Soldiers, a major event of the country. Behind every dynasty there is a division of kings, and only those who truly hold the power of the army can safely stand at the peak of a country's power. The first is to open up the territory, the second is to defend against foreign enemies, and the third is to consolidate the royal power. Whether a country has many soldiers or not is strong or not has a direct bearing on whether the national territory is large enough, whether its international status is high enough, and whether the national fortune is long enough. Therefore, the superiors of successive dynasties were very enthusiastic about army building.
(1) Zhao Kuangyin's two obsessions
Zhao Kuangyin, the founding emperor of the Great Song Dynasty, seemed to have a deeper obsession with military power and raising soldiers.
The first major event that happened after the founding of the Great Song Dynasty was the "right to release troops with a glass of wine".
One day in July of the second year of Jianlong (961), Emperor Taizu of Song, Zhao Kuangyin, and Zhao Da hosted a banquet for Shi Shouxin, Gao Huaide, Wang Xunqi and a group of founding veterans alone, drinking half-drunk, Zhao Da suddenly asked: "If someone draped a yellow robe over you, what would this be?" Everyone was shocked, and immediately understood, and replied in unison: "You say it's all right!" "The next day, the right to hand over the right to surrender the army, the resignation of the resignation, is worthy of the old brothers who fought together in the passionate years, and claiming back a country's military right is also a matter of a glass of wine, and the tacit understanding is full of points.
Emperor Taizu of Song, Zhao Kuangyin, had a cup of wine and released military power
This event was very complete: the founding military generals wisely handed over military power, the monarchs were at peace, there was no suspicion, and Zhao Da no longer had to worry about who would one day harden his wings and seek power to usurp the throne. At the same time, with the reduction of the power of military generals, it also gave Wen Chen more opportunities to stretch his ambitions.
This was followed by military reform.
From the pre-Qin dynasty, to the Qin and Han dynasties, and then to the Sui and Tang dynasties, most of the military supplies were solved by the localities themselves. For example, after the founding of the Zhou Dynasty, it was divided into princes, and each princely state provided its own army; When it came to Qin and Han, basically "all the people were soldiers", farming in their spare time, fighting for soldiers, and everyone could feed themselves; In the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the government military system was adopted, and the soldiers and the people were separated, but the soldiers were also the people (the people who did not have to pay taxes), and they still supported themselves.
Zhao Da was a thoughtful founding emperor who resigned the life of the previous dynasty, so he resolutely refused to step on the pit that the previous dynasty had stepped on. This time, he not only had to spend money to raise a professional army, but also firmly control the military power in his own hands.
In the reformed military system, he directly controlled the establishment, mobilization, and command of the army, and the military power under it was divided between three organs: the Privy Council (the highest military leadership organ) in charge of military orders, the three branches (the highest military command organ) in charge of the army, and the ministers (temporarily appointed generals) responsible for leading the army in battle. Those in charge of military orders are not responsible for managing the army, those who command the army are not responsible for leading the army to fight, and those who lead the army to fight are directly appointed by the emperor, and everyone has a clear division of labor, and no one can control the other, but they contain each other.
Architectural diagram of the military reform of the Song Dynasty
Through military reform, Zhao greatly completed the first step in building a professional army.
(2) How many soldiers did the Song Dynasty raise? How much did it cost?
Since it is a professional army, it is, of course, uniformly recruited by the state and managed according to the establishment.
Our army today is roughly divided into three categories: army, navy, and air force according to the branch of service, while the military system of the Song Dynasty is roughly divided into three types: forbidden army, box army, and township soldier according to the place of belonging. The forbidden army is the central regular army, the closest to the Son of Heaven, the best treatment, the best quality, and the main force on the battlefield; The box army is a standing army stationed in the prefecture town, which does not need training in peacetime, and is a miscellaneous soldier responsible for logistics and construction on a daily basis, but often has to make up the numbers when fighting; Township soldiers were semi-professional armies that had not separated from agricultural production, and were mostly deployed in remote areas such as the Song-Liao border and southwest in the north, with the aim of strengthening border defense and ruling ethnic minorities.
