Chapter 1243: Balancing Contradictions

Zhao Yu knew that for a long time, the military struggle with the Mongol Yuan was still a long-term task, and it was unrealistic to want a quick victory, and the later Ming Dynasty failed to completely eliminate the remnants of the Mongols - the Northern Yuan Dynasty until the destruction of the country, and the Mongols finally relied on suppression and peace to finally make the Mongols surrender; Another task is to maintain political stability in the country in order to achieve long-term peace and stability.

Of course, social harmony was built step by step, and Zhao knew that it was impatient, especially after the political darkness of the late Southern Song Dynasty, the erosion of the government, the corruption of officials, and the brutal rule of the ten years after the invasion of the Mongol and Yuan dynasties. Although the people are determined, a series of political reforms and policy adjustments are still needed to change the deformed politics that has been formed for a long time.

Zhao Yu is now streamlining institutions, adjusting states and counties, and even compressing the treatment of royal family members, and he himself has been living an ascetic life for a long time, all from the height of security from a political point of view. The introduction of a new land policy and the implementation of land according to the mouth are also an effort to ensure the survival of the socially disadvantaged groups. Because he understands that the lesson of history is that whenever there is a major political security problem, it must be that there is a bad condition in the land. This was true of the fall of the Han Dynasty, and so was the demise of later dynasties.

Through decrees, the land controlled by the imperial court was first distributed to the landless peasants, and then to the peasants with little land, and the official land was leased to the displaced people, suppressing the gentry and landlords, and annexing the land by will. Even if there is an incident where the peasants break the law, the peasants' land will not be confiscated, so as to ensure the basic livelihood of the ordinary people. In this way, the majority of people can be benefited, the hearts of the people will be gathered, and the ordinary people who are well fed and clothed will not think about rebellion.

However, after Zhao Yu implemented the policy of benefiting the ordinary people, he found that the people were still opposed to the Northern Expedition from the information he fed back, which made him puzzled. At first, he thought that the common people were worried that the war would increase military spending, which would lead to an increase in taxes and frequent conscription of military labor, which would increase their burden.

However, at present, through the restructuring, Zhao Yu has greatly reduced the tax burden by reducing and eliminating the harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, and has reduced the levy of military service by forming a baggage army, and the military expenditure is mostly to aid trade and commercial taxes, which has not affected the people's livelihood too much. And he understood that if the Northern Expedition did not get the support of the people, not only would the recruitment of soldiers and husband service be affected, but also the people's hearts would be shaken, resulting in an unstable foundation of the imperial court and it would be difficult to have the energy to face the war.

Zhao Yu consulted many ministers, and also learned about the people's feelings and public opinions through the affairs bureau, and now he has gradually figured out the reason, knowing that he has carried the black pot of history again. According to the system of previous dynasties, the imperial court did not allow the rich areas to have the ability to accumulate, and basically squeezed them out and squeezed them out, in addition to satisfying the emperor's extreme desire for poverty and luxury, it was also to prevent the increase of wealthy local financial resources, leading to the emergence of military separatist forces. As a result, most of the proportion of fortunes in wealthy areas is scared to death, and the local finances have no money.

After the Tang and Song dynasties, Jiangnan was greatly developed, its economic strength continued to increase, and it gradually replaced the north as an important source of taxes. So to be honest, he thought that the ancient Chinese court did not care much about output, but cared about Cao Yun, and the essence was to transport grain and wealth over that was the most important thing.

Therefore, the northerners could gain great wealth by invading Jiangnan, which was also one of the driving forces for the north to wage war; The southerners were reluctant to go on the northern expedition, and they were willing to separate themselves and defend themselves, but they also did not want to carry the heavy financial burden of the north. Zhao Hao can also understand that after experiencing the forced expropriation and expropriation of the Mengyuan Dynasty during the reign of the Mengyuan Dynasty, the people could not help but worry that after the Northern Expedition, the political center of gravity would shift northward, and it would inevitably require continuous blood transfusion from the south of the Yangtze River, so as to change the current policy of light taxes and thin taxes and increase taxes again.

There is another contradiction that is still the same old tune - the struggle between civil and military. Zhao Hao now has a bigger stage, which can also allow him to examine history from a higher and larger perspective and understand the political concepts of ancient China. He discovered that in fact, the essence of the civil officials often referred to in ancient China was as an important bureaucratic group as the operation of the state.

From this point of view, whether it is the release of military power with a glass of wine, or the later ban on military power and the emphasis on civil and military force, in fact, it is essentially an act of directly placing the army in the hands of the central imperial power and the bureaucracy. This behavior was not only to avoid the secession of feudal towns in the late Tang Dynasty, but also to allow the imperial court to formulate the army's development strategy more effectively, but there was a large gap between theory and practice.

Because China's imperial examinations completely separated academic research from political knowledge and military affairs, the Song Dynasty was often full of slots in terms of military structure, training, and even command and dispatch. At the same time, the Song dynasty faced a long-term threat from the nomadic regimes in the north. Naturally, it is difficult for an army full of problems to effectively resist foreign invasion.

