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After winter began, thieves flocked to Jingdong Road, and the situation in the north suddenly became severe.

This undoubtedly made the already sad Great Song Kingdom even worse.

Cai Jing's party took the opportunity to clamor. Bai Shizhong and Li Bangyan were too fame and could not take on the prime minister's duties and were unable to defeat the world. They called on Cai Jing to come out again.

The most urgent problem facing the Song State now is that the country has no money and needs money everywhere.

More importantly, Wang Fu, who knows how to make money, has been taken down by Zhao Ji. The remaining Bai Shizhong, Li Bangyan, Cai You and others are good at flattering and making money, and they will stare at me in vain.

This reminded Zhao Ji that when Cai Jing was in power, he had the idea of ​​re-enacting his happy days.

Zhu Xie was very favored at this time. The incident of his father and son forcing the people in the Southeast was already over. Zhao Ji favored him more than before.

Seeing that Zhao Ji was intending to re-enact Cai Jing as prime minister, Zhu Xie, who had always been very close to Cai Jing, persuaded him.

Therefore, in December of the sixth year of Xuanhe, Zhao Ji wrote a handwritten edict to Cai Jing: "I hold power and take advantage of the key points, and use the right to rule the way, and seek the credit for the ministers. Since the year, I have been absent from the other person, and I have been in a state of great trouble. I have been thinking about my moral teachings and have been practicing evil and have been following the rules and regulations, so I have been very strict and conscientious. I have been studying hard and resolutely, and have been appointed as a minister to discuss the matter. The Grand Tutor of the Grand Tutor resigned to Cai Jing to assist me in the first place, and I have been a man of great power and was a man of a man of mine. I have been in charge of the official position, and I have been dependent on my words and deeds. The Book of Documents does not say: "If you ask about this, you will be in trouble." Jing can also take charge of the Lecture Department, and listen to the private ruling department, and still exempt the signing of the book. Do not be diligent, so as to claim that I am noble and greedy for the beauty of virtuous people."

In this way, Cai Jing came out again and was in charge of the Prosecutor's Office. He still took charge of the affairs of the three provinces. He went to the court for five days and went to the capital to manage affairs, and once again appeared on the political stage of the Song Dynasty.

Cai Jing first served as prime minister in July of the first year of Chongning. Cai Jing was fifty-six years old and Zhao Ji was twenty-one years old.

At that time, the Song Dynasty was facing two choices, either taking the path of reform or taking the path of conservatism. The new party and the old party fought fiercely for this.

Zhao Ji, who had just been in power, was eager to do something, so he resolutely chose "Shaoshu's father and brother" to follow the path of reform, and chose Cai Jing as the chief minister.

Cai Jing was grateful for Zhao Ji's kindness and was determined to repay him with all his life.

After Cai Jing came to power, a vigorous Chongning reform quickly set off, and the country's appearance quickly became new.

But in February of the fifth year of Chongning, Cai Jing, who had served as prime minister for less than four years, was dismissed from prime minister by Zhao Ji for his autocracy.

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

Therefore, just ten months later, 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 dictatorship, so Zhao Ji began to hate Cai Jing, so Cai Jing was dismissed from prime minister twice.

That year, Cai Jing was sixty-three years old. He thought he could bid farewell to the political arena. At that time, although he had stepped down, he was still attacked by political enemies. Therefore, he was forced to leave Tokyo and live in Hangzhou.

In February of the second year of Zhenghe, Cai Jing suddenly received a handwritten edict from Zhao Ji, counting Cai Jing's achievements and summoning Cai Jing back to Beijing.

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

In April, Zhao Ji invited Cai Jing to a banquet at Taiqing Building in Neiyuan and asked the prince to accompany him, which moved Cai Jing very much.

In May, Zhao Ji issued an edict, ordering the Grand Tutor Cai Jingluo to retire and go to the capital hall for discussion every three days.

So, Cai Jing became 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, the most glorious period of the Song Huizong era, and it can even be said to be the peak and peak period of the entire Northern Song Dynasty.

Cai Jing's third rescinding of the prime minister was related to the strategy of regaining Yanyun.

