01
In ancient China, there has always been a conflict between these two civilizations and two societies, one is the nomadic civilization in the north, and the other is the farming civilization in the Central Plains, which have clashed, exchanged and integrated for generations on the land of China, and gradually developed to form today's Chinese nation, and a line running through the history of the Chinese nation is the war and peace of ancient nomadic civilization and agricultural civilization.
From the three dynasties of antiquity, the division of Yixia gradually emerged, to the Qin and Han dynasties basically formed the Great Wall as the boundary to divide these two civilizations, the Wei and Jin dynasties in The internal friction of Middle-earth, the rise of barbarians, and the south crossing of the crown, so that the various ethnic groups gradually integrated in the conflict.
After that, the Turks and the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the Liaojin and the Two Song Dynasties, also staged a continuous confrontation between the north and the south in this process, and in the Yuan Dynasty period, the so-called Northern Yu finally unified China for the first time, until it was driven back to the desert in the north by the Ming Dynasty, and the two sides continued to stage the law of confrontation between the farming peoples and the nomadic peoples, and in the process of this confrontation, the Ming Dynasty produced a new system - "anti-autumn".
02
What is "autumn prevention"? Autumn prevention is a system of adjusting its national defense strategy according to seasonal changes, and the life of nomads is particularly prominent in that it acts according to the changes of the seasons, and the nomads have a more difficult life in the spring because the grasslands and woodlands after winter have not yet fully recovered, and the livestock lack food.
In the summer, the water and grass are abundant, the grassland is luxuriant, the life of the herders is relatively idle, and in the autumn, in order to raise the livestock and reserve the forage for the winter, the herders will move frequently, and in the winter, in order to reduce the energy consumption of the livestock, they basically do not move much. Although the specific situation varies according to the different periods of history, the general law is like this.
03
From the above-mentioned laws of nomadic activities, we can see that herders will move frequently in order to feed their livestock and reserve forage before the arrival of winter, but there are only so many grassland resources, and everyone has to grab forage, which is certainly not enough, so the nomads will go south in autumn to plunder resources.
At the same time, because after a rich summer livestock in the pasture, the nomadic work of the year is basically completed, just when the nomadic people are strong and fat, physically sufficient, and the morale is strong, they do not have to worry about production, and directly drive the horses to travel thousands of miles and go south to plunder. Of course, this is a plunder based on survival.
In addition to plundering for this purpose, the nomads also had a strategic plunder, and the purpose of strategic plunder was to weaken the national power of the Southern Central Plains Dynasty in order to seek greater benefits. In response to the seasonal plundering activities of the northern nomads, the Central Plains Dynasty in the south also targeted the adjustment of the national defense strategy in the autumn, which was called "autumn prevention".
04
The word "autumn prevention" first appeared in the Tang Dynasty, according to the "Zizhi Tongjian" recorded in Hu San Province's notes: when the autumn is high and the horse is fat, Tubo will take the opportunity to enter the Kou, and the Tang government will transfer troops from the Kwantung to the west of the capital Chang'an for defense, which is called autumn prevention. According to the New Book of Tang, 30,000 anti-autumn soldiers were drawn each time, and they were all recruited from military towns with strong combat strength such as Wei Bo and Chengde in Hebei, which showed the importance attached to autumn prevention. Tubo launched an attack in the autumn, in addition to the autumn high horse fat, the Tang Dynasty autumn harvest is about to plunder resources, but also in order to compete with the Tang Dynasty for the land of Longxi, expand the land area while threatening the Tang Dynasty capital Chang'an, and in order to maintain its own rule, the Tang Dynasty fully implemented the autumn prevention system.
So what are the differences between the Ming Dynasty's Autumn Prevention and the Tang Dynasty?
The Ming Dynasty people had a clear understanding of the seasonal southward movement of the northern nomads very early on, and as early as the Hongwu period, Emperor Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang said to the border generals that in the spring, the Hu people and horses were thin and weak, you could unarm and rest, and in the autumn and autumn, you should be vigilant and observe the changes of the Mongols at any time.
05
The Ming Dynasty divided the year into two periods, one is the period when the Hu people are weak and China is stronger, which is the spring; the other is the period when the Hu people are strong and China is weaker, which is the autumn.
Even if it is not a war, and the Mongolian mutual market, the Ming Dynasty will also consider the influence of seasonal factors, for example, after the Longqing Peace Conference, the Ming Dynasty and the Li Da reached a mutual market agreement, the annual mutual market is set in the late spring and early summer, this time period is just when the Mongolian horses are weak and the combat strength is insufficient, even if you want to take advantage of the mutual market period to go deep into the interior to invade, it is very difficult to achieve.
