In 927, Zhao Kuangyin, the grandfather of the Song Dynasty, was born into a military family during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Being born in five generations and ten kingdoms, the darkest era in the history of our country, is by no means a blessing. The young Zhao Kuangyin did not think that he could build an empire, and even became very tired of war, and once lived in a temple. Perhaps living peacefully in the chaotic world is his most simple wish.
It was not until the age of 21 that Zhao Kuangyin joined the army under the persuasion of others. He seems to be a natural military man, and as soon as he entered the army, he showed outstanding military talent, and in the past thirty years of the Southern Expedition and the Northern War, he experienced countless cruel battles and bloody battles, and grew from a small soldier to an emperor of a dynasty. After baptism of blood and fire, Zhao Kuangyin has gained insight into the complexity and evil of human nature, and deeply reflected on the social destruction and cruel rule of the people caused by the warlord melee of the five generations and ten kingdoms for many years. Instead of believing in force like the warlords before him, he surprisingly chose a national policy of emphasizing literature and suppressing force, laying the foundation for the Song Dynasty to reshape the social and ethical framework and build a stable and prosperous country. However, this national policy was only established by Zhao Kuangyin after experiencing a bitter lesson.
This has to start with the Pacification of Hou Shu. Zhao Kuangyin attached great importance to "civilization in war", and he emphasized four military orders to the generals under his command: strict military discipline, security of the people first, leniency towards prisoners, and no penchant for killing. But how could the warlord vices, which had been formed by more than half a century of bloody killings, be easily reversed by a few orders? Soon the generals forgot about this order, and it was not surprising that they caused Zhao Kuangyin a big trouble.
In November of the second year of Qiande (964), Zhao Kuangyin ordered Wang Quanbin to lead two large armies to cut down Shu. In the first month of the following year, the Song army had already defeated the Shu army and occupied the Shu land. After the attack on the Shu state, Wang Quanbin consciously or unconsciously forgot Zhao Kuangyin's advice, led the generals to drink and have fun, and indulged his subordinates to plunder and kill prisoners with impunity. The brutality of the Song army caused fierce resistance from the Shu people, and the people from all over the former Shu state revolted. It took only 66 days for the Song army to capture the Shu state, but it took two years to quell the second rebellion of the Shu state. Zhao Kuangyin was very angry about this incident and gave Wang Quanbin and a large number of other generals demotion and other punishments.
In September of the seventh year of Kaibao (974), Cao Bin was ordered to attack the Southern Tang. Before leaving, Zhao Kuangyin repeatedly explained to him that he should not seek a hasty attack and must reduce casualties and destruction. Cao Bin very resolutely implemented this request, besieged Jinling for more than a year, and tried his best to collect his heart and then surrender, and if he could not attack, he would not attack. In the end, the land of the Southern Tang Dynasty was conquered at a very small cost, and the land of the Southern Tang, which was not destroyed by the war, soon became one of the most economically wealthy places in the Song Dynasty.
For the kings of these countries that were destroyed, Zhao Kuangyin did not kill a single one, and all of them were properly arranged. At the same time, he adopted such means as "releasing military power through a glass of wine" and "strengthening cadres and weak branches" and strategies such as reforming the military system, clarifying the rule of officials, and persuading and rewarding nongsang, thus promoting social and economic development. These measures quickly healed the wounds of the war from the late Tang Dynasty to the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms in the past two hundred years, making the emerging Song Dynasty show a relatively stable and prosperous situation, and the historically famous "Jianlong Rule" appeared.
In addition, Zhao Kuangyin also left a "Taizu Oath Monument" and put forward a series of policies of emphasizing literature and suppressing martial arts, such as "no killing of scholars and doctors and people who write letters and talk about things", which laid the tone for the entire Song Dynasty to adhere to the emphasis on literature and suppressing weapons. He once said to Zhao Pu: "The five generations of Fang Town are cruel, and the people are deeply affected by it. I asked more than a hundred able Confucian courtiers to divide and rule the great domain, even if they were all greedy, they could not be worth a warrior. For Zhao Kuangyin, the harm that the appointment of scribes may cause is far less than that of the warriors, and it will not endanger the fundamentals of the regime like the warriors. However, he did not expect that the excessive adherence and dependence of future generations on this policy would make the Song Dynasty a dynasty with a disorder of culture and martial arts.
There's a very interesting story. Zhao Kuangyin knew that the military talent of the general Pan Mei was far above Cao Bin, but he deliberately made Cao Bin the commander of the Tang Dynasty and Pan Mei the deputy marshal. And in front of Pan Mei, he handed Cao Bin a Shang Fang sword and a sealed envelope. He coldly told Cao Bin that inside the envelope were some punishment regulations, and if anyone violated military discipline, there was no need to report it, and they could be directly beheaded according to the regulations. This obviously meant something, scaring Pan Mei's legs when she said goodbye, and she almost couldn't walk. Cao Bin passed this imperial decree through the whole army, and no one in the Song army dared to violate discipline during the expedition. When the two returned from the expedition and Cao Bin returned the envelope, Zhao Kuangyin opened the envelope in person, but saw that it was only a blank piece of paper and not a word was written. This is the famous story of "a blank piece of paper that shocks an army of 100,000 people". Zhao Kuangyin toyed with these generals with his superb mastery of manpower, and no one dared to act as wantonly as the military leaders of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. However, on the other hand, the evil consequences caused by this method are also obvious, the generals have no authority in the army, "the generals do not know the soldiers, the soldiers do not know the generals", which indirectly leads to the serious obstruction of the military command system of the Song Army, the shouts of the generals during the battle are exhausted, and the officers and soldiers below run faster than rabbits.