When Zhao Ji first started to launch the strategy of "Union of Jin to destroy Liao and recover Yanyun", Cai Jing strongly agreed and actively promoted it, but later his attitude gradually changed.

Cai Jing's attitude changed because he was dissatisfied with Tong Guan always passing him and reporting to Zhao Ji alone, and because he realized the weakness of the Song Dynasty and the unpreparedness of the border, and was afraid that he would rashly provoke a war and would have unpredictable consequences.

Once, Zhao Ji was in a banquet at the ban. After drinking, everyone was sailing together. Zhao Ji suddenly sent Tong Guan a piece of paper and told him to tell Cai Jing that everyone would make a statement about the recovery of Yan Yun. If they agree, they would sign the piece of paper.

Cai Jing refused to sign and said, "It's hard to get the title of the book if you're careful."

Cai Jing's negative attitude towards regaining Yan Yun made Zhao Ji think that Cai Jing is old, so he let the young and strong Wang Fu, who actively supports regaining Yan Yun, replace Cai Jing.

Here is a distraction.

If Cai Jing did not return to prime minister again, even if he could not become a famous prime minister of the generation, he would definitely be a qualified prime minister and would not become one of the six thieves.

Unfortunately, Cai Jing is too greedy for power.

Now, Cai Jing has been invited by Zhao Ji again and serves as prime minister for the fourth time.

That year, Cai Jing was nearly 80 years old, and was blind and could not write, and could not bow down. He asked Ji Zi Cai Tao to do whatever documents needed to be signed by Cai Jing, and even Cai Tao was replaced by Cai Tao.

Every time Cai Tao went to court, the attendants and the following bowed, and the whispered, and dozens of officials held the documents to follow.

Cai Tao's arrogant and powerful aroused strong dissatisfaction among the ministers.

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

Although the ministers in the court were afraid of Cai Tao, Cai You was not afraid. He didn't take this little brother seriously at all, and he was secretly looking for strong evidence to get rid of this little brother.

Previously, Zhao Ji had the intention to promote Cai You as prime minister, but many people clearly expressed their opposition: "Cai Liu is not worthy of being prime minister!" Cai You then fell into the position of the Privy Council and was still in charge of the Privy Council.

Although Cai You had no talent, he was still very enthusiastic about climbing to the throne of prime minister.

As long as Cai Tao is removed, he can force Cai Jing 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 and Cai Jing and Cai Tao. They hoped to use Cai You's hands to attack Cai Tao's arrogant arrogance.

In the first month of the seventh year of Xuanhe, Xu Kangzong, the Minister of the Prosecutor of the Secretary of the Republic, was ordered to go to the Jin Kingdom to congratulate Wu Qimai on his ascendance to the throne of the Great Jin Emperor.

When passing by Yanjing, Xu Kangzong was surprised to find that there was an extremely serious famine in Yan. His parents ate their sons, and even had corpses of illness and death were put on paper to sell for money on the market. Not to mention the common people, even the soldiers of the Song Dynasty were starved to death, and many soldiers even starved to death.

In fact, in the face of this situation, Zhao Ji also tried to change.

Last year, Zhao Ji issued the task of ensuring the supply of grain in Yanjing to Hebei, Hedong and Jingdong near Yanjing, and officials from various transshipment departments allocated the amount of grain to the people.

Due to the lack of transportation power, officials from various transshipment departments also specifically asked the people to transport the grain to Yanjing for payment.

In order to transport one stone of food, the freight along the way costs more than ten stones or even twenty stones of food, which has brought great trouble and even disaster to the people.

In addition, in the past two years, famines have occurred in Hebei, Jingdong and other roads, and the harvest is very bad and hunger is everywhere.

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

The most influential ones are Zhang Wanxian from Shandong, with a population of 100,000; Zhang Di from Shandong, with a population of more than 50,000; Gaotuoshan from Hebei, with a population of 300,000; and the other 20,000 to 30,000 people are countless.

Speaking of this, Zhao Ji and Song State have to thank Li Yan and the waters of Liangshan.

