The Song Dynasty is a very special dynasty in Chinese history. The economy and culture of the Song Dynasty reached the peak of ancient society, but its political and military strength was very weak. The Song Dynasty not only failed to defeat the Liao State and recover the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, but also failed to defeat the Western Xia, Jiaotong, etc., so the Song Dynasty could not become a unified dynasty. Why was the combat effectiveness of the Song Dynasty so poor? This article analyzes this problem from the perspective of weapons.
Judging from the weapons and equipment of the Song Dynasty, it was very advanced. The Song dynasty's army needed to deal with nomadic cavalry such as the Liaojinxia, so special attention was paid to the improvement of long weapons and projectile weapons. As far as long weapons are concerned, the main weapons used by the Song army are guns, long-handled knives, axes, etc., which were basically fixed in the Song Dynasty and continued to be used in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Song army held these weapons, which had a certain restrictive effect on cavalry, for example, the Song general Wang De also used 10,000 long axemen to break the 100,000 iron horses of Wushu. Jin Guo's Yan Wushu once said: "Song uses military weapons, the great magician is only a god arm bow, and the second one is a heavy axe, and the outside is fearless." ”
Song Dynasty long-rod iron gun
The projectile weapon, which was an excellent weapon against cavalry, developed more rapidly in the Song Dynasty. When talking about projectile weapons, it is necessary to mention the bow and arrow. There were many types of iron arrows in the Song Dynasty, which were more refined and specialized. The Song Dynasty improved previous arrows, such as the Wind Feather Arrow in the Song Dynasty, which hollowed out both sides of the tail of the arrow, using the hollow grooves that recessed inward to create vortex resistance, so that the arrow maintained flight balance, thereby increasing the range of the arrow. The Song Dynasty also had wooden feather arrows, bucket crossbows and stepping arrows, etc., and the bucket crossbow could fire dozens of arrows at the same time, "the arrows are scattered like crows flying". Stepping on the arrow can be firmly wedged into the wall, so that the siege attacker can use it to climb the wall.
In terms of crossbows, the Song Dynasty made great progress. For example, the bed crossbow of the Song Dynasty can reach a range of 1000 steps, which is about 1500 meters, which is the highest in the history. In the Battle of Liaozhou, the Song army shot and killed the Liao commander Xiao Taolan with a crossbow. The bed crossbow has a long range, but it is too bulky, and a three-bow bed crossbow requires 70 people to open the hair. In the early days of The Song Dynasty, Li Hong began to promote the partial crossbow (God Arm Bow) invented by Li Hong. The crossbow has a range of 240 steps, only one person needs to fire, and the use value is very large.
The stone thrower of the Song Dynasty can throw 90 pounds of stone bullets, creating a new record for the weight of stone bullets in the stone thrower. In addition to cold weapons, the Song army was also equipped with gunpowder weapons. During the Southern Expedition to the Southern Tang Dynasty, the Song army was equipped with rockets, artillery and other firearms, and there were more than 10 kinds of gunpowder weapons recorded in the "General Outline of the Martial Classics", such as artillery, fireballs, tribulus fireballs, iron mouth fires, bamboo firebirds, thunderbolt fireballs, smoke balls, poison smoke balls, etc., some of which were already explosive firearms, and the lethality was particularly large. Some firearms can be fired with the help of crossbows and trebuchets.
Although the weapons used by the Song Dynasty were advanced, they were repeatedly defeated in foreign wars. Institutionally, this is because the Northern Song Dynasty implemented the governance strategy of "emphasizing literature over force" and "guarding the inside and the outside" and the strategy of "separating soldiers and generals". However, this article does not discuss the content of the system, but only from the aspect of weapons. In terms of weapons, there are three main reasons for the poor combat effectiveness of the Song army.
First, the quality of weapons is poor. The weapons of the Song Dynasty were basically manufactured by official camp workshops, and the producers were mainly soldiers, prisoners of war, criminals, pawns, etc., of which the soldiers were the main ones, "the work of the work, the lack of soldiers, so the hiring of migrant workers" Due to the chaos of the personnel involved in production, the quality of the weapons is difficult to guarantee. In addition, at that time, the supervision of weapons manufacturing was also very loose, coupled with the prevalence of corruption, the quality of weapons was not satisfactory, no wonder Ouyang Xiu said: "There is a false name of instruments, but no equipment is practical."
Wang Anshi changed the law, promulgated the Law on The Supervision of Military Weapons, set up a military weapons supervisor to supervise the manufacture of weapons, strictly managed, and improved the quality of weapons. Under the impetus of Wang Anshi's change of law, many new weapons appeared in the middle and late Period of the Northern Song Dynasty, the quality of weapons was also improved, and the military strength of the Song Dynasty also rose a lot. However, after Wang Anshi's reform law was abolished, the combat effectiveness of the Song army declined again.
The second is the lack of strategic resources – horses. Although the weapons of the Song army were very advanced, they lacked a strategic resource- horses. The Song Dynasty did not occupy the Hexi Corridor, and there was no natural horse farm. The Song Dynasty could only obtain horses through household breeding and trade, and the number of horses was widespread and the quality was poor. The Song army accounted for only one-seventh of the cavalry, and three-fourths of the cavalry had no horses. In contrast, Liaojinxia could quickly concentrate tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of cavalry, and the gap between the two sides was very large.
This made the Song army very mobile and inferior in the war with the northern nations. In order to counter the Liaojinxia, the Song Dynasty could only develop heavy infantry and implement the helpless move of "braking with steps". The infantry is more suitable for defending the city and defending the city, and it is very difficult to fight in the wilderness and grassland. Therefore, the Song Dynasty was always on the side of passive defense in terms of military affairs, and rarely took the initiative to attack. During the Xining Reform Law, Wang Anshi implemented the "Horse Protection Law" to increase the horse production of the Song Dynasty, but it could not fundamentally reverse the shortage of horses in the Song Dynasty.
Song Dynasty infantry armor
Third, the degree of promotion and application of gunpowder is insufficient. The emergence of gunpowder marked the beginning of the transition from human warfare to the era of hot weapons. If the Song Dynasty could use gunpowder extensively, it would be able to make the advantages of the nomadic people disappear. Fearing that gunpowder recipes would spread to local and other countries, the Song Dynasty restricted the production of gunpowder weapons, allowing only special departments in the capital to produce them. Therefore, the gunpowder weapons equipped by the Song Dynasty army were also very limited and did not dominate.
After the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, the craftsmen who made gunpowder in Tokyo were captured by the Jin Dynasty, so gunpowder spread to the north, where it was learned, transformed, and even produced more advanced firearms by nomads. Later, in the process of destroying the Jin Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty, the Mongols used a large number of artillery and muskets, so that the advantages of the Southern Song Dynasty were lost. Later, gunpowder also spread to Western countries with the Mongol Expedition to the West.
Although weapons play a very crucial role in war, they cannot determine the outcome of war. For example, during the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the volunteer army used extremely backward weapons to compete with the "United Nations Army", which proved that weapons are not the key to determining the outcome of the war, and in the end it is still people. Although the weapons of the Song Dynasty were very advanced, due to the drag of the system, the poor military ability of the emperor, and the cowardice of officials, the army had poor combat effectiveness, could not successfully resist foreign troubles, and eventually perished in the northern nomads, which is very worthy of people's reflection.