A few years ago, the so-called "Song Dynasty's foreign victory rate was as high as 70%" and "the Song Dynasty's foreign war victory rate was the highest in all generations" was circulated on the Internet. This passage misleaded many people, and even triggered some meaningless arguments, such as "The victory rate of the Song Dynasty is higher than that of the Tang Dynasty, why do we still say that the Tang Dynasty is strong and the Song is weak?" "The Song Dynasty is the most desired dynasty", "The Song Dynasty has a high victory rate to the outside world, which is a shame" and so on.
Many people have also refuted the "victory rate" argument, but often do not pay attention to historical details, but only talk about some theories from a macro perspective.
As long as we delve into the details, we can see that this so-called "external victory rate" is completely false, and only more than 80 cases of battles against Liao, Xia, Jin, and Mongolia are counted. In particular, the 44-year-long tug-of-war between Song and Mongolia only listed 15 battles, and many tragic battles were ignored, and it was easy to draw such an exaggerated conclusion as "the victory rate against Mongolia was high", which was really eye-popping.
Details determine history - "Victory Rate" only includes well-known deeds and misses a lot
From the article "Victory Rate", we can see that the battles listed in it are familiar to the general public, or the author himself knows. These battles can basically be found from the obvious encyclopedia knowledge and history books, but they are limited to this. The complete wars of Song Liao, Song Xia, Song Jin, and Song Meng have not been sorted out in detail.
Therefore, the battles missed by "Victory Rate" are not a few dozen, but the vast majority, and even many key battles are not among them.
For example, the Battle of Shahe, the Battle of Broken Zhuozhou, the Battle of Broken QiZhou, the Battle of Wolf Mountain, the Battle of Tangxing, the Battle of Liangmen and so on in the Song-Liao War. In addition, the battles in which Li Jiqian annihilated Cao Guangshi, defeated An Shouzhong, defeated Li Jibao, and captured Lingzhou in the Song and Xia Wars, and the battles of Breaking Huanqing, Breaking Taozhou, Breaking The Western City, and Breaking the Golden Ming Village during the Li Qianshun Period were all not included.
There was also a very important battle missing from the Song and Xia Wars, that is, the Battle of Tong'an City during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Song Hui, in which 20,000 Song troops were annihilated and a generation of famous generals Liu Fa was killed.
However, most of the key battles of the Song-Liao War and the Song-Xia War are still reflected in the "Victory Rate", and the description of the Song-Jin War and the Song-Mongolian War in the same article is like graffiti.
The Song-Jin war omission was very serious, and there were very few wars during the Jing Kang period.
"Victory Rate" is about the Song-Jin War, a total of about 25 battles are recorded, and the omission is quite serious. Especially during the fierce jing kang years, only three battles were listed—the Battle of Taiyuan and the two defensive battles of Kaifeng—and it seemed that the Jin soldiers crossed the Yellow River easily in the Hebei region without fierce fighting.
However, this period was the largest number of defeats in the Song Dynasty, and this algorithm was tantamount to greatly reducing the defeat rate.
In the two years of the Jingkang period alone, there was the great defeat of The Baihe River in Youzhou and the great defeat at Gubeikou, as well as the annihilation of 30,000 reinforcements from Zhongshan Province, the annihilation of 5,000 reinforcements from Zhending Province, the fall of Xinde Province, the fall of Zhongshan Province, the fall of Daizhou, the fiasco of 40,000 Song troops in the Battle of Fenhe, the fall of Longde Province, and the disastrous defeat of the 10,000 Song army at the Battle of Tingtingguan...
Even the Battle of Taiyuan mentioned in the "Victory Rate" included several major battles, including the Battle of Xiongling, which was killed in battle in the breeding division, the two major defeats of the famous general Yao Gu in Longzhou and the Weisheng Army, as well as the defeat of Wenshui, the defeat of Xidugu, the defeat of Taigu, and so on.
Just counting the defeats during the Jing Kang period, the so-called 72% victory rate of the Song Dynasty against the Jin War (Song Jin 25 battles, Song Victory 18, Draw 1, Minus 6) had to be reduced to less than 50%.
In the Southern Song Dynasty, there were more defeats, the Jin army broke the Daming Mansion, broke Yingchang, broke Xiangyang, broke Jingzhou, broke Jingzhao, broke Fengxiang, and so on, 10,000 Jin soldiers broke 200,000 Song troops at the Battle of Le'an (Jin history exaggerated), Yan Zongbi defeated tens of thousands of Song troops in Ziqing, 30,000 Song troops at Qinghe, Ma Wu broke Zhao Zhao's march in Yangzhou with 500 cavalry, Zong Bi "searched the mountains and inspected the sea" battle, and so on.
