The Khitan envoy only mentioned one thing, there were doubts on the border, and asked the two countries to re-examine it.

In just one sentence, all the monarchs and ministers looked at each other, and they thought of a lot.

Zheng Lang didn't speak, just stared at the four messengers.

When the four envoys saw Zheng Lang's vision, they were all a little weak-hearted, one was Zheng Lang's fame, and the second was the relationship between Zheng Lang and his own emperor. What they are worried about is what they have seen and heard along the way, the Khitan took the opportunity to blackmail, the Song Dynasty used soldiers in Hehuang, it was a use of soldiers, there were very few available soldiers, only more than 20,000 people, for a huge Song army of more than 1 million, what is 20,000 people?

The second is the catastrophe.

But what they see is not what they think.

The catastrophe is serious, but how many years has Zheng Lang prepared? Even since the year before, controversial reforms have been automatically stopped.

Let's talk about personnel first, personnel is very important, let the imperial court organize disaster relief, corruption is indispensable. However, there is another group, the number of officials, the number of officials has gradually declined over the years, and it is impossible to solve it, when there are many officials, it is the later years of Renzong, and Yingzong has reached its peak, that is, these officials are mainly in their thirties and forties, and they want to have few officials, so they must maintain the current good system, and it will take thirty years for the entire number of officials to become healthy. It can only be said that it is less, but once the temple sacrifice and two imperial examinations, many officials have come in again. Officials not only have no power, but also no money, and the income of the two is four times worse.

According to the normal procedure, the imperial court can only move out seven or eight hundred officials a year, so what year will it take? Therefore, the relationship between the official and the errand official is actually antagonistic, unless there is someone in the family. To put it nicely, this is called grinding, long insight. To put it mildly, this is called fighting poison with poison.

Therefore, it is not the common people who are most eager for the demotion and dismissal of officials. Nor is it the imperial court. After a few years of restructuring of the imperial court, the number of officials has stabilized, but it will not be managed, and this group is the official position.

Zheng Lang put down thousands of officials. It is called grinding and surveying, and the training is to raise and make up for the que, but it is actually to supervise each other, and some of the supervision organizations arrange the disaster victims. Some of them were used to supervise the construction of roads and water conservancy, and in the end, most of them were arranged to be arranged in various prefectures and counties, called study, and actually supervised the officials of various prefectures and counties, mainly food and various disaster relief materials.

The law is also very cool, real killing, just a few years ago, more than 30 people were killed, and about 200 people were dismissed and exiled. But at this time, there was no suspicion, and the catastrophe came. They will starve to death, and they will be greedy and filthy. Don't kill when to stay.

There is corruption, and the collusion between officials and businessmen for personal gain, but it is not very serious.

Zheng Lang attaches the most importance to personnel, but it is Wang Anshi's most negligent place, no matter how good the reform is, it still needs people to implement, without a good officialdom atmosphere, Wang Anshi's IQ is as high as 300, and he cannot lead the Song Dynasty to reform successfully. That's it, if 80 to 8 percent can be used for disaster relief and food price control, Zheng Lang is thankful. Zheng Lang is not angry about this, this is in the Song Dynasty, it is even better, if it is in the Ming and Qing dynasties, there can only be fifty or sixty percent at most, and the serious ones are less than twenty percent for the victims, as for the rest, God knows which person's pocket.

People solve it, and then solve the victims.

Not everyone is willing to leave their homes, after a few years of great governance, many families can still get by, and they are not willing to build everywhere with the imperial court, and those who have their own grain are better, and those who do not have grain storage have to buy them with money. In particular, the scale of urbanization has expanded, and urban residents have to rely on food to get by.

This problem seems to be very difficult, but Zheng Lang thought of a stupid way, no matter who buys it, each person is limited to two liters, and it will be distributed in front of the county offices, it doesn't matter how many times a day you buy it, but you can't forcibly cut the line. Violators will be punished with 50 lashes and 100 canes, and the county government will be flogged on the spot.

What should we do, and if we talk about distribution according to households, or distribution according to households, can we distribute them fairly?

