I am Emperor Shizu of Song

Chapter 174 A Millennium Plan: Both Hands Must Be Strong
After Zhao Zicheng established the basic national policy after ascending the throne, the major policy of "rectifying domestic affairs, developing maritime transport, harassing the Jin state along the coast, and repairing the Yellow River channel" was vigorously implemented.

Before the Song Dynasty, the emperors of all dynasties had severely limited power, hampered by an inefficient civil service group. If even a small portion of the money and grain they spent on something actually went into effect, that was considered quite good.

After Zhao Zicheng ascended the throne, relying on the prestige he had earned through bloodshed and the merits of rebuilding China, his control over the administrative system was almost comparable to that of the founding emperor. The efficiency of the use of funds and grain and the efficiency of the allocation of manpower naturally far exceeded those of emperors since Emperor Renzong and Emperor Shenzong.

The wars and protracted struggles with the Jin dynasty in the north had long since resulted in a sparsely populated and vast land area. Hebei province had almost lost its population, so there was no longer any conflict between people and land. Henan province, which had previously faced severe conflicts, has also seen some relief, despite losing at least several million people in the past.

Moreover, the conflicts among the people in the southern regions under his rule, such as Jiangnan and Huguang, had already been thoroughly resolved. The land annexation problem caused by the large landlord class had been greatly alleviated, and the contradiction of too many people and too little land had been largely resolved.

After all, a number of large landlords in Jiangnan had been massacred by Fang La in previous years, and a number of large landlords and gentry in Huguang had also been massacred by Zhong Xiang and Yang Yao.

Only Sichuan remains in the country where the conflict between population and land remains extremely acute. However, this can be alleviated after unification in the future by launching military campaigns against Dali and Jiaozhi from Sichuan, followed by the migration of Sichuanese people south to Yunnan and Guizhou and the replacement of local chieftains with centrally appointed officials.

At present, Zhao Zicheng can take advantage of the loose financial situation and the need to expand the army for the Northern Expedition to recruit a large number of surplus young and strong laborers from the four routes of Sichuan and the Three Gorges to serve as soldiers in Sichuan or be hired by the court as "engineering troops" to repair the Yellow River, build shipyards, build ocean-going ships and carry out industrial construction, so as to temporarily alleviate the contradiction between people and land in Sichuan in the next three to five years.

In the first year of the Jianyan era, Zhao Zicheng, with the strong support of the central government, explored and opened the Daye Iron Mine in Ezhou on Jinghu North Road, opened a large iron mine in Ma'anshan on Jiangnan East Road, and expanded the copper mine production scale in Tongling on Jiangnan West Road.

In the Central Plains and northern regions, especially Shanxi and Henan, mining and metallurgical construction was also strengthened. These mineral deposits would require several years of development to achieve explosive growth in production. At that time, the production of high-quality weapons, armor, and new firearms could be increased by at least an order of magnitude, making it a natural step to crush the Jurchens. Zhao Zicheng, who had already become emperor, could afford to wait.

Tens of thousands of surplus laborers from Sichuan were hired by the imperial court to work in large shipyards in coastal cities, or to conduct large-scale logging in Sichuan and Guizhou and transport timber down the river to coastal ports for shipbuilding.

Sichuan and Yunnan-Guizhou have very rich forest resources. None of the regions under Zhao Zicheng's rule had such a large supply of high-quality timber as Sichuan. Therefore, even though he secretly developed for many years, the size of his sea transport fleet and naval fleet was still too small to support a long-term sea expedition of an army of 100,000 or to support the conversion of canal transport to sea transport.

Now that we have timber from Sichuan, we have not only solved the problem of surplus labor in Sichuan not having any work, but also greatly accelerated the construction of the navy and shipping industry, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone.

Of all the projects for which the imperial court centrally hired laborers, the one with the largest number of workers was the Yellow River repair project.

After more than half a year of surveying in the first year of Jianyan, the Ministry of Works proposed a diversion plan, deciding to excavate a diversion riverbed in the area north of Huazhou, at a point on the east bank where the dam was about to collapse, and to make full use of natural river tributaries to connect to the Daqing River.

After the construction is completed, the section of the Yellow River downstream that is located in what will later become Shandong Province will be completely abandoned, and it will turn slightly eastward when it leaves the border between Henan and Shandong.

The amount of work required for this project is roughly equivalent to dredging the Hebei section of the Grand Canal again—although the length is far shorter than the Hebei section of the Grand Canal, the diversion section needs to accommodate the water volume of the Yellow River, so it is more than ten times wider and deeper than the canal.

The Ministry of Construction estimates that the project can be completed within two years, mainly by taking advantage of the winter off-season for farming. The Sichuanese workers hired from other areas, being full-time, can even work year-round.

Some civil officials in the court were worried that employing so many laborers to work year-round might lead to food shortages. Fortunately, the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of Works later calculated that as long as there was no immediate northern expedition, diverting some of the military rations originally intended for the war effort could easily support the project.

Moreover, the Ministry of Revenue soon discovered that when the Song Dynasty entered a state of "only recovering the territory south of the Yellow River, but temporarily not having the territory north of the Yellow River", the finances, which were originally stretched thin and forced to continue to impose heavy taxes and exploit resources, actually became loose.

