Outlaws of the Marsh

Chapter 571 Phase (please subscribe!)

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After winter, thieves swarmed along Jingdong Road, and the situation in the north suddenly became severe.

This undoubtedly made the already sad Song Dynasty even worse.

Cai Jing's party took the opportunity to quarrel. Bai Shizhong and Li Bangyan were too famous to be prime ministers and unable to subdue the world. They called for Cai Jing to come out again.

The most urgent problem Song Guo is facing now is that the country has no money, and money is needed everywhere.

More importantly, Wang Fu, who knows how to make money, has been taken down by Zhao Ji, and the rest of Bai Shizhong, Li Bangyan, Cai You and others are good at flattering everything, and they will stare blankly if they make money.

This can't help but remind Zhao Ji, when Cai Jing was in power, he spent his happy life casually, and then moved the idea of ​​re-appointing Cai Jing as prime minister.

Zhu Xi was very favored at this time, the story of his father and son's rebellion against the people in the southeast had already been reversed, and Zhao Ji's favor and trust in him was even greater than before.

Seeing that Zhao Ji intends to reinstate Cai Jing as prime minister, Zhu Xi, who has always been close to Cai Jing, strongly persuades him.

Therefore, in December of the sixth year of Xuanhe, Zhao Ji wrote an edict to Cai Jing: "I take the power to take advantage of the important things, use the right way to do things, and make meritorious deeds. The responsibility lies with the ministers. In the midst of a political failure, I am very apprehensive. I read the Mo Xun of my strong examination, repaired the evils, and the generals followed them. It belongs to Minlao. As for the official position, that is, Anli Luxian, his words and deeds still depend on Yan. "Book" does not say: "If you ask Huang, you will ignore the mistakes." Jing can also lead the lecturer, and listen to it private The second adjudication office is still exempt from signing letters, and is not required to work hard, so as to praise the beauty of my noble, greedy and virtuous."

In this way, Cai Jing came out of the mountain again, and he was also in charge of the lecturer, and still in charge of the three provinces. He went to the court once every five days, went to the capital hall to manage affairs, and once again stepped onto the political stage of the Song Dynasty.

Cai Jing's first appointment as prime minister was in July of the first year of Chongning, when Cai Jing was 56 years old and Zhao Ji was 21 years old.

At that time, Song Dynasty was facing the choice of two roads, either to take the road of reform or to take the road of conservatism, and the new party and the old party launched a fierce struggle for this.

Zhao Ji, who had just taken power, was eager to make a difference, so he resolutely chose "Shao Shu's father and brother" to take the road of reform, and chose Cai Jing as the first minister.

Cai Jing was overwhelmed with gratitude for Zhao Ji's kindness, and determined to repay it with his death.

After Cai Jing came to power, he quickly set off a vigorous upsurge of the Chongning Reform, and the country soon took on a new look.

But in February of the fifth year of Chongning, Cai Jing, who had been prime minister for less than four years, was dismissed by Zhao Ji because of his monopoly.

At that time, although Cai Jing had retired from his position, the personal connections he had carefully built in the court were still there.

Therefore, only ten months later, that is, in December of the fifth year of Chongning, Cai Jing returned and served as prime minister for the second time.

Until June of the third year of Daguan, many ministers impeached Cai Jing's monopoly, so that Zhao Ji also began to hate Cai Jing, so Cai Jing was dismissed for the second time.

Cai Jing was 63 years old that year. He thought he could bid farewell to the political arena. Although he had stepped down at that time, he was still being attacked by political opponents. Therefore, he was forced to leave Tokyo and live in Hangzhou.

In February of the second year of Zhenghe, Cai Jing suddenly received an imperial edict from Zhao Ji, counted Cai Jing's achievements, and called Cai Jing back to Beijing.

Cai Jing was overjoyed, and his family moved back to Tokyo.

In April, Zhao Ji hosted a banquet for Cai Jing in the Taiqing Building of the Inner Garden, and let the prince accompany him, which moved Cai Jing very much.

In May, Zhao Ji issued an edict ordering Cai Jingluo, the grand master, to become an official and come to the capital hall to discuss matters once every three days.

Thus, Cai Jing served as prime minister for the third time.

Cai Jing served as prime minister for nine years.