The anti-autumn time of the Ming Dynasty is also based on the seasonal time of autumn to adjust the defense, generally speaking, it is basically from July to September or June to September, in addition to Jizhen and Changping Town are more special, there are two adjustments every year, three months in the spring, four months in the autumn, these two towns garrison the capital, the status is more important, can not be lost, so the spring and autumn two defenses are also understandable.
06
The records of the Ming Dynasty's autumn prevention are bounded by the Jiajing period, and the difference between before and after is very large, and the anti-autumn activities in Jiajing often appear in the historical records before, but since the Longqing Peace Conference and the tribute, the historical materials for autumn prevention have decreased sharply, what is the reason for this?
During the Jiajing period and before, the relationship between the Ming Dynasty and the Mongol ministries was relatively tense, the Mongols continued to invade under the leadership of the little prince, the Ming Dynasty also took the initiative to search from time to time, the diplomatic relations between the two sides were extremely bad, since the tribute of the Mongolian ministries under the constraint of the Yuda, the invasion of the Mongol departments became less and less, the large-scale invasion and war gradually disappeared, and the two sides entered a period of peaceful development.
In the sixth year of Longqing, Inspector Zhang Hui of Ningxia took the initiative to go up, and this year, the Northern Yu discussed and did not invade, and most of the autumn prevention can be cut, so that a lot of money and grain can be saved. The cabinet minister at that time, Gao Jue, could not wait to request that the surplus money and grain be "stored in another item" after receiving the song, which shows how much financial pressure the annual routine of autumn prevention brought to the Ming Dynasty.
The intensity of autumn prevention in each emperor period of the Ming Dynasty was different, of which the jiajing period was the most popular, which was also inseparable from the increasingly bad border defense situation since the middle and late Ming Dynasty.
07
Why was the anti-autumn defense during the Jiajing period? Here we have to mention a great Mongol khan, Dayan Khan, who ruled Mongolia for more than fifty years since he claimed to be a khan to unify the Mongol ministries, making Mongolia internally stable and developing. The unification of Dayan Khan was not a loose political alliance like that of The Yaxian of Vala, but a truly integrated Mongolia, and since Dayan Khan, the mongol forces have coalesced together to become a very powerful force, and the ming dynasty's long-established advantage over Mongolia no longer exists.
So in addition to mobilizing heavy troops to strengthen defense, what measures did the Ming Dynasty take to prevent autumn? The ming dynasty's most important measures against autumn had two: one was to swing the edge, and the other was to burn the wasteland.
Needless to say, the connotation is to transfer troops to the frontier to defend the so-called swinging edge, swinging is a way of dividing troops and scattering defense, this system originated in Jiajing, the purpose is to divide the troops scattered and strengthen everywhere, and the previous concentrated troops "and defend" is different; the history of burning the desert is much longer than the history of swinging the border, since the pre-Qin dynasty has defended the northern provinces by burning the wilderness.
08
However, from the Beginning of the Ming Dynasty, burning famine has become a mandatory daily routine system, and the so-called "Han family has no strange strategy, and the years of burning famine out of the north" refers to the Ming Dynasty's burning policy.
Burning refers to the behavior of the border guards who set fire to the dry grass, which will cause the Mongols to go south and get closer to the inland and the more lack of hay supplies, which is a burden for logistics, which is not conducive to the invasion of the south, somewhat similar to the "hard wall clear field", all by cutting off the supply around the place to achieve the purpose of defense.
The Ming Dynasty's autumn prevention system has become more and more perfect since Hongwu to the Jiajing period, which also shows that the border troubles in northern Xinjiang have become more and more serious, although the Ming Dynasty did not die in Mongolia, but in fact, the finances were constantly squeezed by the northern defense, and the large amount of money and grain invested in the nine sides and the autumn prevention every year was an astronomical amount.
09
The anti-autumn is actually a passive defense against the nomads, and its role in the Northern Raid is limited, but it has to be implemented continuously such a passive defense system, because for thousands of years since the Qin and Han Dynasties, for the extremely aggressive nomads, the Central Plains Dynasty lacks effective means of restriction, and can only continue to passively defend, relying on the Great Wall as a garrison, or going out to conquest, or defending by the city, there is always no fundamental solution. The Ming Dynasty also exhausted its finances on the Nine Sides, and at the end of the period, it could no longer fill the bottomless pit of military expenditure, and eventually became a special memory point in the long river of history.