The Song Dynasty was not a unified dynasty in China, and in the 320 years of its existence, in the north and west, there were successively the Liao state established by the Khitan ethnic group, the Western Xia state established by the Dangxiang ethnic group, the Jin state established by the Jurchen ethnic group, and the Yuan Dynasty established by the Mongols later, which successively confronted and coexisted with them. The Liao and Jin rulers often referred to the Song as the "Southern Dynasty", while the Song called them the "Northern Dynasty", which can be said to be another period of division between the north and the south in Chinese history. When the Yuan Dynasty compiled the history of the previous dynasty, the three main histories of the Song Dynasty, the Liao History, and the Jin History were juxtaposed, which basically reflected the actual situation in China at that time.
In the pen of many historians in the past, the Song Dynasty was a terrible dynasty, and it was often called "Lonely Qin ugly Song" alongside the Qin Dynasty. The reason why the Song Dynasty was quite despised or criticized was mainly due to two points: First, it was weak militarily, repeatedly defeated in the face of foreign invasions, and both the Northern Song Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty died at the hands of foreign nationalities; second, the political conformism, "redundant troops, redundant officials, and redundant expenses", and the slightest political reform, the result was a failure. Of course, many of the reasons for the above situation can be found, but the main one is inseparable from the founding policy of the supreme ruler in the early Song Dynasty.
In the north, not only did the powerful Khitan (Liao) covet the "Southern Dynasty", but in the Taiyuan area there was also a Northern Han regime under the wings of the Khitan egg; in the upper and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and its vicinity, there were Houshu in Sichuan, Nanping in Jiangling, Chu in Hunan, Wuyue in Hangzhou, Nantang in Jinling, as well as the Southern Han in Guangdong and Fujian in Fujian. These separatist regimes can be said to be a continuation of the situation of the division of feudal towns since the Middle and Tang Dynasties.
Internally, when Zhao Kuangyin seized the Later Zhou Dynasty, what he received was actually just a mess, even if it was not counted those who had two hearts, such as Li Jun, Li Chongjin and the like. As far as the regime itself is concerned, it inherits five short-lived dynasties. In just 53 years, the dynasty has changed five times like a marquee, and the throne has changed eight surnames like a rotating throne. The intensification of this pattern is all related to the internal usurpation of the local feudal towns (Jiedushi) with heavy troops. Therefore, after Song Taizu ascended the throne, on the one hand, he actively planned the great cause of reunification in the southern conquest and the northern war; on the other hand, he must always think carefully about how to eliminate the vicious political situation in the past and completely solve this major problem related to the long-term peace and stability of the Zhao and Song dynasties.
In terms of external reunification, Zhao Kuangyin was still relatively successful. In light of the actual situation he was facing at that time, he formulated the basic principles of "first making things easy and then making them difficult" and "first going south and then north." It took him 13 years to resolve the 9 separatist regimes in the South. His younger brother, the reigning Emperor Taizong of Song, Zhao Guangyi, spent another 3 years destroying the Northern Han Dynasty. By 979 AD, in addition to the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, which had been ceded to the Khitan (Liao) by the Later Jin Dynasty, which was still under the control of the Liao Dynasty, the frontier areas also included Gaochang and Guizi in the northwest, Dali and Tubo in the southwest, and the original "Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms" had all been incorporated into the territory of the only Central Plains Dynasty, the Song Dynasty. As a result, since the "Anshi Rebellion" in the Tang Dynasty, the state of division that had lasted for more than two hundred years in Chinese mainland was ended, and a unified centralized state reappeared.
Zhao Kuangyin was also quite successful in eradicating the usurpation of power internally. Soon after he ascended the throne, he successively relieved Murong Yanzhao, Shi Shouxin, and others of their military power to command the forbidden army, and made them envoys to the local festival. From 963 onwards, Zhao Kuangyin began to use civil servants to manage state affairs. For the former Later Zhou Yongbing's foreign-surnamed king and dozens of people from the Great Clan with the Seal of Xiang, Zhao Kuangyin either transferred them for an excuse, or took a remote position, or no longer let his descendants inherit the post after their deaths. In addition, new civilian ministers were gradually appointed to replace the old warlords. After unifying the countries, Emperor Taizong Zhao Guangyi continued to replace the military generals with civilian ministers, and used the internal ministers, that is, eunuchs, to lead the troops or charge the supervision army to blackmail the generals. At the same time as the seizure of the military power of the military generals, the emperor of the early Song Dynasty also carried out a major reform of the military system:
First of all, the forbidden army was strengthened by eliminating the old and the weak and strengthening the strong, which not only strengthened the central forbidden army, but also weakened the local troops.
Second, the "internal and external phase system" is implemented for the forbidden army, that is, half of the troops are stationed in the Beijing Division, and the other half is stationed in various military strongholds; the forbidden army of the Beijing Division is enough to deal with the forbidden army stationed in various places, and the mobilization of the forbidden army in various places can also counter the forbidden army of the Beijing Division.
Third, set up "commanders in front of the palace", "infantry commanders" and "horse army commanders", and the three officials were collectively called "three marshals". They are only responsible for the management and training of some of the forbidden troops, and have no authority to dispatch the forbidden troops. The right to dispatch the forbidden army was nominally under the jurisdiction of the Privy Council, which, as the highest military organ, was directly responsible to the emperor, so in fact only the emperor could dispatch the forbidden army. If the forbidden army goes out to fight, the emperor temporarily sends generals as commanders, and the emperor personally formulates the battle plan, and sometimes even directly grants the "formation map" of the operation, and the general with the troops is not allowed to change it at will, regardless of whether this "formation map" is in line with the actual situation on the battlefield at that time.