This stupid method was solved, the imperial court was cheap grain, and there were many people in line, and some people queued up from morning to afternoon to buy once. It is that the businessman is greedy for this price difference, can he hire people, can he afford to hire people, if he is lucky, he can buy one bucket a day, and if he is not good, he can only buy back two liters and four liters, and the difference is far from enough to pay wages.

As a result, it has played a positive role in stabilizing food prices.

This is very important, in fact, if a large country, not only the national warehouse, but also the grain merchants and big landlords have a lot of grain in their hands, it is said that there is no large amount of grain in the wine business in various places. Unless there is a drought for three or five years, it will be a drought in Xining, even if Jiangdongwei is not like now, Liangjing and Liangguang have not been developed, and farmland and water conservancy have not been implemented for a few years, if everyone's grain is accumulated, the difference will not be much. The main reason is that the merchants are hoarding more and more in the disaster, so the price of grain is getting higher and higher.

Wang Anshi did a good job in history, the price of rice in the capital was only 150 wen in the seventh year of Xining, and when I think about Renzong, the price of rice in Jiangnan has risen to 6,000 wen per stone, what is this price? This is the credit of the Standing Closing and Shipping Division.

It was at this price that the imperial court also transferred rice from all over the country, and the price of 100 meters was supplied to the people of the capital, and finally it was reduced by 10 Wen. With such a big drought, it is not easy to achieve this step, but unfortunately Sima Guang, Wen Yanbo, Zheng Xia and Han Qi can't see it.

However, this is the capital, the center of gravity of the country, and other places are still very miserable, many areas in Hebei have risen to more than 300 Wen, more than 400 Wen, Hedong has risen to more than 400 Wen, 500 Wen and even 6700 Wen, Shaanxi has been unimaginable. This has led to the displacement of people everywhere, there is no way, the country's financial resources are so large, who would have thought that such a sudden catastrophe would occur. is still under Wang Anshi's organization, which is much better than when Ming Dao was in the past. It's not easy.

Zheng Lang didn't know how much the price of grain would rise in the future, but on New Year's Day, the price of rice in the capital was only 70 Wen, the price of wheat was 40 Wen, and the price of millet was 20 Wen. Helplessly, wheat millet is cheap and the most prepared. Hebei has an average of only 90 wen, 50 wen, 20 wen, plus a freight, millet is produced locally, the price has not changed. Hedong is 100 Wen, 50 Wen, 20 Wen. Such a catastrophe is not as expensive as the price of food when the emperor was in power. Therefore, the people do not complain, and there are very few displaced people.

There are also poor peasants, who can only maintain food and clothing in good years, such a great drought, next year's summer harvest will definitely be gone, and they have to obey the command of the imperial court and come out to work for relief. However, the imperial court also did a very humane job, erecting workshops, distributing supplies, and sending some charcoal for roasting. There are even a few families with large livestock, which are gathered together and marked. Someone to watch over it. If something goes wrong with the livestock. Compensation will be made at the price later. However, the imperial court did not take over, this time the imperial court did too carefully, and the charity association did not know how to intervene to help, so it took over this piece. Do good deeds for the victims. Then he hired some doctors to go to various construction sites to treat the people. Of course, it also saved an expense for the imperial court.

The four messengers made their way south. Look closely.

What they saw was not what they thought at all, there were still a large number of people left in the states and counties, and it seemed that the fields outside were dry, but they were smiling, as if there was no drought. I also saw some displaced people, who were even more reluctant to slaughter large livestock, but they left their homes, and there were still some pigs, chickens and ducks at home, and no one took care of them. There was no way to take it away, so he killed. Cover the stain with salt and load it on the trolley. You can't take away the bulky furniture, but some of the quilts accumulated over the years, including cotton clothes and quilts, can be taken away. The imperial court has also organized many labor relief, especially in the north, where there are many disasters, and many people have experience and are calm. Even while killing pigs, he was talking and laughing. Then he was pulled by a small cart and followed the officials on the road. The four messengers were amazed when they saw it, was this an escape from the famine or a visit to their relatives?