During his lifetime, Song Taizu only unified the south, and although he also led an army to conquer the Northern Han Dynasty three times, he died suddenly without success. Emperor Taizong of Song, Zhao Guangyi, was more ambitious, and after pacifying the Northern Han Dynasty, he decided to send troops to attack the Liao. However, the emperor's military talent was really not worthy of his ambition, and the record of consecutive defeats made him lose confidence in recovering the land of Yanyun. We think that this is just a historical accident, after all, how can a dynasty with such a rich economy and such a splendid culture not even have an ambitious and enterprising emperor. However, history really jokes with us that the defeat of Song Taizong on the Sorghum River was only the beginning. After that, the descendants of Taizu and Taizong were more unbearable than the other, they indulged in the luxurious life of fine clothes and jade food, lingering in the artistic world of poetry and painting, and never put the great cause of reunification in their hearts.
In the Southern Song Dynasty, the founding emperor Of song Gaozong Zhao, from the day of his claim to the throne, took abandoning the Central Plains, crossing the south to avoid war, and taking a corner of peace as a strategy of "unswerving determination", and never thought of recovering the lost land. Especially in 1141 AD, in order to reach a peace agreement with the Jin people, he did not hesitate to kill the general Yue Fei to please the Jin people. In the end, the Southern Song Dynasty signed the Shaoxing Peace Agreement at the cost of paying compensation to its subjects and ceding most of Tang Prefecture and Deng Prefecture, as well as Shangzhou and Qin Prefectures, which had previously been recovered by Yue Fei. Emperor Gaozong was not ashamed, but proud, and feasted with the Lord and his trusted ministers to celebrate. The veteran general Zhang Jun connected fifty letters to oppose peace, in exchange for a letter of exile. At that time, Taixue had a person named Zhang Bolin, and when he passed by the eunuch's house, he saw that the lights were colorful, singing and dancing, and angrily took a pen and wrote a line on the white wall: Fu Cha, Er forgot to kill Ru Father Hu? Emperor Gaozong and Qin Ju were furious and sent Zhang Bolin to prison, tortured to death, and then exiled to Jiyang Jun. It was not until the time of Emperor Xiaozong of Song, after Qin Ju's death, that Zhang Bolin was released. In addition, Emperor Gaozong also killed Taixue Chen Dong and Jinshi Ouyang Che, who appealed to resist Jin. He violated the ancestral precept of "not killing scholars and doctors and people who write and talk", but insisted on the strategy of emphasizing literature and suppressing martial arts.
The tragedy of the execution of Yue Fei, the privy councillor, on charges of "false accusations" was not unique in the Song Dynasty. Di Qing, a great general of the Northern Song Dynasty, was a famous general with outstanding merit and rare in the world, and was able to run the Privy Council because of his merits. The civilian officials did everything possible to suppress Di Qing, not only demanding his removal from his post, but also ordering Di Qing to commit suicide. Emperor Renzong couldn't bear it and said, "Di Qing is a loyal subject." With a single sentence, Zai Chancellor Wen Yanbo blocked Renzong's mouth: "Isn't Taizu a loyal vassal of Sejong?" Di Qing was eventually demoted and transferred, but the civilian officials still did not let him go, and every ten years they sent envoys to "cordially" greet him and make him bend down to talk back. Di Qing really couldn't stand this humiliation, and he died of grief half a year later. At the beginning of the Southern Song Dynasty, the main general of the Western Army, Qu Duan, Xiao Yong was good at war, and fought many bloody battles with Jin soldiers, and the famous generals Wu Jie and Liu Qi were his subordinates. Later, Qu Duan was imprisoned for violating the order, burned iron into juice, and poured it from his mouth and burned him alive. Even if a military general is guilty, he can be killed according to the law, why is he so cruel? The famous lyricist Xin abandoned the disease, at the age of 23, he joined the rebel army to resist the gold, and won the first rank of the enemy general among the ten thousand armies. The 26-year-old returned to the Song Dynasty in the south, and did not want to be shelved and not reused. He was also suspected every day, and was mobilized 37 times in 26 years, and could only shoot off the railing, and sighed that "the boy's heart is as iron as iron..." And so on, and so on, and there are countless cases of difficult and harsh suppression of military generals.
The emperor had no heart, and no matter how much blood the soldiers had, they could only slowly cool down in the cold wind and rain. Over the past thousand years, we have summed up the historical lessons of the Song Dynasty in two ways: the cultural and economic success of the Song Dynasty benefited from the relaxation of thinking; the biggest drawback of the Song Dynasty's military defeat was the imbalance of culture and military.
