At the end of May 1255, the Emperor of the Great Song Dynasty and the Emperor of the Jinhe Empire formally signed the "Lin'an Agreement", and the two countries launched comprehensive cooperation for the first time. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 infoIn the political sphere, the Great Song Empire announced the trial implementation of new special zones in nine coastal port cities, and the introduction of new laws within the boundaries of the special zones. Instead of having a government office, the central government appoints a mayor, a justice, and the mayor takes the lead, selects local people to serve in the city government, and sets up a body called the Consultative Council.

The Council initially set up 10 members to examine and approve the budget of the city government and the decrees issued, and if the approval of the budget and decrees was not reached, the budget and decrees could not be adopted. The first members of parliament are selected and appointed by the mayor and the chief justices in the local area according to different professions and ethnic groups, and serve a term of two years. Two years later, it was decided by free nomination by local trade associations and by a joint vote of all citizens, and the number of members of the council was increased to 50. The appointment, removal, and dismissal of members of parliament are not under the jurisdiction of the municipal government, but can only be decided by the council itself.

In addition to these nine cities, the rest of the prefectures and roads also followed the previous Great Song Dynasty law, but all the military power of the state capitals and roads was transferred to the central government, and a deputy governor called the military representative was added to the local governments, who managed the local garrisons in the local governments on behalf of the central government and coordinated the military-political relations with the local governments.

At the same time, the number of troops in the new court of the Great Song Dynasty began to shrink sharply, and the army only retained all the new troops and part of the forbidden army, and the final number was about 100,000, including 70,000 cavalry and 30,000 infantry. The vast majority of these troops were located in the inland areas south of the Yangtze River, and a small number went north to station in a few cities south of the Yellow River, mainly to protect the smooth flow of communication between these cities.

The original Great Song naval division was also reduced to 10,000 people, and the number of warships was sharply reduced from more than 800 to more than 200, most of which were inland river patrol ships and coastal patrol ships, which were only used to ensure the safety of inland ports and coastal ports. There are only more than 50 warships that can really be used for far-sea operations, including the 21 Virginia-class ships brought by Hong Tao.

As for the shipbuilders who belonged to the Great Song Dynasty sailors, they were basically eliminated, and some of the skilled craftsmen were temporarily supported by the imperial court, and the rest were self-reliant. These people don't have to worry about running out of work and starving, and many of them don't even have to leave the shipyard, because 80 percent of the shipyards have been dismantled, some of them have been sold to local private individuals for civilian use, and some of them have simply been abandoned. The privately purchased shipyards and workshops required a large number of shipwrights, both as apprentices and apprentices.

The current Great Song Empire has solved the problem of redundant troops and redundant officials, but it is a bit overkill, and the national defense capability is very weak, not only the military strength in the coastal areas is very weak, but there is not even a large-scale imperial army north of the Yellow River, and it is completely undefended.

On the surface, this is true, but it is not. Although the Great Song Empire's own army was smaller, its defensive strength increased instead of decreasing, because the agreement between the Great Song Empire and the Jinhe Empire clearly stipulated that the Jinhe Empire had two fleets that would be stationed in the Great Song Dynasty. The South China Sea Fleet is based on Hong Kong Island outside the Pearl River estuary, and the North Sea Fleet is based at Dengzhou Port. In addition, the Jinhe Empire will also send 20,000 imperial troops to be stationed along the Yongji Canal, Tianjin Port, Pingzhou, Xingqingfu, and Xuanhuafu to help the Great Song Empire build a relatively loose defense line in the north.

This line of defense is not to guard against the Mongols and other nomads, but to deter the local northern nobles, so that they can be honest for a few years, and not have nothing to do with everywhere, and do not blatantly continue to hook up with the northern nomads.

The main reason why Hong Tao wants to do this is that there are not enough people in his hands. There are not enough people available, there are too many things to solve, there are holes everywhere, and everywhere needs to be strengthened. If you are really led by these questions, then it will never be possible to change anything about Da Song, it will use its strong inertia to drag itself down, drag it down, and drag it to death.

At present, the focus of Hongtao's transformation is in the area south of the Yangtze River, where 90 percent of the population and 100 percent of the essence of the Great Song Dynasty are concentrated. The nine special zones are just a false trick for Hong Tao to ask for directions, and the laws that are extremely similar to the laws of the Jinhe Empire have a relatively strong mass base here, and will not be subject to all-round resistance. As long as these places are successfully transformed, through their impact on the surrounding areas, the SAR can quickly expand several times over. Moreover, through these two years, Hong Tao has been able to use the SEZ to train a large number of military and political talents, and they will be the vanguard of his own attack on the inland areas in the future. Using the Great Song people to govern the Great Song Dynasty people is very in line with Hong Tao's concept.