The four of them went all the way south, in fact, it may not be so good, and when the catastrophe comes, there will definitely be some bad human tragedies, which is unavoidable. It can only be said that in the face of such a catastrophe, a country can still maintain the current daylight, and it cannot be said that there is no one who will come after it, but it has almost reached a realm that has never been seen before. However, it was definitely not what the four messengers could see, so they went all the way south, and the more they looked, the more frightened they became.

In this regard, almost the whole country exclaimed.

But I didn't see another more hidden situation, that is, under Zheng Lang's perverted brain organization, the whole country is now becoming more and more like a machine, no matter what you do, as long as Zheng Lang intervenes, it will immediately become a machine that runs precisely and efficiently.

After the streamlining of the army and the restructuring of the government, more than six years of governance, even if it was a catastrophe, could not stop this machine from taking the Song Dynasty to start running in great strides.

The four messengers could not see it either.

But know who all this came about.

Thinking about all the rumors they had heard before, when they saw Zheng Lang looking at them, they were weak and scared in their hearts, and they didn't dare to look at them directly.

However, to their surprise, Zheng Lang did not express his position from beginning to end.

But others didn't think so, the Khitan made it clear that they were here to blackmail, promised to lose power and humiliate the country, the covenant was broken again and again, and finally the Khitan was insatiable and his appetite became bigger and bigger. If you don't agree, it is very likely to join forces with Western Xia and Tubo to attack the Song Dynasty.

Then the sky fell.

The envoy retreated, but the monarch and the ministers did not leave, and they all looked at Zheng Lang one by one.

Zheng Lang has been in power for decades, and most of the time he was the biggest and bravest firefighter for the Song Dynasty, and he stayed in the Khitan for more than a year. It's just a matter of looking at him.

Zheng Lang smiled and said, "Your Majesty, all the ministers, I only want to say two things. The first of the two things that happened in the Liao State was several wars in the Liao State since the Yelu Chongyuan Rebellion, and in the second year of Xining, the Liao Minister Yelu Zhixun instigated the rebellion of the Junnbu tribe in the north, and the Liao State took a lot of strength to suppress it. In the same year, the Five Kingdoms rebelled again, and the Liao State used the royal family's Huluduo (the most elite Khitan Praetorian Guard), and it took a lot of effort to suppress it. One thing I want to make clear is that in the past, there were rebellions in the northern Khitan region, but the central army was not used, let alone Hanluduo. Looking at my rebellion in the south, the scale of Nong Zhigao's rebellion was far greater than that of the Five Kingdoms, and when Di Qing went south, he only used a few thousand horsemen. In the fourth year of Xining, there was a heavy snowstorm in the north of Liao and a severe drought in the south. In the fifth year of Xining, Wugu Enemy Lie established himself as emperor again, and it took almost half a year for the Khitan to suppress it, and in the same year, the whole country was again famine. It may not have been as severe as the disaster I had brought to this disaster, but many people died of starvation. ”

Everyone smiled together.

There is Zheng Lang's credit, and there is also their credit. Nine times out of ten, the handling of this disaster can be remembered in the annals of history as a monument, and the state and county officials will certainly not be recorded in the annals of history, but one of them is indispensable. At this point, power and money have almost reached their peak, and there are only some small party struggles, so they attach more importance to a name.

"It was also in this year that there was another great famine in Liao, and although locusts flew south last year, Liaoguo was somewhat affected. If there is no siege of Western Xia, Your Majesty, all the ministers, even if our two countries meet face to face, the combat effectiveness of our army will not be weaker than that of the Khitan. even dared to say that if you use the coach well, you are already slightly better than the Khitan. I would like to share with you the good news that the second type of artillery has been successfully developed. ”

"Oh," everyone was pleasantly surprised.

There was a strange phenomenon in the Song Dynasty, and all dynasties were very happy. But in the Song Dynasty it was the opposite. In order to reconcile and suppress the generals. Great victories are often hidden, but great defeats are widely reported, and in the end, even the master is not very confident. The soldiers can't do it, so they have to desperately develop weapons.

