In November of the eighth year of the Qingli period of the Song Dynasty, the news of the destruction of Western Xia spread rapidly with the publicity of newspapers.

For a time, the whole country was jubilant, even happier than when the Liao Kingdom was destroyed.

The reason is that although the Liao Kingdom bullied the Song Dynasty, it had not gone to war with the Song Dynasty for more than 40 years after the Treaty of Chanyuan.

On the contrary, it was the Western Xia that frequently invaded the border, although there were no major battles before the Song-Xia War officially began.

However, small-scale looting never stopped. The two sides had too many clashes around the border area, causing heavy casualties to the Song army on the border.

In addition, during the Baoyuan period, the Western Xia launched a full-scale invasion war.

Therefore, under the premise that they had been at peace with the Liao Kingdom for a long time, they fought with the Western Xia from time to time, and the Western Xia took the initiative to attack them.

The people of the Song Dynasty only heard and received information about the affairs of Western Xia, and they hated the Western bandits to the core.

In addition to destroying the Western Xia, the Song Dynasty occupied a large amount of territory. The Song army continued to move north and captured large tracts of land in the Hetao and Yinshan areas.

When the Song Dynasty recovered the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, it also conquered part of the Liao territory. Now it has occupied tens of thousands of square meters of the Hetao Plain, continuing to expand its territory.

The news was passed back to the Constitutional Court, and Zhao Jun took out a map and began to compare the current territory of the Song Dynasty.

It was still snowing heavily outside, but it was very warm inside.

Honeycomb coal was burning in the heating table, and the smoke was discharged outside the house through the pipe. Several prime ministers were writing official documents around the heating table.

There was a plush blanket on the table. Zhao Jun covered his feet with the blanket and looked at the map.

"Hanlong, what are you doing?"

Yan Shu saw that Zhao Jun had just finished reading an official document and had been looking at a map. He asked curiously, "What's so interesting about a map?"

"I'm looking at how big our Song Dynasty's territory is now."

Zhao Jun used a thick pencil to draw a few circles on the map. Compared with a brush, a pencil is more convenient to use.

This thing doesn't require much technical content. It was invented by the Germans in the 17th century before the Industrial Revolution. It was also produced after the Song Dynasty entered industrialization.

But it was not made until recently because Zhao Jun had always thought that the raw material of this thing was lead, but he didn't know it was graphite.

I asked the factory to conduct research and development, but using lead was not feasible. Finally, after trying many materials, I found the main body.

"Have you figured it out?"

Song Shou asked with a smile.

"Well, about 3.8 million square kilometers."

Zhao Jun also said with a smile.

"You can calculate this?"

Everyone was surprised.

The ancients had no idea about these things.

Due to limited transportation and the lack of a concrete map of China, they don't even know how big their country is.

In ancient times, wherever the army conquered and ruled, those places would become territories.

As for how many miles it is, it is purely an estimate.

For example, during the Tang Dynasty, the King of Gaochang said that his Gaochang Kingdom was 8,000 miles away from Chang'an and the Tang army could not defeat it at all.

But the actual distance was 2,000 kilometers, and then he was captured by the Tang army.

Although Zhao Jun brought them a map, they still found it difficult to make an abstract thing concrete.

"It's quite simple, just a rough estimate will do. I'm pretty good at geography, so I roughly know the area of ​​each province."

Zhao Jun pointed to the Western Regions and said, "For example, Xinjiang is about 1.6 million square kilometers, Tibet seems to be 1.2 million. Subtract Qinghai, Yunnan and Guizhou, the three northeastern provinces, and Inner Mongolia, and add the areas of Western Xia, the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, and part of Liaoning Province, and you have about the same area."

He had previously calculated on a piece of scratch paper that the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun were approximately 120,000 square kilometers, while Western Xia had not yet reached its peak at that time, and its area was approximately 700,000 square kilometers.

Then it controlled most of Liaoning Province, one of the three northeastern provinces in later generations, about 100,000 square kilometers.

Together with the captured territories of Xijing Road and Zhongjing Road of Liao Dynasty, as well as the bottom of Hehuang Valley, it is about 70,000 to 80,000 square kilometers.

All in all, the Song Dynasty expanded its territory by about 1.1 million square kilometers over the years, and its total area should be around 3.9 million square kilometers.

Don't think there are few of these places.

In fact, this was the traditional area of ​​the headquarters after excluding the Western Regions during the Han Dynasty.

Because according to later calculations, excluding the Western Regions, the area of ​​the Central Plains during the Han Dynasty was approximately 4.11 million to 4.2 million square kilometers.

The missing 200,000 to 300,000 square kilometers does not cover the entire Yunnan province, but the area from Guizhou to the northern part of Yunnan.

During the Han Dynasty, this southwestern area was the Ailao Kingdom. It was not incorporated into the Han Dynasty until the Eastern Han Dynasty. The Eastern Han Dynasty lacked the territory south of the desert that it had during the Western Han Dynasty. The increase and decrease basically hovered around 10,000 square kilometers.

Therefore, if the Song Dynasty attacks Dali and takes over the Western Regions, then the current Song Dynasty has basically restored the peak territory of the Han Dynasty, or even surpassed it.

As for my country's 9.6 million square kilometers in later generations, after subtracting 3.9 million square kilometers, where did the remaining approximately 6 million square kilometers go?

It's very simple.

The Western Regions alone covered 1.6 million square kilometers, and then there was the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which later became Tibet, covering 1.2 million square kilometers.

Then Inner Mongolia has about 1.2 million people, the three northeastern provinces have about 800,000, and the Song Dynasty has about 100,000 people in Liaoning Province, minus another 700,000. Finally, add Qinghai and Yunnan and Guizhou regions together for 1.2 million, and the total is exactly 6 million.

"It's a great honor to have so much more territory."

When the prime ministers heard Zhao Jun say that so much land had been added in recent years, they all smiled, but they were not too excited.

My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It will be even more exciting later!