The defeats of some famous generals of the Southern Song Dynasty were not included in the "Victory Rate", such as Wang De and Yang Yizhong, who won first and then lost in the Battle of Tuogao, and the subsequent defeats were not counted. The famous general Wu Lin was once defeated by Guanyan Sari, and in the War of Southern Invasion of Guanyan Liang, Wu Lu also suffered defeats such as Hechi. The famous general Han Shizhong was also defeated many times in the battle against the Jin army. The famous general Wei Sheng was defeated and killed in the Battle of Chuzhou, and so on.
In addition, there were some defeats during the Song-Jin-Jin war. For example, in the war of Yan Liang's southern invasion, all the way through all over Huainan, most of the Song army was defeated and fled. Later wars such as the Longxing Northern Expedition, the Kaixi Northern Expedition, and the Jin Army's Three-Way Attack on the Song Dynasty all contained hundreds of large and small battles, but the "Victory Rate" basically generalized and only counted as one battle.
In fact, the number of battles that Song Jin broke out in the middle and late period was not many at all, not only were they defeated, but many of the Victories of the Song Army were not counted in the "Victory Rate". It can be seen that the description of the Song-Jin War in "Victory Rate" is completely superficial.
But compared with these, the Battle of Song and Meng is simply a serious distortion of history.
A large number of tragic and magnificent examples of the Battle of Song and Meng, "Victory Rate" turned a blind eye
The Battle of Song and Mongolia can be said to be the most intense and tragic in the history of the Song Dynasty war, but "Victory Rate" only lists 15 battles. It should be known that the Song-Mongolian War lasted for 44 years, and the two sides carried out a long-term tug-of-war, with hundreds of famous battles and more than 10 million casualties.
For example, the most important initial battle of the Song-Mongol War, the Battle of Duanping into Luo, the "Victory Rate" seems to have existed, but it takes the battle of Qiuzhou, which failed to attack Sichuan, as the beginning. Duanping into Luo is a very important battle in history, and even if you lose and win, you can't lose this battle in history.
In addition, in the War of Attacking the Song Dynasty, there were battles such as the Battle of Langzhou and Chengdu at the Broad End, the Battle of Xiangyang and the Destruction of Jiangling in Timutai, which led to the erosion of most of Sichuan and Hubei. Subsequently, after decades of tug-of-war between the Song and Mongolian sides in Sichuan, Hubei, and Huainan, many cities and pools were repeatedly competed for, and the military and civilians paid huge casualties. Among them, Chengdu alone was attacked by the Mongols three times, and Yu Jiu once counterattacked Hanzhong, but these were not reflected in the "Victory Rate". On the contrary, the Battle of Huxiaoshan, the Song army killed more than 1,000 people in this small battle, and the "Victory Rate" was actually listed in the 15 "Song and Mongolian Wars", which was ironic.
The victory rate given by the Southern Song Dynasty against the Mongolian army is as high as 73.3%, as if the Song army has been constantly victorious. In fact, completely ignoring a lot of tragic battles,
Especially in Kublai Khan's war against the Song Dynasty, many battles after the Battle of Xiangyang were very tragic, especially the first series of bloody battles south of the Yangtze River, and the "Victory Rate" was all ignored. For example, the Blood Battle of Tanzhou (hundreds of students of Yuelu Academy were martyred), the Blood Battle of Jingjiang (250 Song troops defended the Moon City and blew themselves up), and the Blood Battle of Changzhou (500 monks died in street battles). In these battles, although the Song army was defeated, after several months of tenacious fighting, it greatly shocked the Mongol army. However, the author of "Victory Rate" may think that "after the Battle of Xiangyang, it does not make much sense for the Yuan army to clean up the remnants", and most of the battles of the Song War were not counted at all, but the early battles of the Song and Mongolia were counted in the overall "victory rate" of the Song Dynasty.
It is precisely because of this "meaningless" logic that the Battle of Dingjiazhou, the Battle of Huaixi, the Battle of Yingzhou, the Battle of Jiaoshan, the Battle of Yuezhou, the Battle of Luzhou, the Battle of Yangzhou, the Battle of Wen Tianxiang's counterattack on Jiangxi, and even the Battle of Yashan in the Song-Mongol War were not included in the "Victory Rate". In this way, the Song Dynasty's "carefully selected" more than 80 battle cases are of course "high victory rate".
It can be seen from this that the article "Victory Rate" itself is a passage of no historical value, but many people have been seriously misled, and even use "Victory Rate" as an argument to argue about some higher-level issues, such as military system, army establishment, cavalry and infantry strength, etc., which are basically empty talk.
Details determine history, and any conclusions drawn without talking about details or tampering with details are worthless. (Author: Tao Mujian)