In the twelfth year of Baode in the Western Song Dynasty, February 14. The atmosphere in the Huaqing Palace has never been so depressed as it is now, and everyone feels the depression of the coming end.

It is not the end of mankind, but the end of the autocratic empire of the Western Song Dynasty is coming.

The war between the three heroes of China has long been divided...... In fact, as early as more than eight years ago, when Zhao Hao, the emperor of the Eastern Song Dynasty, led the members of the imperial family to leave the dock of Zhaojiagang in Jiangning on the battleships of the Eastern Song Dynasty's native fleet, the victory or defeat of the war had already been decided.

Because in this war of unification, the real opponent of the Great Zhou was the Eastern Song Dynasty. The Eastern Song Dynasty was a world empire with a population of 120 million, also carried out the Industrial Revolution, and also possessed a maritime power second only to the Great Zhou.

As long as the Eastern Song Dynasty was united and wanted to resist to the end, the Great Zhou Republic would not have enough strength to conquer the Eastern Song Dynasty.

But the problem is that the country of the Eastern Song Dynasty does not belong to the Zhao family, but to the United States. The United States just regarded the Zhao family as a banner.

It is simply impossible to make the United States abandon the prosperity and decadent bourgeois way of life of the past, endure all kinds of suffering, and defend a banner with blood and life.

Therefore, after the Battle of Longshi Island, there was only one question in front of the 50 states of the Eastern Song Dynasty, that is, on what conditions to join the Great Zhou Republic.

The Great Zhou is a world empire on which the sun never sets, occupying 167 million square miles of North and South America!

Moreover, the territory of the Great Zhou Dynasty is also extremely vast, occupying the area of the East Siberia and Mongolian Plateau that was later called, with an area of more than 6,000 square miles.

Combined with the small colonies in Africa, the Atlantic, the Pacific and the South Seas, the Republic of Great Zhou has a land area of 234 million square miles, which is equivalent to 51 million square kilometers!

It is 10 million square kilometers more than the more than 40 million square kilometers of the British Empire in history!

Moreover, the British Empire itself has only a population of tens of millions, and it is inevitable that it will be difficult to maintain it for a long time.

If the Great Zhou Dynasty and the Eastern Song Dynasty were merged, the population would reach 260 million, and the population of that colony, including slaves and natives, would be 30 or 40 million.

30 or 40 million people want to rebel against 260 million people...... Not to mention the door, not even the window.

If the Great Zhou and the Eastern Song Dynasty did not merge, the two Chinese giants engaged in infighting and dismantled each other, which may lead to a wave of colonial independence movements.

But once they merge, there will be no colonial liberation movement or anything for at least the next three or four hundred years.

And an empire with a population of hundreds of millions and more than 50 million square kilometers of land is undoubtedly the ultimate ruler of this world!

Therefore, for the capitalists of the fifty states of the Eastern Song Dynasty, it was much more cost-effective to join the Great Zhou and become a member of the world than to fight a scorched earth battle with the Great Zhou Republic with heavy casualties.

Of course, the conditions for reunification still have to be discussed......

And this talk has been talked about for three years!

In the course of the negotiations, there were also several back-and-forths. Zhao Hao, who fled to the New Song Dynasty, also had many supporters in the Eastern Song Dynasty, the so-called royalists. They tried all kinds of ways to use negotiations as a cover to buy time for the Eastern Song Dynasty to rebuild their navy.

It's a pity that the Great Zhou Republic has always been superior - in fact, they have always invested more in the navy and steam engines than the Eastern Song Dynasty (the Great Zhou has a great demand for steam ships, and the financial resources are stronger), so they have better technology and production capacity.

Therefore, after the navy entered the era of ironclad steam sailing ships, the naval gap between the Great Zhou and the Eastern Song Dynasty not only did not narrow, but became larger.

Therefore, the efforts of the royalists of the Eastern Song Dynasty were ultimately in vain because they could not defeat the navy of the Great Zhou.

But their policy of delaying is not without its significance. They at least bought time for the transfer of population and property of the Eastern Song royalists.

Oh, and after the Great Zhou began negotiations with the Eastern Song Dynasty, they did not carry out the operation of blockading the coastline of the Eastern Song Dynasty. Of course, Da Zhou did not resume the export of guano.

The purpose of not blocking the coastline was to let go of royalists from all walks of life while maintaining the economic collapse of the Eastern Song Dynasty.

Da Zhou did not intend to exterminate the royalists of the Eastern Song Dynasty, otherwise Zhao Hao would not have been able to go to the New Song Dynasty.

His little home fleet, it is not easy for the Great Zhou Navy to annihilate it?

But that is not in the interests of the top leaders in the Great Zhou Republic.

First of all, the leadership of the Great Zhou Republic did not want the royalists of the Eastern Song Dynasty to stay and make trouble for themselves, and it was not bad to have a good place for them.

The second is that the military of the Great Zhou Republic hopes to keep an opponent for itself, and only with an opponent can a strong army and navy be maintained!

