The Southern Song Dynasty resisted Mongolia for half a century, but was it just lucky
Since the rise of the Mongol Empire in the early 13th century, they have been fighting everywhere and seem to have the intention of unifying the world. Among the many countries conquered by the Mongol Empire, the Southern Song Dynasty resisted the longest, lasting 40 years.
Therefore, some people praised the combat effectiveness of the Southern Song army. However, after careful study of the historical sources, I found that this was not the case. The reason why the Southern Song Dynasty was able to resist the Mongol Yuan Dynasty for more than 40 years was, on the one hand, because the Southern Song Dynasty soldiers and civilians relied on the terrain and fortified cities to carry out stubborn resistance, and on the other hand, because of a series of problems in Mongolia itself, which gave the Southern Song Dynasty a chance to survive.
Let's take a look at the problems facing Mongolia. The battle of Song and Mongolia (Yuan) can be divided into three main stages: the first stage was from 1235 to 1241, when Yuan Taizong Wokotai attacked the Song Dynasty; The second stage was from 1253 to 1259, when Yuan Xianzong Meng Ge attacked the Song Dynasty; The third stage was from 1268 to 1279, when Kublai Khan, the ancestor of the Yuan dynasty, attacked the Song dynasty.
In these three large-scale wars, the Mongol army was huge, but due to internal reasons, the first two attacks failed to achieve the expected results, and it was not until the time of Kublai Khan that the Yuan army finally defeated the Southern Song Dynasty and realized the unification of the world.
Why, then, did it take nearly 40 years for the Mongols to bring down the Southern Song Dynasty? There are two main reasons for this. First of all, the Southern Song Dynasty was not the only target of the Mongols.
Unlike previous minority regimes in the north, the Central Plains Dynasty was not the only target of conquest for the Mongols. In the past, ethnic minorities such as Xianbei, Turkic, and Jurchen regarded the Central Plains Dynasty as their main or even only goal.
When they conquered northern China, they ran out of manpower and could not conquer other places, such as southern China. As a result, it took longer for the Mongols to achieve their conquest of the Southern Song Dynasty.
Although the Southern Song and Jin dynasties were Genghis Khan's main targets of conquest, the Mongols saw much more than that. As early as the time of Genghis Khan, the Mongols had already come into contact with many other regions, such as Western Liao, Khorezm, Persia, Arabia, the Caucasus and even as far away as Kievan Rus' in Eastern Europe.
Therefore, the "worldview" of the Mongols is much broader than that of the Xianbei, Turkic, Jurchen and other nomadic peoples. This is also evidenced by the geographical location of the Mongolian steppe, which is bordered by China to the south, the Korean Peninsula and Japan to the east, Central Asia to the west, the Middle East beyond Central Asia, and the Caucasus and Eastern Europe from the northeast to the northeast.
Therefore, the Mongols naturally did not only regard the Central Plains Dynasty as the only target of conquest, but attacked from all sides. This strategy gave the Southern Song a respite, and even during the reign of the Great Khan of Ögedei, the Mongols did not devote all their forces to attacking the Southern Song despite the many fierce battles they fought with the Southern Song.
Mongol and Yuan expeditions: In 1235, the Mongol army launched an attack on the Song in two directions. The Eastern Route Army attacked the Jingxiang region in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, while the Western Route Army attacked Sichuan. However, in the same year, Ögedei summoned the Mongol kings and decided to conquer the Eastern European countries that had not yet been submitted, such as Kipchak and Zaras.
Led by Batu (Jochi's eldest son) and Subutai as the main general who actually commanded the army, about 150,000 troops launched the Second Western Expedition or the "Eldest Son's Western Expedition". During this westward expedition, the Mongol army captured what is now Ukraine and the European part of Russia, and continued its westward march to defeat Poland and Hungary, even approaching the Hungarian capital Budapest for a time.
However, when news of Ogedei's death came, the Western Expedition stopped its offensive and returned to Mongolia.
In order to prevent the return of Zalandin, the prince of Khwarazm in Central Asia, in addition to the army of the western expedition, Ögedai also sent 30,000 troops led by Yuer Mahan to conquer. Killed on the run, Zarandin continued westward to raid northwestern Persia (present-day Iran) and even to Armenia.
With a total of 180,000 Mongol troops, these two Mongol armies can be said to be the elite division of the Mongols. In comparison, the resistance of the Southern Song Dynasty was insignificant, including a small number of Mongol armies and the original Jin ** team, which could not be compared with these two Mongol armies in terms of number and combat effectiveness.
He succeeded Ögedei as Great Khan by Möngke, who continued his large-scale campaign against the Southern Song Dynasty and sent his army on a third expedition to the west (1256-1260).
This expedition to the west, led by Hülegü, lasted until present-day Iraq, destroying the Abbasids of the Arab empire at that time and severely inflicting heavy losses on the Ayyubids in Syria.
