The Great Song Dynasty was established in 960 by the "forced and helpless" Zhao Kuangyin to usurp the throne.

And this year is 1340 in the Western calendar!

In other words, it has been 380 years since the founding of the Great Song Dynasty.

Of course, it should be the Western Song Dynasty that has a 380-year-long national ancestry, not the Eastern Song Dynasty, which has its capital Jiangning.

Although the Eastern Song Dynasty also took Song as the country name, the official family was also surnamed Zhao, and he was also the descendant of Zhao Guangyi.

However, the legal system of the Eastern Song Dynasty did not come entirely from the inheritance of the Zhao and Song dynasties, but mainly from the eighteen states of the United States. Therefore, the Eastern Song Dynasty was actually only a nominal national leader elected by the people of the eighteen states (later became fifty states), and was not really an emperor who followed the law.

Although the Western Song Dynasty also underwent drastic changes during the Jingkang period, and in order to survive and seek strength, it lost the ancestral system of "sharing the world with scholars and doctors" and embarked on the road of military merit.

However, the Jingkang reform of the Western Song Dynasty was still carried out on the basis of the continuation of the Great Song Dynasty, and it belonged to the new opening of old shops. It is completely different from the Great Zhou Dynasty and the Eastern Song Dynasty building systems and laws on a blank sheet of paper.

Moreover, the congenital nature of the Western Song Dynasty was also quite insufficient, and there was no access to the sea, so it could not obtain rich colonies for its own rule blood transfusion.

In addition, the core territory of the Western Song Dynasty is also relatively fragmented. Unlike the core areas of the Great Zhou Dynasty and the Eastern Song Dynasty, they are all connected together and have very convenient transportation.

The core of the Western Song Dynasty, Guanlong, Jingchu, and Bashu, are relatively independent, and they are not closely related to each other.

Moreover, unlike the Great Zhou Dynasty and the Eastern Song Dynasty, the Western Song Dynasty attached great importance to the development of industry and commerce. Therefore, we must spare no effort to strengthen transportation facilities and create a unified domestic market, thus promoting the centripetal force of various sectors in the country.

The situation in the Western Song Dynasty was different, because there was no access to the sea, the transportation between the three major plates of the mainland was extremely inconvenient, and there was also a lack of precious metals to mint currency.

Therefore, the Western Song Dynasty had no possibility of vigorously developing industry and commerce. The Western Song Dynasty court during the Jingkang period also took a development route in line with the national conditions of the Western Song Dynasty - emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce, and making a profit.

To tell the truth, the Western Song Dynasty, which basically made a profit, was really unlucky, and met two "RMB players", with their own New World, and almost unlimited resources and financial resources. Otherwise, the Western Song Dynasty would probably be another strong Qin.

Now that the Western Song Dynasty has met an open opponent, it is naturally not possible to be a strong Qin. After 200 years of implementation, the national policy of "emphasizing agriculture and suppressing business, and benefiting from a hole" has also reached the point of many drawbacks.

This way of "making a hole in the air" is, to put it bluntly, the way of not wanting butter and cannons, reducing the consumption of the whole society, only satisfying the most basic needs, and then using the saved social wealth for military purposes. After the military developed, they seized the wealth and land of other countries through war, and used it to compensate the citizens and nobles who used all the wealth of the society in the military.

Therefore, in the first few decades of realizing the "profit out of a hole", the Western Song Dynasty did gain a lot of territory because they drove out the Jurchens, ate Dali, expelled Xiliang, and invaded Bagan and Burma. Although these territories are not rich, they are large enough to make up for the efforts of the country's elite in the national policy of "making a profit".

However, after the Western Liang moved westward, the expansion of the Western Song Dynasty was close to the limit.

As a result, the cost of expansion has increased dramatically, while the benefits have become so small that they can no longer cover the costs.

The "Great Mongol War" was a sign that the expansion policy of the Western Song Dynasty had reached its limit.

Although the army of the Western Song Dynasty was still very sharp, even the Mongol army, which was invincible in the west, suffered blood losses on the battlefields of Yiliebao and Shayehe.

However, there is no way to convert victory on the battlefield into a real "war dividend".

Because the cost of the Great Mongol War was too high, and the value of the loot was too low to cover the cost.

In the later stage of the Great Mongolian War, the Third Central Plains War launched by the Western Song Dynasty once again hit the iron plate of the Eastern Song Dynasty - the advantage of "RMB players" is unimaginable for Dick Silk players.

Therefore, from the beginning of the Great Mongol War, the Western Song Dynasty entered an era of loss-making expansion.

Although it is a loss, it must also expand!

Because the Western Song Dynasty is a system that makes a hole out, if this hole does not exist, what will happen to so many military households and gun doctors in China? They have no way out, and they have no choice but to rebel against the Great Song Dynasty!