A soldier of the Song Dynasty in film and television dramas
So how many soldiers did the army of the Great Song Dynasty have? According to statistics, in the last year of Kaibao in the early Song Dynasty (976), the national army strength was 378,000, including 190,000 forbidden troops; by the fifth year of the Song Renzong Qingli (1045), the national army strength reached 1.259 million, including 826,000 forbidden troops; a few years later, in the early years of Emperor Yu (1049), the national military strength reached a peak of 1.41 million. This number is the highest in ancient Chinese history, ranking second only to the Ming Dynasty (the highest strength reached 1.6 million).
Approximate numbers of troops from Emperor Taizu of Song to Emperor Xiaozong of Song for more than two hundred years
It is good to raise soldiers in a thousand ways, but there is one problem - to spend money.
Raising soldiers for a thousand days, and when the troops are used, the soldiers are ready to go to the battlefield at any time, and the necessary expenses must not be sloppy. Since the founding of the Song Dynasty, the army has implemented professional management, and of course, all the expenses of these professional soldiers must be fully supported by the state.
In addition to training on a regular basis, one must be equipped with good weapons and defensive equipment, sufficient horses and food and grass, and a head salary and silver. Therefore, for the Great Song Dynasty, raising troops was also a double-edged sword, on the one hand, it was the guarantee of national security, on the other hand, it was endlessly consuming the country's wealth and resources.
How much money does the Great Song spend on army supplies every year? Let's take the reign of Emperor Renzong of Song as an example, when Cai Xiang, a famous minister of the Northern Song Dynasty, served as the third envoy, and he made statistics on the military expenditure at that time. At that time, the army was 1.18 million people, and the expenses were as follows:
The expenditure and proportion of the army during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Song
Cai Xiang is an official Qingzheng, and his statistics should be credible. From the above table, we find that more than 76% of the total annual expenditure of the Song Dynasty was used to feed the army. At that time, the population of the Great Song Dynasty had reached 12.46 million households (about 100 million people), that is, the army, which accounted for about 1% of the country's total population, consumed more than 75% of the country's cloth, grain and grass, and 30% of the silver money. The huge cost of the Great Song to feed the army can be seen.
(3) Why did the Song Dynasty have to raise so many soldiers?
Most of the country's strength is spent on military provisions, why did the Great Song pay such a huge price to raise so many soldiers?
The primary reason stemmed from the loss of the sixteen states of Yanyun.
The Yanyun region has been a transitional area between northern nomads and southern farming peoples since the pre-Qin Dynasty, so it has been a very special presence on China's territory since ancient times. The sixteen prefectures of Yanyun refer to the sixteen prefectures centered on Youzhou (present-day Beijing) and Yunzhou (present-day Datong, Shanxi), that is, the northern regions of present-day Beijing and Tianjin, as well as northern Hebei and northern Shanxi, with a width of about 600 kilometers from east to west, a length of about 200 kilometers from north to south, and a radius of 120,000 square kilometers. Straddling the Yan Mountain, Taihang Mountain, Daxing'an Ling and other mountain ranges, the mountains are steep, the terrain is condescending, easy to defend and difficult to attack, and has become a place where soldiers must fight. In the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the Turkic, Khitan and other ethnic minorities became increasingly strong, and the sixteen prefectures of Yanyun became a hurdle they had to pass to enter the Central Plains, and at the same time became a natural line of defense for the rulers of the Central Plains to defend against the invasion of foreign enemies in the north.
Map of Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures
The sixteen states of Yanyun must not be lost, this is the consensus of all the emperors who are still sober-minded in previous dynasties, and of course, including the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty, Zhao Kuangyin. However, Zhao Da's luck was not very good, and before he conquered the Great Song Dynasty, the sixteen states of Yanyun had been surrendered to the Liao Emperor Yelu Deguang by the "child emperor" Shi Jingyu, who was enslaved and bottomless.
Therefore, Zhao Da's heart at that time must be hanging, just like he finally built a big house, only to find that the courtyard wall was built on the site of someone else's house. How could the thoughtful Zhao Da just let his door open unobstructed under the noses of the enemy? Therefore, Zhao Da was determined to build an army, on the one hand, to gather forces to recapture the sixteen states of Yanyun, and on the other hand, he was always ready to defend Daliao to visit his vegetable garden.
