Fan Zhongyan, who had been prefect of Kaifeng, the imperial capital during the Northern Song era, in the 1030s, had been demoted to regional posts for criticizing the Chief Councilor.
In 1040, the Liao and Western Xia to the north were threatening Song security, and Fan had been brought back to organize a strong defense.
Ouyang Xiu, posted to Kaifeng four years after passing his jinshi examination in 1030, had begun his association with Fan from this time in Kaifeng.
Like Fan, he also had been demoted.
After Fan’s demotion, Ouyang had criticized Fan’s principle critic, resulting in his being sent to a minor post in Hubei.
Like Fan, he had been brought back to the capital in the 1040s where he was assigned to work on cataloguing the entire imperial library.
Fan Zhongyan had in 1041 submitted a ten-point memorial in which he outlined his reform objectives, divided into three categories: administrative efficiency; strengthening of local governments; and strengthening of defense.
The first set of proposals has met with deep resistance from groups of bureaucrats.
The second set, while farsighted, seems remote to the court.
The third seeks to correct Song over corrections for the Tang Dynasty’s mistakes of giving local military commanders too much independent authority.
Many of these reforms have been put into effect during 1043 and 1044.
However, without the full support of the emperor, there is never complete implementation of the reforms, and not long after they began, backlash from conservative elements at the court results in the reformers being brought down and sent out to remote postings in the provinces.
The Wujing Zongyao, a military treatise written and compiled by scholars Zeng Gongliang, Ding Du, and Yang Weide during the Song Dynasty, is the first book in history to include formulas for gunpowder and its use for various bombs (thrown by sling or trebuchet catapult).
Although the Wujing Zongyao emphasizes the importance of many weapons, it reserves high respect for the crossbow and the ability of crossbowmen to fell charging units of nomadic cavalrymen.
It also describes the double-piston pump flame thrower and a thermoremanence compass, a few decades before Shen Kuo wrote of the first known magnetic mariners compass.
The Chinese of the early eleventh century are thus aware that a piece of iron can be magnetized by heating until it is red hot and then quenched in water.
While quenching, it is oriented in the Earth's field to get the desired polarity.
