In the first year of the Northern Song Dynasty (1038), Li Yuanhao was proclaimed emperor, and for the Northern Song Dynasty, how could a remote party member be qualified to sit on an equal footing with him? For the sake of the majesty of the Great Song Dynasty, war between the Song and Xia Dynasty was naturally inevitable.
Since the founding of the Northern Song Dynasty, the war between the Northern Song Dynasty and the party has always been continuous, but it has not been completely pacified, but it has become bigger, so that it has become equal to itself.
You say that the Western Xia is strong, but it only has a few states, far inferior to the Northern Song Dynasty that occupies the Central Plains, you have to say that it is rich, the Northern Song Dynasty is a well-known rich dynasty in the feudal era, and the Western Xia on the border is completely incomparable.
Western Xia Dynasty
But this is such a poor and sparsely populated Western Xia, the Northern Song Dynasty has never been able to annex since the founding of the country, although the Great Song Dynasty really has nothing to see to the outside world, but I have to say that the Northern Song Dynasty military is really not very good.
Compared with other great dynasties, the Han Dynasty, which was founded for a hundred years, has incorporated the Western Regions into its territory, the Tang Dynasty competed with the Arabs for hegemony in Central Asia, the Ming Dynasty Chenghua was ploughing the court and sweeping the caves, and the Qing Dynasty was in the period when Qianlong worked hard for his own perfection.
Returning to the main topic, why did the Northern Song Dynasty never be able to pacify the Western Xia? To be honest, it was all caused by the Northern Song Dynasty's own stupidity in all aspects.
At first, the party leaders also knew that by relying on this, the party people would be annexed by the Central Plains sooner or later, after all, the regime that occupied Hexi and Lingzhou at the beginning basically did not survive to 50 years, and the longest was Qianliang during the Sixteen Kingdoms period.
In the Later Zhou period, the scope of activities of the party members
The reason why Qianliang was able to maintain the national glory for 60 years was because of the rebellion of the Central Plains Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms and the refuge of a large number of Central Plains scholars, so that Qianliang had the capital for long-term development.
But even so, once Former Qin unified the north, even if Former Liang had been running here for more than fifty years, it quickly perished under the front of Former Qin's troops.
Therefore, before and after the establishment of the Northern Song Dynasty, the party people have paid tribute to the Central Plains Dynasty, and when they arrived here in Li Jitou, they offered the land of the five states of Yin, Xia, Sui, You, and Jing on the table, and then settled in Beijing.
The problem lies in Li Jiqian's brother Li Jiqian, he is unwilling to belong here, and leads dozens of people to flee to Jinze, three hundred miles northeast of Xiazhou, intending to gain a firm foothold here, but the title of the envoy of the difficult festival is here, Li Jiqian has neither soldiers nor horses and no status of the envoy of the difficult festival, according to what most people think, Li Jiqian, who has dozens of people, will soon be pacified.
The scope of activities of the party members in the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty
But the Northern Song Dynasty soon began to "give" the opportunity, first of all, it was not effective to exterminate, for the Northern Song Dynasty, it was just Li Jiqian, no effort, but the Song army entered Dijinze several times and could not capture it, of course, Li Jiqian was also beaten many times and lost his armor, but he refused to surrender, and the tribes around Dijinze no longer supported him.
Seeing that it was going to be unbearable, Li Jiqian played a trick to surrender, since Li Jiqian was "willing" to surrender, the Northern Song Dynasty naturally accepted it, and directly gave Li Jiqian a chance to breathe, first using the fraud to seize Yinzhou, and then plotting Lingzhou, after which the Song army repeatedly sent troops, but each time Li Jiqian escaped, and let Li Jiqian smoothly set up a relationship with the Liao.
During this period, the biggest problem of the Northern Song Dynasty was actually a logistical problem, after all, the rescue of Lingzhou needed to pass through the Hanhai Desert for seven hundred miles, and every time the grain and grass were delivered, it had little effect.
Why not choose another route? Because this road was set by Emperor Taizong of the Song Dynasty and could not be changed, which eventually led to the fall of Lingzhou.
Li Jiqian
At the same time, the war between the Northern Song Dynasty and the Liao State made it difficult for the Northern Song Dynasty to draw the main force to deal with Li Jiqian.
After Song Zhenzong succeeded to the throne, in order to calm the people, he directly sent the five states of Dingyan to Li Jiqian, and also made Li Jiqian stunned, Song Zhenzong's operation was comparable to Shi Jingjiao, and the enemy could not be pacified, so he sent out the city of Guishun, and also allowed Li Jiqian to gain a firm foothold smoothly, and took advantage of this to conquer Lingzhou and Liangzhou, completely cutting off the trade routes of the Northern Song Dynasty and the Western Regions.
At this time, in addition to the party members in the northwest, there were also some party hostile forces such as the Ganzhou Uighurs and the Tubo tribes, and the Northern Song Dynasty should have united them to fight the party members, but the Gou An atmosphere in the Northern Song Dynasty since the end of the Song Dynasty Taizong has also become stronger and stronger.
In this way, the Northern Song Dynasty not only did not unite with other forces to fight the party, but of course the party was destroyed one by one, and also let the power of the party people expand from Lingzhou to the Hexi Corridor, and it was difficult to calm down the war again.
During the Li Deming period, the scope of activities of the party members was already very large
In addition, the Northern Song Dynasty also lacked high-quality war horses, which is a common problem, although the loss of the horse-producing land of the sixteen states of Yanyun, why is there no shortage of five generations?, it is because the method they adopted is to return to the horse hybridization, in the early Song Dynasty, there were actually a lot of high-quality war horses.
