The only time Kyoshi did not suffer from drought was the third year of Yuanyou, but natural disasters were not only droughts.

In the winter of the second year of Yuanyou, Jingshi also encountered a heavy snowstorm, although the scale and time were not as good as the one on Hedong Road, but the heavy snow in the sky still fell for several months, and it never stopped until the beginning of spring.

The weather was cloudy for a long time, and the temperature outside naturally continued to be cold, so the Empress Dowager Gao Tao had no choice but to stop the activity of traveling to the Shangyuan Festival.

She once again parted ways with the emperor and went to the temples and Taoist temples in Bianliang City to pray for the blessings of the world, so that the Bodhisattva and the True Monarch could manifest their spirits and descend on the suffering people.

If that's all there is to it, that's it.

In the first year of Yuanyou, after all the new laws promulgated by Wang Anshi were abolished, the Great Song Dynasty under the rule of Wen Yanbo and Lü Gongzhu did not slowly get better, but slowly became weaker.

The rebellion of Hebei Baojia continued to weaken Hebei's defense capability. Wang Anshi's armor protection law does have many problems, but there is one fact that no one can deny, that is, the people of Zhulu in Hebei do have a certain ability to protect themselves. At the beginning of the trouble, they were always in the upper hand when facing the army of Zhulu, Fuzhou, and County in Hebei.

Even if Di Yong led the forbidden army to easily quell the more famous rebel gangs in the armor, it was only with the sophisticated equipment in the hands of the forbidden army that he did so. Di Yong found that the elites of the forbidden army he led did not have the upper hand at all when facing the rebellion and defending the armor, if it was one-on-one, without the help of bows and arrows.

Di Yong is indeed not a famous general who is good at field warfare, and when he leads his troops to battle, he is often overly cautious. This made Wen Yanbo and Lu Gongshu very dissatisfied. Countless money and food have been wasted, not to mention, but they have not been able to completely exterminate the rebellious Baojia, no wonder at that time, even the Empress Dowager Gao Taotao was suspicious of Di Yong.

Fortunately, with Cai Dao's help, Di Yong gathered the forbidden army he brought with him before leaving the forbidden army and returning to Beijing alone, and the deputy general led the team to gather the forbidden army troops under the city of the Daimyo's Mansion. In this way, it invisibly made way for the people of Hebei Road who wanted to escape to the various cottages of Taihang Village and were forced to participate in the rebellion, but were scattered by the troops of the forbidden army.

Therefore, after Di Yong returned to Beijing alone, he was boycotted by Gao Taotao and the two prime ministers.

Later, Gao Zunyu finally came back, and he personally went to the Daimyo's Mansion to bring back those forbidden army troops, which can be regarded as relieving a hidden danger in Gao Tao's heart.

Originally, Wen Yanbo and Lu Gongzhu also planned to send Gao Zunyu to Hedong Road to assist Zheng Xia in sending troops to exterminate the lion village. However, due to the drought that had been struck for many years, the troops had to fight, and seeing that the grain in the treasury was getting scarce, the matter had to be stopped. The sons of Cai Dao, Cai You, and Cai Bian were also left behind by these conservative ministers.

At this time, Cai Jing and Cai Bian were married in front of Wang Anshi's grave to guard filial piety, and the other was shrunk in his hometown in filial piety, avoiding the limelight and watching the style, so naturally he couldn't take care of his eldest son.

As a result, the Cai brothers were gorgeously forgotten.

Because of his previous disaster relief exploits and Lu Gongzhu's strong recommendation before his death, Lu Dafang was quickly promoted by Gao Tao and became the deputy minister second only to Wen Yanbo. However, Wen Yanbo, an old minister, couldn't hold it anymore.

It's not because of age and body, if nothing else, this old guy can live for more than ten or twenty years, in history, he has to live until Shao Sheng four years before he dies, this old guy lived to be ninety-one years old.

In the four years that Wen Yanbo and Lu Gongzhu were in power, it can be described as lackluster. In the first year of Yuanyou, a series of new laws promulgated by Wang Anshi were all abolished one after another, but the evil consequences were born.

Since the first year of Yuanyou, the financial revenue of the Great Song Dynasty has been decreasing every year, and the decline is very large. In the first year, the various taxes collected by the central government from various localities were directly reduced by one-fifth.

The reason for this

It's not just the heavy snow disaster on Hedong Road and the drought in the first year of Yuanyou. Snow and drought can indeed lead to a reduction in grain production, and to a certain extent, a reduction in fiscal revenue.

However, there is a deeper reason for this.

The reason why so many people have come forward to oppose the new law promulgated by Wang Anshi is actually because many of those new laws touch the fundamental interests of the northern literati families, Buddhist and Taoist people, military generals, and big merchants.

