The Song Dynasty was a turning point in Chinese history from the glory of the Han and Tang dynasties to the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Song Dynasty ended the situation of "five dynasties and ten kingdoms" since the end of the Tang Dynasty, and the agriculture, industry and commerce of the feudal countries developed rapidly, and the economic and cultural development of the feudal society reached an unprecedented level.
However, along with the high degree of economic and cultural development, the Song Dynasty coexisted with a number of minority regimes, and was always accompanied by brutal wars of conquest and killing. Although it far surpassed Liao, Jin, and Western Xia in terms of economic and cultural strength, it was militarily defeated and won less, and was in a position of being passively beaten for a long time. "Jing Kang is ashamed, and it is still snowing. When the courtiers hate, when will they perish. "In the history of the Song Dynasty, "shame" and "hatred" ran through until the final demise of the country.
Why was the Song Dynasty always unable to compete with the surrounding minority regimes?
From the middle of the Tang Dynasty, the warlords controlled the situation of the country, forming a situation of self-respect for the army.
The self-respecting warlords relied on their soldiers to call for wind and rain, and thus in turn lacked effective management of the soldiers, and often treated the soldiers with extreme indulgence and preferential treatment, making the soldiers more arrogant and difficult to restrain themselves.
Later Zhou forbidden army general Zhao Kuangyin seized the throne through the "Chenqiao Mutiny" and established the Song Dynasty. In order to avoid the chaos of the secession of the late Tang Dynasty and the military dictatorship of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, Zhao Kuangyin relieved the military power of senior generals by "releasing military power with a glass of wine", and adopted the policy of emphasizing literature and suppressing military force to strengthen the centralization of power. The "method of changing the war" makes the officers and men often change and exchange, so that "the generals do not know the soldiers, and the soldiers do not know the generals" in order to prevent the formation of a deep relationship between the soldiers and the generals. It completely eliminated the hidden danger that the military generals of the five dynasties in the late Tang Dynasty dominated one side by force and threatened the imperial court. But this caused.
There are two sides to everything, although the Song Dynasty's strategy of separating soldiers and generals suppressed the power of the generals, but the generals, especially the main generals, were not familiar with the characteristics and combat effectiveness of the troops they led, and they had neither majesty nor credibility for the soldiers, nor the means of restraint, and the control over the soldiers was greatly weakened, thus forming the soldiers into "proud soldiers", which affected the combat effectiveness.
In the Song Dynasty, whether it was the forbidden soldiers, the box soldiers, or the garrison army of the Southern Song Dynasty, the method of recruitment was basically adopted. Recruiting displaced and hungry people as soldiers in disaster years was a traditional national policy of the Song Dynasty. After recruiting the able-bodied into the army, it was impossible for the old and weak to rebel, and this was a countermeasure to prevent the outbreak of peasant uprisings in disaster years. The recruitment of military children also became an important source of soldiers in the Song Dynasty. In addition, sturdy criminals were also stabbed into soldiers, especially as vanguards. When the supply of soldiers is exhausted, they often forcibly arrest husbands, and these recruitment methods cause great harassment and suffering to the people.
The generous rewards of the Song Dynasty surpassed those of the previous dynasties, which were originally to buy the hearts of the army, but it backfired. Song soldiers often did not listen to commands, made trouble unreasonably, and did whatever they wanted. There was a time when a soldier failed to pass the drill in the barracks, and the officer merely blamed him, causing more than a dozen soldiers to rebel that night. There was even a situation in Baozhou, Hebei Province, which cut a useless and well-paid army, and as a result, this army actually killed Zhizhou and rebelled.
The soldiers' disobedience to management was inevitable even in the palace. At the time of Renzong, there were four royal guards, who killed the military academy, robbed **, and set fire to the palace and cut down several people in the palace.
According to statistics, there were more than 30 mutinies in the Northern Song Dynasty, and there were countless small ones, and a considerable part of them belonged to arrogant rebellion.
Due to the indiscriminate recruitment of assassins, the selection of false candidates, and the poor training, the Song Dynasty maintained a huge army of very poor quality, but huge military expenditures, which often accounted for seven-or eight-tenths of the Song Dynasty's financial expenditures, causing a serious financial crisis and greatly increasing the people's tax burden. In particular, a large number of non-commissioned officers have left agriculture, resulting in a shortage of agricultural labor, affecting the normal development of agricultural production, and even causing serious consequences in the abandonment of a large number of fertile farmland.
