I am a prince in Zhutian Films

Chapter 409: The birth of the legitimate son, the destruction of Xia and the defeat of Liao

Three months passed in the blink of an eye, and time quietly came to the day of Zhao Paner's delivery.

Prince Han’s Mansion, outside the delivery room.

Liu Wan was pacing back and forth anxiously outside, while inside she could hear Zhao Pan'er's heart-wrenching screams.

At this time, it had been almost two hours since Zhao Pan'er entered the delivery room, but she still hadn't given birth. Even Liu Wan, who was usually calm, was extremely anxious.

Song Yinzhang, Sun Sanniang, the Cao family, and others were as anxious as Liu Wan. However, although they were anxious, they did not dare to relieve their anxiety by pacing like Liu Wan did.

Because it was the birth of the first grandson, not only Liu Wan came to the Han Palace, but Zhao Heng also came. He glanced at Liu Wan and said indifferently: "Okay, stop turning around, it makes me dizzy."

"It's already been two hours. I'm in a hurry."

"There's no point in being anxious. Don't worry. Everything will be fine. I think the baby will be born soon."

Before he finished speaking, the midwife's voice was heard in the delivery room.

"Born, born!"

Along with a loud baby cry, the door of the delivery room was pushed open and Xiuyin rushed out with a happy face.

"Your Majesty, your Majesty, it's a little boy. The princess gave birth to a little boy."

"Good good."

Liu Wan couldn't help but burst into laughter. The others immediately felt relieved and smiled happily. Only Zhao Heng was stunned.

As for the reason for his daze, it was naturally because Zhao Ye was born just after he finished speaking.

What does this mean?
This shows that his words are golden, and that Zhao Ye is a child that he is destined to love.

Zhao Ye was the name Zhao Wei gave to his son. Although he did not come back, he still knew that Zhao Pan'er was pregnant, so he named the child early.

If it's a boy, I'll name him Zhao Ye, hoping that he will have a bright future.

If it's a girl, I'll name her Zhao Jing, hoping that she will be outstanding in the future.

After a long while, Zhao Heng came back to his senses and laughed heartily: "Okay, King of Chu, make Zhao Ye the King of Chu."

You should know that in the reign of Zhao Heng, no one was granted the title of prince at birth. Even Zhao Wei and his brothers were only princes at most. Like the later Song Renzong Zhao Zhen, he was even only a duke at the beginning.

Zhao Ye was conferred the title of prince just as he was born, which set a precedent, and he was also conferred the honorable title of King of Chu.

However, Liu Wan and the others didn't care about Zhao Zhen's title of king at this time. Liu Wan just wanted to see her grandson, while Sun Sanniang and the others were worried about what happened to Zhao Pan'er.

"Where's the child? Hurry up and bring him out for me to see."

"Aunt Xiuyin, how is Pan'er?"

Liu Wan and Sun Sanniang spoke at the same time. Xiu Yin naturally answered Liu Wan first, and then smiled at Sun Sanniang and said, "Madam Sun, the princess is fine. She was just too tired, so she fell asleep."

Sun Sanniang heaved a sigh of relief: "It's good that everything is fine, it's good that everything is fine."

Soon, the cleaned baby was brought out. The baby looked good, much better looking than other newborn babies. This might be because the baby had adequate nutrition and both his parents were good looking.

Liu Wan held her grandson for a long time before handing him to Zhao Heng. Not long after, she snatched him back. The couple took turns holding the grandson, and the eager Cao family and Sun Sanniang could only watch.

Until the child started crying and was sent back to Zhao Pan'er, neither the Cao family nor Sun Sanniang could hold him.

In a blink of an eye, forty-five days passed and Zhao Pan'er was out of confinement.

The birth of her son made Zhao Pan'er feel completely relaxed. This was Zhao Wei's eldest son. With this child, her status and position in the palace were completely consolidated.

After all, in that era, in the eyes of most people, daughters and sons are incomparable.

Sons, even illegitimate sons, are eligible to be included in the family tree, but daughters have basically no chance of being included.

A mother's status is determined by her sons. This is not just a simple phrase, but fully demonstrates the customs and traditions of feudal society.

Even though Zhao Wei, a time traveler from modern times, sees boys and girls the same in his eyes, and even likes daughters more than sons, this is only from an emotional perspective.

Most men prefer daughters and pamper them more emotionally.

But when it comes to inheritance and succession rights, whether in ancient times or modern times, about ninety-nine out of a hundred men will choose their sons. This is not feudal, but a kind of inheritance that belongs to the Chinese.

Although this phenomenon is very unfair to women, it has been like this for thousands of years, which shows that there is some truth to it.

The inheritance of a clan ultimately depends on men. After all, women will eventually get married, and relying on women to inherit is far less reliable than relying on men.

With the birth of Zhao Ye, Zhao Pan'er put all her heart on her son and wished she could stay with him all the time.

As the eldest son of the Prince of Han's Mansion, the eldest grandson of the royal family, and deeply loved by the emperor, Zhao Ye was made a king as soon as he was born. Naturally, his full-moon banquet was a hot topic of discussion in the court and the country.