But in the eyes of the literati of the Northern Song Dynasty, what kind of words did this look like? Contrary to Confucian ethics and morality, a book of music was completely abolished, and there were no good horses available during the Song Zhenzong and Song Renzong periods, and if they wanted to deal with the party members who were good at cavalry in the northwest, the Northern Song Dynasty had to have high-quality cavalry, but this move was tantamount to increasing the difficulty of their own conquest.
西夏骑兵铁鹞子
The Northern Song Dynasty pretended to be blind all the way to the Li Yuanhao period, seeing that Li Yuanhao was called the emperor, this blind can no longer pretend, the Song-Xia war is inevitable, but at this time, the Northern Song Dynasty has been exposed after more than 30 years of stability, and these deficiencies have been magnified in the three wars of Sanchuankou, Dingchuanzhai and Haoshuichuan, although there were small victories during the period, they have never been able to cover up the decline of the Northern Song Dynasty.
Song Renzong, who was originally the main battle, was also forced to succumb to reality, after all, the Song Xia War cost countless military expenses and did not have much effect, coupled with the continuous natural disasters during the Qingli period, Song Renzong chose to bow his head, as for the Western Xia, the country was weak and the people were tired, and finally gave up the emperor due to the lack of national strength under repeated blows, and reluctantly gave the Northern Song Dynasty a step.
After the Qingli Peace Conference, although there was occasionally a little friction between the Song and Xia, there was no major conflict between the two sides in general, and the main energy of the Western Xia at this time was indulged in internal strife, while the Northern Song Dynasty began to strengthen the rectification of the northwest armament to prepare for the future war.
Western Xia in its heyday
And taking advantage of the fact that Li Bingchang, the young lord of Western Xia, had just succeeded to the throne and the political situation in Western Xia was unstable, Song Shenzong attacked the Song Dynasty again, after years of preparation, the Song army once occupied the advantage, and even captured the six states of Xihe on the front line of Hehuang, which also made Song Shenzong feel that the destruction of Western Xia was just around the corner, waved his hand, and sent 600,000 people to fight Xia in five ways, known as Yuanfeng Xia.
But history proves that the seven hundred miles of Hanhai is a great pressure for the logistics of the Northern Song Dynasty, among the five road armies, Yanyan and Hedong are trapped in Hanhai, Jingyuan and Huanqing two roads command errors, only Xihe Road Li Xian captured Lanzhou, finally brought a little fig leaf to Song Shenzong, but in the battle of Yongle City, Xu Xi relied on his own blind command to bury more than 10,000 Song troops, and also let Song Shenzong die with infinite regret.
With the death of Song Shenzong, the old party reoccupied the court, and the old party personnel led by Sima Guang completely restored the old law, and by the way, the strategic achievements of the Xihe River during the Song Shenzong period were all abandoned, and the land of Futu, Anjiang, Jialu, Dingyuan and other lands that were originally captured were given to the Western Xia, and they also chose to compromise and retreat on what the Western Xia did, which once again made the Western Xia people stunned.
Sima Guang
During this period, the Western Xia completely treated the Northern Song Dynasty as a monkey, but the Western Xia did not be proud for long, after the worship of the father Song Zhezong was pro-government, he came up and began to restore the new law, and then continued to conquer the Western Xia, during this period, the Northern Song Dynasty completely pressed the Western Xia, the Western Front defeated the Ao Luo regime, and the Eastern Front occupied Tiandu Mountain and Hengshan, and it was also the first time to touch the doorway to destroy the Western Xia, which was the first time that the Northern Song Dynasty took the initiative in the Western Xia.
But Song Zhezong died young, died at the age of twenty-five, and was succeeded by Zhao Ji of Song Huizong.
Relying on the power accumulated by the elder brother, Song Huizong sent Tong Guan to pass through the northwest for a long time, which is also why many people think that there is only one step away from destroying the Western Xia, but unfortunately, the Northern Song Dynasty still can't destroy the Western Xia.
First of all, the Northern Song Dynasty was good at using the shallow attack tactics of building fortifications before, but after crossing Tiandu Mountain and Hengshan Mountain, the effectiveness has dropped significantly, and there was once a scene of a lone army being completely annihilated.
The second is that Song Huizong's indiscriminate tossing, under the empty consumption of national strength, it is impossible to support the plan of long-term war against the Western Xia, and the Northern Song Dynasty's plan to destroy the Western Xia to break the left arm of the Liao was also abandoned because it planned to destroy the Liao with the Jin people, so it continued to choose to negotiate peace with the Western Xia, and naturally would not send a large army to destroy the Western Xia.
Western Xia during the reign of Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty
Of course, the Northern Song Dynasty and the Jin people jointly destroyed the Liao, but in the end they were destroyed by the Jin, and the Southern Song Dynasty and the Western Xia after the Northern Song Dynasty did not border, so naturally they could not fight, so the Western Xia continued to survive for a hundred years before being destroyed by the Mongol army.
On the whole, most of the Northern Song Dynasty's war against Western Xia was the Northern Song Dynasty's own pot, when the army was strong in the early stage, but because Song Taizong liked micro-manipulation, the logistics were not effective, and it was not completely wiped out, and then several generals such as Li Jilong, Ge Shouyun, Gao Zunzhi, Xu Xi and others commanded indiscriminately, burying many elites of the Northern Song Dynasty.
finally wanted to fight a good battle, the Northern Song Dynasty broke out between the old and new parties, fighting each other to the death, especially after the old party chose to compromise and retreat to the Western Xia, wasting the opportunity, and in the last years of the Northern Song Dynasty, the rise of the Jurchens made the Northern Song Dynasty feel that there was no need to destroy the Western Xia, coupled with the chaotic rule of Song Huizong, it was impossible to talk about the thunder to destroy the Western Xia.
The Western Xia was able to enjoy the national throne for two hundred years, all thanks to the Northern Song Dynasty.