During the period of Song Shenzong, the Great Song Dynasty has been troubled internally and externally, with the military invasion of Western Xia and Liao, and it also has to send them a lot of money, and the internal state finances are in deficit, so Song Shenzong wants to reverse this situation by changing the law to achieve the purpose of enriching the country and strengthening the army, but the changes have always been the reconstruction and redistribution of interests and power, so all the changes will have opposition, and there will be huge resistance, which is estimated that Song Shenzong and Wang Anshi, the prime minister who presided over the change, are not estimated enough in the early stage. Therefore, this change, which was originally intended to reverse the fate of the Great Song Dynasty, was fiercely opposed and resisted by almost all the old ministers during the Song Renzong period.
In order to promote the reform, Wang Anshi took extremely tough measures and carried out large-scale purging and promotion of officialdom, but this further intensified the opposition and even affected the normal operation of the Great Song Empire, and at the same time it also brought obstacles to the normal advancement of the reform.
Perhaps God did not bless the Great Song Dynasty, and as Sima Guang became the prime minister and began to govern, he vetoed all the contents and measures of Wang Anshi's reforms, even if the changes that had achieved practical results were abolished blankly.
Since then, how can the Great Song Dynasty not hurt its vitality? So who is wrong in this, Song Shenzong? Wang Anshi? Sima Guang?
What value did they offer to later dynasties?
Later, in the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, there were also reforms to reform the law, but it was difficult to achieve effective success, is it difficult for us to learn valuable things from history?
Sima Guang once wrote a huge work that has influenced him to this day, but did he draw and learn from this book?
One of the important reasons for the success of Qin's Shang Ying's reform is that although Shang Ying was later killed by King Qin Huiwen, the content of his reform was retained and continued.
So Sima Guang's complete rejection of all the contents of Wang Anshi's reform was out of selfishness or public intentions?
History has a public opinion, but the Great Song Dynasty cannot repeat it again.