These rebels, as well as those who were too hungry to bear, finally took the initiative or passed away (sold by the Song army), gathered on the Jiaodong Peninsula, and were then transported to the eight counties including Jiuzhou by the people who were flooded in Liangshan. Otherwise, the endless rebels would be enough for the Song State to drink a pot.

In fact, at the beginning, Zhao Ji and Song did not want to give these victims to Li Yan and to the Liangshan Mountains.

But the victims were really desperate to see that the State of Song did not even give them the last way of life, and many Song soldiers could not bear to stop the last way of life of the victims.

Later, Li Yan simply sent someone to talk to Song State and promised to give Song State 500,000 kilograms of good iron to replace these victims.

After Zhao Ji's monarch and ministers considered it comprehensively, he no longer stopped Li Yan from recruiting these victims.

As a result, the victims of the Lianghe River, Beijing East and West, Zhejiang West, Huanqing, Bining, Jingyuan and other places migrated to the Jiaodong Peninsula, and were then moved to the eight counties including Jiuzhou by the Liangshan Mountain.

(Hedong and Yan are too far from the Jiaodong Peninsula, and the Song State strictly prohibits the people from these two places from leaving these two places, which is related to the national defense of the Song State. Moreover, the years of war have caused the two places to lose a lot of population. How could Song State let the people from these two places leave again?)

In a few months, Shuibo Liangshan recruited six or seven million victims, and the number was increasing rapidly.

Although there are waters of Liangshan to help Song State relieve the pressure of victims and riots, this year is still full of disasters and difficulties.

In the first month of the year, a major earthquake suddenly occurred in Hedong, Shaanxi and other places, houses collapsed in many places, and people's casualties and property losses were very serious, and even Tokyo Bianliang felt a tremor.

In early February, when Zhao Ji heard about the famine in Yanshan, he immediately issued an edict, requiring him to transport 500,000 hu of rice from the capital to Yanshan, and named Meng Kui, the Minister of Works, to take action personally.

Meng Kui led a fleet from the capital, headed north along the Great River, entered the Lu River from Baoxin Shatang, and then transported to Yanjing.

At this time, Cai Tao, who was in power, was in charge of evil and profit, and was rewarded and punished without any rules. He sent envoys to come out to punish him for interviews. Those who were happy were ordered to recommend him, otherwise he would impeach him, and all the Chinese and foreign gentry were looking at him.

Moreover, Cai Tao imitated Ying Fengsi established by Wang Fu and established a Xuanhe Ku style tribute. In fact, Cai Tao's move was also raising money for Zhao Ji and the Song State. However, because his methods were not clever enough, Xuanhe Ku style tribute became the handle for him to be attacked.

Cai Tao's arrogance and unrestrained Cai You's arrogance made him extremely angry. He secretly stepped up his search for evidence to remove Cai Tao.

Hard work pays off, and Cai You finally found strong evidence in a book written by Cai Tao called "The Talk of Western Qing Poetry".

In this book, Cai Tao dared to quote Su Shi and Huang Tingjian's remarks. This is evidence of the crime. Zhao Ji issued an edict not long ago, expressing his intention to strictly prohibit the citation of Su and Huang's collections, otherwise it would be considered as a violation of the system.

At the same time, Cai Tao had a bigger handle, which was captured by Bai Shizhong and Li Bangyan, that is, Cai Tao used his power to promote his brother-in-law Han Jian as the Minister of the Ministry of Revenue.

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, and he even made suggestions to Zhao Ji to execute Cai Tao.

Zhao Ji had long heard of Cai Tao's performance and had long been very dissatisfied with it, so he ordered the exile of Cai Tao.

Cai Jing hurried into the palace to beg after hearing the news.

For Cai Jing's sake, Zhao Ji exempted Cai Tao from exile and ordered Cai Tao to suspend his post and revoked the imperial edict for Cai Tao.

At this time, Zhao Ji was very disappointed with Cai Jing. He knew that Cai Jing today was no longer the Cai Jing of the past, and he hoped that Cai Jing could take the initiative to resign.

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

...
Chapter completed!