Han Tuoxuan is Han Qi's great-grandson, and Han Xiaoxuan is a brother. However, the age difference between the two is 75 years! When Han Xiaoxuan passed away, Han Tuoxuan was not born yet!

Although he is a cousin of Han Xiaoxuan, Han Tuoxuan is not a figure in the Jingchu system, but a member of the Chang'an Xungui. is not from a civilian background, but a military attache who escorted Huashan to lecture on martial arts. After graduating from Jiangwutang, he became the imperial guard of Emperor Xiaozong. Later, he changed his literary resources and became a ruler step by step.

The initiation of the Second Central Plains War was inseparable from his wrong decision! But his life on this plane is better than in history. The Eastern Song Dynasty and the New Zhou Dynasty were both civilized and civilized countries, and they would not want his head...... What are you going to do?

Therefore, Han Tuoxuan, who took responsibility for the war, just stepped down and demoted his officials, and returned to become prime minister after a few years of slump - he started the war in the interests of the officers of the Western Song Dynasty. Even if he didn't win, the soldiers still remembered him. Therefore, it is more advantageous for him to control the army by being on the left.

And the defeat of the last war made the rule of the Western Song Dynasty a little shaken!

Because some of the officers blamed the defeat on the "monarchical dictatorship" of the Western Song Dynasty, they hoped that the country would follow the example of the Eastern Song or the New Zhou Dynasty for reform.

This made Song Guangzong Zhao Xin very frightened, so he chose to let Han Tuoxuan, the prime minister who was very popular in the military, return to the furnace.

For the Mongols who dared to challenge the authority of the Great Song Dynasty in the Western Regions, Han Tuoxuan had only one suggestion - fight! If you don't fight, Xiliang will be lost, and the revolutionaries in the army will be in trouble again!

"However, the new defeat in the Eastern Crusade was not long after, and the country's vitality has not ......"

Zhao Xin was a little hesitant. In the last war, the Western Song Dynasty lost a total of 140,000 troops! And it also cost tens of millions of dollars in military spending. The country's savings for many years have all been exhausted, and it has also borrowed a sum of money from the rich king of Western Xia, which is really a shame!

Now that Han Tuoxuan wants to start a war in the West thousands of miles away, I'm afraid the cost won't be too low!

"Your Majesty, if we don't save Xiliang, Storm Zhou may intervene."

Now the Western Song Dynasty no longer uses the "Eastern Thief" to refer to the Zhou State. Because after the end of the Second Central Plains War, the Western Song Dynasty and the Zhou State formally signed a peace treaty.

In other words, the Western Song Dynasty recognized the sovereignty of the Zhou State - they have tens of millions of square kilometers of land, if you don't admit it, it is also there!

"Will Storm Week intervene?" Zhao Xin was stunned for a moment, "Can their hands stretch so long?" ”

"Have you forgotten where the Mongols moved from?"

"Mongols ......" Zhao Xin thought for a moment, "Oh, it was moved from the Daxi grassland!" ”

The Mongols of this time and space went to the rich Kipchak steppe and the eastern part of the Eastern European steppe (really oily!). Later Caspian oil fields, Ural oil fields, and Siberian oil fields are now the property of Temujin), the name of the Mongolian plateau naturally does not exist, and the geographical name of this territory is now called "Daxi steppe". Politically, the land was ruled by the Xi Kingdom, which was attached to the Great Zhou Republic.

The nature of the Xi Kingdom is similar to that of the United States of North America, and they are all autonomous vassal states under the Great Zhou Republic. Although it has the name of a country, it does not have independent sovereignty. It relied on the Great Zhou Republic militarily and diplomatically.

The reason why the "country name" was established was to facilitate governance. Now the land area of the Great Zhou World Empire has reached tens of millions of square kilometers! It is completely beyond the limits of what a central government can effectively govern under the existing communication conditions.

Therefore, the establishment of an autonomous vassal state was inevitable.

It was not only the Great Zhou Republic that used autonomous vassal states to govern remote areas, but also the Eastern and Western Song dynasties. Under the Eastern Song Dynasty, there were five autonomous vassal states, including the New Song Dynasty, Siam, Cochin, New Dongying, and Ceylon.

The Western Song Dynasty is not small, so it also has a Xiliang Domain, in addition to Jingchu Palace, Dali Palace, Tubo Palace, Gaochang Palace, Shule Palace, Khotanese Palace, Qingtang Palace, and other seven major feudal kings.

As for the Western Xia Kingdom, which had migrated to Tianzhu for more than 100 years, after the Second Central Plains War, it dissolved its affiliation with the imperial court of the Western Song Dynasty by paying a large amount of gold and silver tribute, and became an independent country.

