People in the Song Dynasty were lawless

Chapter 521: Foreign troops are prohibited from entering the Song Dynasty border

The Song Dynasty in the 13th year of the Qingli period was full of positivity.

The economy, culture and science and technology develop comprehensively.

The education coverage rate was gradually improved, and three-year compulsory education officially began.

This proposal was made by Zhao Jun to Zhao Zhen at the regular meeting in Chongzheng Hall at the end of the 13th year of the Qingli period.

Hope to start six years of compulsory education.

He believes that now is the best time to implement compulsory primary education.

First, the domestic economy is developing rapidly.

During the Jingyou period, the national GDP was only 400 to 500 million guan per year, and tax revenue was only 70 to 80 million guan.

Moreover, most of the tax revenue is used to support heavy military expenditures, making it difficult to develop education.

However, as the effects of reforms have become increasingly significant over the years, the country's wealth and productivity have more than doubled, and annual fiscal revenue has reached more than 500 million guan.

Although the higher the fiscal revenue, the more money needs to be spent, for example, a few years ago, the issue of repairing the city of Peking was decided.

There is also the construction of railway networks in various places, investment in science and technology, and construction of hydropower station projects, etc.

However, education is the cornerstone, and no matter how poor you are, you must not be poor in education.

Therefore, even though money has to be spent on all aspects, once compulsory education is opened, fiscal expenditure will inevitably increase significantly, and this money has to be spent.

Otherwise, if it is delayed for too long, education will only lag behind and slow down the country's development.

The second issue is the educational process.

Although the education system for primary, middle, high and university levels is well established across the country, tuition fees are high and only those from well-off families can afford to go to school.

The Song Dynasty is indeed wealthy now, but that does not mean that everyone is wealthy. What it means is that most people have solved the problem of food and clothing and no longer have to worry about food like in any previous dynasty.

But among the vast majority of the peasant class, since food prices were not high, simply farming could only ensure that they would not starve to death, but it was impossible to help them get rid of poverty and become rich.

Therefore, the lives of the vast majority of the lower-class people in the Song Dynasty were not very comfortable.

After solving the daily necessities of life every year, it was considered good if a few strings of cash were left over. We still had to buy some clothes and furniture. It was very difficult to support our children to finish elementary school, junior high school, high school and college.

However, the current national situation in the Song Dynasty is one that urgently requires a large number of educated talents. Factories are being built everywhere and workers also need cultural levels.

At present, there are many illiterate factory workers across the country, many of whom do not even have primary school education, and lack industrial research and development capabilities.

Scientific research technology and scientific theories also need continuous innovation.

There may be one or two people in the scientific community who can rapidly advance scientific development.

For example, Newton and Einstein.

But the condition for producing Newton and Einstein is the popularization of education. It is not realistic to expect scientists to emerge among billions of people, rather than expecting one to emerge after teaching ten people.

Therefore, when the educational process has become somewhat backward and private education cannot be popularized on a large scale due to the high tuition fees, compulsory education must be implemented.

This is true whether it is Japan's compulsory education after the Meiji Restoration or my country's nine-year compulsory education that was fully implemented after 1986.

Therefore, the implementation of compulsory education is an inevitable trend in order to significantly improve the quality of the country's citizens.

However, after a long and serious discussion at the meeting, everyone agreed that the six-year compulsory education system would put too much pressure on the finances and should be reconsidered.

The main reason is that the population of the Song Dynasty is growing rapidly. It is foreseeable that in the next few years, tens of millions of children of school age will enter primary school, and the financial burden will be very terrifying at that time.

Once compulsory education is relaxed, it means that a large number of primary schools will have to be built, perhaps not just a few thousand but tens of thousands across the country.

With tens of thousands of primary schools accommodating hundreds of students on average, they must have at least six teachers. Some large primary schools may even need dozens or even hundreds of teachers.

Hundreds of thousands of teachers are needed across the country.

Let’s not talk about whether there are so many teachers engaged in teacher education in the Song Dynasty. Even if there are, with various school facilities and continuous maintenance funds, the annual fiscal budget would probably be tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of strings of cash.

Basically, once compulsory education is implemented, one-fifth of the national fiscal budget will have to be invested in it, accounting for 20%. Even in later developed countries, the proportion is only in single digits, which is too exaggerated.

Therefore, careful research is still needed in this regard.

Zhao Jun felt that what everyone said made sense, and that 20% investment in education was indeed not appropriate. Even if education was to be vigorously developed, an annual investment of 10% would already exceed that of all developed countries in the world in later generations.

