Song Xianggong: Adhering to the traditional afterglow, the tree is benevolent and righteous
In the fragmentary historical knowledge I received during the Cultural Revolution, Song Xianggong was a very special existence, because Chairman Mao had a very famous evaluation of him, called "stupid pig-style benevolence", so in my impression, he was synonymous with impractical, pedantic, stupid to the extreme.
Not only Song Xianggong, as if the whole Song Kingdom is a group of strange existences, many of the idioms of the pre-Qin to describe a person's stupidity are said to be them, what plucking seedlings to promote growth, carving boats and asking for swords, guarding the plants and waiting for rabbits, etc. A bunch of them, even the shrewd monkeys, once they arrived in the Song Kingdom, also became silly monkeys in the twilight.
However, this Song kingdom is really not to be underestimated, they are descendants of the Shang Dynasty, after the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty, in the tradition of "rising and destroying and continuing to extinction", they were not slaughtered, but a large piece of land was set aside to seal the country, and the Tianzi ceremony was allowed, "Yu Zhou as a guest", which was the guest state of Zhou Tianzi, which was the Song Kingdom.
The so-called "rise and fall and continue to extinction" is the law generally followed in the Spring and Autumn Period, when people believed that the feudal kingdom was given by the Son of Heaven and could not be extinguished, "two kings and three ke", maintaining their temple sacrifices for everyone to abide by.
After the Xia Dynasty was replaced by the Shang Tang, a State of Qi was established in order to inherit the Xia Dynasty, a tradition that was broken until the shameless conspiracy to annex the State of Wu was broken, thus ending the Spring and Autumn Period and entering the Warring States Era with no rules to speak of.
The State of Song was a state of Yin Shang with the surname of Zi Guo, the status was very high, it was the highest of the princely states, according to the rank of the gonghou bozi male, they were a rare principality, and many countries at that time were only princely states, such as the state of Lu, the state of Yan, etc., so it was called a princely state.
Of course, there is also the State of Chu, which is regarded as a barbarian sub-country by the Central Plains, and the king can only be called Chuzi, and the State of Qin, which raised horses for the Zhou royal family in the northwest and later became dominant, belonged to the general non-flow of The Horse Wen, so they created a word of their own, called Wang, so their monarchs were called the King of Qin.
As a remnant of Yin merchants, the Song State had a land of 100,000 anointed people, located in the thoroughfare, convenient transportation, the capital of the country, Shangqiu, was a prosperous city, known by later generations as "the source of the three merchants, the capital of Chinese merchants", and the commerce was extremely developed, so later there was the term "merchant", which has been used to this day.
And the surrounding countries watched them do business and get rich, and in their hearts it was an envy and jealousy, so there was such a choreography of the Song people's idioms to vent the five-flavored knot in their hearts.
The Song Kingdom is the source of the Chinese sage culture, the Song people have precipitated in the blood of the inherent gene of etiquette and righteousness, and Song Xianggong, as the representative of this group of people, has been influenced by the atmosphere of "etiquette, righteousness, benevolence, wisdom and faith" since he was a child, so it is not surprising that what remains in him is more of a code of conduct of the past.
Duke Xiang of Song, the 20th monarch of the Song Dynasty during the Spring and Autumn Period. One of the Five Hegemons of the Spring and Autumn Period, he reigned for 14 years and became famous for contacting the States of Wei and Cao to unite with Qi and support the Duke of Qi.
Later, when he was fighting against his younger brother Zheng Guo, who betrayed him, he fought with the Chu army that saved Zheng in Hongshui, and was defeated and injured because he spoke of "benevolence" and refused the military principle of "half crossing the attack", and died of his wounds the following year. "For Song Xianggong's dream of hegemony, it has come to an end.
Regarding this battle, the history books record that Xianggong fought against King Cheng of Chu in Hong. The Chu people did not help, and Mu Yi knew: "The other is many and I am widowed, and they have not been attacked." "The public does not listen. It has not been exhausted, and it is also known: "Can be attacked." Gong Yue: "Wait for it to be chen." "Chen Cheng, the Song people struck it." The Song division was defeated, and Xianggong was injured.
Song Xianggong was actually aware of the disparity in strength between the two sides in this war, but he believed too much in the power of justice and the charm of benevolence and righteousness, and said to himself: "There is more than enough armor in Chu bingjia, and there is insufficient benevolence and righteousness; there is insufficient armor in contempt, and there is more than enough benevolence and righteousness." That is to say, he believed in his heart that the root of the hegemony of the world was not the armor, but benevolence, which was very funny to see from now on.
80 years after the death of Song Xianggong, Confucius was born, he spent his whole life nagging to preach his "benevolent morality" doctrine, and at this time, no one was willing to listen to his outdated preaching, from this point of view, Confucius must be Song Xianggong's confidant, if Confucius can be contemporary with Song Xianggong, I think, he will definitely be able to give the old master a stage, to achieve a win-win effect.
I think that it is certainly not comprehensive to say that Song Xianggong is stupid, and if you specifically refer to this battle of Hongshui, it is still reluctant, but it can also be said that the battle of Hongshui was Song Xiang's use of his life and interpreted his insistence on benevolence and righteousness.
The monarch of a country, in that chaotic world, can become one of the "five hegemons" and preside over the alliance of soldiers, how can this not be a stupid thing to do, such as the country that renews the incense for the Xia Dynasty, in addition to a worrying idiom, what else can we remember?
