Houzhou, and the salt industry became an economic chip for the Later Zhou regime to firmly control the Southern Tang.
Second, after the defeat of the war, when Li Jing declared himself a vassal to Hou Zhou in 958, Li Jing sent a total of one million silver, silk, money, tea, and grain to Chai Rong in the name of the labor army, and since then, he has paid 100,000 taels of silver, 100,000 silk horses, 100,000 pieces of money, 500,000 catties of tea, and 100,000 stones of rice grain to Hou Zhou every year. After Li Yu succeeded to the throne, he was well aware of the strength of the Southern Tang Dynasty, and could only continue to give gifts to Zhao Kuangyin, who had already replaced Hou Zhou. When Li Yu first ascended the throne, he gave Zhao Kuangyin 2,000 taels of gold, 20,000 taels of silver, and 30,000 horses of sarongs. In June of the following year, he also donated 2,000 taels of gold, 20,000 taels of silverware, and 10,000 pieces of silk brocade to the Northern Song Dynasty. When the Northern Song Dynasty destroyed Jingnan, Li Yu also sent tribute. When the Northern Song Dynasty held the southern suburb ceremony, Li Yu paid tribute to 10,000 taels of silver and 10,000 silk. All in all, as long as the Northern Song Dynasty had any happy things, the Southern Tang Dynasty would congratulate the Northern Song Dynasty on its wealth, and the huge amount of property paid was also jaw-dropping.
The impact of the huge amount of tribute is like a domino, resulting in a large outflow of copper money from the country, the result is to trigger an unprecedented serious money shortage, followed by business difficulties, and finally a sharp reduction in taxes, the outbreak of the Southern Tang financial crisis, and the financial worsening.
Third, natural and man-made disasters continued, and in 954 A.D., a fire broke out in Jinling during Li Jing's reign, burning for more than a month, and the Southern Tang Dynasty Treasury suffered heavy losses. The following year, a great famine broke out throughout the territory, further weakening the power of the Southern Tang.
In 961, Li Yu took over the Southern Tang Dynasty, like a person who was still losing blood after a serious illness. With half of the country and the country bearing several times the previous financial burden, the national treasury is in jeopardy, and an atmosphere of pessimism and decadence is pervasive and decadent up and down the government and the public.
Faced with difficult state affairs and financial difficulties caused by The Tribute, Li Yu began to carry out reforms.
Li Yu himself was reluctant to live in the wenqing life of a drunken gold fan, so he first sacrificed the big stick of tax increases, so he produced a variety of harsh taxes. According to the northern Song Dynasty scholar Shao Bowen's notebook "Shao's Records of Hearing and Seeing", it is recorded: "The li state is underused, and the folk geese give birth to twins and wicker knots are taxed. In the "Magazine of Awakening Alone" written by Song Ren Zeng Minxing, it is recorded that "during Yu's reign, he was extravagant, so he was given more than yes." ”
Once, when Li Yu led the Minister of Culture and Military Affairs to the people to observe the people's feelings, and when he came to the fields where there had been no rain for a long time, he asked, "Why is it raining in other places, but it is not in the capital city?" The civil official Wang Chonggu replied, "The rain does not dare to come down to the capital." Li Yu asked why, and Wang Chonggu replied, "Because it is afraid of being taxed." ”
The move to raise taxes is undoubtedly to quench thirst.
Minister Pan You prescribed a good recipe for Li Yu to carry out the reform of equalizing the fields, and the wealth of agricultural society came from the land, and if this problem was solved, the finances would naturally improve. Pan You put Li Ping in charge of the Sinong Temple, restored the well field system, created a civil and cattle register, and tried to redistribute the land previously annexed from the landlords, this reform seriously violated the interests of the bureaucratic landlords in the Southern Tang Dynasty, met with fierce resistance and opposition, the people were also inconvenienced, the reform ended in failure, and finally Li Yu could only choose to protect the interests of the Jiangnan Shi clan, and took Pan and Li into custody, resulting in the two committing suicides one after another.
The road to land reform did not work, and Li Yu appointed Han Xizai to carry out currency reform and ordered a large number of iron coins to be minted instead of copper coins. As a result, apart from the value of iron and copper, iron money depreciated sharply, causing prices to soar, inflation, money shortages to become more serious, and the people to complain even more.
Both reforms have failed, and the tossing and turning has made the financial difficulties of the Southern Tang Dynasty deeper and deeper. Li Yu himself lacked the ability to govern the country and the way of taming his subjects, and the cruelty of the political struggle in the Southern Tang Dynasty further prompted him to choose to escape from reality and concentrate on the text.
We look back at Chai Rong of the Later Zhou Dynasty of the Central Plains, who reigned for more than five years, carried out drastic reforms, straightened out the military, rewarded production, built water conservancy projects, melted Buddhas and coinaged coins, and set up land endowments, laying a solid foundation for the unification of the Northern Song Dynasty. Li Yu, who firmly believes in Buddhism, cannot do anything to destroy the Buddha.
In the case of the Southern Tang Dynasty losing the heavens, places, and people, the destruction of the country and the death of the family was a doomed fate. In the first month of the ninth year of Kaibao (976), Li Yu, who was exhausted of food, opened the city gate and came out with a shiver of flesh. The Southern Tang Dynasty, which existed for 39 years, was destroyed.
In summary, li yu certainly had an unshirkable responsibility for the demise of the Southern Tang, but his father was the culprit who destroyed the Southern Tang, and the death of the Southern Tang really could not be blamed entirely on Li Yu.