Sky Curtain: The Overlord Charges into Battle, Shocking Emperors of All Dynasties

"Peace talks? Peace talks? Why is the Song Dynasty always talking about peace?!"

Liu Che was driven mad with anger by the Song Dynasty.

Of all the wars mentioned on the celestial screen about the Song Dynasty, except for the reign of Emperor Taizu, there were few victories in foreign wars.

Over a period of hundreds of years, the number of victories has been extremely limited.

Most of them are either negotiating peace or on their way to negotiating peace.

We had to negotiate peace with the Liao Dynasty, and we also had to negotiate peace with the Jin Dynasty.

Emperor Wu of Han even wondered if the Song Dynasty would have to negotiate peace with the Western Xia just to fight against them.

"Just a few months ago, the Song Dynasty negotiated peace with the Jin Dynasty and paid a large amount of gold and silver in reparations."

"I want to see what the Song Dynasty can offer in this peace negotiation with the Jin."

During the reign of Emperor Renzong of Song,

At this point, the court was filled with despair; they could no longer think of a way to break the deadlock.

Ceding territory?

The Jurchens have already reached the outskirts of the capital; where else can they cede territory?

Are we really going to cede all the land north of the Yangtze River to the Jurchens?

The Southern Song Dynasty, it turns out, really was the Song Dynasty south of the Yangtze River.

"They're going to cede territory and sue for peace again."

"Today they cede five cities, tomorrow ten; if this continues, when will it ever end?"

Su Xun's "On the Six States" had already been read by the ministers during Emperor Renzong's reign.

No one can miss what this article is trying to say.

It was simply advising the court against excessive compromise with the Liao and Western Xia dynasties, lest they be gradually eroded like the other six kingdoms.

Su Xun's statement, when applied to the Jingkang era, is both correct and incorrect.

The Jurchens were no longer nibbling away at the Song Dynasty; they were devouring it whole, tearing it apart with their jaws.

The Jin's peace negotiations seemed to offer a glimmer of hope to the terrified Emperor Huizong (Zhao Ji) and Emperor Huan (Zhao Huan).

They fantasized that the Jin army, like when they first marched south, would demand some gold and silver and then retreat.

[They had already demanded gold and silver once when the Jin army first marched south.]

At the time, the Jin army demanded 5 million taels of gold, 50 million taels of silver, 1 million bolts of silk, and 10,000 head of cattle and horses, all of which Emperor Qinzong of Song accepted.

When the national treasury was insufficient, Emperor Qinzong of Song ordered a city-wide ransacking of Kaifeng to seize gold and silver, taking it from the people and even confiscating the property of entertainers and members of the imperial family.

In the end, they only managed to raise a little over 200,000 taels of gold and a little over 4 million taels of silver.

In addition, Zhao Huan ceded the three towns of Taiyuan, Zhongshan, and Hejian, honored Emperor Taizong of Jin as his uncle, and, to show his sincerity, dismissed Li Gang, disbanded the Imperial Guard Command, and thus disbanded the Song Dynasty's main war-fighting force.

By the time of the second peace negotiations, Kaifeng had already been completely looted; what could they possibly offer in the negotiations?

Five million taels of gold and fifty million taels of silver?

Did the Jin people know what this concept meant?

Even the ancients could imagine the greed of the Jurchens just by looking at this number.

China didn't have much gold and silver to begin with; it's uncertain whether the entire country at that time possessed that much.

Surely a country named after gold can't have no concept of gold at all!

"The Jurchens were even more greedy than the Liao Dynasty!"

"These Jurchens, they're no good people to begin with!"

Zhu Yuanzhang's words were full of anger; he already harbored a deep aversion to the Jurchens.

These Jurchen people destroyed the Northern Song Dynasty, committing so many atrocities and blood debts.

And his Ming Dynasty,

Just thinking about these things made Zhu Yuanzhang want to pull the bones of those Jurchens out of the dogs' mouths and kill them all again.

I was really too hasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang regretted why he had killed all the Jurchen prisoners that Lan Yu had brought back in a fit of anger.

It's good to keep a few; you can bring them out to vent your anger whenever you feel like it.

Unlike now, he has nowhere to vent his anger!