Otherwise, what excuse will the military, especially the navy, use to demand military spending?

Therefore, the military of the Great Zhou Republic not only sat back and watched the royalists of the Eastern Song Dynasty run away in waves, but also classified the islands in the South Seas east of Java as "affiliated islands" of the New Song Dynasty, which were all areas that were not recommended to be seized.

There are many other areas that are "not recommended to be captured", such as the Gowa County in Tianzhu, the Abadan Dominion on the Shatt al-Arab, the Ceylon County in the Lesser Western Ocean, and the Siam County, which are not recommended to be captured.

Because the Great Zhou Republic is not an aggressor...... Well, Da Zhou is a liberator!

Therefore, the Great Zhou Republic will not use aggressive means against a civilized and progressive country or dominion. And the cost of doing so is far greater than the gain.

"Civilized regions" such as Ceylon, Gova, Abadan, Siam, and even the royal domains of the New Song Dynasty could become united partners in the world system led by the Great Zhou.

Under the combined fist of coercion, inducement and expulsion of the Great Zhou Republic, the parliaments of the 50 states of the Eastern Song Dynasty finally passed the resolution to join the Great Zhou Republic before the end of June 230 of the Republic of China.

Although the Red Dragon Banner of the Eastern Song Dynasty was still flying over Xinkaifeng Prefecture, it was no longer a native Chinese powerhouse, but became the first "independent" colonial country......

After June of the Republic 230, only two players, the Great Zhou Republic and the Western Song Empire, remained in China itself.

By this time, the balance of power on the East Asian continent had become completely unbalanced.

The Great Zhou Republic, which unified the Eastern Song Dynasty, had 260 million citizens and 50 million square kilometers of land.

The Western Song Dynasty had a population of only 60 million, and its territory was only seven or eight million square kilometers. Industrial strength and financial strength are not the opponents of Da Zhou.

But no one expected that the resistance of the Western Song Dynasty was actually very tenacious, and launched millions of troops to resist one after another, although it was repeatedly defeated, but it still caused relatively large losses to the attacking Zhou army.

So much so that the ruling class of the Zhou State began to doubt the necessity of unifying China, and after the Battle of Xiangyang in 232 of the Republic, peace talks with the Western Song Dynasty began.

Xiangyang, of course, was occupied by the Great Zhou. In this battle, the steam ironclad gunboats of the Great Zhou Dynasty drove to the city of Xiangyang Daleng and destroyed the city walls of Xiangyang with large-caliber artillery shells.

But in the month-long brutal street fighting that followed, as many as 30,000 Zhou officers and soldiers were killed, and nearly 20,000 others were permanently disabled.

In the face of such a big loss, the high-level leaders of the Great Zhou Republic also felt their scalps tingle.

It turns out that the enemy, supported by hundreds of thousands of military households and gun doctors, is not easy to deal with!

Although the fight was fought, is it worth it to kill and wound hundreds of thousands of people?

Moreover, there are no good things in the Western Song Dynasty, there are no gold and silver mountains, no guano saltpeter, and no natural selection of the Great Plains. Da Zhou is obviously going to help the poor, and he is beaten like this, which is thankless...... In the Great Zhou, the capitalists who saw the money and the diligent working people did not agree.

Therefore, from the beginning of the Republic 232 to the Republic of 236, the Zhou and Song dynasties have been fighting and stopping, and the two sides have also begun to negotiate.

And in July 236, the two countries finally signed an agreement on a "comprehensive ceasefire". As a result, the troops of the Great Zhou Republic withdrew from the occupied part of the Jingchu region, including the Jianghan Plain and the Dongting Lake Plain.

The retreat of the Great Zhou Republic should have been a good thing for the Western Song Dynasty...... But no one thought that the retreat of the Great Zhou Dynasty sounded the death knell of the fall of the feudal dynasty of the Western Song Dynasty.

Because during the several years when the Great Zhou Republic ruled some areas of Jingchu, the Great Zhou Republic not only implemented a republican form of government and an equal citizenship system for everyone.

Moreover, the ruling government of the Great Zhou Republic carried out a series of social reforms in the Jingchu occupied areas with the idea of "poverty alleviation".

For example, the distribution of land to poor peasants (land comes from redemption); free distribution of guano and new farming implements; Reduction and exemption of agricultural taxes (in fact, taxes were collected according to the standards of the Great Zhou and Eastern Song Dynasty), and low-interest loans were issued; a large number of schools and compulsory education; Many hospitals and Tzu Chi homes have been opened...... In short, it took a lot of money earned from the New World to buy people's hearts.

Moreover, the ruling government of the Great Zhou Republic also vigorously improved the governance of local officials, issued high salaries to officials, and conscientiously dealt with corruption.

Therefore, when the officials and troops of the Great Zhou ruling government retreated from the Jingchu occupation area, the people of Jingchu really sent and sent, cried and cried. Many children of poor peasants who have been allocated land and live a life of rice and broth are eager to follow the team to fight against feudalism and make a revolution!