Soldiers under the maintenance policy serve for too long and are generally not demobilized until the age of 60. The old and weak soldiers are full of soldiers, who cannot be taught or dare to use them, the military and political affairs are corrupted, and the arrogance of the soldiers arises spontaneously. Ouyang Xiu once pointed out: "The country has been 33 years old since Jingde's strike, and the soldiers have died of old age, and the latecomers have not heard the golden drum and know the battle array, and they are born with nothing to do and are full of food and clothing, and their momentum has to be arrogant." ”
The obvious difference between the army of the Song Dynasty and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms is that the five generations of fierce generals coexisted with arrogant soldiers, used each other, and had strong combat effectiveness;The Northern Song Dynasty was "a cowardly and arrogant", and the Southern Song Dynasty was "a general and a lazy soldier", and its combat effectiveness plummeted.
As for the reality of the army, from the king to the ministers, it is obvious to all, but they dare not change it, and they can't change it.
They did not dare to change it for fear of weakening the vested interests of the arrogant soldiers and causing the arrogant soldiers to cause chaos. At the beginning, Wang Anshi's reform had implemented the armor protection law, hoping to replace the regular soldiers with the militia, and then realize the merger of the art of war into the military camp. Wang Anshi's change was strongly opposed by the arrogant soldiers in the barracks, and the change failed.
Out of worry and fear, and from fear to appeasement, not only do they dare not get rid of the evils, but they generally do not dare to punish the perpetrators. I'm afraid to change, I'm afraid if I don't change, I can only follow it.
The only way to appease adultery is to reap the consequences.
Song Shenzong was a relatively effective emperor in the Song Dynasty, but he "used troops every time, or never slept all night", and every time he used troops, he always had to personally plan and command, but the result was a major defeat in the two battles of Lingzhou and Yongle. Song Shenzong was most afraid of the Khitan, he said: "Therefore, those who are afraid of the other side think that I am guilty of it, and the inner truth is why I am afraid of the other......Those who are void inside, but the military system is not repaired. "Bing Jiao has a great impact on the humiliating and weak situation. The Song Dynasty was afraid of arrogant soldiers and guarded the internal appeasement, and the external fear of Liaoxia and forbearance externally, and developed into both internal and external weakness, which aggravated the weakness of the Song Dynasty.
Zhu Xi pointed out sharply: "When this dynasty was in its heyday, such as Qingli and Yuanyou, they just supported the world together. Don't dare to do things, don't dare to move, be insulted by Yidi, and only endure it, don't dare to compare, and don't dare to make facilities, so that the world can be a little peaceful. As for Jingkang, once it is done like this, the world will be safe and secure!”
The difficulty of Jingkang was that the army at that time was undisciplined and relied entirely on money to maintain it, and if the reward was not timely, it would be chaotic and defeated. During the Battle of Yuci, the Song army had just shot back the Jin soldiers, and because the reward materials had not yet arrived, these soldiers dispersed with resentment and were defeated without a fight. In the battle of Bianjing Defense, the soldiers not only could not defend it, but destroyed it. Because the commander Xin Kangzong ruled the army a little strictly, the soldiers went to the city wall in anger and killed him, which seriously weakened the will of the four wall guards to resist the war. And when the Jin soldiers launched the final attack, the soldiers refused to go to the city to fight because the reward was not timely.
The capital was lost, and the soldiers of the Song Dynasty did not grieve at all, but took advantage of the fire to loot, and the high-ranking forbidden army even assisted the Jin soldiers in looting the treasury, which harmed the people worse than the Jin soldiers.
After the founding of the Song Dynasty, in order to prevent the recurrence of the division of the five dynasties of the late Tang Dynasty, the practice of Xi in the whole society became more and more prosperous, while the style of martial arts declined, the status of martial artists was low, soldiers could not get formal and effective training, the army operated business, and the quality was poor, resulting in the low combat effectiveness of the Song army. The "poor and weak" Song Dynasty finally had to regard the peace negotiation as a cure for border troubles, thus exposing its own weakness and incompetence, stimulating the greedy ambitions of its enemies, and finally being swallowed up by the rising Yuan Dynasty.