In order to be able to deploy the army to counter the threat, the bureaucracy's intervention and command of the development of the army increased. This also plunged the military development of the Song Dynasty into a vicious circle. Therefore, Zhao Hao has long realized that it is very difficult for the bureaucracy to determine a correct line for the development of the army. And he also wanted to change this situation by supporting the military clique and letting them intervene in politics, in addition to the needs of the restoration war, but also to suppress civilian officials and change the political system.

Of course, Zhao Hao's intentions have long been known to the civilian clique, and the two sides are also fighting openly and secretly, and there have been several intensifications. Now that the Northern Expedition has recovered the two Huai in one fell swoop, the soldiers have entered the Central Plains, and then there is a possibility of recovering the old capital. Under such an honor, the civil officials understood that the imperial court would inevitably reward the warriors in a big way, so that a new batch of martial artists was born into the imperial court, and the strength of the martial arts group was further strengthened. So for the recovery of Kaifeng, they do not want to see it.

In the case of one and the other, the civil official group is bound to panic, and Zhao Yu also understands that the current management of the country is still in the hands of scholars, and he also needs them to shepherd the Quartet for him. If they secretly make trouble, they will not be able to prevent it, and a small loophole may be infinitely magnified in the war, which is enough to make the achievements of the Northern Expedition fall short, so he stopped at Bianjing and did not want to stimulate the civilian clique too much. However, Zhao Yu also understood that emphasizing literature over military force or using literature to control military force is the inevitable result of China's military development.

Strictly speaking, the fact that there are certain problems most of the time does not mean that the system is completely unreasonable in theory. However, China's imperial examination system, as well as the contempt for military affairs from the Song Dynasty onwards, have cast a huge shadow on this system and even the entire military development of China. However, the change of dynasty has never been a problem in one aspect, and the shadow of emphasizing literature over military force is actually just a hole when the boat is overturned, and Zhao Yu also needs time to adjust the political pattern to adapt to the current situation.

Money is another issue that cannot be avoided. Whether it is war or consolidating the newly harvested land, it will require a lot of financial investment, but Zhao Yu knows that his family background is too thin. The war, which lasted less than a year, had already stretched the finances, not only exhausting the grain stored in the official warehouses of various places for more than two years after entering the south of the Yangtze River, but also risking inflation to over-issue currency to purchase the surplus grain in the hands of the people.

It is very dangerous for a country to have no grain in its treasury, and in the event of a major natural disaster or sudden war, it will face the dilemma of having no food to buy even if it has money. After the disaster, if the imperial court is unable to allocate grain for disaster relief, it will be starving all over the wilderness, and the displaced people will travel through the state to survive, which will inevitably lead to a series of social problems, and even lead to a civil uprising. Similarly, after the outbreak of war, the imperial court could only squeeze the little food in the mouths of the people to ensure military needs, causing a serious political crisis, which is a historical precedent.

Now the Great Song Dynasty is at war everywhere, in addition to the Jingxiang and Lianghuai battlefields, the war between Sichuan, Shu and Yunnan is still ongoing. The Northern Expedition battlefield seems to have invested a large number of troops and has the largest scale, but the consumption of the Sichuan-Shu and Yunnan battlefields is also not to be underestimated. These two battlefields are located in remote areas, and the people's livelihood is poor, and neither of them can solve military needs on the spot, so they need to be transferred from Huguang and even Jiangdong.

In this era, the transportation is difficult, the road is far away, and there is no modern means of transportation, even if the grain is transferred from Huguang to Sichuan and Shu, it will take two times to send it to the front of the army. As the saying goes, thousands of miles of grain are transported, and there is no one in ten. Therefore, the battlefield between the two places seems to have a small number of troops, but in fact, the need is by no means inferior to the Northern Expedition battlefield, and it will need to last for a long time.

In addition, Zhao Hao also needs to face another new battlefield. Nowadays, a large part of the financial source of the Great Song Dynasty is to rely on the funds obtained from overseas trade, and it is also an important channel for Zhao Yu's small treasury funds, it is no exaggeration to say that once there is a problem in overseas trade, the finances of the Great Song Dynasty will be in trouble, and it will re-embark on the old road of increasing taxes to maintain the country's expenditure.

Now, the Great Song Dynasty's maritime trade fleet has sprung up, and the voyage is getting farther and farther, and the scale is getting bigger and bigger. Especially after controlling the spice production area, breaking the monopoly of the spice market by Persian merchants, and watching the Great Song Dynasty transport a shipload of real money and silver, not only commercial competitors, but also many countries were red-eyed, and the friction and conflict between the fleets of the two sides increased day by day.

Zhao Yu knew that many foreign countries and local lords relied on sea trade to get rich, and their own wealth was to take food from their mouths, and the conflict would no longer be a competition in the commercial field, but would soon evolve into a war at the national level......

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