The reason why the Ministry of Revenue had not considered this issue before was because the Song Dynasty had never been in such a territorial state before.

Later, after careful calculation, they realized that, starting from the Zhenghe era of Emperor Huizong, the Song Dynasty's rule over Hebei had been a serious financial burden. Even without considering the expenses of stationing troops on the Liao and Jin borders, just considering the expenses of disaster relief for the people...
Because of years of natural disasters and banditry, the government's fiscal revenue from Hebei had become negative. By temporarily abandoning the uninhabited areas, the saved revenue could be used to repair the Yellow River.

The first and second years of the Jianyan era passed in this vigorous and comprehensive construction.

The Jin people did consider harassing the Song dynasty's construction work north of the Yellow River. The Jin leadership felt that the Song dynasty was going too far, not only entering Hebei territory but also occupying only one or two prefectures and then engaging in large-scale construction there.

Therefore, the Jurchens also tried to launch surprise attacks and harass, attempting to plunder resources or slaughter the Song Dynasty's construction teams and guards.

Zhao Zicheng immediately retaliated, strengthening his garrison in the Hebei region north of Huazhou and repelling several Jin harassments. This resulted in heavy losses for the Jin cavalry under the combined firepower of shotguns and crossbows.

On the other hand, such passive defense and on-the-spot counterattacks were not strategic enough to deter the enemy. So Zhao Zicheng came up with his pirate plan: whenever the Jurchens came to harass the Yellow River construction, he would send Yue Fei or Song Jiang and Li Jun's fleet to land and sabotage the Liaodong Peninsula or the Tianjin and Tangshan area.

The Song Dynasty also retaliated against the Jurchens, Khitans, and Xi people by burning, killing, and looting, and the retaliation was precise and equal. Every time the Jurchens harassed the Yellow River defense line, the Song Dynasty would harass the Yan-Yun coastal area, no more and no less.

After this happened several times, the Jin people realized that the Song court was trying to intimidate and maintain a balance of terror, telling them, "If you come once, I will go once too."

The Jurchens, not yet confident of a full-scale invasion of the Song Dynasty, could only suppress their urge to engage in minor skirmishes and sabotage, hoping to achieve a peaceful resolution.

After all, Wanyan Zonggan's previous actions of killing Wanyan Zongpan in order to seize the throne had severely weakened the Jin Dynasty. Furthermore, the harassment by Zhao Zicheng's pirates had greatly slowed his recovery; it was better to settle things peacefully.

Time quickly passed to the third year of Jianyan.

Zhao Zicheng's two-year industrial plan, as well as shipbuilding, shipping, and river repair projects, have all made significant progress.

In the summer of the third year of the Jianyan era, the planned orderly diversion of the Yellow River officially reached its final stage. Under the guidance of the Ministry of Works' meticulous surveying and design, a section of the riverbank near Heze (later known as Heze) was breached, and the main stream of the Yellow River flowed into a new connecting canal. Although the water flow was initially somewhat excessive, and the connecting canal could not withstand the enormous volume of the Yellow River, and some land on both banks was indeed submerged, the area was already uninhabited, and Hebei in this era had been cleared out ahead of schedule.

Even if there were a few scattered farmers cultivating the land in these areas, they were all military settlements for the Jin people, forcibly relocated by the Jin high command to monitor the Song Dynasty. They knew what the Song Dynasty was planning, and they knew that water and fire were merciless and natural forces could not stop them, so they withdrew their people before they anticipated that the Song Dynasty would change the course of the Yellow River.

Zhao Zicheng said it was like painting on a blank sheet of paper; even if some ruins of cities and villages were submerged, they were all uninhabited.

This battle effectively relieved much of the pressure and risk of the Yellow River changing its course that had hung over the Song Dynasty for nearly a century. Although, given the amount of silt carried by the Yellow River, it will certainly silt up again in a few hundred years, that's a matter for later.

Perhaps, thanks to the technological advancements brought about by Zhao Zicheng, the engineering technology of this world three hundred years from now will be sufficient to manually dig a Yellow River using engineering machinery.

In fact, with the engineering capabilities of 21st-century China, it would have been entirely possible to dig a completely new and sufficiently deep Yellow River from eastern Henan to the entire Shandong province; however, it was no longer necessary. Even if the Yellow River in later generations were a suspended river, its water volume would be very small, insufficient even for the northern provinces, and there would be virtually no risk of flooding.

Zhao Zicheng suggested that it would be better to consider starting from the latter half of the Song Dynasty, focusing on protecting the greenery of Qin and Long, and gradually prohibiting the felling of the remaining trees in Guanzhong from that era onwards. As long as the Loess Plateau is contained, or even managed, the amount of sediment carried by the Yellow River will be drastically reduced, and it may not form a suspended river again for the next five hundred years.

The mighty Yellow River, having found a more stable course with a lower elevation throughout, flows northward. Amidst the turbulent waves, the remaining inhabitants of Hebei province are deeply awestruck by this natural wonder.

