Although many things happened in the seventh year of Jianyan, and even Emperor Zhao did everything he could to make ends meet due to the financial hole, and even became ill from exhaustion, those things were more complicated affairs from the perspective of the rulers, which at most made the emperor and the central government officials feel tired and made the top dignitaries feel panic.
For the vast majority of the people of the Song Dynasty south of the Yellow River, even for a considerable number of grassroots officials, and including the hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the imperial camp, this year was undoubtedly a very relaxing and comfortable year.
Because there were no large-scale wars that year.
Putting aside the harassment on the border, the only two places that could be called organized battles were the battle between the Imperial Camp Navy, which had absolute water advantage, and the Jin Navy, which had tentatively emerged from the north, on the Yellow River in the middle of the year, and won a small victory; then after the autumn harvest, Li Yanxian, who received a signal, organized forces out of Zhongtiao Mountain to launch a tentative attack on Hezhong Prefecture, a major town controlled by the Jurchens. The momentum was strong, but after the arrival of the Jurchen Taiyuan reinforcements, they chose to retreat across the board and returned empty-handed.
However, these actions are not worth mentioning at all compared with the large-scale troop deployments of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of troops, the participation of hundreds of thousands or millions of civilians, and the thousands or tens of thousands of casualties in previous years.
In fact, apart from the official gazette, not many people mentioned it.
Even Zhao Jiu himself knew that the purpose of fighting these two battles was more for the sake of fighting itself, which was to tell the world that Song and Jin were still at war, that Song and Jin were irreconcilable, and that they would have to fight sooner or later.
Then according to what this official meant, the fight will have to continue next year, and the scale and frequency will have to be increased.
Han Shizhong, Wu Jie's troops, including part of the imperial camp's central army, will all participate in the battle in Hezhong Prefecture... Shanzhou is located in Pinglu City and Zhongtiao Mountain area north of the Yellow River. It is the only preserved Hebei salient of the Song army. Its position is as important as it can be. Hezhong Prefecture is the natural first landing point for the future Northern Expedition. We must understand it as thoroughly as possible, and large-scale troops must be as skilled as possible in traveling on the Yellow River with different river conditions.
By the same token, due to specific historical reasons, there are many old roads in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River... These old roads are certainly not as wide and smooth as the main roads entering the sea in Shandong, but the problem is that during the summer flood season, they can still allow large ships to pass through them. They are the natural way for the Imperial Camp Navy to try to infiltrate the vicinity of Daming Prefecture, and they are also the direct channels for the Imperial Camp Front Army and the Right Army to reach Hebei in the future. There is also no reason to give up the fight for this complex waterway.
In addition, although the Imperial Camp Navy is in its infancy, it is currently only at the stage of collecting ships and recruiting pirates. Just like Li Qi, the Pseudo-Qi naval general who was taken away by the Jurchens, it is at the level of a jack of all trades...For this reason, a few young officials who advocated the navy to tickle the Jurchens were reprimanded by their more cautious superiors.
Of course, due to a certain superstition developed in later generations, Zhao Jiu did not say it out loud, but he firmly believed in his heart that with his support and the blessing of shipping policies, the Imperial Camp Navy would grow rapidly and become another breakthrough point to the north.
But, the same thing goes... none of this can change the fact that there were no major wars during the entire seventh year of Jianyan.
No war.
Then, although Zhao Ding and Zhang Jun kept making small moves against each other, they generally maintained and presented a period that was probably the most clear-headed political period in the Song Dynasty in the past forty or fifty years.
Then naturally there is a lot of work to be done and the place is full of vitality.
Even Emperor Zhao's brutal military spending campaign did not prevent the great empire from making great strides in its revival.
The political situation became increasingly stable, production gradually recovered, the population began to grow slightly, a baby boom began to appear...even the son of Prime Minister Zhao Ding was said to be looking for a wife.
The speed and scale of this spontaneous healing behavior of the entire society far exceeded the expectations and judgments of politicians.
Before the Imperial College's political study session, the Ministry of Revenue conducted an inspection of the second half of the year based on the thick fiscal proposals it had drawn up, and was surprised to find that the speed of financial recovery was faster than expected.
The collapsed porcelain kilns were rebuilt much faster than expected; small-scale trade markets were spontaneously formed at the transportation hubs next to the burned-down markets; the cities that had been slaughtered and burned quickly regained their glory after a few years of peace... Luoyang and Nanjing (Shangqiu), which were originally wastelands, were the most obvious. In just a few years, they recovered into metropolises with a population of over 100,000.
There is no doubt that Luoyang will continue to recover rapidly, as this city has great potential.
Moreover, fiscal revenue showed that many new things that emerged in many places were not anticipated when they formulated the fiscal proposal at the beginning of the year... The officials of the Ministry of Revenue expressed cautious optimism about the trade in the Western Regions. The existence of the Lanzhou Grand Market was indeed within their consideration, but at the same time, they had no idea about Yinshan Mountain and only regarded it as a pure inflow point for horses.
Come to think of it, the population is only one or two million... maybe there aren't even that many grasslands. Even if the area is larger, what can we say? Can it be as useful as the millions of acres of fertile land in Xingling Plain?
However, it turns out that the commercial taxes collected at Keyi Gate this year alone are a shockingly huge number... It was not obvious in the first half of the year, but starting from the second half of the year, all kinds of strange goods from the entire Guanxi and Bashu will pass through here to the north.
Several doctors and assistant officials of the Ministry of Revenue were beaten to death. They couldn't believe it. How could a place where a king couldn't even support dozens of sons consume so many exquisite porcelains and Shu brocades?
Even the tea leaves and medicinal herbs are a bit too much.
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