There are still a large number of areas in the country that need to be developed. If we raise the level of education too much all at once while the rest of the construction does not keep up, the result will only be that a large number of talents will be unemployed, which will be a waste of manpower.

After realizing that he had gone too far, Zhao Jun discussed with everyone and finally decided on three years of compulsory education and implemented the 5-4-3 system.

This system is a five-year primary school, four-year junior high school, and three-year high school system.

Compulsory education will be provided from grades one to three of primary school, and tuition fees will be charged only from grades four and five to maintain local education finances.

In this way, although investment in education will still increase, both the number of people involved and the entire system will be much smaller, and the focus will be on literacy, supplemented by basic education.

In a few years, when the national strength has developed to another level, we will begin to focus on basic education and improve the education level of the entire country, so as to achieve the goal of cultivating more talents.

of course.

Naturally, the entire content of the meeting could not be decided and implemented so hastily.

The Constitutional Court has proposed this direction, and the next step is to carry out a pilot program, such as conducting compulsory education in Bianliang first, to see the results, and then promote it nationwide if there are no problems, and make good budgeting and preparations.

It may take several years to actually implement it. Although it is a bit slow, the plate is too big and many things are interconnected, so we have to be cautious.

This is also the strategic policy that our country has adopted for any reform in later generations to avoid mistakes.

In addition to education, as the School of Physics deepens its research on electromagnetism, electricity has also begun to be widely used in industry.

And ordinary people also need electricity, whether it is electric lights or electric fans, they can all be commercialized.

Therefore, it is imperative to build a large number of power stations.

Both thermal power generation and hydropower generation require construction and hiring of workers. The 30% of fiscal revenue retained by local governments is definitely not enough, and central government funding is also needed.

Plus the remaining directions and previously formulated plans.

The result was that by the end of the 13th year, almost all the tax money that had just been collected had been distributed before they could even warm up in the hands.

This made many prime ministers, including Zhao Jun, feel very emotional.

The more money you have, the less you can spend it.

In the past, the annual income hovered around 6000 to 8000 million guan, which was enough to cover military expenses, officials' salaries and other miscellaneous expenses.

The annual income has now reached 5 million guan, and military spending has been greatly reduced. Although the salaries of officials have not been greatly reduced, they have increased to more than million guan due to the increasing number of officials each year.

But compared with today's fiscal revenue, both military expenditure and officials' salaries are just a drop in the bucket, and the total does not exceed 40 million strings of cash.

As a result, the remaining 400 million guan were used to spend on infrastructure, scientific research, innovation subsidies, social security, medical expenses, transportation, state-owned companies, naval fleet, agriculture, forestry, fishery, etc.

Not only did they spend all the fiscal revenue for the year, but even the large number of gifts from all nations at the end of last year and the money earned from selling outdated firearms were not enough. Everyone sighed that national development and construction was indeed a huge hole that could not be filled.

Just when the Song Dynasty was worried that its annual income of 500 million strings of cash was too little.

At this moment, Wanyan Wugunai, who was far away in Liaodong, was sitting in the imperial palace in Shangjing of the Liao Kingdom, looking at the mountains of gold, silver and jewelry in front of him with great joy.

The Imperial Palace in Shangjing of the Liao Dynasty was the earliest palace of the Liao Dynasty. It was not actually very large in scale, but it was the birthplace of the Khitan, and a large number of Khitan nobles lived here, leaving behind a lot of wealth.

After Ugunai captured Shangjing, many Khitan nobles fled and a large amount of wealth was plundered by the Jurchens, including various Song Dynasty coins, some gold, silver and jewelry.

All together, there may be dozens of boxes.

"Your Majesty, let me make it clear. There are more than 1.8 million coins in the Song Dynasty, and all kinds of jewelry combined should be worth 1 or 2 million coins."

Tangkugut, who was named Guolun Bojilie, reported to Wanyan Ugunai.

"Hahahahahaha."

Wanyan Wugunai was very happy. He had never seen so much money in his life.

"Your Majesty, how should these be dealt with?"

Tangkougut asked.

"Keep it for now, and tell all the soldiers that this money will be used as a reward for them after we capture Zhongjing."

Wanyan Wugunai waved his hand and made the decision.

He is very clear.

Now is not the time to slack off.

A few months ago, both he and the Liao Kingdom sent envoys to the Song Dynasty.

However, the attitude of the Song Dynasty was very ambiguous, neither helping Liao nor intending to help Jin.

It seems that neither side is helping each other. They are just playing Tai Chi and passing the buck. There is no definite news.

This made Wanyan Wugunai a little worried, fearing that the Song State would take advantage of the conflict between the two countries.