However, the independence of Western Xia was not the will of the Western Xia rulers led by Li Chunyou, but during the Second Central Plains War, the small Western fleets of the Eastern Song and New Zhou repeatedly attacked the Western Xia city of Haikou (located at the mouth of the Xindu River). It caused great losses to the Western Xia, and the Eastern Song and New Zhou also issued an ultimatum to the Western Xia.

If you don't draw a clear line with the Western Song Dynasty, you will be invaded by their joint alliance!

Therefore, Li Chunyou had to terminate the relationship with the monarch and ministers of the Western Song Dynasty, but he would still pay tribute to Chang'an every year in the form of purchasing public bonds with the Polo Kingdom.

"Exactly," Han Tuoxuan said, "When the Mongols were relocated, the Zhou State also took the opportunity to build six trading forts in the Xi steppe (Mongolian steppe) and the Kipchak steppe. One of the closest trading forts to Shattered Leaf City is on the banks of the Yemili River, called Yemili Fort. At present, it is in charge of Xiao Gan, the also mysterious marquis of Xi State, and this Xiao Qian is actually the great-grandson of Wu Haogu. and the current head of the Great Zhou Dynasty, Wu Guocheng, are clan brothers.

If I don't save Broken Leaf, then Broken Leaf Mansion may ask this Xiao Qian for help and pull the forces of the Zhou State in.

As for military spending, you can borrow money from Western Xia and Polo! ”

The Western Song Empire had debts anyway, so it didn't care about borrowing more.

"Looks like I had to save it...... Zhongshu Sheren, plan to crusade against Mongolia! Zhao Xin didn't expect at this time that his decision would involve the Western Song Dynasty in a Hundred Years War.

And this war, which lasted for a hundred years, would eventually exhaust the national strength of the Western Song Dynasty. It laid the foundation for the unification of China in the 14th century.

……

Firecrackers rang out in unison, and drums played loudly. The "Republican" class sail battleship on slipway No. 1 of Tianjin Shipyard is slowly sliding into the sea along the laid slipway.

This is a "giant" sail battleship with a displacement of 20,000 stones.

The concept of displacement was also put forward by Wu Haogu in his early years. However, it did not immediately replace "material", that is, the amount of wood consumed in shipbuilding, as the standard for calculating the size of ships. It was only in the last two or three decades that the study of ship buoyancy reached a certain level, and displacement replaced the material as the standard for expressing the size of the ship.

And 20,000 stones is equivalent to about 1,200 tons in later generations. In later generations, it was a small sailing ship, but in the 13th century, the sail battleship with a displacement of 1,200 tons was definitely the most important weapon of the country.

The difficulty of building a wooden sail battleship with a displacement of 20,000 stones, equipped with 60 cannons, which can sail continuously on the ocean for 6 months without supplies, and can withstand large winds and waves, and can have a maximum speed of more than 20 knots (referring to sailing 60 miles in an hour, equivalent to a little more than 8 knots in later generations) is also quite high!

For the level of productivity in the Middle Ages, this was a large and complex system engineering.

It can be said that so far, the shipbuilding industry of the Great Zhou Republic and the Eastern Song Dynasty has not mastered the construction process of sail battleships to the extreme. This work starts from the selection of timber and timing, to the insect-proof and moisture-proof timber of timber, the laying of keels, the construction of ship ribs, the fixed support of decks, the laying of hull skins and outer decks, the waterproofing measures of ship hulls, and even the use of iron nails and wooden bolts. It takes a long time to study and practice in order to get the best solution.

And it takes a long time to build a sail battleship with excellent performance. It is usually two to three years, and it can take several months to build urgently, not including the time it takes to cut down trees and dry wood in the shade.

Therefore, the technological progress of shipbuilding can only follow the cycle of shipbuilding and advance step by step, and it is difficult to use gold fingers to pull out the seedlings. So when the centennial of the republic came, the legendary "flying clippers" still did not appear. Although before Wu Haogu's death, he had put forward the idea of "flying clippers" - the underwater shape of the ship was designed to have the least drag to increase the speed.

But how small should the "minimum resistance pattern" be? How to solve the stability of the ship? Does the hull have enough strength to withstand high speeds? Are the rigging and sails strong enough?

These problems need to be studied and accumulated repeatedly in order to be solved one by one.

So until now, the 20,000-stone sail battleship of the "Republic" class is the highest level of work that the shipbuilding industry of the Great Zhou Dynasty has come up with.

As the Republic, the lead ship of the "Republic" class, slowly slid into the water, the people who came to watch the ceremony invariably let out a burst of cheers.

"What a huge ship!"

"It's really worthy of the sea wall of my Great Zhou!"

"Führer, we still have to build a few more republics!"