"Zheng Gong. Take me to test the gun. ”

"Your Majesty, weapons are not the only ones, the main thing is soldiers, if Your Majesty looks at the cannons, you can. And listen to the minister's words. ”

It's the kind of Furlong cannon, Zheng Lang wants to make it progress and leap, but it becomes a trend that the speed is not reached, and finally lowers the requirements, which is successfully developed, and the power and size are equal to the Furlong cannon, so Zheng Lang doesn't like it very much.

Compared with the red-coated cannon, it has a limited range, with an effective range of only five or six hundred meters, which is only half the distance of the Divine Arm Bow. In addition, the lethality is not stronger than the smaller and more mobile Tiger Squat Cannon, but it is still powerful if it is used to fire shotguns. However, shotgun technology has not kept up. Of course, it also has advantages, the weight is still not very high, the big one is two hundred catties, a small car will push away, the light one is only a few dozen catties, a horse will be carried away, and at the same time equipped with bullets, the firing speed is faster, and one minute can fire three or four shells. That is, with the speed of the cavalry, it is enough to fire five shells within the effective range before the enemy cavalry comes to kill in front of them. In addition, the process is simple, not easy to blow up, and the technical requirements for the operation of the soldiers are very low.

Large-scale army group operations, or used to siege and defend cities, it is better to have red-coated artillery. It may not be useful to fight with the Tibetans, but to fight with the Western Xia and Khitans, you must master the trump card of the red-coated cannon.

"The minister said the second thing, the lord of Liao likes hunting, good Buddha, he has a horse, named Feidian, it is said that he can gallop a hundred miles in the blink of an eye, because the horse is too fast, the guards often can't keep up, so they have to look for the emperor of Liao everywhere in the deep mountains and ravines. But this time it was not the Liao lord who made trouble, he was too late to play, and the abacus was hit on our Song Dynasty. It was about another man, Jereuzin, who came from a very poor birth, and was the child of a shepherd. Of course, a person's background does not mean anything, Fan Zhongyan was born even poorer, but he is a world-class minister. Guan Jian is his superior, and his form of superiority is exactly the same as Li Linfu, because he is obedient to the Liao lord everywhere, so he is loved by the Liao lord, and the Liao lord travels in the mountains and rivers and does not like national politics, so he gradually handed over the national politics to this person. Now, this person is holding the country's major politics, brutally harming the loyal and good, and his power is almost heavenly. It was not enough to hold authority in the country, and when he saw that my dynasty was in difficulty, he beat it to my dynasty again. But what did this gentleman and minister, Your Majesty, think? ”

"The Emperor of the Tang Dynasty and Li Linfu."

"Your Majesty, Nakaya." Zheng Lang sighed slightly. Because I thought of a girl, who was still a little girl in the past, Zheng Lang has not yet reached this point, what thoughts do he have about a little girl, but now that he is getting older, he will not think about it. But in the end, there are some feelings, and soon this little young woman will die tragically. Suddenly, his eyes lit up, and he said: "But the situation is definitely not very favorable to our dynasty, if you want to run Hehuang, and you have to be distracted by the drought, if the Khitan is not treacherous, the Liang family will inevitably intervene, although our dynasty is not afraid, but the four sides are at war, and the good national government will inevitably be corrupted." Alas, if there were not so many things, the debt would have been repaid in three or four years. Therefore, the longer the time drags on, the better it will be for our dynasty. There are two ways to deal with it, the first is to pretend to be deaf and dumb, and drag it out as long as possible. The second is to back down a little. But everyone, think about how our dynasty treats the Khitan, in order to seek peace, when the Khitan disaster comes, I will let them come and eat, and after the disaster, we will send the victims back as much. The hatred of falling into the well, as well as the huge annual 500,000-year-old Na, Lan Yuan is humiliated, if he doesn't remember, he is ashamed of Song Chen. ”

"Yes," Zhao said through gritted teeth.

