In fact, he doesn't want to start a war now.
Because the Song Dynasty has developed rapidly in recent years.
Especially after the introduction of crops such as sweet potatoes, potatoes, corn, and peanuts, productivity has grown explosively.
During the Northern Song Dynasty, the introduction of Champa rice greatly increased productivity, making it easy to feed 100 million or 200 million people, even though food distribution was uneven.
Sweet potatoes, potatoes, corn, and peanuts are the icing on the cake. Unless the Song Dynasty abolishes the head tax and distributes the head tax based on the amount of land, causing a large-scale population growth, these crops are unlikely to become the staple food of the people.
However, the introduction of these things will still greatly increase farmers' grain production. Even if they cannot be used as staple food, they can enrich the dining table and even be used as livestock food to feed chickens, pigs, cows, sheep, etc.
Peanuts can also be used to produce oil.
Therefore, the overall social development and people's lives have definitely improved, solving the problem of food and clothing for a large number of people, allowing them to have a job and not go hungry.
What remains is overall prosperity, which changes the Song Dynasty's wealth level from a pyramid structure to a diamond structure.
This direction is really not easy to achieve in later generations.
So what about the ancient Song Dynasty?
If all goes well, the Song Dynasty will become the Moldy Emperor of future generations, or even stronger than the Moldy Emperor.
As long as the Song Dynasty is given another ten years, it can continue to engage in foreign trade to continuously absorb raw materials from all over the world, process them into commodities for sale, accumulate original capital, and build comprehensive domestic development.
By then, everyone in the Song Dynasty army will have a gun, each army will have artillery, steam locomotive construction, road construction, and infrastructure will continue to emerge.
When Li Yuanhao and Yelu Zongzhen saw the Song Dynasty's muskets, artillery, and Maxim machine guns, they had to call Zhao Zhen "Dad."
It’s a pity that people don’t give them time to develop.
However, even so, Zhao Jun is confident that he can deal with Western Xia and Liao. Liao is difficult to pacify, but the steel production of the Song Dynasty has increased dramatically, so it should not be a problem to destroy Western Xia.
He looked around and said, "Send a message to Hebei right away. The steel is now mainly used to make muskets and artillery, as well as civilian kitchen knives, hoes and other items to increase productivity. These should be put on hold and have them turn their attention to making armor, swords and spears."
"Are you not going to make firearms anymore?"
Wang Zeng asked.
"Firearms are limited by raw materials. Once the gunpowder is gone, the firearm is just a stick. Therefore, the current transition from cold weapons to heated weapons is still the main focus. It will take at least ten years to accumulate gunpowder for the entire army to transform into hot weapons."
Zhao Jun pointed out the problem and said, "Steel cold weapons and armor already put us significantly ahead of Xixia and Liao. Aside from the firearms battalion, the rest of the troops should use steel weapons. This year, we'll focus on defensive counterattacks. My request is simple: Xixia must be annihilated next year."
"Um."
Everyone thought there was no problem, so they nodded.
Zhao Jun and his team immediately began to discuss the specific plan and would go to Zhao Zhen in the afternoon to confirm it.
In this way, subordinates can raise problems and solve them, which makes Zhao Zhen, the boss, much more relaxed. He only needs to give orders and let Fan Zhongyan lead the troops to Hebei.
However, at 12:00 noon, they hadn't eaten yet and were still discussing foreign war strategies when Zhang Kang, the deputy privy councilor, rushed in and said, "Report!"
He still retained his military habits.
Fan Zhongyan glanced at the door and asked, "What happened?"
"Six hundred miles in a hurry, Xixia was repelled."
Zhang Kang walked in and said.
Li Yuanhao attacked Lanzhou on August 30th and was repelled by Wang Shiyun using a small cannon.
Then they attacked again on September 2nd, but Zeng Yong and Zhang Wenwu, with their firearms battalion musket team and protecting Wang Shiyun's small cannon, defeated the rear army of the Western Xia army, leading to the complete collapse and defeat of the Western Xia army.
Under normal circumstances, it is more than 1,100 kilometers from Lanzhou to Kaifeng. If you travel 800 miles at an expedited speed, which means 400 kilometers per day, it will take about two or three days to arrive.
However, the situation in Guweizhai was not sent directly from Guweizhai to Bianliang, but needed to be reported from Guweizhai to Qinfeng Road first.
It took several days for the information to reach the Qinfeng Road Governor after it was submitted through various levels. He had to immediately send someone to investigate the situation. The back and forth naturally delayed him for a few more days.
So after the news was confirmed, Qinfeng Road was about to mobilize troops and send a report to Bianliang immediately, which resulted in Bianliang not learning the news until twelve days later.
However, there were two days between the start of the fight and the defeat, which basically happened at the same time. This was related to the speed of reporting from Guwei Village. So Qinfeng Road had just reported the news of the start of the fight when Guwei Village immediately reported the news of the defeat. They had no choice but to issue a new document.
"What exactly is going on?"
When everyone heard Zhang Kang say that the Western Xia had been repelled, they became curious.
The Western Xia attacked Lanzhou. They didn't deploy any troops on the Lanzhou border, so how did they defeat the Western Xia so easily?
Zhang Kang laughed and said, "When Sun Guangyi, the chief officer of the Guwei Village, was leading his troops to rescue Lanzhou, he happened to encounter two firearms battalions that were garrisoned in Huining. He brought them over to join the battle, and unexpectedly, it worked wonders."
Then he recounted how the firearms battalion protected the small steel cannon team, and how the Song army used the small steel cannons to destroy the rear defense line of the Western Xia army, resulting in a large-scale rout of the Western Xia army.
After hearing this, everyone burst into laughter. Lü Yijian laughed and said, "Yuan Hao is truly vulnerable. An army of tens of thousands was actually defeated by a few thousand people."
"Han Long often said that Sun Quan was Sun Shiwan and Zhang Liao was Zhang Babai. It seems that Yuan Hao is no different from Sun Quan. We also have our own Babai."
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