For example, the Law of the City Trade, the Fangtian Equal Tax Law, the Green Seedlings Law, and the Equal Loss Law have greatly damaged the fundamental interests of these people in power and vested interests.

There is a more important reason, when Wang Anshi implemented the reform, in order to get more help, he led the reform of the imperial examination system, and actually used his own 'new learning' as the foundation of the entrance examination.

This greatly harms the fundamental interests of the conservative faction.

The new law was repealed, and the interests of the gentry and the big families in those places were naturally protected, but the taxes collected by the imperial court would naturally be greatly reduced.

Not to mention anything else, the heavy snowstorm in the eighth year of Yuanfeng indirectly made Wen Yanbo's family completely become the largest landlord in Jiexiu County.

Wen Yanbo was infamous for recommending Zheng Xia to take up his post on Hedong Road, no matter how violent it was, but it did not hinder him at all, and his family took this opportunity to buy land around Jiexiu County.

However, the Wen family's move this time obviously ended in failure.

In Jiexiu County, other families were afraid of the Wen family, and of course they didn't dare to go against the Wen family in this matter. However, except for Jiexiu County, the wealthy gentry and wealthy families in the surrounding state capitals and counties will not sell the face of the Wen family. Moreover, when the small peasants and small landlords who had to sell their land in the disaster year heard that it was the Wen family who had received the land, they would rather sell it to the landlords in their hometown at a low price than to sell it to the Wen family at a high price.

Han Qi's family is dominating Xiangzhou, and after this incident, the Wen family can only sit in Jiexiu County and watch the sky.

After Wen Yanbo learned about this situation, of course he was not happy, and he specially sent one of his protégés to Fenzhou, Taiyuan Prefecture, and became the governor of Fenzhou. tried to let this student use his status as a governor to solve the difficulties of the Wen family, but if any conservative or reformer wants to make a difference in the local area, they must rely on the local gentry to really make a difference.

Those capable officials of the Fa-Changing faction can indeed not care, like Cai Bian and Zhang Dian.

However, the basis of the conservative minister's rule was the support of these local gentry, who were quite welcoming when he first took office, but as soon as he tried these people with his words, the next day he suddenly found himself completely hollowed out.

Even if Zheng Xia, the governor of Taiyuan Prefecture, tried to help Wen Yanbo's student in the back and regain the power of a state. However, his behavior completely angered the local gentry and the officials of the middle faction on the entire Hedong Road.

The judge and the deputy envoy for transport, who had always supported Zheng Xia, changed their faces, which directly led to Zheng Xia's inability to act at all in the next three years. No one else stopped him, what could he do?

Wen Yanbo didn't change his partner for Zheng Xia.

However, who said that there is no factional strife among conservative ministers.

When Cai Qu and Zhang Dian were still there, the conservatives, under the leadership of Sima Guang, were indeed united, because Song Shenzong believed in the people of the Reform Sect, and they had to huddle together to keep warm. However, in the first year of Yuan You, Cai Qu and Zhang Dian were demoted out of Beijing one after another, and Sima Guang died early.

Conservatives are gradually beginning to diverge.

Conservatives can be broadly divided into three factions:

Shuo Dang: Sima Guang, Liu Zhi, Liang Tao, Wang Yansuo, Liu Anshi

Luo Dang: Ercheng, Zhu Guangting, Jia Yi

Shu Party: Su Shi, Su Zhe, Lu Tao, Shangguan Jun

These are the three factions that later generations have summed up.

However, because of Cai Dao, Su Shi and Su Zhe, one was demoted to Hangzhou early, and the other was delayed to Beijing after Song Shenzong's death, which caused Sima Guang to have a misunderstanding, coupled with Su Shi's big mouth, which led to Su Zhe being dismissed from office.

Seeing that Chao Chinese Yanbo and Lu Gongzhu were so domineering, Su Zhi also completely figured it out, after he recovered from his illness, he immediately entered Beijing, and Zhang Shangying also set up a school outside Bianliang City, the big manor bought by Cai Dao.

By the way, that Zhang Tianbei also became Su Zhe's disciple as he wished.

A year later, that is, in the second year of Yuan You, in order to avoid the limelight, Su Zhe resolutely left this school to Zhang Shangying to take care of, and he took Zhang's family and his own family back to his hometown Meixian, preparing to return to his hometown to set up Shu School.

On the one hand, this is Cai Dao's suggestion, because the reputation of the Su brothers is much higher than that of Zhang Shangying, and people outside the court and the opposition can see that the life of the court is very sad now, and Lu Gongzhu is not in good health. The conservatives are already in decline, and they will certainly try to find ways to win over some centrist ministers to share the government with them.

Among the various methods, there is even the position of the prime minister.