At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, the powerful minister Jia Rudao was in power, bullying the king and misleading the country internally, and humiliating and seeking peace externally. The Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan intended to annex the world and decided to break through from Xiangyang in the middle of the road. A battle of Xiangyang, which determined the life and death of the Southern Song Dynasty, began.
After Möngke was seriously wounded and killed in the western attack on Diaoyu City in Sichuan, Kublai Khan hurriedly returned from Ezhou to compete for the Khan's throne. After kublai khan seized the Khan's throne and secured it, he once again led a large army south, And Kublai Khan heeded the advice of the Han "leading the way party", changed the previous strategy of slaughtering the city after each time the Mongol army captured the city, and began to focus on being surrendered to Recruit Security, which was to attack the Song all the way to the south and attack the city and plunder the land.
Xiangfan is located at the southern end of the Nanyang Basin, Xiangyang and Fancheng are interdependent on each other, "across the Jingyu, control the north and south", the terrain is dangerous, since ancient times it has been a place where soldiers must fight, and it is also a border town for the Southern Song Dynasty to resist the Mongol army. In November 1267, the Southern Song Dynasty admiral Liu Zhen (a famous general under the command of Meng Jue, who was squeezed out by the traitor Jia Xiangdao and lost his temper and surrendered to the Yuan), led the Southern Song Dynasty water division to descend the Yuan, and attacked the strategy of attacking the Southern Song Dynasty: "First attack Xiangyang, withdraw its cover", the Southern Song Dynasty "no Xiang is no Huai, no Huai, no Huai, no Huai, No Huai, Jiangnan is within reach". Liu Zhen's strategy of "attacking the Song Dynasty, it is advisable to engage in Xiangyang first" was adopted by Kublai Khan, and the Song and Yuan Wars entered the final stage of the Yuan army's strategic offensive against the Southern Song Dynasty.
In 1268, the Mongol army built fortifications around xiangyang and Fancheng and blockaded hanshui, and repeatedly repelled reinforcements from the Southern Song Dynasty (the method of encircling reinforcements). The Southern Song Dynasty court sent a total of 150,000 sailors to rescue Xiangyang eight times in five years without success. The Commander of the Mongolian Army, Ah Shu, and his Henan Province Shi Tianze followed the plans of Zhang Hongfan of Wanhu and Zhang Fujian, the commander of the Water Army, and added 70,000 newly recruited and trained sailors to launch a land and water attack on Xiangfan. He also used the back cannon made by Alaowadin and Ismain (which was the most advanced siege thrower in the world at that time) to attack the city, and Fancheng was broken. In 1273, after the Yuan army attacked Fancheng in the first month of 1273, it slaughtered the city, and Lü Wenhuan cried in front of the battle. The Song general Fan Tianshun vowed not to surrender, and eventually hanged himself; the general Niu Fu led more than a hundred warriors to fight in the alley, and finally committed suicide by being seriously injured and thrown into the fire. Later, the Xiangyang Song general Lü Wenhuan surrendered to the Yuan Dynasty under the promise of the Mongol commander Ah Shu that "the surrender of Xiangyang would ensure the safety of the city".
From the rupture of the military alliance between Song and Mongolia in 1235 and the first war of Xiangyang to the fall of Xiangyang in 1273 AD, the Battle of Xiangyang of the Song and Yuan Dynasties lasted for 38 years. During this period, after losing and recovering, and then losing and recapturing, Mongolia and the Southern Song Dynasty each experienced civil strife and civil war, the two sides deceived each other, and carried out many wars and negotiations, the Song and Mongolian (Yuan) sides in order to compete for Xiangyang, almost concentrated the world's most elite cavalry and water army at that time, used all the advanced weapons at that time, the number of casualties on both sides exceeded 400,000, five years after the fall of Xiangyang, the Southern Song Dynasty died.
The Song Meng Xiangyang Defense War is also a glorious chapter in the history of world wars. The Yuan Dynasty eventually won the war, which was inseparable from the foresight of the Yuan Emperor Kublai Khan; the Southern Song Dynasty was defeated by its treacherous rule and the incompetence of the imperial court. After the Southern Song Dynasty's self-proclaimed general Meng Jue, the monarchy of the Ming Dynasty, Jia Rudao, came to power, first lost the hearts and minds of the people and the army, and then lost the heavy subjects and brave generals. What the Southern Song Dynasty lost was exactly what the Yuan Dynasty gained, and the demise of the Southern Song Dynasty was actually due to the emperor's dimwitting and the treacherous ministers of the DYNASTY, and to the long-term accumulation of evils.
History records that after the fall of the Song Dynasty, Kublai Khan, the ancestor of the Yuan Dynasty, once asked the General of the Yuan Dynasty and the Song Dynasty: "How can You wait for the surrender of Yiye?" Answer Yun: "Song has a strong minister Jia Xiangdao who is good at state authority, and every scribe is a good scribe, and the only light military attaché." The minister waits for a long time to be uneven, and the heart is dissociated, so the wind is also sent! Yuan Shizu replied, "As it was said, it seems that the Tao Is light and ru is also appropriate!" This statement shows that people's hearts are in the heart.