Those nine years were the most glorious period of Cai Jing's life, and also the most glorious period of Song Huizong's era, and it can even be said to be the peak and most prosperous period of the entire Northern Song Dynasty.

Cai Jing's dismissal for the third time was related to the strategy of regaining Yanyun.

When Zhao Ji first launched the strategy of "Uniting Jin, destroying Liao and recovering Yanyun", Cai Jing strongly agreed and actively promoted it, but his attitude gradually changed later.

The reason why Cai Jing’s attitude changed was because he was dissatisfied with Tong Guan always going over him to report to Zhao Ji alone; A war will have unforeseen consequences.

Once, Zhao Ji had a banquet during the ban, and everyone went boating together after drinking.Zhao Ji suddenly sent Tong Guan a piece of paper, asking him to tell Cai Jing, please express your opinion on the recovery of Yanyun, and sign the piece of paper if you agree.

Cai Jing refused to sign, saying: "It's hard to come up with the title of the book, let me explain it carefully."

Cai Jing's negative attitude towards the recovery of Yanyun made Zhao Ji think that Cai Jing was old, so he replaced Cai Jing with Wang Fu, who was in the prime of life and actively supported the recovery of Yanyun.

Let me say a digression here.

If Cai Jing does not return to prime minister again, based on Cai Jing's previous achievements, even if he cannot become a famous prime minister, he will definitely be a qualified prime minister and will not become one of the six thieves.

It's a pity that Cai Jing is too greedy for power.

Now, Cai Jing was invited out again by Zhao Ji to serve as prime minister for the fourth time.

This year, Cai Jing was nearly 80 years old, he was blind and unable to write, and he was unable to kneel down. All the documents that needed to be signed by Cai Jing, he asked his younger son Cai Xian to do it, and even the performances in the court were replaced by Cai Tao.

Every time Cai Tao went to the court, all the attendants below greeted him, murmured and whispered, and dozens of hall officials held documents to follow.

Cai Tao's arrogance and bravado caused strong dissatisfaction among the ministers.

Among them, the most dissatisfied are Bai Shizhong and Li Bangyan-although they are prime ministers, they have almost no right to handle any official affairs, and can only handle affairs according to the documents issued by Cai Tao.

Although the ministers of the DPRK and China are terrified of Cai Tao, Cai You is not afraid. He doesn't pay attention to this little brother at all, and he is still secretly looking for strong evidence to get rid of this little brother.

Previously, Zhao Ji had intended to promote Cai You as Prime Minister, but many people clearly expressed their opposition: "Cai Liu is not worthy of being Prime Minister!", so Cai You dropped the Jieyue and was still in charge of the Privy Council.

Although Cai You has no talents, he is still very enthusiastic about climbing to the throne of prime minister.

And as long as Cai Tao is removed, Cai Jing can be forced to retreat, and Cai You has the hope of climbing to the throne of prime minister.

Li Bangyan and others fanned the flames and tried their best to provoke the conflict between Cai You, Cai Jing, and Cai Tao—they hoped to use Cai You's hand to combat Cai Tao's arrogance.

In the first month of the seventh year of Xuanhe, Xu Kangzong, a member of Fengyi Lang Shangshu Division, sent an envoy to the Kingdom of Jin to congratulate Wu Qimai on his ascension to the throne of Emperor Dajin.

When passing by Yanjing, Xu Kangzong was surprised to find that there was an extremely serious famine in Yandi. Parents ate their children, and even sick and dead corpses were marked on the market and sold for money. Song's soldiers were all starved to death, and many soldiers even starved to death.

In fact, facing this situation, Zhao Ji also tried to change.

Last year, Zhao Ji assigned the task of guaranteeing the food supply in Yanjing to the Hebei, Hedong and Jingdong roads close to Yanjing, and the officials of the transshipment departments distributed the food amount to the people.

Due to the lack of transportation capacity, the officials of various transshipment departments also specifically asked the people to transport the grain to Yanjing to pay.

In order to transport one shi of grain, more than ten or even twenty shi of grain would be spent on the freight along the way, which brought great troubles and even disasters to the people.

In addition, in the past two years, there have been famines in Hebei, Jingdong and other roads year after year, the harvest is very bad, and starvation is everywhere.

As a result, many anti-donation storms or peasant riots broke out in various places, ranging from a few hundred people to tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people, one after another.