Song Xianggong was an ambitious monarch, but in that era of collapse, blindly adhering to the ideals in his heart was too pedantic, and he was like Don Quixote fighting with the windmills, he could not find the same level of camp to fight, and when facing a group of opponents whose ultimate goal was victory, his defeat was inevitable.
If you think about it from another angle, if Song Xianggong won the Battle of Hongshui, can it be said that this is the power of benevolence and righteousness, and a righteous master who can defeat all evil is invincible?
Jin Wengong was later praised because he won the "Battle of Chengpu" between Jin and Chu, so the benevolence of "retreating from the three houses" paid him a lot of gold; but if he lost, it must be the same as this Song Xianggong.
I remember watching the large films depicting ancient wars in Europe before, I was always very confused, they were all lined up on both sides, or knives or guns to kill and shoot at each other, absolutely could not see what strategy to use, such as showing weakness, sneak attack, enveloping, etc., our ancestors summed up those wise tactics of war, for these Europeans, all of them are playing the piano to the cattle.
Song Xianggong's era, as far as the moral level is concerned, can be said to have encountered "a great change that has not occurred in a thousand years", people's traditional concepts are being replaced by the law of the jungle of the weak and the strong, and everything does not look at the means but only looks at the results, just like in the African grassland, the cruelty of the lion's "throat locking" and the cruelty of the second brother hyena "anorectal surgery", in fact, there is no difference.
It is undeniable that at least in the early period of Song Xianggong, the set of values he respected was still very useful, that is to say, there was a market, and the surrounding countries were still obedient, they all respected Zhou Tianzi, the co-lord, followed the moral bottom line of Zun Wang, obeyed the rules, and emphasized benevolence, so they achieved the great cause of Song Xianggong's hegemony.
However, due to the later addition of the State of Chu, the war became somewhat tainted, and the State of Chu openly declared, "I am a barbarian and do not talk to China." At that time, the State of Chu was outside the established order of the Princes of the Central Plains, and it was a typical "I am a rogue, who am I afraid of".
In the face of such an opponent who did not play cards according to the routine, Song Xianggong fought with the Spring and Autumn Battle Method, and still insisted on the battle of benevolence and righteousness in his heart, was there any reason to be undefeated? Therefore, I think we can laugh at Song Xianggong's ignorance of current affairs, but we cannot attribute the defeat to benevolence and righteousness!
Therefore, Cheng is also Xiao He, defeat is also Xiao He, this sentence is also quite applicable to Song Xianggong, that is, Cheng is also benevolent, defeat is also benevolent, this has nothing to do with IQ, and there is no dime relationship with stupidity, the real stupid things are all done by smart people after careful consideration, Song Xianggong is just in accordance with the values and behavior he follows, but he does not realize that his cognition has long been out of the changing reality.
Benevolence and righteousness are certainly not the guarantee of victory, and civilization is not necessary for survival, as evidenced by the fact that the Civilization of the Central Plains in Chinese history has been repeatedly rubbed underground by barbaric aliens; in other words, the higher the degree of civilization, the narrower the space for survival, which is also the main cause of Song Xianggong's defeat, and he himself does not recognize this.
Zheng Zhuang was crazy and deceitful, and from the time Zheng Zhuang dared to fight with Zhou Tianzi and hit the king's shoulder with an arrow, the form of this war began to come, they dared to "risk the world's great disobedience", for the sake of the result, they could do whatever they wanted, unscrupulously.
That Cao Jiao did not abide by the rules of "beating the drum to attack", and waited for the Qi army to exhaust its three drums before striking a counterattack, leaving an allusion to "one drum making a gas" in the idiom vocabulary; and the emergence of "Sun Tzu's Art of War" is even more a public declaration of "the tricky way of the soldier", and it is also an indispensable textbook for the soldiers, and there is no benevolence to talk about, so the change from "soldier of etiquette and righteousness" to "trickery and strange plot" has been completed.
Xiang Yu's Hongmen feast was at most ridiculed as too benevolent and too soft-hearted, and Wujiang's self-destruction was not ridiculed as ignorant of current affairs, but it was a pity that his "comeback is unknown." "Calling him the last nobleman in China, in fact, compared with Song Xianggong, the two of them are not fifty steps and a hundred steps, under the same roof, this difference is so big.
Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, people had great respect for Song Xianggong, and we can see from his nickname that the person who is exalted and uplifting is "Xiang", of course, there are also non-mainstream evaluations, thinking that he is pedantic, because history is written according to the principle of "becoming a king and losing a coward", I do not know whether this is a moral degeneration or the progress of civilization, I can only say that he was really a different kind in that special historical period.
Song Xianggong can be said to be a martyr of morality and etiquette, who practiced benevolence and righteousness in the chaotic world of the Spring and Autumn War, "facing great events without forgetting great gifts", and was a true nobleman in Chinese history, just like Zilu "died with the crown"; they could duel face-to-face with their opponents, but they would never do the thing of stabbing a knife in the back.
From this I think of a small episode in the American Revolutionary War, when a British blocker aimed at a high-ranking officer in a general's uniform, and just as he was about to pull the trigger, he was stopped by his superior, "The other side is a nobleman, how can you shoot from behind?" So, watching the group disappear behind the hill.
Later, I learned that the general who escaped the disaster was the person who led the Continental Army to victory over the British army and became the first president of the United States, his name was Washington.
The local tycoons and aristocrats are not at all dialogues on the same level!