In the Song Dynasty, there was no law. Chapter 288 of the main text of the Song Dynasty: Arms Race with Liao. In the fifth year of the Qingli period, with Li Yuanhao's humiliating defeat, the Liao Dynasty's attempt came to an end.
Yelu Zongzhen was shocked by the power of the Song people's firearms and ultimately did not dare to act rashly.
In fact, the early muskets were not superior to cold weapons. The early smoothbore matchlock guns had disadvantages such as slow firing rate, short range, easy explosion, and poor accuracy.
But Zhao Jun knew the defects of the early smoothbore matchlock rifle, so he did not go for that thing at the beginning. Instead, he went directly for the best musket in the black powder era, the rifled flintlock rifle.
With the fixed Minié bullet and the rifling to stabilize the bullet, this design has reached the pinnacle of the musket era. Before the invention of the fulminate of mercury percussion cap, which turned the musket into a rifle, the rifled flintlock represented the highest level that could be achieved at that time.
In the Napoleonic era, flintlock rifles did not suppress heavy cavalry, especially in France. The infantry groups had basically popularized flintlock rifles and artillery, but there were still a large number of heavy cavalry in Napoleon's army.
However, that was because their cavalry in the Napoleonic era had all undergone special training. They not only had explosion training to prevent the horses from being frightened by the loud noise, but also fire training to prevent the horses from panicking when they saw the flames from the muskets.
There is a solution for cavalrymen who really don't have time or are not well trained, which is to blindfold the horses.
Such a formation of heavy cavalry phalanxes can still pose a threat to the musketeer phalanxes that have not yet formed complete fire suppression when charging.
In addition, the firearms of the Napoleonic era were not rifled flintlock rifles that used Minié bullets, but smoothbore flintlock rifles. The Minié bullet was not invented by the British until three years after Napoleon's death.
So, to sum up, cavalry was not incapable of fighting muskets. It wasn't until World War I, with the widespread use of armored cars and the Maxim, that cavalry was completely eliminated.
But at least Yelu Zongzhen certainly had no way to deal with the Song Dynasty's muskets.
He did not train his cavalry in fire and explosion prevention to prevent the horses from being spooked, nor did he organize a group of heavy cavalry specifically to deal with muskets - his leather room army was still mainly equipped with leather armor, which could not prevent bullets from penetrating.
This meant that using light cavalry to fight against the Song Dynasty's musket team was no different from committing suicide.
Li Yuanhao is an example.
His Iron Harriers were actually also a heavy cavalry unit, but they did not wear full body armor like in the Napoleonic era. Instead, they only wore armor on the upper body, and their horses had no armor either.
As a result, they encountered a thousand-man musket squad of the Song army, three thousand Iron Harriers and about ten thousand ordinary light cavalry, and were defeated. The artillery shells and the flames from the muskets frightened the horses and they ran around before the cavalry could get close.
Therefore, after seeing Li Yuanhao's disastrous defeat, Yelu Zongzhen knew that it was not a good choice to go south to attack the Song Dynasty, at least before he found a way to guard against the Song Dynasty's muskets, or made a batch of muskets himself.
Although Li Yuanhao suffered heavy losses, it was not too bad because the Liao Kingdom gave him a lot of things to make up for the losses of the expedition and the compensation.
Compared to the massive Liao and Song dynasties, the Western Xia was still too small. The Liao and Song dynasties could easily squeeze out some of the supplies that flowed through their fingers, so the Western Xia wouldn't be seriously injured by this incident.
But this was a huge blow to the political and military of Western Xia.
The Dangxiang tribe had been accustomed to being a vassal state of the Liao and Song dynasties since the time of Li Jiqian. After being defeated by the Song dynasty several times in a row, their morale was inherently inferior to that of the Song people, and the noble leaders were unwilling to fight with the Song dynasty again.
The pro-war Zhang Yuan was killed again as a gift to appease the anger of the Song Dynasty. Now there are no pro-war people in the whole country. It would be difficult for Li Yuanhao to take the initiative to provoke an attack on the Song Dynasty again.
certainly.
This is all Li Yuanhao's business and has nothing to do with the Song Dynasty.
Just after the New Year of the fifth year of the Qingli period, Bianliang became bustling.
Last December, Kaifeng Prefecture was frozen over, and the government hired people to clear the snow and break the ice.
The Bian River was reopened, and just one month into the spring, many merchant ships were already traveling back and forth.
In recent years, Bianliang’s biggest headache is not the increasing number of migrant workers causing difficulties in all aspects of urban management.
Rather, the carrying capacity of several rivers such as the Bian River, Cai River, Guangji River, and Jinshui River is insufficient. Every spring and summer, when commodity trade is most prosperous, river blockages occur repeatedly.
This obviously seriously hindered economic development.
Therefore, Zhao Jun planned to build a new canal outside the city, digging from Huazhou to Kaifeng, with a straight-line distance of about 100 kilometers. It would probably require more than 100,000 laborers.
On January 14th, in the Constitutional Court, the New Year had just passed and tomorrow was the Lantern Festival. The government officials had only been working for a few days before they had to take a day off again. Therefore, the officials inside and outside the Constitutional Court were not very motivated and were just thinking about where to go for fun on vacation tomorrow.
However, Zhao Jun did not lie down. He was now the most powerful person in the Song Dynasty. Even Zhao Zhen had to look at his face. If he wanted to lie down and live a luxurious life, not to mention a colorful life, he could do whatever he wanted and go wherever he wanted.
But he is a bit of a workaholic, thinking about making the Song Dynasty strong and prosperous all the time. Now he has been in the Song Dynasty for almost nine years and has done a lot of things, but he still feels unsatisfied and is still struggling on the front line of work.
The main reason was that in his eyes, the development of the Song Dynasty was still too slow.
Apart from being relatively advanced in military and steelmaking, which had reached the level of the early Industrial Revolution, other aspects were terrible.
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