Great Song Super Scholar

Chapter 648
In the afternoon, the emperor Zhao Xu, Xiangguo Fubi and Wen Yanbo were specially summoned to drink tea by the Empress Dowager Cao. The Empress Dowager Cao also read today's newspaper, living in the deep palace all year round, almost isolated from the outside world, and the prosperity of the Song Dynasty. The newspaper has become the biggest expectation of the palace people every day, and it has also become their talk after dinner.

Empress Dowager Cao is no exception. She subscribes to all the newspapers in the capital, and spends two hours reading newspapers every afternoon. This habit is almost irreversible.

The three met the Empress Dowager in Ci'an Palace and saluted. The Empress Dowager Cao asked the emperor Zhao Xu and the two left and right ministers to sit down.

Empress Dowager Cao took out the special battle report and asked, "I saw a piece of good news today, but it's a pity that the report is too short. The Ai family would like to know more news."

Zhao Xu leaned forward and said: "The attack on the southern defense line was sent by flying eagles, and it was very brief. Di Shumi led an army of 36 troops to attack from behind the defense line, and the Xixia army was caught off guard. They broke through [-] villages in a row and captured Weizhou and Yinzhou. and Xiazhou.

The main force of the Xixia army is concentrated in Youzhou, Hongzhou and Yanzhou. They originally planned to counterattack, but Han Xiangguo and General Zhong had led 30 troops to kill them. They had to retreat northward, but they were blocked by Di Shumi's army. The Xixia army was trapped in Yanzhou. "

Empress Dowager Cao nodded, "Can we destroy Xixia this time?"

"Reporting to the emperor's grandmother, as long as there are no major accidents, it should be fine."

Empress Dowager Cao took another copy of "Military News" run by Cao's family, and said with a smile: "I read an article yesterday, saying that Xixia still has a main force in Mount Henan. Have you reminded Mr. Fan?"

Zhao Xu quickly said: "He Nanshan's army should be the traditional cavalry of the party. They are the ones who have been fighting the Song army for decades. They are not as many as hundreds of thousands of troops. They can gather up to 3 cavalry, of which [-] are deployed in In the Hexi Corridor, there are still [-] cavalry deployed in Juyanhai, and [-] cavalry in the Hehuang area to confront us. The cavalry they can use to support Xingqing Prefecture is only [-] to [-]. Mr. Fan is very wary of them , sent a large number of scouts to monitor them."

At this time, Fu Bi laughed and said, "There is something to report to the Queen Mother about the Xixia Army in the Hexi Corridor. The leader of Tubo, Dong Zhan, will soon arrive in the capital and discuss with us about the coalition attacking the Xixia Army in the Hexi Corridor."

Dong Zhan was the leader of Tubo in the Qingtang Dynasty. He controlled today’s northern Qinghai and a part of southwest Gansu. His father Jiaosi Luo led the army to defeat Li Yuanhao’s invasion of the Hehuang area, and established the national policy of uniting the Song Dynasty against the Xia Dynasty. After Jiao Siluo’s death, His son Dong Zhan inherited his state policy and has always maintained close ties with the Song Dynasty.

"The Tubo spy on the Hexi Corridor too?" Empress Dowager Cao asked coldly.

Wen Yanbo said with a smile: "Don't worry, Queen Mother, today's Tubo is not the Tubo of the Tang Dynasty. The Qingtang Tubo is just a branch of Tubo. How can it compete with the Song Dynasty? It's just that the Xixia Army in the Hexi Corridor keeps peeping at Hehuang. This made them restless, this time the Song army attacked Xia on a large scale, and they saw the opportunity, so they came up with a plan to join the Song Dynasty to attack Xia, to destroy Tubo, and the Hexi Corridor must belong to the Song Dynasty."

Empress Dowager Cao was relieved a little, and asked again: "Will the Liao Congress send troops to interfere with our plan to destroy Xia?"

It was also the most hotly debated matter in the papers, and she certainly cared.