Wu Guocheng, the head of the Great Zhou Republic, was full of smiles, and his perennial life at sea made his complexion dark and red, and he looked very healthy. He is not a descendant of the Wu family, but a descendant of Wu Tiexin. Considered a naval family, he is 55 years old this year and has served in the navy of the Great Zhou Republic for 25 years. Spend almost half of his life at sea. In the end, he retired with the rank of admiral and moved into politics.

And when he entered the political arena, the Wu clan had already declined politically. Wu Yoshijiu's grandchildren are either playboys or capitalists who don't care much about politics - Yoshihisa has too much money! And there are not many heirs, so no one wants to work hard in politics and the military.

How good is it to be a big capitalist comfortably?

Wu Yiyong's descendants have made a lot of achievements in military and political affairs, and there are "five generals in one family" in the army, and in the political arena, they have long controlled the Japanese provinces and the Bohai provinces, and there are also several veterans.

However, the "Righteous Brave" always had a strong monarchical tendency, which made most of the senators very worried. Therefore, Wu Yiyong's descendants have never had a chance to become the head of state.

As for the descendants of Wu Yixin, they are deeply cultivated in the United States of America. In the past few decades, there have been three commanders and more than a dozen councilors. However, in the political arena of the Great Zhou Republic, there was basically no existence of the "Yixin faction".

Moreover, North America, the chosen country, is synonymous with backwardness and barbarism in the eyes of most citizens of the Great Zhou Republic. Only the losers who couldn't get along in the Great Zhou and Eastern Song Dynasty would go across the ocean to North America to eat.

Therefore, it is impossible for the "righteous believers" who are living in the United States of America to be the head of the republic.

At the same time as the "decline" of the lineage, there were many outstanding figures in the samurai family. Therefore, there were several heads of state in a row, either from the samurai family, or from the sons-in-law or grandsons of the samurai family.

And Wu Guocheng also took advantage of the rise of the Wu family and won the election two years ago and became the twentieth head of the Great Zhou Republic.

Wu Guocheng, who was smiling all over his face and looked very proud, was a little depressed at the moment.

Because disturbing news is coming from the West!

The Mughal tribes, which were moved to the western Kipchak steppe by the Great Zhou Republic a few decades ago, actually miraculously rose. The Muguls, who were originally divided and made a little money by being mercenaries for the Dashi Empire and the Golden Horde Kingdom, now have a proud leader named Temujin. After bringing together the originally divided Mughal people, they established the Great Mongolian State, and also severely damaged the Great Stone Empire and the Golden Horde. Not long ago, Temujin also led a large army to invade the Xiliang Kingdom, and beat the Tianli knights to retreat into the Tianmen Pass and defend it......

Although the Great Mongolia was not yet able to reach the Great Zhou for the time being, Temujin's destruction of the Western Liao and the Golden Horde also caused the Western market to shrink, and the sales of Great Zhou cotton cloth and porcelain to the West decreased sharply.

At the same time, the western part of the Xi kingdom, which was dependent on the Great Zhou, was under the threat of the Mongols. As the suzerain, the Great Zhou had the obligation to protect the territorial integrity of the Xi Kingdom.

Moreover, the city lords who now rule the border between Xi and Mongolia are the descendants of Wu Haogu, Xiao Sese, and Ci Okuye.

For both private and public affairs, Wu Guocheng can't sit idly by.

But the question is...... The territory of the Great Mongolia is too far away from the Great Zhou.

And it's not very close to the sea, the closest coastline is the Black Sea...... The fleet of the Great Zhou Republic has to travel more than 60,000 miles to the Black Sea!

If you take into account the factor of waiting for the right wind direction, it may not be possible to reach it for a year or two.

In addition, most of those countries in the West will not welcome the expeditionary force of the Great Zhou Republic to directly enter the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, right?

That's a real embarrassment!

"Führer, Chang'an's express!"

As soon as Wu Guocheng, who had just finished attending the launching ceremony of the "Republic," returned to his carriage, one of his officials handed him a letter.

It is a personal letter from Xin Qiji, the minister of the Great Zhou Republic in Chang'an, Xin Qiji, an army general of the Great Zhou Republic, who served as the overseer of the Henan Army in the Second Central Plains War and defeated Yue Ke, a famous general of the Western Song Dynasty. After the end of the war, Xin Qijian retired from active service and was appointed by Wu Guocheng as Minister Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary in Chang'an.

Wu Guocheng unfolded the letter and looked at it, and a smile appeared on his originally gloomy black face, and asked his Jiyi, Yuan Hao, who is only 24 years old this year: "Yuzhi, immediately send someone to invite Meng Shangshu, Wudu Jiyi, and the two prime ministers, all to the Fuhrer's Mansion to discuss matters." ”