Jin Jun
The basic impression of the Song Dynasty is that it is weak, especially in the last years of the Northern Song Dynasty, there was an unprecedented national shame of Jingkang. However, the Southern Song Dynasty was different from the Northern Song Dynasty, and the combat effectiveness of the Southern Song Dynasty army was higher than that of the Northern Song Dynasty, especially in Tang Island, and the Southern Song Dynasty even won more with less, beating the Jin army 20 times its size. The significance of the Battle of Tangdao lies not only in the fact that this was the first time that Chinese firearms were practiced in naval warfare and showed great power, but also that the Southern Song Dynasty won a complete victory in this battle and laid the foundation for the founding of the country.
Song Dynasty Imperial Court
1. Fire attack and gunpowder before the Song Dynasty
Traditional warfare is mainly based on the victory of more people over fewer people, and the morale of each other is to see which side collapses first. In order to win more with less, you have to use strategy, and fire attack can be regarded as an important strategy in ancient Chinese warfare that can win more with less and turn the tables against the wind. Historically, the art of fire attack was first recorded in the Art of War, and the famous case was the Tiandan Fire Ox Formation. Several famous battles in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" are almost all won by fire, such as the burning of Bowangpo, the burning of Chibi, the burning of the company camp, the burning of the vine armor army, and the burning of the upper valley. However, the above fire attack techniques are all artificial ignition, and the fire source used is only grease rockets, grease fire ships, or relying on animals to impact the enemy formation, or sending people to throw torches directly, this kind of fire source is highly sacrificial, unstable, and greatly affected by weather factors. It was not until the Tang and Song dynasties that gunpowder weapons appeared, and the form of warfare gradually changed.
Burning Chibi
Gunpowder, which today is believed to have been prototyped in the practice of alchemy by warlocks of the Warring States period, is a by-product of alchemy. By the Jin Dynasty, Ge Hong's "Hug Puzi" had already recorded the gunpowder formula, which was roughly "one nitrate, two sulfur and three charcoal", and the ratio of the three was 1:2:3. In the Tang Dynasty, after countless alchemists' improvements, the gunpowder formula was continuously scientific, and the ratio of 75% saltpeter, 15% sulfur and 10% charcoal powder was studied. This ratio allows the gunpowder to produce more power. The Chronicles of the Nine Kingdoms, written during the Northern Song Dynasty, says that gunpowder was first used as a weapon of war during the reign of Emperor Ai of the Tang Dynasty, when Zheng Yan attacked Yuzhang, and in order to break down the door, he ordered his soldiers to "send a flying fire", and then the city gate was burned. Today, it is believed that this so-called flying fire is most likely a gunpowder weapon, a primitive cannonball with a fuse, which is artificially ignited, thrown by a catapult, and continues to burn after landing.
2. Firearms of the Song Dynasty
The Song Dynasty was a peak period in the development of gunpowder weapons in ancient China. The Song army's combat power was low, in order to make up for the lack of combat power, the Song Dynasty people worked weapon technology, trying to destroy the enemy before hand-to-hand combat, so the Song Dynasty long-range weapons bloomed, and all kinds of bows, crossbows, firearms, etc. have made great progress.
Kaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, has a Guangbei siege (military factory), and one of its departments is called gunpowder kiln, which is a department specializing in the production of gunpowder. In 969, Feng Jisheng offered rockets, which was based on the traditional bow and arrow, installed gunpowder packs and fuses, and with the help of gunpowder thrust, the bow and arrows had greater penetration and longer range. When the Song Dynasty destroyed the Southern Tang Dynasty, it bombarded Jinling with artillery. In 1000 AD, Tang Fu presented a new type of gunpowder to the imperial court, which greatly appreciated it. During the Song Renzong period, there were more than 10 kinds of gunpowder weapons in the Song army, and even biological and chemical weapons - poisonous smoke appeared. In 1132, the prefect of De'an used bamboo pipes as containers to spray gunpowder. In 1259, someone installed stones and iron pellets on the basis of the stereotyped gunpowder bamboo pipes, these things were called "Ziyi", and with the help of gunpowder thrust, the Ziyi was pushed out to kill and injure the enemy. This is the prototype of the musket.
Song Dynasty firearms
3. The Song-Jin War
After the Jingkang Revolution, the Jin army frequently went south, and in 1153, the Jin lord Wanyan Liang moved the capital to Yanjing, and at the same time built a large ship to prepare for the unification of China. After that, Wan Yanliang extorted Jianghuai land from the Southern Song Dynasty, and after the Southern Song Dynasty refused, the Jin army provoked an incident. In the strong voice of the military and people of the Southern Song Dynasty, Song Gaozong was forced to give an order to resist, and the Song-Jin War broke out again.