And this kind of popular scene also infected the Western Song Dynasty soldiers who came to receive Jingchu.

In particular, a group of officers of the "Huashan faction" from Jingchu. After learning about the benevolence of the Republic, many officers of the "Huashan faction" of the Western Song Dynasty, who had fiercely opposed the republican army, were transformed into republicans.

They all have a feeling of being deceived and deceived, it turns out that the republic is so good and so progressive. Under the republican system, the common people could also eat rice broth every day...... This is happier than the old man!

At the same time, the Western Song Dynasty had no way to give satisfactory rewards to the heroes who had worked hard - because the Western Song Dynasty had nothing to gain in this war, and had spent every copper plate in the treasury!

What do you let the anxious Zhao Mian take to distribute the reward? But he didn't dare to treat the heroes too badly, at least not those military tycoons, right?

Therefore, he issued an order to recover the land allocated to the poor peasants of Jingchu by the Great Zhou, and use this batch of land to reward the heroes.

But I didn't expect that the poor peasants of Jingchu, who had lived under the republic for several years, were no longer lambs. Not only did they know what kind of life a person should live, but they also got flintlock pistols and ammunition from the retreating Zhou army and armed themselves.

The Jingchu peasant uprising broke out immediately! The peasants who revolted also raised the banner of "the world is for the public"!

At the same time as the peasant uprising occurred, the Western Song army was also greatly shaken.

Because of the unfair distribution of land, a large number of middle- and lower-class soldiers were extremely disappointed with the imperial court.

In the eighth year of Baode in the Western Song Dynasty (237 years of the Republic, 1351 in the Western calendar), that is, in the same year that the Jingchu peasant uprising took place, a secret revolutionary group appeared in the Western Song army, the Congregational Society.

The Congregational Council advocated the overthrow of the Western Song Dynasty, the introduction of a republican system, and the negotiation of the peaceful reunification of the two countries with the Great Zhou Republic. With the help of the Great Zhou Republic, land reform was carried out, and each peasant was allocated a piece of land that could not be bought or sold to ensure his basic livelihood. The military household system and other hierarchical systems were abolished, and all the people in the land of the former Western Song Dynasty were equal......

Although the Western Song Dynasty repeatedly carried out purges in the army, it wanted to eliminate the Congregationalists. However, the ideas of the Congregational Church and the republican revolution gradually took root in the hearts of the people as the Jingchu Peasant War continued.

In December of the eleventh year of Baode, due to the sudden death of Zhao Mian, the emperor of the Western Song Dynasty, the Congregational members in the Huashan Lecture Hall suddenly shouted the slogan of "the end of the imperial system, the prosperity of the republic"!

A republican revolution broke out when the emperor was in the sky and the new monarch was not established.

The revolution soon swept through the entire lecture hall, and not only the teachers and students in the lecture hall joined the revolutionary camp one after another, but even the officers and soldiers stationed in the lecture hall camp also launched an uprising.

On February 1, the twelfth year of Baode, about 10,000 officers and soldiers of the uprising arrived at the square outside the Huaqing Palace, and then exchanged fire with the imperial forbidden army. The rebel army transferred artillery from Huashan Jiangwutang to bombard the forbidden army that was defending to the death. The two sides fought fiercely until 13 February, when a Western Song infantry division stationed at Tongguan also mutinied, and the Congregational officers seized command and led the unit to join the attack on the Huaqing Palace.

At this time, the imperial forbidden army could not resist and had to retreat to the Huaqing Palace.

The rebels then besieged the Huaqing Palace and delivered an ultimatum to the soon-to-be-enthroned crown prince Zhao Ming.

According to the conditions given by the rebels, as long as Zhao Ming announced his renunciation of the throne, the revolutionary army could let Zhao Ming and his family leave the Great Song Dynasty and take refuge in the Great Zhou Republic.

Otherwise, after the rebel army breaks through the Huaqing Palace, it will liquidate Zhao Ming and the entire Zhao Song Dynasty!

The desperate last prince of the Western Song Dynasty had to tearfully accept the conditions of the Congregational revolutionaries, agreed to renounce the throne, and left the Huaqing Palace the next day, that is, on February 14, the 11th year of Baode of the Western Song Dynasty. He first went to the Great Zhou Republic and then went into exile in Egypt, where he spent the rest of his life.

The feudal imperial system of the Western Song Dynasty also came to an end!

In the years that followed, the Western Song Dynasty, which had implemented a republican system, began to negotiate a merger with the Great Zhou Republic, and finally reached an agreement in the year 240 of the Republic.

The two countries jointly formed a unified Chinese Republic...... All three points are unified!

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Thank you all for your support and wish you all a happy Valentine's Day.

I hope that tomorrow, Luo Luo can see you again in the new book "Rescuing the Ming Dynasty".

The Great Lorro.

.。 m.