In China's traditional eighteen-like weapons, the "sword" can be described as the hegemon of the soldiers. From the barbaric ancient era when the beasts were rampant, to the Iron Age, swords have run rampant on the historical stage of these thousands of years, accompanied by people in the long river of history to interpret a period of bizarre and tragic stories.
There are not a few famous knives in the world, and China naturally has famous knives with great power and resounding all over the world, such as the Tang dao that once opened up the territory and expanded the territory for the Tang Dynasty and killed the enemy to the death. Tang knife is a peak in the history of the world's cold weapons, this knife manufacturing process is exquisite, the blade is sharp, the use of light, the lethality is extremely strong, can be described as the best in the sword.
However, after the Song Dynasty, there was no longer a Figure of Tang Dao, so why did no one in the Song Dynasty want to fight with Tang Dao?
Tang knife model
Looking through the historical documents, we can see that the reason why the Tang Dao declined in the Song Dynasty, or even disappeared completely, was mainly caused by the following reasons.
First: The manufacturing process of Tang knife is complex, expensive, time-consuming and laborious, making it difficult to continue to inherit the process. According to the data research, forging a Tang knife requires hundreds of folding and forging by craftsmen, and then burning the blade for the knife covered with soil and steel sandwiching, so the production time of the Tang knife as a cold weapon is very long, because the manufacturing process is exquisite, and the cultivation and maintenance of the later stage of the Tang knife is also very troublesome.
Such a superb and complex manufacturing process has indeed made the Tang knife famous all over the world, and its craft has even been transmitted to Japan, making it the direct ancestor of the Japanese sword. However, this has also become a direct obstacle to the continued inheritance of the Tang dao, which has experienced the problem of "redundant soldiers" in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms and the Northern Song Dynasty, which has experienced frequent wars, because of its high cost, the Tang dao was directly eliminated by the Song Dynasty, and its craft was gradually lost.
Tang knife
Second: the Song Dynasty was an era of heavy literature and light martial arts, and in such a social context, those literati and scholars preferred to collect poetry and paintings than to collect precious swords. Since the founding of the Song Dynasty, due to the historical event of "a cup of wine and the release of military power", the status of military generals has declined significantly, and the imperial court has deliberately suppressed military officers, and even the matter of military governance has been handed over to civilian officials.
Although this practice consolidated the feudal imperial power, it also made the entire army scattered and the martial atmosphere was absent. In this way, the state reduced its investment in the manufacture of military weapons, and the soldiers did not care what kind of weapons were used, and the most common Tang knives on the battlefield of the Tang Dynasty naturally withdrew from the war stage.
Third: Since the enemies of the Song army were mainly northern nomads, the Tang knife was actually not suitable for the Song people to use in combat. The Tang knife does have many advantages, but the weapons are only suitable for close combat, not for fighting the cavalry of the northern nomads. Because the main weapons used by these nomadic armies were spears and axes; coupled with the song dynasty's original lack of cavalry, they wanted to cause greater damage to the nomadic cavalry, and the Tang dao was completely useless.
Only those long-handled swords specially forged by the Song people to fight against the cavalry were the weapons used to kill the enemy on the battlefield. This long-handled knife is inexpensive, its handle is made of wood that can be long or short, and it is very useful for both offensive and defensive cavalry. In this way, the expensive Tang dao, which had many defects in the confrontation with the nomadic cavalry, would only be eliminated by the Song army.
Song Dynasty wooden handle knife
In summary, the elimination of Tang Dao is also the inevitability of the times. It is indeed the pinnacle of cold weapons, but it is only suitable for this specific period of combat in the Tang Dynasty. When the enemy of the Song Dynasty army, which was dominated by infantry, was converted into a powerful nomadic cavalry, the shortcomings of the Tang sword were fully exposed, and when its collection value was higher than the use value, it was bound to be eliminated by the times.