Fourth, the generals of the Forbidden Army were appointed directly by the imperial court and were often transferred, and the generals of the generals who commanded the army in every war were temporarily appointed. In addition, a "more disciplined method" was also formulated, and the forbidden army was sent to other places and rotated every three years. As a result, "soldiers are impermanent, marshals are impermanent divisions", "soldiers do not know soldiers, soldiers do not know generals", "people from above and below are not familiar", and generals and soldiers are not allowed to establish a solid relationship.
Fifth, the command of the local armies, the van army, the township soldiers, and the Fan soldiers, was taken over to the states, and the moderation made them a false title without power. Such a military system made it impossible for the generals of the Forbidden Army and local feudal towns to launch a mutiny of "yellow robes and body".
The military commander has solved this most difficult problem, and the next thing to be solved is the system problem from the central to the local government. The measures taken by the supreme rulers of the early Song Dynasty were:
The first is to decentralize the power of the head of the civil servants. The highest administrative body of the Song Dynasty was the "Zhongshu Menxia", and the head of the song dynasty was called "Tongzhongshu Menxia Pingzhangshi", referred to as "Tongping Zhangshi". His deputy, known as the "Governor of The Government", is the deputy prime minister. In terms of establishment, there is no quota for the prime minister, and there are generally several people. The powers of the Prime Minister are limited to the administration of administrative affairs. The supreme military body is the "Privy Council", headed by the "Privy Council" or "Privy CouncilLord", whose deputy is called the "Deputy Envoy". The Privy Council is in charge of military decrees and mobilizes the army. The Prime Minister and the Privy Counsellor, one in one article and one weapon, did not communicate with each other, and were respectively responsible to the Emperor. Second only to these two are the "three divisions", which are in charge of the country's finances. Its highest official is the "Three Divisions Envoy", and because of its special status, it is also known as "Counting Phases".
The second is to strengthen supervision over officials. The central supervisory organs of the Song Dynasty had two separate functions with exactly the same responsibilities: one was the "Imperial History Platform" and the other was the "Imperial Court". Its duty is to picket and impeach officials at all levels, including the Prime Minister, the Privy Councillor, and the Three Secretaries. The emperor also authorized the officials of the two independent supervisory bodies to "hear the truth" and not be punished even if they were wrong.
The third is to restrict the "external system" with "internal system". The Song Dynasty also inherited some of the practices of the Tang Emperor in cultivating and supporting forces outside the system, such as selecting a part of Hanlin scholars as advisers to participate in decision-making, called "internal system". The "internal system" often bypasses external government agencies and announces certain measures or appointments in a sudden manner, etc., with the purpose of restricting the foreign dynasty as a regular government agency.
The fourth is to strengthen local control. In the establishment of local officials, it is also centered on the basic principle of strengthening the centralization of power. The establishment of a large administrative region "road" replaced the old system of jiedu envoys and sub-counties since the Tang Dynasty. The following are divided into the Department of Transport Envoys, the Department of Punishment and Prison, and the Department of Appeasement Envoys, and later the Department of Raising Changping. The functions and powers of the local divisions are completely separate and act as a check on each other. In addition, the Caosi, Xiansi, and Cangsi have the responsibility of supervising the local officials of the prefectures and counties. The substantive local administrative organs are the state (prefectural, military, supervisory) and county levels. The governors of prefectures and counties are appointed by the central government, which is called "knowing the affairs of a certain state" and "knowing the affairs of a certain county", and the local people cannot serve as officials in the local area, and the local officials are generally changed every three years. In each state, there was also a "general judgment palace", which was directly dispatched by the imperial court and had the right to jointly handle state affairs with zhizhou, and to supervise the actions of zhizhou, and directly report the situation to the imperial court.
The fifth is to create an extremely complex bureaucratic system. The official system of the Song Dynasty was divided between "name" and "reality", and "post" and "power", and there were differences between "official", "post" and "dispatch". "Dispatch" is a position in the true sense, but it is temporary in nature, so it is called "knowing...", "judging...", "right...", which means that it can be exchanged at any time.
In short, in order not to let the newly established dynasty repeat the mistakes of the five generations, and to ensure that his Zhao surname Jiangshan could survive for a long time, the emperor of the early Song Dynasty "took the government of preventing malpractice and the law of establishing the country" (Wang Fu's words), and took a multi-pronged approach, "the soldiers also received, the wealth was also collected, and the reward and punishment of everything in the criminal government were collected" (Zhu Xi). As a result, the ills of "the weak and the subjects are strong", "the external (local) is heavy and the internal (central) is light", and the danger of the soldiers joining forces to mutiny is eliminated, but the price is that the combat effectiveness of the army is greatly weakened, which became one of the important reasons for the repeated defeats of the Song Dynasty in the wars against the Liao, the Western Xia, the Jin, and the Mongols in the future. In addition, the centralized power of authoritarianism has been strengthened as never before, and all power has been concentrated in the hands of individual emperors, but at the same time, a huge redundant bureaucratic system has been formed, which is separated from the real and the real, stacked on the bed and framed house, and abused officials and inefficient.