Zheng Lang further comforted everyone, made another joke, and said: "Everyone, I am pretending to be deaf and dumb now, the Khitan will not let it go, and will soon further force me to express my position in the court, but who has the ability to fight with the Khitan, take the initiative to stand up and fight with the Khitan for me, the longer the better, it is best to drag it out until the end of the river and drought." At that time, even if I made a big stride, the Khitan might not dare to accept it. ”

Fu Bi, Zhang Fangping and several old ministers laughed and scolded together.

can be a joke, so that everyone's pressure is immediately relaxed.

Then watch the guns.

The Khitan envoy returned, and good news came from the southwest.

From the Sanjiangkou (Minjiang, Jinsha and Yangtze rivers) in later generations, that is, Wuliangye Distillery and Cuiping Mountain to the south of Luzhou, it was called Luzhou Man, or Luzhou Yi, which was one of the most difficult areas to control in the Song Dynasty. Su Dongpo personally made a good friend for him, the hero Chaogu in the TV series Su Dongpo, Chaogu has a friend who is Han Cunbao, a brave general of the Song Dynasty, who was not defeated by Tubo and Western Xia, but he fell here.

It's not that it's poor here. Opposite. Zheng Langdian sells the so-called manor. It is nothing more than to let these large households make use of sufficient funds to establish a good specimen of three-dimensional agricultural operation in the north. In fact, there has long been an advanced three-dimensional agricultural production model here, where rice is planted in the valley, and cattle and horses, pigs and sheep are raised on the slopes. Livestock manure in turn increases the rice harvest. The only thing that is missing is the lack of people to plant alfalfa and other fodder. Therefore, the people in this area were very wealthy, and a soldier would report that there was a village with ten thousand acres of fertile land. There are many valleys, and their forests are hundreds of miles away. It is impossible to have 10,000 hectares of fertile land, Wang Shao has tossed for a few years, if the two states of Qinwei are only tossed out of 8,000 hectares of cultivated land, then there can be 10,000 hectares of fertile land. But it shows that this village has a large piece of arable land. And the level of civilization is also very high.

Originally, according to this form, it was best managed, but there was an output here, which led to a serious contradiction, Shioi!

Luzhou Yanjing is very famous. Therefore, the Han Yi fought for it.

It is very easy to explain that the imperial court is fighting for this salt well, one is to collect money. The second is control. Just like Nanjiangman, they levied money for tolls, not only harming the people, but also because they had money in their hands, they could raise some private soldiers, and their strength became stronger and stronger, and the government became more and more difficult to control. In the end, you can only break the net.

The intentions are good, but the execution is not the same thing. Just like Wang Anshi, the intention of that article is not good, and the intention of the Qingmiao Law is not good, but it will be different if it is implemented. The local officials carried out not to weaken the big chieftain, but mostly to collect money, so they seized more civilian salt wells, so that "from the official to sell the well, I lost the business of selling the grass, and made me nano fold the grass, so I gathered the people." "Exaggeration, the imperial court dares to force the barbarians to this step? However, something bad must have happened, and some ambitious chieftains instigated it, so there was a rebellion.

This can still be a little sympathetic, and in fact, the imperial court has repeatedly issued edicts to ease the people. The key is that some officials dare not act after they arrive, and some of them are becoming more and more bold. Last year, there were two Luzhou chiefs, one was called Yanzi, not the Yanzi of the Spring and Autumn Period, and the other was called Axe Wang. These two united the six surnames outside the mountains and the twenty-four surnames of Naxi, Shengyi, and invaded the interior from the Huaijiang River. This approach is very unreasonable, if the government is not good, killing the official is, why harm the innocent people.

The imperial court had no choice but to transfer Kumamoto to quell the rebellion.

Kumamoto was not in a hurry after coming to Luzhou, but sent someone to inquire about the specific situation. Then I learned that the reason why the Luzhou barbarians dared to invade was that there were twelve villages outside the well where the people were bought by the barbarians. Kumamoto made an excuse and gathered them together, and the guards with knives suddenly surrounded them and killed them one by one. More than 100 heads hung by the water, and the rest of the troops were frightened and pledged their allegiance. When a friend comes, there is wine, and when an enemy comes, there are knives and guns, and it is easy to be loyal and obedient, and he will be knighted immediately. Grace is not good, the more grace it is, the easier it is to raise white-eyed wolves, and Wei is also not good, often leaving the scar of hatred. But when grace and power are combined, the power immediately increases. Receiving the allegiance of the tribes, Kumamoto immediately gathered the local nineteen strong armed forces, plus the imperial army, and took the generals Wang Xuan and Jia Changyan to the south to crusade against the powerful Ke Yin, who had always been dissatisfied.