Therefore, in order to maintain the "one-hole" route, the Western Song Dynasty had to cut each other in Central Asia and the Mongols. In order to reduce the cost of the war, the feudal lords in the northwest had to be indulged in the expansion of their power, because the efficiency of the feudal towns was always higher than that of the bureaucratic and military institutions directly under the central government, far from the center. Therefore, using the vassal king to conduct a war was the only option for the financially weak Western Song Dynasty.

At the same time, the Western Song Empire had to grant many economic and political privileges to the gunmen and military households that had been captured in the Great Mongol War.

And if there are more privileges, it will naturally form a pattern of gate valves monopolizing the upward channel!

By the time of the reign of Emperor Zhao Mian of the Western Song Dynasty, the prestige and appeal of the court of the Western Song Dynasty were not as good as before.

Not only did there appear signs of feudal town secession, but also in the core territory of the Western Song Dynasty, there were also many military aristocrats who occupied large tracts of land.

The land they occupy has long broken the upper limit of 3,200 mu set during the Jingkang period of the Western Song Dynasty, but tens of thousands of acres, hundreds of thousands of acres of land, and even military giants who occupy millions of acres of land have appeared!

Its representatives are the Xiangyang Yue clan (descendants of Yue Turn), Ezhou Yue clan (descendants of Yue Fei), Jingmen Zong clan (descendants of Zong Ze), Jiangling Han clan (descendants of Han Xiaoxuan), Xiazhou Qu clan (descendants of Quduan), Chang'an Seed Clan (descendants of the Seed Master, Seed Division), Fengxiang Zhang Clan (descendants of Zhang Jun) and so on, every family has more than one million acres of land. Not only is it connected to the state and county, but it also has a private city wall dock (all of which are fortresses), as if it is a monarch.

And the military tycoons covering an area of hundreds of thousands of acres or even millions of acres are naturally not ordinary landlords, but real feudal lords.

If calculated in terms of income (ground rent), the military tycoons covering an area of one million acres have at least 500,000 stone of income. And you don't have to pay taxes!

And to cultivate this million acres of land, at least 30,000 tenants are needed, all under the control of military tycoons!

Such a wealthy family, of course, is a strong clan, under the head of the family, the free clan, the doorman, the dead, and the retainers, can casually pull out thousands of guns.

These military tycoons not only monopolized a large number of land and population, but also firmly controlled the Huashan Lecture Hall, almost turning the Huashan Lecture Hall into a private school for military celebrities.

In addition, they also broke the rule that military households were not allowed to participate in target shooting, and used high-quality rifled guns and children who had received strict training since childhood to snatch the hole where the cold door would rise.

And in order to ensure that their children can win in target shooting, they also worked together to change the rules and add a horse target shooting event. As a result, the threshold for target shooting has been greatly raised......

So by the 14th century of the Western calendar, the Western Song Dynasty had lost most of its vitality and had become a lifeless military power.

Of course, the military power of the Western Song Dynasty is still very strong!

Regardless of the national army of the Western Song Dynasty, even if the private soldiers owned by those military giants were pulled out, it was enough for the Chagatai Khanate and the Great Mongolia to drink a pot.

Therefore, in the peace treaty brokered by the Holy Maiden of Light, Kubal Lun Chahan, it was stipulated that both the Great Mongolia and the Golden Horde had to pay the New Year's coins to the Western Song Dynasty!

The Great Mongolia paid 400,000 a year, the Golden Horde paid 350,000 a year, and the Western Xia and Baltic countries each paid 300,000 a year.

The four countries have to supply 1.35 million taels of silver coins to Chang'an every year!

If the military of the Western Song Dynasty was not strong, how could these four countries be willing to give money?

However, the more than one million extorted from the Mongols, the Golden Horde, the Western Xia, and the Baltic States (because of the mining of gold and silver in the New World, the purchasing power of silver can no longer be compared with 200 years ago) is a drop in the bucket for the Western Song Dynasty, which is full of financial holes - because a large amount of land and population are monopolized by military tycoons, the Western Song Dynasty is facing an increasingly serious financial crisis.

The gap between the national strength of the entire country in the Western Song Dynasty and the Eastern Song Dynasty and the Great Zhou Dynasty is also becoming more and more wide.

If the Western Song Dynasty wants to reverse the decline, I am afraid that the only way to do it is to find an opportunity and make a desperate blow!

……

Yue Xuan, the newly appointed Privy Council member of the Western Song Dynasty, hurriedly walked into the Chongzheng Hall of Huaqing Palace.

He is the ninth grandson of Yue Fei, and he was previously an ambassador in Tianjin, the capital of the Great Zhou Republic, and only recently transferred back to China to be promoted to the Privy Council of Tongzhi.

Although he was promoted, Yue Xuan's mood was not good, because he knew that he was about to face the most severe situation since the westward migration of the Great Song Dynasty.

The reason for the grim situation is not the decline of the Western Song Dynasty itself, but the fact that another upheaval was taking place in the Great Zhou Republic and the Eastern Song Dynasty.

Just when Yue Xuan was serving as an envoy to the Great Zhou Republic, he saw an unimaginable device - a water heater!

