The Song Dynasty was beaten so badly by the Liao that it had to call them "brother," and harassed by the Western Xia that it had to pay money every year to ensure its safety. It thought that after destroying the Liao together with the Jin, it could seize the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun and defend the Great Wall. However, it was unexpectedly beaten so badly by the Jin that it questioned its existence.
The most tragic thing is that the entire nation of China was completely stunned. What happened to the Celestial Empire? How could we be so thoroughly humiliated by barbarians?!
Regarding the weakness of the Song Dynasty, even its own people believed it was because the horse-breeding lands in the northwest had been seized by the Western Xia, that damned bastard. The Song Dynasty was unable to develop and strengthen its cavalry, so every time it encountered the Western Xia or the Liao Dynasty, it would be utterly crushed, ground and rubbed against the ground! What should have been a perfectly good march turned into a devil's march!
Zhao Huan, who traveled through time, naturally knew that the Song Dynasty lacked cavalry and was repeatedly defeated. When he arrived in the Southern Song Dynasty, the cowardly Zhao Gou didn't even call him "brother" anymore, but directly called the Jin traitors "father".
In the era of cold weapons, cavalry did indeed have a natural advantage. Whether it was Emperor Wu of Han defeating the Xiongnu and making them call him "grandpa," or the Tang Dynasty's dominance over all sides, the Central Plains dynasties all possessed powerful cavalry.
Later, the monstrous Mongols conquered the world because they had a cavalry force that gave the world a real headache!
Cavalry was a type of military force that existed even during World War I, until tanks and machine guns were deployed on a large scale, which finally made cavalry a thing of the past.
Therefore, cavalry was indispensable if the Song Dynasty was to develop into a powerful empire.
However, cavalry alone is not enough. After all, Zhao Huan is a time traveler, and his vision is much longer than that of people in this era. Before he traveled here, the protagonists in the time travel novels he read were all developing firearms when they returned to ancient times.
Without firearms, even with a strong development of cavalry, it's hard to guarantee that the Song cavalry could defeat the suddenly rising and powerful Mongols a hundred years later.
Some people say we can wipe out the Mongols beforehand and eliminate them completely, but what if, hundreds of years later, the cannons of the Gay Country bombard Guangzhou?
Therefore, no matter what, China still needs to develop firearms.
However, the development of firearms is not something that can be done on a whim. Zhao Huan, a low-level employee in a company, knew nothing about weapons. At most, he could only recall some basic knowledge from his previous life as a keyboard warrior online, which was clearly far from sufficient.
What should we do? We finally became emperor, and we have the manpower and resources of the entire China in our hands. With so many people, we are the richest country on the planet. We can't back down just because it's difficult.
Let's get started first!
How to do it? Of course, the first step is to thoroughly understand what weapons the Song Dynasty currently possesses. At the same time, he has already asked Wang Boyan to compile a report on the entire Song Dynasty's steel production last year.
In addition, he also reviewed last year's fiscal revenue.
The good news was that the Song Dynasty's steel production far exceeded his expectations, which clearly gave it the potential to develop into an industrial nation!
Last year's total steel production reached a staggering 150,000 tons!
In his previous life, Zhao Huan once went to the toilet and forgot to bring toilet paper. There was a world history book on the side, and when he used the book to wipe his bottom, he occasionally glanced at it and saw that in 18th-century England, around 1788, the annual production was only about 70,000 to 80,000 tons!
That's a gay country after the Industrial Revolution!
These steel-making geniuses of the Song Dynasty were already this amazing?
There's good news, but also bad news: the national treasury's funds have reached the warning line!
Damn it! It was all squandered by Zhao Ji and his damned favorites!
Therefore, Zhao Huan faced several challenges: external threats, a financial crisis, and technological advancements.
Of these three points, the element of "culture" is particularly important.
The Song Dynasty was the most prosperous era of Confucian culture. The powerful civil officials led to the weakness of the country, which in turn made it vulnerable to constant external threats.
At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, political corruption also led to a financial crisis.
Because Confucian culture was so powerful, technology was suppressed to some extent.
Therefore, Zhao Huan's goals were clear: to destroy the Confucian establishment, eliminate corrupt scholars, adjust the social and economic structure, develop commercialism, vigorously promote innovation, and invest heavily in research.
It was unknown how long it would take to accomplish all this, but Zhao Huan knew that he needed the support of two forces: the army and the people!
Only by controlling the army can he be unafraid of corrupt scholars and the Confucian establishment; only by gaining the support of the people can he securely remain emperor.
His purpose in doing these things was very simple: to eliminate the border troubles of China at the root!
The course of Chinese history has been incredibly unpredictable. Historically, there have been many opportunities to pursue commercialism and technological advancement, but the rise of foreign enemies has defied all expectations.
Take the Song Dynasty for example. Both commerce and technology were quite advanced, and even the way of governing the country was much more civilized. At least there were no real tyrants. But those guys in the north were just restless. When it got cold, they wanted to come down and rob things.
The developed Southern Song Dynasty had already opened up maritime trade. Once maritime trade was opened, a new ecosystem was opened up. It was a country that might truly move towards commercialism. Unfortunately, it encountered the Mongols, a group of barbarians who had just successfully evolved and had not yet shed their human bestiality!
If there were no Mongols, and if Zhao Gou had simply established the Southern Song Dynasty and exported a large amount of trade to Southeast Asia and Japan and Korea, would the country have become a new commercial power and thus completely shed its traditional agricultural roots?
Once private businessmen accumulate substantial wealth, will they further seek ways to gain power that influences the state?
In short, by the Song Dynasty, Chinese civilization had already experienced a new opportunity for rebirth.
The tax revenue from last year that Zhao Huan was facing totaled 80 million strings of cash, which was eight times the tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty!
Even though the territory of the "Pigtail Kingdom" was so vast and its population had surged to hundreds of millions, the Song Dynasty's tax revenue was actually twice that of the "Pigtail Kingdom"!
What excited Zhao Huan even more was that commercial taxes accounted for 70% of the total, while agriculture only accounted for 30%!
What does this mean? The country's economy relies primarily on commerce; this is the eve of capitalism!
At this point, wouldn't it be enough to reignite the flame of the Renaissance, rekindle the profound and grand cultural concepts of the Hundred Schools of Thought era in China, and then have the imperial court take the lead in developing new industries, thus unleashing tremendous vitality within the country?
With these questions in mind, the imperial entourage arrived at the Arsenal. Led by the Grand Arsenal Supervisor, Zhao Huan visited the Song Dynasty's armory for the first time.
Zhao Huan specifically requested to see the firearms, namely the so-called gunpowder weapons.
The development of firearms in this era was still in a relatively primitive stage. For example, rockets were simply arrows whose heads were ignited and then fired. However, there were also groundbreaking things, such as the most famous thunderclap, which was very similar to the hand grenade of later generations. This surprised Zhao Huan, who realized that the keyboard warriors of that time were not all just fooling people.
"What's that bamboo tube for?"
"Your Majesty, that's called a fire lance, and it's not very effective."
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