After the unification of China by the Han Dynasty, China basically appeared in the form of a unified Central Plains dynasty, and in its long history of more than 2,000 years, it has only experienced two long major divisions. The first great division was after the fall of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the land of the Central Plains was divided, the Three Kingdoms, the Two Jins, the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the Five Hu Chaohua, the Central Plains land, the nomads entered the Central Plains, and the Han people were eaten as two-legged sheep. It almost wiped out Han culture, and until the completion of the unification of the Sui Dynasty, the entire period of division lasted 360 years.
The second great division was the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period after the fall of the Tang Dynasty, which was not long, only more than 80 years, and finally completed the unification by the Northern Song Dynasty. The reasons for both major splits were the same: professional military groups formed warlord divisions and fought each other.
In fact, from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, China was in the era of warlords for a full 900 years. Liu Xiu, the founder of the Eastern Han Dynasty, started as a grassroots soldier and grew up to become the largest warlord leader at that time, subduing all other warlord forces. The Li Yuan family, which founded the Tang Dynasty, was the representative of the Guanlong warlords and stood out in the fierce military conflicts after the death of Sui. In the era of warlords, it is the comparison of who has a tougher fist, who has more power, and whose army is stronger. Dong Zhuo, who destroyed the Eastern Han Dynasty, was a warlord, and Zhu Wen, who overthrew the Tang Dynasty, was also a warlord, and in an era when there were warlords everywhere, the only way to achieve unification was for the royal family to maintain its position as the largest warlord.
By the way, the collapse of the Eastern Han Dynasty was caused by the fact that the Han and Emperor Liu Zhao sent Ban Chao to pacify the Western Regions, and the elite military strength of the imperial court was exhausted, so that it was impossible to suppress the local warlord forces; The fall of the Great Tang was due to the killing of all the outstanding figures of the Li warlords during the Wu Zetian period, and Li Longji of Tang Xuanzong had to rely on the power of the Hu soldiers to govern, causing the two Hu warlords, An Lushan and Shi Siming, to gradually become stronger, which finally led to the An Shi Rebellion.
After the founding of the Great Song Dynasty, the founding emperor Zhao Kuangyin, the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty, made a bitter decision and decided to end the work of "professional soldiers" that plagued China. Note that this decision by Song Taizu was far-reaching.
Since the Song Dynasty, with very few exceptions, the Han no longer have the concept of "professional soldiers". Since then, the military has become synonymous with inferiority and rudeness, and the saying that good men are not soldiers, and good iron does not nail, has been handed down in this way, making the Han people the most cowardly nation in the world. In the later period, Yue Fei's Yue Jiajun and Qi Jiguang's Qi Jiajun barely had the taste of a professional soldier, but neither of them ended well, Yue Fei was wrongly killed and Qi Jiguang died of poverty and illness after being dismissed.
There are two main ways to play Song Taizu. The first is the strange box army system. This system is equivalent to collecting garbage, and all the poor, beggars, thieves, displaced people, these people at the lowest level of society, are all received by the army and used as soldiers. To expect how much combat effectiveness these people can have is daydreaming.
Another way to play is that the "privy envoy" of the highest military chief is Wen Yuwu, which must be a civilian official. All promotions and promotions of military attachés must be approved by civilian officials. Of course, the military power is handed over to the civilian officials, this matter is also terrible, in order to prevent the civilian group from having too much power and uniting against the imperial family, the Great Song Dynasty established an exceptionally complex civilian system, three words and two words are not clear at all, I will introduce it in general: the civil officials of the Great Song Dynasty are all temporary workers, basically unable to serve in a position for three years. The emperors of the Great Song Dynasty were most proficient in the art of power, and it was like beware of a thief to change the civil and military officials in turn, and the inexplicable promotion and sudden loss of officials were commonplace for the bureaucrats of the Great Song court. The emperors also liked to sow discord among the officials, play balancing tricks, and when they saw the ministers attacking each other and the party fighting each other, the emperors were happy.
We now understand that the fundamental reason for the financial bankruptcy of the Great Song Dynasty was that the rabble army, under the command of a group of stupid civilian officials, wasted huge military expenditures, but could not fight at all. However, Wang Anshi, who presided over the reform of the law, did not dare to mention the professionalization of soldiers, so he introduced a large number of extremely bizarre reform measures, the only effect of which was to loot the people's wealth. The Equal Loss Law and the City Easy Law copied the Emperor Wudi of Han's equalization order, established government-run commercial and trading enterprises, and forced buying and selling to earn the difference; The Young Seedlings Law was a loan shark from the imperial court to farmers to earn interest; The Conscription Act apportioned labor money nationwide; The Fangtianjun tax law is to check the field property and increase the source of taxation. All in all, all kinds of measures to change the law were aimed at increasing the income of the imperial court. However, this money must eventually be transferred to the lowest level of society, borne by the most vulnerable farmers.
Of course, these looted money were sent to the front line, and the fourth battle with Xixia was fought. However, the result of this battle, which Wang Anshi supported by the strength of the whole country, was no better. On the surface, the Song army was a crushing victory, relying on hard work and consumption to win the Western Xia tribal alliance, which was almost in a state of abject poverty, but the Khitan people finally intervened and forced the Great Song army to withdraw, and the Great Song finances could not bear the expenditure of another fight with the Khitans, and in the face of the threat of the Khitans, the Great Song monarchs looked at each other, and finally really returned without success.
The most fundamental defeat of the Great Song Dynasty was the military system, but Wang Anshi's change of law did not touch this aspect, and of course it would not have any effect. However, Wang Anshi's various wealth looting methods brought other evil consequences: First, the gap between the rich and the poor in the Song Dynasty deteriorated extremely much. The people watched this strange imperial court plunder endless wealth, take it to the battlefield to waste, do not have enough to eat, wear and warm, and watch a group of stupid civil officials pretend to fight all day long, it is really angry. The Great Song Dynasty lost the hearts of the people because of this, and 30 years later, the Jurchens came in, and the Great Song Imperial Court launched a war mobilization order, and the common people simply ignored it, and you died as you pleased.
The Jurchens established the Jin Kingdom north of the Yangtze River, and the common people happily accepted it, there was no so-called nostalgia for the homeland, and there was not the slightest nostalgia for the Zhao and Song dynasties. On the other hand, Wang Anshi's indiscriminate and frenzied search for wealth also violated the interests of the bureaucracy. As prime minister, he should have sided with the bureaucracy and confronted the imperial power. However, this house completely sided with the emperor, and spared no effort to help the emperor raise military expenses. As a result of this, Wang Anshi and the so-called law changers became the public enemies of the world.
Wang Anshi presided over the reform of the law for ten years, but he withdrew sadly, and then all the new laws were abolished. Wang Anshi ignored him and died sadly. But history doesn't end here. As the financial situation of the Great Song Dynasty continued to deteriorate, it became more and more difficult to resist the attack of the northern nomads, and the Great Song Imperial Court, which was already in the end of the day, once again started to change the law, and Prime Minister Cai Jing once again took out the set of means of looting people's wealth that Wang Anshi changed the law, but these rotten means can only aggravate social contradictions, whether it is the bureaucratic class or ordinary people, they are more disgusted with the Great Song court.
The Northern Song Dynasty therefore missed the last opportunity to correct its mistakes and eventually died in the country. When we review the history of Wang Anshi's transformation today, we can only have one evaluation: I don't know what it is! For the most core contradiction in this country, the so-called law change measures dare not touch at all; But the abundance of imaginative means in looting people's wealth is breathtaking. Such a method of changing the law, such a strange imperial court, it is better to die early.