Zhang Wanxian in Shandong has a population of 5; Zhang Di in Shandong has a population of more than 30; Gaotuo Mountain in Hebei claims to have [-] people; and the other [-] to [-] people are countless.

Having said that, Zhao Ji and Song Guo have to thank Li Yan and Shuibo Liangshan.

These rebels, as well as those people who couldn't stand the hunger, finally gathered actively or passively (those who were driven out by the Song army) to the Jiaodong Peninsula, and then were transported to Kyushu and other eight counties by the people of Shuibo Liangshan. The rebel army is enough for Song Guo to drink a pot.

In fact, at the beginning, Zhao Ji and Song Guo didn't want to give these victims to Li Yan and Liangshan.

But those victims saw that Song Guo didn't even give them the last way of life, they were really desperate, and many soldiers of the Song Army couldn't bear to stop the victims' last way of life.

Later, Li Yan simply sent someone to talk to Song Guo, and promised to give Song Guo 50 catties of good iron in exchange for these victims.

After comprehensive consideration, Zhao Ji and his ministers stopped preventing Li Yan from recruiting these disaster victims.

As a result, disaster victims from Lianghe, Jingdongxi, Zhexishui, Huanqing, Binning, Jingyuan and other places migrated to Jiaodong Peninsula one after another, and then moved to eight counties including Kyushu by Shuibo Liangshan.

(Hedong and Yandi are too far away from the Jiaodong Peninsula, and the Song Dynasty strictly forbids the people of these two places to leave-these two places are related to the national defense of the Song Dynasty, and years of wars have caused the two places to lose a lot of people. How can the Song Dynasty Maybe let the people of these two places leave again?)
Within a few months, Shuibo Liangshan recruited 700 million victims, and this number is still increasing rapidly.

Although there is a water park in Liangshan to help the Song State relieve the pressure of the victims and riots, but for the Song State, this year is still full of disasters.

In the first month, a major earthquake suddenly occurred in Hedong, Shaanxi and other places. Many houses collapsed, causing serious casualties and property losses. Even Bianliang, Tokyo felt the earthquake.

At the beginning of February, when Zhao Ji heard that there was a great famine in Yanshan, he immediately issued an edict to transport 50 dendrobium from the capital to Yanshan, and ordered Meng Kui, the servant of the Ministry of Industry, to deal with it in person.

Meng Kui led the fleet to set off from the capital, go up the Dahe River, enter the Lu River from Baoxin Shatang, and then transport it to Yanjing.

At this time, Cai Tao, who was in power, was seeking treacherous interests, rewarding and punishing without rules, and sent envoys everywhere to punish him for interviews.

Moreover, Cai Tao also imitated the Yingfeng Division established by Wang Fu and created a Xuanhe Ku-style Gongsi—in fact, Cai Sui’s move was also raising money for Zhao Ji and the Song State, but because his methods were not clever enough, Xuanhe Kushi Gongsi also became the handle of his attack.

Cai You was extremely angry at Cai Tao's arrogance, and he secretly stepped up his search for evidence to kill Cai Tao.

The hard work paid off, and Cai You finally found strong evidence in a book called "Xiqing Shihua" written by Cai Tao.

In this book, Cai Tao dared to quote the remarks of Su Shi and Huang Tingjian.

At the same time, Cai Tao had a bigger handle, which was caught by Bai Shizhong and Li Bangyan, that is, Cai Tao used his power to promote his brother-in-law Han Zhuo as the servant of the household department.

Bai Shizhong and Li Bangyan went to court to impeach Cai Tao, accusing him of stealing power and using power for personal gain.

Cai You was even more vicious. He even suggested to Zhao Ji that Cai Tao be executed.

Zhao Ji had heard about Cai Tao's performance for a long time, and was also very dissatisfied for a long time, so he ordered Cai Tao to be exiled.

Cai Jing heard the news and hurried into the palace to beg.

Seeing Cai Jing's face, Zhao Ji exempted Cai Tao from exile punishment, ordered Cai Tao to suspend his post, and revoked Cai Tao's edict of birth.

At this time, Zhao Ji was very disappointed with Cai Jing. He knew that today's Cai Jing was no longer the former Cai Jing, and he hoped that Cai Jing could take the initiative to submit his resignation.

However, Cai Jing was obsessed with power, obsessed with power, and was reluctant to hand over the power of prime minister for a long time.

……

(End of this chapter)