However, in recent years, many people and many articles have avoided talking about the fact that the Song Dynasty blindly made peace and called it a tribute, but they enthusiastically praised its economic and cultural achievements, calling the Song Dynasty the "first golden age in history", and even Song Renzong, who was divided by the Western Xia and defeated in successive wars, was also praised as "the emperor of the ages".
In fact, this kind of argument is not the first of its kind in China, but comes from the West. The British historian Toynbee said: "If I had to choose, I would like to live in the Song Dynasty in China." In his history of Asia, the American historian Rhodes Murphy said the Song Dynasty was "China's golden age" and "an unprecedented period of development, innovation, and cultural flourishing" in Asian history." The words of these two historians have been taken as a guideline by many Chinese people, but they have ignored their hidden other purposes. Murphy, in particular, has a series of extremely harmful assertions in the book: "China's astonishing prosperity in the Song Dynasty has a lot to do with its abandonment of its ambition to build a larger empire..." "The Song Dynasty wisely concentrated on the core areas of high productivity where the Han Chinese lived south of the Great Wall, and even signed an armistice agreement with gifts to recognize the control of foreign races over the Beijing area... These agreements do not cause substantial damage..." If you understand the details of their assertions in their entirety, you will understand that they are actually advocating the Chinese separatist theory with ulterior motives.
In order to support a series of arguments touting the Song Dynasty, some people have carefully preached that "the Song Dynasty's GDP accounted for three-quarters of the world's GDP", and even some people have carefully calculated an account: the Northern Song Dynasty gave the Liao Dynasty only one burnt cake money to each people, and each person can eat one less burnt cake every year in exchange for peace. All kinds of strange theories abound, but these people turned a blind eye to the problems of the Song Dynasty. One of the most basic facts is that song still had to maintain an extremely large army after signing agreements with Liao, Jin, and Western Xia and paying the old coins.
At the beginning of the founding of Taizu, there were only more than 100,000 troops, and there were more than 400,000 troops during the Taizong period. The zhenzong and Renzong dynasties successively concluded treaties with the Liao state and the Western Xia and paid the old coins, but the number of troops did not decrease, but increased sharply, and the Renzong dynasty reached a staggering number of more than 1.2 million people. The national defense pressure of the Northern Song Dynasty was not alleviated in the slightest because of the payment of the annual currency. The Liao state also threatened to go south many times, and the Northern Song Dynasty once had to increase the number of coins to please the Liao state. The Jin Dynasty was even more excessive, and after collecting huge amounts of coins, Yanjing rent fees, and other extortion materials, it still brazenly tore up the peace talks, went south twice, and finally destroyed the Northern Song Dynasty. This is the biggest irony of the "old coin buy peace" strategy.
At any time, living in an era of prosperity, peace and tranquility, and the cessation of war is the simple and eternal dream of the people. But looking at these historical facts of the Song Dynasty, how did the old coin really bring peace? On the contrary, the number of troops is constantly increasing, and the amount of money is constantly increasing, resulting in an increasingly heavy burden on the people. In the two Song Dynasties and three hundred years, there were as many as four hundred uprisings, but did the people really rebel just because they ate one less burnt cake? If this were the case, Lu You would not have helplessly written in "Appeal to Heartfelt Feelings": "Hu Mo is extinguished, sideburns are first autumn, and tears are empty." Li Qingzhao was even more full of grief and indignation, "Still thinking about Xiang Yu, I refuse to cross Jiangdong!" ”
"Sima Fa Renben" Zeng Yun: "Although the country is great, it will perish if it is belligerent; although the world is safe, if it forgets the war, it will be dangerous." Previously, in the article "A Brief Analysis of the Three Great Prosperities of the Han Dynasty, Tang Dynasty and Qing Dynasty in China's History", I had elaborated whether a dynasty can be regarded as a prosperous world, and the most basic conditions must meet four conditions: political clarity, perfect system, unity and prosperity, and the people's peace of mind. Taking this as a criterion, the Song Dynasty, which "is drunk by the warm wind and makes Hangzhou a biaozhou", is by no means a dynasty that can get high scores. Powerful do not know the messenger, some people do not know the mercy, some soldiers do not know the battle, the Song Dynasty is like a giant who binds his hands, willingly kneeling down again and again, and killing the neck. Those prosperous cities and pools that were burned down in the war, and the bones of the people buried in the rubble, were all for the Song Dynasty, which was out of balance with culture and martial arts, leaving a humiliating page in the history books. I don't know if Song Taizu, who originally decided on the national policy of suppressing martial arts with literature, will Izumimi feel a hint of remorse?
History is not like smoke, it is like a gentle gentleman, one hand holding a book, raising his hand and throwing his feet are wonderful; the other hand dances the sword, scratches the sky, leaving a story of blood and fire, pioneering and striving. I am Zhao Zisheng, a scholar under the Zhongnan Mountain, and a scholar in Chang'an City. Like, just add a follow!
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