It sounds like it's for bathing, but it's not. This is a kind of miraculous power equipment, which does not use manpower, animal power, water power, and wind power, but relies on coal to ignite and boil hot water to generate power. Hence the name water heater...... Well, this thing is clearly a steam engine from another plane!

However, it was not the Englishman Watt who invented the steam engine in this time and space, but Wang Zhen, a scholar from the Yuntai Academy of Institutions, and he also gave the name of the water heater.

So...... One of the important symbols of the first industrial revolution in this time and space was the invention of the water heater!

Another announcement of the industrial revolution was the invention of the Huang Daopo textile machine, a female textile worker in the Shanghai business market, who invented a new type of textile machine that could drive multiple spindles with a single spinning wheel around the 180th year of Hezhong. He also became rich and became the owner of the richest textile factory in Shanghai.

Now, with the invention and large-scale utilization of water heaters, the prelude to the industrial revolution has been unveiled!

Yue Xuan, who had just arrived in Tianjin, saw the scene of the "water heater" driving various machines to operate, and almost felt that he had arrived in a magical world.

After staying in Tianjin for a few years, he deeply felt the backwardness of the Western Song Dynasty...... The Western Song Dynasty did not have water heaters, nor Huang's spinning machines, nor factories that could produce on a large scale, only agricultural cultivation that had not changed for hundreds of years.

Oh, by the way, the agriculture of the Western Song Dynasty is not as good as others!

The agricultural tools are not as advanced as others, the seeds are not as good as those of others, the water conservancy facilities are not as well repaired as others, and there is no guano ...... Therefore, the crops in the field look malnourished, and the yield per mu is not as good as that of others.

Therefore, the common people eat far less than the people of the Eastern Song Dynasty and the Great Zhou Dynasty!

On the Da Zhou side, the most ordinary peasants can eat three meals a day and meat every day!

In the Western Song Dynasty, the peasants had two meals a day, and they ate dry when they were busy and thin when they were free, and it was rare to eat meat once a year......

The difference in living standards on both sides is too much!

The poor lived almost the same as the military nobles of the Western Song Dynasty, and the aristocratic capitalists of the people were ...... I can't think about it.

If the Western Song Dynasty doesn't rise up, I'm afraid it will perish!

And Yue Xuan is not the only one who has this kind of thought. Many of the children of the Western Song Dynasty nobles who studied in the Great Zhou Republic germinated the idea of change.

The Western Song Dynasty has reached the point where it must be changed!

Some of the radical children of the aristocracy even thought of the republican revolution......

Isn't the progress of the Great Zhou Republic because of the republican revolution in which the world is for the public?

Isn't the progress of the Eastern Song Dynasty because the United States of the Fifty States are public?

Only the Western Song Dynasty is the home of the world, and it is the king and the military nobles who share the world.

So the Eastern Song Dynasty and the Great Zhou Dynasty flew in the sky, while the Western Song Dynasty climbed on the ground.

It can't go on like this!

The Western Song Dynasty must be revolutionary!

Yue Xuan, who had been an envoy in Da Zhou for several years and was responsible for supervising international students, was also very familiar with this revolutionary trend of thought. In fact, there is a small revolutionary party in his family, and one of his sons and several clan brothers and nephews have all studied in the Great Zhou, and after returning to China, they are not used to this and that, and they shout all day long to learn from the Great Zhou and the Western Song Dynasty...... Don't look at the new world that people bring their own, there are endless resources, how can the Western Song Dynasty learn?

Therefore, in Yue Xuan's view, there was only one way out for the Western Song Dynasty to fight, and it was easy to say anything if they won the war, and they were defeated...... If you are defeated, wait for the revolution!

"Yue Qing, you came just in time." The voice of Zhao Mian, the official of the Great Song Dynasty, interrupted Yue Xuan's thoughts.

It turned out that he had already arrived in the Chongzheng Palace.

After bowing, Yue Xuan stood solemnly in the hall, waiting for Zhao Mian to speak.

"The urgent letter from the Great Zhou Embassy said that Wu Yuankai, the descendant of the Wu clan of the Great Zhou, was going to enter the Komnenos Dynasty in Egypt and marry Princess Anna." Zhao Mian paused, "Yue Qing, what do you think?" ”

"Marrying Princess Anna?" Yue Xuan was stunned, "Princess Anna is the heir to the Egyptian throne!" ”

Zhao Mian, an official of the Great Song Dynasty who is in his fifties this year, nodded, "Yes, it is the heir to the Egyptian throne." Moreover, she is only 17 years old this year, but her father is over 60 years old, and it is said that he is seriously ill and will die soon. ”

"Then this Wu Yuankai will be in power!" Yue Xuan quickly made a judgment. "Egypt has a parliament, but the royal power is strong, and if the eldest princess is young, her husband can hold the real power. And the martial arts must have paid a considerable price for this marriage...... What he is planning is very great! ”

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