In later generations, there were successful examples, which were summarized as the countryside surrounding the city. Hong Tao didn't plan to copy it, because that method was not suitable for himself, a foreigner relative to the Great Song Dynasty. According to their existing conditions, it is more appropriate to encircle the inland with the coast and gradually carry out reforms from the south to the north.

However, there is one place here that is more special, and that is Tianjin and Pingzhou.

The position of Tianjin Port in the north is self-evident, it not only stared at the Mongols north of Yanshan, held the northern end of the Yongji Canal, but also served as a material assembly port for the northward march and the construction of Beijing City in the future.

Where is Pingzhou? This is a Northern Song Dynasty Fuzhi, it belonged to Yanshan Fu Road at that time, and was later occupied by the Liao, Jin, and Mongols respectively, it is a military town located on the north shore of the Bohai Bay, connecting the east-west corridor, and the approximate location is in the west of Lulong County and the east bank of the Luan River in Hebei Province in later generations.

As early as March this year, when the port of Tianjin was not yet fully built, an army of four or five hundred men sailed up the Luan River to this small city and was stationed on the high ground on the west bank of the Luan River, a few kilometers south of Pingzhou. These people are very strange, and they usually don't see them armed, but from time to time they go into the city and go to the countryside to wander around, and ask the local people where there are iron mines and coal mines nearby.

This army came from the Golden River Empire, and there were several prospecting teams among them, who had come here to conduct preliminary exploration of iron mines, coal mines, and steel mills according to the aid agreement reached between the imperial government and Hong Tao. If suitable iron and coal mines can be found nearby, then the steel mill that Hong Tao exchanged for a warship will be built nearby. At that time, this place will be more lively than Tianjin Port, because Emperor Hong is very anxious, in order to put this place into use as soon as possible, he has prepared 100,000 troops to be used as engineers.

Not to mention that the maritime merchants in the south are superstitious that they can make money by cooperating with Hong Tao to do business, and it only took more than a month for this prospecting team to determine whether there are iron ore and coal mines in this hilly area, or large, semi-open-pit, very easy to mine, and easy to transport. As for why the old emperor had never been here, but he could understand the local products so well, no one could guess, and everyone could only put Hong Tao in the category of demigods again. It's just that this time the priesthood has changed slightly, from the God of Wealth to the Father-in-law of the land.

At the beginning of June, the Luan River became the busiest river in Bohai Bay, and hundreds of inland river flat sand boats were pulled from the south by armed cargo ships of the Royal Navy.

These people and goods were transported along the Luan River by sand boats to the pre-selected shore, and then a new port was built on the Luan River southwest of Pingzhou, and then a simple hardened road began to extend westward from the small port named Tangshan Port by Hongtao, and twenty kilometers later branched off and drilled due north into the mountains.

The later Tangshan City was not on the Luan River, it should be a few dozen kilometers further west, which Hong Tao knows. However, he didn't care if the location was accurate, he just needed to make the place name acceptable to his memory, and he could immediately remember where the place was.

The road had to be built forty kilometers to the west and thirty kilometers to the north. At the western end of the highway is the later Kailuan Coal Mining Area, from which the coal will be transported to the fork of the road by cattle and horse-drawn rail-powered carts. At the end of the northern fork in the road is the Qianxi Iron Mine, and the iron ore dug from here is also transported by railroad carts to the fork of the road.

At the fork in the road, the foundation has already begun to be laid, and a large steel mill will be erected. Iron ore brought from Qianxi and coal dug from Kaiping District would be thrown into the steelmaking furnace to turn into hot molten steel, and then cast into iron ingots and ingots, and then sent to the forging factory in the south and the machine factory in the north to produce steel rails, ship keels, guns and bullets and various tools.

In the future, it will become the largest metallurgical, mechanical, chemical and military manufacturing center in the Great Song Dynasty, providing sufficient material foundation for the rise of the Great Song Dynasty. At the same time, this will also be the scientific research and development center of the Great Song Dynasty, and the high-ranking apprentices who Hong Tao brought back from North America to learn from Qi Zu, Wen Xiaoqi, and Bush will continue their work in North America here, build every factory from scratch, train batches of qualified industrial workers from less to more, and then build warships, Qi Zu cannons, shotguns, bullets, fireworks, explosives, fertilizers, pesticides, and other things from coarse to fine, and re-arm the now very weak Great Song Dynasty from the inside out.

Hong Tao even plans to set up a new steam engine research and development institute here, using the prototype of the steam engine brought from Wen Xiaoqi to continue to improve the steam engine with higher power and use it for actual production and life. In the future, trains and electric lights will come out of this desolate mountainous area and slowly travel all over the Great Song Dynasty and to the world.

(To be continued.) )