Even those Yan-Yun people who originally sided with the Jin Dynasty, and even those who had no sense of identification with the Song Dynasty before, were greatly shaken when they saw that the Song Dynasty could actually tame the Yellow River and make it change its course in an orderly manner, surging towards them.

"The fact that the Great Song Dynasty could accomplish such a thing, and undertake such a massive project, without causing such a nationwide uproar as during the reigns of Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Yang of Sui, shows how wise and powerful the new emperor of the Great Song Dynasty is."

It is perfectly normal that such a thought was widely planted in the minds of the officials, scholars, and common people of Yan and Yun.

After discussing with his core trusted ministers, Zhao Zicheng also felt that the wavering morale in Hebei was a good opportunity, and that the Song Dynasty could advance north along the Yellow River, combined with long-distance troop transport by sea.

Some court officials felt that the people should rest and recuperate, and that the construction of the Yellow River and other projects in recent years had exhausted too much of the people's resources. They suggested that it would be better to wait.

But this time Zhao Zicheng did not wait any longer. His opinion was very clear: "The orderly diversion of the Yellow River is a major event that will have a great impact on the hearts and minds of the people of Hebei. We should take advantage of this opportunity of the psychological fluctuations of the enemy's people and make a quick and decisive move!"
As for the ministers' concerns about insufficient manpower and whether a full-scale northern expedition would be detrimental to the people, Zhao Zicheng believed that, in any case, they should first take back Yan and Yun, or at least take back the territory within the pass.

The people of Hebei are most affected by the orderly diversion of the Yellow River, and they cannot miss this opportunity.

The Jurchen strongholds in the Liaodong hinterland and even further northeast may not be affected by this event, nor will they necessarily become unstable.

Therefore, if after recovering the land within the Great Wall, there is no better opportunity to strike at the heart of the enemy in one fell swoop, then there is no need to fight a direct confrontation.

The destruction of the Jin dynasty can be accomplished in several stages; don't always think about finishing it all in one battle.

Under this guiding ideology, the high-ranking officials of the Song Dynasty finally reached a consensus, and with the emperor's personal encouragement, a full-scale Northern Expedition was launched after the autumn harvest in the third year of the Jianyan era.

Before the war began, Zhao Zicheng first summoned Xiang Wang Yue Fei alone and authorized him to lead an army and take charge of a single situation.

"Pengju, the imperial army is marching north. This time, the plan is to divide the army into three routes. The first route will advance north along the new Yellow River waterway to seize the hinterland of Hebei. The second route will advance north along the coast, heading straight for Yanjing and its gateway to the Bohai Sea. The third route will start from Goryeo and advance along the Liaodong coast to attack Liaodong."

I will personally lead the first two routes, but the route to Goryeo in the east is isolated overseas. You set out from Goryeo three years ago, taking a roundabout route to attack the capital, so you naturally have a better understanding of the geography of the northern expedition from Goryeo. You will be in charge of the strategy for this route, and I will trust you without interfering in the details.

I have only one request: this time, it should not be limited to harassing and containing the Jin army. If we can actually capture some coastal cities on the Liaodong Peninsula, we can hold them for a long time. The maritime power of our Great Song Dynasty is now far greater than it was three years ago. Even if we control some coastal cities across the sea, we are confident that we can hold them for a long time, relying on maritime transport to supply troops, weapons, and provisions.

Perhaps by planting more spies behind enemy lines, we can bleed the Jurchens a little more blood, making them see the threat but unable to swallow it, leaving them with a bone stuck in their throat, forcing them to repeatedly attempt attacks. Our Great Song can then wait in comfort to wear down the Jurchen army. The entire Jurchen tribe, including men, women, and children, numbers less than a million; how can they possibly outlast our Great Song?”

Upon hearing this, Yue Fei felt a slight chill, but after a moment's thought, he quickly grasped the Emperor's decree.

It must be said that Yue Fei, after careful consideration, wholeheartedly agreed with Zhao Zicheng's plan. His Majesty truly deserves his reputation as a wise ruler who conquered the world on horseback; his understanding of military strategy and tactics is absolutely first-rate in the world today.

Of all his generals, only Yue Fei could fully keep up with His Majesty's thinking; the others, such as Han Shizhong and Liu Guangshi, were perhaps slightly less capable.

Ultimately, Zhao Zicheng made the following arrangements: he himself led Liu Guangshi, Guan Sheng and others, northward along the new Yellow River route from Shandong, and personally led the expedition.

Han Shizhong led his naval forces to conduct amphibious landings and harassment in the area of ​​Tianjin and Tangshan, relying on sea routes to transport grain for support, and launching attacks on other lost territories west of Shanhaiguan.

Yue Fei, leading the Song army on the Korean Peninsula, could both harass and feint along the Changbai Mountains and attack the Jin army in Liaodong along the Korean coastline, preventing the Jin army from being able to attend to both ends.

The three armies agreed to launch their attack together during the northern grain harvest season. This way, when they arrived in Cangzhou and even Pingzhou, the wheat of the local Jin agricultural areas would not yet be dried and stored. They might even be able to launch a surprise attack and plunder the Jin people, reducing the logistical pressure on their food supplies.

(End of this chapter)