In fact, there is nothing much to say about this matter. Even a child can understand the mistake made by King Song. Now the Tang Dynasty is different from the beginning, and the interests of merchants are increasingly valued by the court.
After all, they are the main taxpayers. If you don't guarantee the interests of these people, why should they guarantee the tax revenue of the Tang Dynasty?
The slave trade itself was the main source of tax revenue for the Tang Dynasty court. In foreign wars, these slaves were used as money. If you could not be fair and just in the process of buying and selling slaves, would these merchants still trust you in the future?
Similar incidents have occurred in the past, but they were basically very sporadic, and it was impossible for anyone to be so bold as to detain more than 20,000 people. This number is not a small matter. Even the largest businessman in a province probably cannot consume so many slaves.
The matter is very simple. If Li Shimin had pushed the person out and dealt with him according to the laws of the court, then the storm could have been suppressed quickly. Moreover, this person was Li Shimin's younger brother. He had committed such a serious crime. It was not just a matter of competing with the people for profit, but it even involved a bit of monopoly.
Businessmen have the strongest sense of smell. If we only compete with them, these people will give in. Everyone knows that the people do not fight against the officials. As long as you leave us with certain benefits and don't let us starve to death, we will not fight bravely in this matter.
But in this situation you have gone too far. Not only do you want to eat up some of our profits, but you also want to keep all these cheap slaves, who are all strong and healthy, and sell them to a certain businessman. This is already a loss of fairness and justice.
We have money but cannot buy slaves now, so we have to hire people to work for us.
This will cost a lot of money, but those big businessmen who have colluded with King Song can wait at home honestly. Even if they cannot raise enough money now, it will give them time to raise money. The important thing is that if their competitors cannot buy these people, they have already won half the battle.
In this case, unfair competition has already taken place, and the prince of the court has endorsed you. Even if ordinary officials knew about this, would they dare to intervene? If this matter had not been brought to Li Xiang's attention, I am afraid it would have continued to be concealed. If that time really came, you would not be able to stop it even if you wanted to.
Take what King Song did for example. He only detained a few hundred people the first time, but later the number reached several thousand, and now it has reached 20,000. If it were not for the large number of prisoners of war to be transported back from the northwest, this number would have continued to increase, and it is still unknown what it would be in the end.
People's courage grows slowly. At the beginning, you may not care about it, but you find profit in this sport, which is much faster and more relaxing than your previous way of making money. Then the next time you are short of money, you will definitely do something about it.
Even if there is no merchant asking you to do this, if you are comfortable making money, you may create opportunities for yourself. For example, if there is no merchant buying slaves, you will still hoard these slaves. Relying on the power in your hands, you can control the price in the slave market without spending a penny.
After all, the slave market is market-driven. When there are many people, it is not cheap, and when there are few people, it is expensive. The King of Song can decide all this. If other people's personal interests are not involved, I am afraid no one will stand up.
After Li Shimin sat in his seat, court officials began to submit petitions one after another. Most of them were representatives sent by local chambers of commerce. They did not dare to say anything too harsh to the court, but their meaning was very clear, that is, they had to get a result from the court.
After the Five Surnames and Seven Clans were destroyed, the big families in various places did restrain themselves a lot, but that was in a normal business environment, and everyone did not have too many conflicts. If there were too many conflicts, they would probably not be able to survive safely.
Now these businessmen feel that their interests have been violated. If the court can give a good result, then these people will also honestly keep quiet. But the problem is that the culprit has gone straight to the palace of the retired emperor and sought protection from his father. No matter how hard you try, as long as you don't catch the person, what can you do?
Listening to the noise of these people in the court, Li Shimin also felt a headache. What you think is very simple, send troops to the retired emperor to pull the person out. If that were really possible, Li Shimin would have torn his brother into pieces long ago. Family affection is actually not that important to Li Shimin.
But you have to consider what people think. Take the current emperor, for example. He could die at any time, but is dying of illness the same as dying of anger? If his body can no longer bear it, that's normal. At most, he'll have a grand funeral.
But if he angered someone to death, then the matter would be difficult to say. All kinds of voices would come out from all over the world. When Li Shimin killed his brothers, he had already buried his reputation completely. Now he has finally recovered a little. Is he going to anger his father to death again?
But there are some things you cannot avoid doing. Merchants from all over the country are now planning that if the imperial court really does not give them a good explanation, then the next time slaves are shipped in, they will definitely not continue to buy them. They will let these slaves rot in the hands of the imperial court and see if you can deal with them.
Although the ministers who submitted memorials did not say it explicitly, they had already received reliable information that the merchants were colluding internally, and that the merchants and officials were connected. If they did not have the support of the officials behind them, they would probably not dare to go against the court, especially the small merchants.
But now these guys have united, and this has really touched their interests. The settlement of labor can be said to be a huge cost in the entire business operation, at least between 15% and 25%. If you encounter some more technical ones, it can even reach 35%. If you hold on to the slaves and don't sell them to us, then it will cost us about 20% more. Who can bear it?