In addition, there is another reason that Zhao Da can't wait to raise an army to increase his sense of security, that is, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, Bianjing Kaifeng Province, is too looking for fighting. Kaifeng is located in the hinterland of the Central Plains, and although the land is fertile, it is also flat. The flat terrain is not bad, which is conducive to the development of agricultural production and economy, but it is also not dangerous to defend, which is not conducive to industrial defense. For Zhao Da, it was like the courtyard wall was built on the site of someone else's house, and the door of his own house was also open.
Map of the Song-Liao warring situation during the Northern Song Dynasty
Because of this, the poor Great Song Dynasty had to raise a large army at any cost, and while emboldening itself, it was also ready to copy the guys at any time.
(4) How instigated is the Song Army?
For the impression of the Song Dynasty army, we mostly come from the story of Yang Jia General and Yue Jiajun. In the stories of film and television, book reviews and comic strips, how bloody and brave the Yang family general and the Yue family are and how rotten the rule of the Great Song Dynasty is. Many years ago, I also heard a joke that it was the hit TV series "Yang Family General" at that time, and there was a farmer in a certain place who was his loyal fan and chased the drama on time every day, but chasing and chasing, the grievances encountered by the Yang family in his heart and the anger against Pan Renmei and other bureaucrats also accumulated, and finally one day this old brother broke out in anger, and took turns to smash his hoe into his own TV.
Zhonglie Yang family will be stills
Stories are often suspected of exaggeration, but the logic of the story should follow history seven or eight times out of ten, from these stories, it is not difficult to judge whether it is the Northern Song Dynasty or the Southern Song Dynasty, there has never been a shortage of generals who can fight, nor is there no army that can be mastered, but the generals are fighting bravely on the battlefield to kill the enemy, while also preventing the civilian officials who do not deal with the dynasty from tripping them, there are enemies behind them and there are opponents at home, physically and mentally exhausted, where can they kill the enemy with peace of mind?
People's character often determines their destiny, and a country's genes also determine a country's national destiny. The genes of the Great Song Dynasty are obvious, and the eight-character policy - Yangwen suppresses martial arts, and values peace.
The two Song dynasties lasted for a total of 319 years from 960 to 1279, and after 18 emperors, except for the founding emperor Zhao Kuangyin Zhao, who was greatly strategizing, the children and grandchildren behind seemed to be weaker from generation to generation. The second emperor Zhao Guangyi drove his own conquest and was shot by the Liao army, and almost became a prisoner; The fourth emperor Zhao Zhen of Song was forced to go north to meet the enemy, and instead of taking advantage of the victory when his own army was superior, he negotiated with the Liao army and reached the "Alliance of the Lanyuan" and paid tribute to the Liao army for a hundred years; The eighth and ninth emperors Song Huizong and Song Qinzong were directly captured by the Jurchens, and even refined into lamp oil after their deaths, and the Northern Song Dynasty perished with it. In the Southern Song Dynasty, the emperors were even more unenterprising, and they were in a corner of peace, and the founding emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty, Emperor Gaozong of Song, Zhao Zhi, directly paid tribute to Jin, and the last little emperor Zhao Xiang was forced by the Yuan army to commit suicide by jumping into the sea.
"The Shame of Jingkang" at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty
We don't need to study the Song army here to study whether the Song army fought more victorious battles or suffered more defeats, the Great Song Dynasty from the Northern Song Dynasty to the Southern Song Dynasty, less active attacks, more passive beatings, the territory continued to shrink, the emperors were defeated and retreated, and everywhere you could easily smell the Song army's instigation.
Map of the territory of the Northern Song Dynasty
Map of the territory of the Southern Song Dynasty
However, the instigation of the Song army cannot be completely attributed to the generals and soldiers, it can only be said that the military system is like this, the emperor advocates "strong rods and weak branches" and "emphasizing civilization over martial arts", civil officials everywhere pressure military attachés, and military attachés can not use the right way even if they have a strong body. It's like the daughter-in-law in the family is the head of the household, pocket money and commuting time are all stared at by the daughter-in-law, what can the husband do?