While the Prince of Han's Mansion was preparing for Zhao Ye's full-moon banquet, Zhao Wei, who was far away in the northwest border, finally launched a large-scale offensive against Xiazhou Dingnan Army.

Just as he thought at the beginning, after he was in a stalemate with the Dingnan Army and gradually won a series of small-scale wars, the Liao Kingdom finally sent people to Xiazhou to support the Dingnan Army.

In addition, the Liao Kingdom directly tore up the Treaty of Chanyuan and launched an offensive against the northern border of the Song Dynasty.

The Song Dynasty was really used to being weak. When the Liao Kingdom launched a war, they did not think of sending troops to resist and fight back. Instead, they first thought of sending people to negotiate with the Liao people and beg them to withdraw their troops.

When Zhao Wei heard the news, he was shocked. He could only say that the Song Dynasty's bones were really broken by the Liao people and they had no backbone at all.

But the problem was that the Liao people were extremely ambitious. They were not satisfied with the conditions offered by the Song Dynasty and still led an army of hundreds of thousands to launch an offensive on the border. There was no natural barrier of the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun on the northern border. Even with General Zhe Lao and Ke Zheng in charge, they could only slow down the attack of the Liao cavalry but could not keep them out of the border.

However, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Zhao Wei, and he certainly wouldn't let it go.

So, he led the border army with a swift force, defeated the Dingnan Army step by step, and directly attacked the Dingnan Army's base camp Xiazhou, captured Li Deming alive, and beheaded Li Yuanhao, the future founding emperor of Western Xia.

From then on, Western Xia was destroyed before it was even established.

After defeating the Dingnan Army, Zhao Wei immediately reported the great victory to the court, and had Li Deming escorted back to the capital, bringing a memorial to Zhao Heng, requesting to be transferred to the north to fight against the Liao Army.

Zhao Heng was already worried about the Liao offensive and couldn't sleep all night. When he received the news of Zhao Wei's great victory in Xiazhou, he was overjoyed. He was especially delighted when he saw Li Deming and the memorial sent by Zhao Wei.

He was a weak-willed person, but no matter how weak he was, he was still the emperor of a country. When the Liao people bullied him, his civil servants kept petitioning for peace, and some even proposed to double the annual tribute of the Chanyuan Alliance to pay off the Liao people. But this time, the Liao people wanted more than just the annual tribute, they also wanted the land of the Song Dynasty.

Zhao Heng, who had dreamed of the Jingkang Shame, did not want to be an emperor of a fallen country, so after seeing Zhao Wei's memorial, he quickly made a decision to let Zhao Wei lead his troops into the north and take command of the military and political power in the north to resist the invasion of the Liao people.

It can be seen that Zhao Heng was still very conservative. He just hoped that Zhao Wei could defend the north and resist the iron hoof of the Liao people. He never thought that Zhao Wei could counterattack the Liao Kingdom.

But this is normal. After all, the Liao Kingdom is far from comparable to the Dingnan Army of Xiazhou.

Years of failures had caused the entire court to lose confidence in defeating the Liao people.

Even though Zhao Wei had just led his troops to destroy the Dingnan Army and recover the states in the Hexi Corridor, it did not boost the confidence of the court and the people.

Zhao Wei was not surprised when he received the imperial edict. He led 100,000 elite troops directly to the north, ready to fight a decisive battle with the Liao people.

It took Zhao Wei only half a year to plan and wait to destroy the Dingnan Army and capture Li Deming alive. This achievement was definitely a rare glorious one in the history of the Song Dynasty, but Zhao Wei was not proud of it.

Because he knew very well that the Dingnan Army occupying the Hexi Corridor was just a small country, while the Liao Kingdom was no less vast than the Song Dynasty in terms of territory and even more powerful in military strength. Therefore, it would be much more difficult to take back the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun from the Liao Kingdom than to destroy the Dingnan Army in Xiazhou.

This was indeed the case. When Zhao Wei arrived in the north with an army of 100,000 trained in the northwest border, the north was suffering from the ravages of the Liao people, and their troops were heading straight for the capital of the Song Dynasty.

It took Zhao Wei more than a month just to integrate the northern border troops, and the Liao people had already invaded the heartland of the Song Dynasty.

In the first encounter, Zhao Wei witnessed the ferocity of the Liao cavalry. A team of a thousand people was almost wiped out by the Liao people.

It has to be said that there was a reason why the Khitan tribe was able to suppress the Central Plains for a hundred years. Their cavalry was indeed quite powerful.

The Liao Kingdom lived in a harsh environment, and the cavalry they trained were indeed not comparable to the cavalry of the Song Dynasty.

Moreover, the Khitans were naturally fierce, and in individual combat, the Song people were basically no match for the Liao people.

Therefore, in the past, when fighting against the Liao army, the armies of the Central Plains dynasties basically relied on numbers to win.

Zhao Wei's goal was to defeat the Liao army, not to show off his bravery for a moment, so he was also prepared to use numbers to gather the troops that were outnumbered by the Liao army and begin to encircle the Liao people.