In August 1161, the Jin State sent troops, and the waterway claimed to be 600,000 troops. From the sea in the east to Shaanxi in the west, on a thousand-mile-long front, the Jin army advanced in an all-round way. The main force by sea was led by Su Baoheng and Wanyan Zheng Jianu, and its fleet included 600 warships and 70,000 officers and men, with the aim of taking Hangzhou directly from the sea. Wan Yanliang claimed that if it was more than 100 days, or as little as 1 month, it would destroy the Southern Song Dynasty.
Wanyan Zheng Jianu
The Song army was in charge of the defense of the sea route Li Bao, deputy chief of the Mabu Army on the West Zhejiang Road, with 3,000 sailors under his command, and said in the CCTV documentary "Fire Attack Weapon" that the Song army had 120 warships. Faced with an enemy 20 times his size, Li Bao decided to strike first and lead his army north. At this time, there was an anti-Jin uprising in Haizhou (Lianyungang) of the Jin Dynasty, and Wanyan Liang sent 10,000 people to besiege Haizhou. Li Bao then led his army to Haizhou and successfully relieved the siege of Haizhou. In October, Li Bao's fleet reached the waters of Rizhao, Shandong, and was confronted by the Han Jin navy, under their guidance, Li Bao learned that the Jin fleet was anchored at Tangdao (in Qingdao, Shandong).
Song fleet
4. The Battle of Tang Island
At this time, the north wind was tight, and the Song army fleet was in a headwind state. Cao Yang, the deputy general of the Song army, asked for a headwind attack and a surprise attack on the anchorage of the enemy fleet. However, some people think that our side has few people, and it is a headwind, and we want to attack the other party's anchorage, and we should wait for the opportunity to move. Cao Yang thought that the Jin people were not Xi to water, there were many people and few boats, and resting on the boat could not make up for their physical exertion, and our side would definitely win if it attacked at night. In the end, Li Bao agreed to raid the enemy anchorage. Then the Battle of Karashima broke out.
The Battle of Tang Island in the CCTV documentary "Fire Attack Weapon".
In the early morning of November 27, a sudden southerly wind broke out, and the Song army hung up full sails and approached the anchorage of the Jin fleet with all its might. The Jin sailors discovered the Song fleet, but most of the Jin sailors were Han fishermen who were forcibly captured by the Jin army, and they were not willing to serve the Jin people at all, so they deliberately delayed the report, so that the Jin army fleet did not hang sail to meet the battle at the first time.
As the Song warships approached, the Jin army prepared for war in a hurry, and hundreds of warships were blocked by the Song army in the Tang Island bay, and then the Jin army sailors dived one after another, resulting in the Jin warships being unmanned. Seeing this, Li Bao immediately fired various long-range weapons, the most important of which was the Thunderbolt Cannon. The so-called thunderbolt cannon is the original artillery, which already has a prototype of the cannon, relying on the gunpowder in the barrel as the power to fire the gunpowder shell. In the first year of Jingkang (1126), Li Gangshou Kaifeng, and in 1161, Yu Yunwen was in Quarry, and they all used this weapon to break the Jin army. And for the first time that the Thunderbolt was used in naval warfare.
After the Song army disrupted the enemy fleet with firearms, the Song army's ironclad clippers quickly broke through to the enemy's flagship and carried out a decapitation operation. After that, it's gang jumping. It has to be said that the quality of the soldiers of the Southern Song Dynasty was indeed stronger than that of the Northern Song Dynasty. Taking advantage of the chaos of the enemy army, the deputy marshal of the Jin army, Wanyan Zheng Jianu, was beheaded, and the commander Su Baoheng saw that the situation was not good and fled by boat, but his commander Yinxin and the high-level documents of the Jin army were all captured by the Song army. Due to the loss of the commander's command, the rest of the Jin army's warships were lost, and the Song army's fierce attack was fierce, and all the more than 600 ships of the Jin army were burned. The Song army achieved a complete victory in the naval battle.
Song warship
Wen Shijun said
The Battle of Tangdao had a great impact on the direction of Chinese history. For the Song Dynasty, 3,000 Song troops defeated 20 times the enemy soldiers, which could not be done in any case on land, so this battle greatly boosted the morale of the Song Dynasty's military and civilians to resist Jin. The Jin army and naval division were completely destroyed, and Wan Yanliang's plan to take the capital of the Song Dynasty from the sea and destroy the Southern Song Dynasty failed, and he himself died in the army. In terms of the history of human warfare, the Battle of Tangdao was the first time in human history that firearms were used in naval warfare, and it has an important position in the history of naval warfare in the world.
bibliography
Qiang Zhonghua: Research on the Application of Gunpowder in the Song Dynasty, Master's thesis, Shanghai Normal University, 2009.
Wang Zhaochun, "Primary Firearms in the Song Dynasty", Military History, No. 04, 1989.
(Author: Haoran Literature and History, Purple Orange)
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