Therefore, he had to fight quickly and decisively. Taking over the Liao Dynasty's Shangjing Linhuang Prefecture was not enough to secure victory, and he had to continue the attack.

We have to capture Zhongjing Dading Prefecture and completely wipe out the Liao people to put the matter to rest.

When the time comes, the Great Jin Kingdom will replace the Liao Kingdom, and they will immediately send envoys to the Great Song Dynasty to pay tribute and pledge allegiance, putting in enough superficial effort to become a vassal state of the Great Song Dynasty.

I don't think the Song Dynasty would risk the world's condemnation and attack its vassal state just for the sake of the barren land in the north.

As for this money.

Although this was the most wealth Wanyan Wugunai had ever seen, he understood that only by letting his soldiers fight to the death could the Liao Kingdom be quickly conquered.

Therefore, money must be spent to encourage soldiers to fight to the death.

After making the decision to fight a quick battle, Ugunai only rested in Shangjing for two days before leading his army south without stopping.

When he first rebelled six years ago, there were only a few thousand people from the Wanyan and Tangku tribes combined.

But as it has continued to grow over the past six years, various tribes have joined in one after another, and the number of soldiers and horses has reached tens of thousands.

He also recruited surrenders and rebellions along the way, not only gathering troops from the Shiwei, Bohai, Xi and other tribes, but also incorporating the surrendered Khitan troops.

Soon the situation snowballed, and by the time he reached the vicinity of Zhongjing, Wanyan Wugunai already had an army of over 100,000.

This is very similar to the later Jin Dynasty.

Or it can be said that this is the normal direction of war. For example, Cao Cao's army of hundreds of thousands at the Battle of Red Cliff was also composed of surrendered troops from various places.

Under the rapid offensive of the Jin Dynasty, the Liao Dynasty's already corrupt and decadent system quickly collapsed.

Although they had artillery, the army was seriously corrupt, lacked gunpowder and ammunition, and had a very high rate of grenade duds, so they suffered heavy losses in battle.

In addition, the Pi Shi Army, which had long been defeated by the Song Dynasty, had low combat effectiveness and was far from being a match for the ferocious Jin people. It soon lost a large number of cities and was chased by the Jurchens and fled everywhere.

Yelu Chongyuan's troops became smaller and smaller, with only about 30,000 people left guarding Zhongjing Dading Prefecture.

The Song Dynasty did not agree to their request for help.

The Liao emperor had no choice but to concentrate his troops and fight a desperate battle in Dading Prefecture.

On December 29th of the 13th year of the Qingli period of the Song Dynasty, after three days of siege of Dading Prefecture, the Jin army finally blasted open the city gates with artillery.

Groups of Jin troops rushed into the city. The Liao army engaged in street fighting with the Jin army. After half a day of fierce fighting, they were eventually defeated. Yelu Chongyuan escaped from the south gate with his family under the protection of the guards.

At the same time, a large number of remaining Liao troops also followed him out. About 20,000 people fled separately, and several thousand people followed Yelu Chongyuan all the way to the south.

On the 30th, the New Year arrived. There was a festive atmosphere inside and outside Yuzhou City on the border of the Great Song Dynasty, and lanterns were hung in every household.

Although it was the dead of winter and there was a light snow in the north, it did not dampen the enthusiasm of the people at all. They wore cotton clothes, set off firecrackers, and many of them ran from the surrounding villages to the city to attend the market.

Cart after cart of New Year's goods were pulled home, and people were filled with laughter and joy.

But at noon, many troops appeared on the bank of the Yuli River in the distance. The soldiers of the border defense camp originally deployed in Yuzhou shouted and ran to the river.

They dug trenches, piled up sandbags, and did not know what they were doing.

Many curious people heard the news and walked out of the city and ran to the nearby river bank to watch from afar, about a mile away from the river bank.

Just when they were confused, there was the sound of horse hooves in the distance and dust rose up.

A large number of troops came towards the Yu River.

"Listen up, people in front. Foreign troops are prohibited from entering the border of the Song Dynasty. Violators will be killed without mercy!"

The Song army brought out a set of loudspeakers and the leading commander shouted.

The army in the distance gradually slowed down, but before they could come over to negotiate, the sound of killing gradually arose from the rear.

Immediately afterwards, another army rushed out and the two sides were forced to fight fiercely.

The people of Yuzhou on the south bank were dumbfounded.

It turned out that there was a war in the north.

What moved all the people of Song Dynasty even more was that

When the North was fighting a desperate battle.

In the southern territory of the Song Dynasty, however, there was peace and prosperity, and people were enjoying the joy of the New Year.

(End of this chapter)