Before the second siege by the Jin army, Emperor Qinzong of Song and a group of pro-peace ministers were determined to sue for peace and hoped to negotiate with the Jin army to force them to withdraw.

Fearing that the reinforcements would provoke the Jin dynasty and affect peace negotiations, they ordered the reinforcements already en route to halt and not approach Kaifeng.

They were completely dumbfounded when the Jin army had completely besieged the city; they couldn't send out the imperial edict.

The Jin army's peace negotiations after breaching the outer city were like a lifeline for them; these people had no choice but to believe it.

The second peace negotiation was the most infuriating, and it exposed the shamelessness and weakness of the Zhao family father and son to the fullest extent.

The Jin demanded that Emperor Qinzong of Song personally go to the military camp to present a letter of surrender, and Zhao Huan did just that.

He personally went to the Jin camp, wrote a letter of surrender, revised it four times, and finally knelt down to the north, read the letter of surrender, and submitted to the Jin state as a vassal.

In addition, the Jin army demanded one million ingots of gold and five million ingots of silver to reward their troops, while the Song Dynasty's treasury was already empty.

Therefore, the Jin people established a conversion rule, using royal women as a form of compensation.

[Among these events, the Jurchen commander Wanyan Zongwang heard that Princess Maode, Zhao Fujin, the daughter of Emperor Huizong of Song, who had already married Cai Jing's son, was beautiful, and specifically demanded her.]

[Zhao Fujin refused, so Emperor Qinzong of Song tricked him into going to the Jin camp, drugged him, and sent him to the bedside of Wanyan Zongwang, the commander of the Jin army.]

[Afterwards, princesses, imperial princesses, clan princesses, wives of imperial clan members, wives of clan members, and noblewomen were successively valued at a discounted price and allowed the Jurchens to choose and take them away.]

Everyone in front of the canopy felt their blood pressure spike and their temples bulge as they witnessed this scene.

This is outrageous, absolutely outrageous!

"Beast! This is a beast!!!!"

"I will personally kill this father and son!!"

"How could they possibly be worthy to be emperors of the Great Song Dynasty?!"

Zhao Kuangyin coughed up a mouthful of blood, clutching his chest and trembling uncontrollably.

What a disgrace! An utter disgrace!!!

Zhao Kuangyin felt his head buzzing, and his ears were ringing incessantly; all the blood in his body was rushing to his head.

There had never been such an emperor in previous dynasties.

He listed his own biological daughters and used them as commodities to offset debts with gold and silver.

Even if a marriage alliance was established with the Xiongnu during the Han Dynasty, and the treatment was poor, the wife was still considered a wife.

But what about their Great Song Dynasty?

Once they were sent to the Jin camp, what difference was there between them and slaves? What difference was there between them and being sent to their deaths?

The face of the Song Dynasty was trampled into the dust and crushed underfoot the moment Zhao Huan knelt down and personally drugged the princess and sent her to the enemy camp.

"China has never seen such a ruler in its thousands of years of history!!"

"These two have utterly disgraced the Han emperors!"

Li Shimin's gaze was icy, and the anger in his words could no longer be concealed.

If he were to go to the Song Dynasty, the first thing he would do is kill Zhao Ji.

Li Shimin could see that although Zhao Ji had abdicated and become the retired emperor, had his power truly disappeared?

Emperor Qinzong of Song was undoubtedly influenced by Zhao Ji (Emperor Huizong) in many of his actions.

Moreover, Zhao Ji was the main culprit in the Song Dynasty being governed to its current state!

Including drugging the princess, if Zhao Ji hadn't allowed it, how could Zhao Huan have succeeded in doing so?

How could there be such a father, such a brother, and such an emperor in this world?

The Song Dynasty court officials, witnessing this scene, were filled with shame and indignation.

While Emperor Huizong (Zhao Ji) certainly bears some responsibility for this situation, their responsibilities are also considerable.

Military preparedness was in disarray, corruption was rampant, the country was obsessed with peace, it was weak and incompetent, and internal strife was endless.

These are all things they did.

In order to refute the new law, Wen Yanbo said, "The Song Dynasty shares the world with the scholar-officials."

But in the end, how did this world, which we all share, end up like this?