Fu Bi said: "Report to the Empress Dowager, we have just received news that Emperor Yelu Hongji of the Liao Kingdom will send a special envoy to the Song Dynasty to mediate the war between the Song Dynasty and Xixia."

"What does this mean?" Empress Dowager Cao asked puzzledly.

"That is to say, the Liao Kingdom gave up the use of force to interfere with the Song Dynasty's attack on Xia, and only used diplomatic methods to ease the relationship between Song and Xia. In fact, the Liao Kingdom was trying to find a way for itself."

Empress Dowager Cao nodded slightly, "The Ai family is really looking forward to the 60 troops marching into Xixia. Hearing the news of the Song Dynasty's demise of Xixia, the Ai family can also explain to the late emperor when they die in the future."

Speaking of this, Empress Dowager Cao's face turned cold. She took out a "Tabolo" and found an article targeting the Fan family, and pushed it in front of the emperor Zhao Xu, "Have the officials read this article?"

Zhao Xu nodded, "These are all nonsense. It is obvious that they want to provoke the court's distrust of Mr. Fan, and then change the commander. The emperor's grandmother should ignore it."

Empress Dowager Cao said coldly: "The Ai family doesn't want to pay attention to it, but at noon Princess Wu sent a form to the Ai family, she wants to resign the title of princess, and begged the Ai family to agree, what do you think the Ai family should do?"

Zhao Xu was startled, what's going on?Why did Fanning's wife resign in the name of princess.

Wen Yanbo said: "Queen Dowager, a princess is neither a title nor an official position. Unless King Wu abolishes his wife, it cannot be removed. Princess Wu should know this truth!"

"That's right! Her husband is working for the imperial court on the front line, but the imperial court allows others to wantonly bully their weak wives and children. They are so forced that they can't help it. They don't even dare to be princesses. We are still here to reason with them, you The emperor has acted calmly, but you two prime ministers don’t take it seriously, Fan Ning will hand over a letter of resignation tomorrow, and I won’t work for you, officials, what should you do?”

Sweat dripped from Zhao Xu's forehead, and he quickly knelt down in front of the emperor's grandmother to plead guilty, "It's my grandson who didn't think carefully, and my grandson corrected it immediately."

"Where are you two?"

Empress Dowager Cao glanced at Fu Bi and Wen Yanbo, "Did the Zhizheng Hall not think carefully?"

The emperor knelt down, Fu Bi and Wen Yanbo couldn't stand anymore, and they also knelt down, Fu Bi said shamelessly: "It is we who neglected the feelings of the Fan family, and I personally wrote a pen to publicly criticize the "Tabolo". slander."

Empress Dowager Cao looked a little better, nodded and said: "Mr. Fan has made great achievements many times and has a high prestige in the army. If these newspapers are spread to the army, it will seriously affect the morale of the army and shake the morale. This reason even makes me a woman. The older generation understands, you just let it go, the Ai family really doesn’t know what to say about you, you two, go down! What to do, Zhizheng Tang can figure it out, the Ai family doesn’t want to talk about it a second time.”

Fu Bi and Wen Yanbo resigned, and the Empress Dowager Cao said to Zhao Xu: "You should know that the "Letter" is run by the Zhu family, but the "Letter" has never said a word about this matter. In fact, it is Zhu Pei who is waiting. When the court came forward, Zhu Pei liked her very much since she was a child. She is soft on the outside and strong on the inside. She complained to the Ai family. In fact, she took care of the overall situation. If she took her family to leave Song Dynasty and go to Beidao , do you think Fan Ning can still work hard for you with peace of mind?"

Zhao Xu said with shame on his face, "Grandson knew he was wrong."

"How are you going to solve this?"

"Refuse the rumors, clarify the matter, and then I will let the queen go to the Fan Mansion to appease Princess Wu in person."

Empress Dowager Cao shook her head, "It's not enough!"

She said in a deep voice: "If your grandfather handles this matter, he must find out this Li Guangbai. No matter who this person is, he will be given the hat of collaborating with the enemy. Only in this way can the reputation of the Fan family be restored and the Fan family Let Fan Ning work better for you, do you understand the meaning of Aijia?"