The two armies fought at Huangge, and Ke Yin soon knew why there was the idiom of Yelang arrogance, and he was defeated in the first battle. But it doesn't matter, if you are defeated, there are deep mountains and old forests, and you will flee with your legs. But it's wrong again, the Song army is not the Song army of decades ago, on the contrary, very early, since Zheng Lang crusaded against Zhang Hai, he has been training this mountain climber. Compared with climbing mountains, than drilling forests, everyone compares, Ke Yin drills deep mountains, drills old forests, goes up the mountains, and goes down to the big river, but no matter how he jumps, the Song army behind him has not been left behind.

was almost chased crazy by the Song army, and finally cried, I won't run away, uncles, don't chase you. He went out and offered all the people, the land, the treasures, the cattle and the horses. said that he really didn't fight, but Huang Ge fought a battle, and then he chased it. But this kind of crazy chase made Yan Zi and Axe Wangshu completely disappointed. Axe Wangshu came forward to surrender on behalf of the two, and sent his son to Kumamoto as a petty official, but he was actually a hostage. As soon as the two of them fell, they brought Shujing, Changning, Wuman, Luo's ghost lord and other departments to descend together. Fan Bailu presided over the oath, and all the clans were always Han official slaves, and the oath was engraved into a stone tablet and stood in Wuning. But then let Zheng Lang change, and the clans will always be the people of the Great Song Dynasty, not the Han official slaves.

Kumamoto returned to the court, this battle was fought beautifully, only tens of thousands of dollars were used, and not many people died, so Zhao Ji said: "Qing will not hurt the money, will not harm the people, once it will be a hundred years of trouble." "Awarded Kumamoto the rank of three-rank official. It is said that the mouth is leaking, the great disaster is coming, and there is the river, and the money is used everywhere, and the wealth is put in front of the people.

In fact, it is far from being called a plague of the past century. As long as this salt well dispute still exists, there will be no time for Luzhouman to calm down.

And there is an even worse incident to come.

Before this happened, Zheng Lang made further arrangements. for soon he will go down......

The disaster became more and more serious, and finally the victims who fled the famine increased, so the imperial court organized the victims to go further south, first the passage between Danshui and Luoshui, not a waterway, with this ability, there is no water source, but a dry road, which is not easy, if there is no explosives, just the reckless Bear's Ears Mountain has become an insurmountable moat. However, the significance of communicating this road is not trivial, and there are only more than 300 miles of road, and since then, goods from the Han River valley can be transported to the capital in a steady stream of shortcuts. As soon as these two roads were built, Danshui became extremely important. However, it is not to open up the upstream, the amount of work is not trivial, large-scale navigation, must set up a plank road for the slender man to pull the fiber, in the dry period of winter, but also with explosives to blow up some reefs, so that navigation does not produce hidden dangers, as well as some local areas to strengthen the embankment, widen and so on. These are the two main roads on the west side, as well as the main road to the southeast. By the way, the official road from Caizhou to Gwangju and Huangzhou, and some valuable goods from Liangguang and Jingnan as well as Jiangnan West Road can be used to reach the Dajiang River, and then transported to the capital by the Huangzhou dry road in the fastest time, instead of going around to Yangzhou, Jiangning, and going around in a big circle before entering Beijing from Bianshui.

In the past, Zhou Xin and Tian Yu were worried that the increasing weight of the south would be detrimental to the status of the capital and the rule of the country.

The construction of these roads and water conservancy projects is not only to prosper the north, but also to consolidate the status of the capital.

Anyway, since the beginning of spring, there have been more and more victims, and finally almost reached nearly 10 million victims.

After the arrangement, Zheng Lang proposed one thing, something that had worried him for a long time. (To be continued.) )