Although the Liao army was powerful, they were far inferior to the Song Dynasty in one respect: they were unable to wage a protracted war.

As the invading party, they did not have enough dry food, and they relied on fighting to support themselves and robbing the Song people of their food to ensure their survival along the way.

Therefore, after entering the heartland of the Song Dynasty, the Liao army basically would not choose to attack large cities, because large cities are easy to defend but difficult to attack, and the Liao army simply did not have that much time and experience to carry out engineering projects, and they were more likely to plunder small towns and villages.

The Liao army moved very quickly, and it was not easy to encircle and suppress them.

Fortunately, Zhao Wei had rich experience in warfare. He spent quite a bit of time and blocked the Liao army's offensive routes one by one and launched a counterattack.

Zhao Heng and the civil and military officials who were far away in Bianliang were shocked to learn that Zhao Wei had blocked the offensive of the Liao army in just half a year, preventing the Liao people from advancing any further and eliminating the danger in Bianliang.

Especially after learning that Zhao Wei had annihilated a large number of Liao troops, Zhao Heng was ecstatic, and then an extremely absurd thing happened.

The imperial court once again sent envoys to the Liao Kingdom to negotiate peace with the Liao people, and was willing to stop the war on the condition of increasing annual tribute.

I have to say that the thoughts of the civil servants in the court are really weird. If they lose the battle, they negotiate, and if they win the battle, they still want to negotiate.

What's more important is that even after winning the war, they still increased the annual tribute in exchange for peace talks. This is really something that ordinary people cannot understand.

What's even more outrageous is that Zhao Heng, who clearly supported sending troops, actually agreed to it. It was he who asked Zhao Wei to go, and now it is also he who asks Zhao Wei to cease fire. Emperor Zhao Heng was completely kidnapped by the civil service group.

Zhao Wei was just preparing to lead his troops north to counterattack the Liao and recapture the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun when he suddenly received an order from Zhao Heng, ordering him to guard the border and wait for the peace talks to be concluded.

"boom!"

After reading the imperial edict, Zhao Wei was so angry that he smashed the table in front of him to pieces.

"Commander."

Li Junxin picked up the imperial edict from the debris with a nervous look on his face, wiped it, and then began to read it.

After Zhao Wei's palm strike, he calmed down and looked at Li Junxin, who was more experienced than him: "What do you think?"

After reading the contents of the imperial edict, Li Junxin also showed anger on his face, but he quickly suppressed his anger and said calmly: "General, we have not rested since we came from Xiazhou. Now that the emperor asked us to wait for the results of the peace talks, it is a good time to rest."

"No, if the government tells us to stop fighting, will we really stop fighting? Also, if the government tells us to prepare to return the prisoners, will we also release those beasts?"

Liu Sheng was the commander of Zhao Wei's personal guards. When Zhao Wei was reading the imperial edict, he also saw it. When he learned the result, he found it unbelievable. They had clearly won the battle, but the emperor and officials far away in the capital actually asked them to cease fire and release the Liao people who had massacred countless people of their Song Dynasty. He really couldn't accept this.

What was even more unacceptable to him was that General Li Junxin actually agreed with the emperor's will.

Zhao Wei turned his head and glanced at him: "Are you very unwilling?"

Liu Sheng gritted his teeth and said honestly, "Yes, I am unwilling. We fought bloody battles and lost countless brothers. How can we let the Liao people go so easily? Moreover, under your leadership, we are invincible. It is not impossible to recover the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun. Why should we stop the war?"

Zhao Wei did not answer, but fell into deep thought.

However, Li Junxin spoke up and said calmly: "Because we are not the ones who can make the decision."

"Is it that simple?" Liu Sheng looked incredulous.

"Yes, it's that simple."

Liu Sheng was stunned on the spot. It took him a long time to come back to his senses. He looked at Zhao Wei and said, "Your Highness, what should we do? Do we really want to cease fire?"

Zhao Wei nodded and said coldly: "Stop, of course you have to stop, after all, it's an imperial decree."

"But……"

"No buts. If we send troops, it would be disobeying the order." Zhao Wei interrupted.

"But Your Highness, this is not the first time you have disobeyed an order. Why... I don't understand. So many of our brothers died in vain?"

Thinking of the soldiers who died in front of him, Liu Sheng, who usually shed blood but not tears, shed two lines of tears.

The reason why Zhao Wei dared to disobey the imperial order back then was that he established the Blood-Cloth Army under his command himself and did not ask for money or food supplies from the court. Even if Zhao Heng wanted to investigate, at most he would be punished alone. After all, the Blood-Cloth Army did not belong to the military sequence of the Song Dynasty. But now is different. If he disobeys the imperial order, those soldiers who follow him will inevitably suffer, and this is not what he wants to see.

"I am now the commander-in-chief of the entire northern border army. If I disobey your order, I will at most be demoted to a commoner, but you will definitely be punished. But don't worry, the people and soldiers of my Song Dynasty will not die in vain."

(End of this chapter)