As Hülegü prepared to attack Egypt, news of Möngke Khan's unexpected death came, and he returned to Persia and set up a large camp. In the course of its westward crusade, the Great Mongol State conquered more than 40 countries for more than 20 years, greatly dispersed the Mongol forces, and occupied far more territory than the Southern Song Dynasty, thus reducing the military pressure of the Southern Song Dynasty in the face of Mongolia.
Imagine that if the Mongols used all their forces to attack the Southern Song Dynasty, the Southern Song Dynasty would definitely not be able to resist it. In addition, the unique inheritance system of Mongolia gave the Southern Song Dynasty another respite.
Many nomads had a different system of succession from the Central Plains dynasty in that they were not decided by the Great Khan himself, but by a council of nobles. The Great Khan of Mongolia had to be elected by Kuriltai.
Genghis Khan's four sons and their descendants, each of whom was brave and talented, and they never forgot the position of the Great Khan, so the descendants of Genghis Khan's four sons began a fierce competition around the position of the Great Khan.
Whenever Kuriltai was to be convened, the Mongol foreign wars would be suspended until a new Great Khan was elected. For example, when news of Ögedei's death reached the Batu army, Batu immediately stopped his attack on Europe and returned with his army to prepare for the Kurultai event.
At the same time, the Mongol army, which had moved south to attack the Song Dynasty, also withdrew and returned north. Another example is that after Möngke's death, the third Mongol expedition of Commander Hulegu was forced to be suspended; Kublai Khan, who was attacking the Song Dynasty, negotiated peace with the Southern Song Dynasty in order to compete for the throne of Khan, and then led his army north to compete with his brother Ali Buge for the throne, which lasted for four years.
This is the history of the Mongols, full of fierce struggles and rivalries.
The Southern Song Dynasty met with good fortune at a critical moment, Meng Ge died under the Diaoyu City, and Kublai Khan was leading his army to besiege Ezhou in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, crushing 100,000 Song troops. At the same time, the Mongol army had earlier conquered Dali, and at this time, under the leadership of Wuliang Hatai, it went all the way north from Yunnan, passing through Guizhou, Guangxi, and Hunan, and fought all the way to Wuhan.
Wuliang Hatai fought more than 1,000 miles in the Song Dynasty, fought 13 battles, annihilated more than 400,000 enemies, crossed the Yangtze River, joined forces with Kublai Khan, and then returned north. The Southern Song Dynasty faced an unprecedented crisis.
During the Ögedei and Möngke periods, the Mongols' strategic center of gravity was in Sichuan, and they attacked Sichuan many times, although they conquered many cities, but because the Southern Song army took advantage of the mountains and rivers of Bashu and the dense water network in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the Mongol offensive did not make substantial progress.
Years of Mongol attacks on Sichuan have been in vain. When Meng Ge personally conquered Sichuan, he ordered Kublai Khan to lead the army to attack the Jingxiang defense line in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River in the Southern Song Dynasty.
In the history of the war between Mongolia and the Southern Song Dynasty, Kublai Khan ordered an all-out attack on Xiangyang, cut off the Southern Song defense line, and then went down the river to defeat the Southern Song Dynasty. If Meng Ge did not die, Kublai Khan would join forces with Wuliang Hatai and go east along the Jiangdong, plus the Mongol army in the Jianghuai area would attack, and the Southern Song Dynasty would definitely be defeated.
However, Meng Ke's death turned the Southern Song Dynasty around, and Kublai Khan hurriedly returned north after negotiating peace with Jia Nidao and began to compete for the throne of Khan. This time, the luck of the Southern Song Dynasty was really good, and a catastrophe of the destruction of the country was averted.
But perhaps because the Southern Song Dynasty was too lucky in the previous decades, and it was used up in the later stage of the war, the bad luck of the Southern Song Dynasty followed. In April of the first year of Jingding, Liu Quan, the prefect of Luzhou in the Southern Song Dynasty and the deputy envoy of Tongchuan Road to pacify, was ** by Lu Wende and others, and took refuge in the Yuan Dynasty in order to protect himself.
The Mongols (Yuan) fought fierce wars with the Southern Song Dynasty for many years when they eliminated the Southern Song Dynasty, but they were never able to completely defeat the Southern Song Dynasty. During this period, many people, including Kublai Khan, once lost confidence and considered negotiating peace with the Southern Song Dynasty, and only the Southern Song Dynasty Jin needed to offer New Year's coins.
However, in the fourth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1267), Liu Cheng entered the court, and he proposed a strategic proposal to Kublai Khan to destroy the Song Dynasty. Liu Cheng believed that in order to eliminate the Southern Song Dynasty, it was necessary to first capture Xiangyang.
Once Xiangyang is conquered, the "Sichuan-Jingxiang-Lianghuai" defense line established by the Southern Song Dynasty will be broken through from the central part, so that the Bashu and Lianghuai of the Southern Song Dynasty will not be able to support each other, so that they will fall into a situation of inevitable death.
Kublai Khan was overjoyed to hear this, and he ordered Liu Quan and Ah Shu to attack Xiangyang with all their might, and began to train naval forces, eventually achieving a simultaneous advance by land and water, and the Yuan army captured Lin'an in 1276, and the Southern Song Dynasty perished.