"Grandson understands!"

Early the next morning, Empress Xiang came to Zhu's mansion to visit Fan Ning's mother, wife and children, and gave Fan Ning's mother five hundred pieces of Zhang's palace brocade as a token of condolence to the family of the expedition commander.

At noon, the right minister Fubi and the left minister Wen Yanbo published feature articles on the front pages of the "Letter" and "Tabolo" respectively, refuting Li Guangbai's rumors.

Fu Bi clearly pointed out in the article that Fan Ning's two elder brothers were the first businessmen to go to Kunzhou, risking being killed by the natives, and they were the first to discover gold sand in the rivers of Kunzhou.

For this reason, Fan Ning specially wrote to the emperor to apply for mining gold sand, which was specially approved by the emperor, allowing small-scale mining for three years, and employing no more than a hundred people, as Fan Ning's reward for developing Kunzhou for the imperial court.

As a condition for mining gold mines, the Fan brothers and other miners are responsible for prospecting for the imperial court in Kunzhou. At present, the gold and silver mines in Kunzhou were discovered by the Fan brothers, and they were handed over to the imperial court for free, and they were awarded by the emperor at that time. The Fan family was not the only family that was specially approved for gold mining. Even Zhang Yaozuo was approved to mine silver in Ryukyu Prefecture.

When refuting overseas purchases of islands, Fu Bi even pointed out that the imperial court encouraged big businessmen and meritorious worlds to purchase land overseas, and allowed overseas territories to exercise self-government conditions.

At present, there are 430 families and businessmen who have purchased islands and land overseas, and the Fan family is just one of them. Moreover, the island purchased by the Fan family is the farthest from the Song Dynasty, and there are cannibals on the nearby islands.

Fu Bi also pointed out that the island purchased by the Fan family was tens of thousands of miles away from the Song Dynasty, and the imperial court did not even know that there was an island here. The Fan brothers still paid 8 taels of gold for this. In fact, they returned the gold they found in Kunzhou to the court.

This is exactly the embodiment of Fan Ning's strict demands on himself, with the court in mind, and the Song Dynasty in mind.

At the end of the article, Fu Bi pointed out that at the critical moment when the Song army attacked Xixia, some people spread rumors at this critical juncture in an attempt to influence the court to change commanders and make the Song Dynasty's strategy of destroying Xia fall short. The essence of these articles It is implementing countermeasures.

However, Wen Yanbo's article took out the letter of the late emperor's approval of the Fan family, the Cao family, the Gao family, and the Pang family's gold mining prospecting, and published it publicly in the newspaper. At the same time, it disclosed the price and location of the Fan family's purchase of the island, as well as the price stipulated by the court. , using hard facts to refute Li Guangbai's slander against the Fan family.

The heavyweight article of the two husbands was like a stone that stirred up thousands of waves, and caused a great uproar in the capital. The people in the capital angrily accused the "Tabloid" of spreading rumors. The strong pressure forced the "Tabolo" to print a special issue overnight, publicly expressing the author's article It does not represent the position of the newspaper. The newspaper firmly supports the Pingxia War of the Song Dynasty and apologizes to the Fan family for the harm it has suffered.

The next day, Li Guangbai revealed his true colors. He turned out to be Zhao Jinglun, the former son-in-law of Zhang Yaozuo, who is now a doctor of the Imperial College. Dali Temple found several letters in his study that had secretly communicated with Xixia. .

On the same day, Tabloid was ordered to stop publishing that day's newspaper and suspend operations for a month for rectification.

After this turmoil, the vitality of "Title Newspaper" was severely damaged, and nearly [-]% of its readers were lost, which made it fall from the first largest newspaper to the last among the thirteen newspapers in the capital.

A series of turmoil occurred in Bianliang, but Liang Yibu, who should be one of the protagonists, knew nothing about it. He had already left the capital and was on his way back home.

(End of this chapter)