The new law was blocked, Wang Anshi resigned, and Emperor Shenzong lost his spiritual sustenance and turned to the reform of the official system, that is, the so-called "Yuanfeng reform system" in later generations. The effect of this move was not very great, it was nothing more than a routine redundancy and reduction of personnel, but the reform of the military and armor protection system was deepened a lot, and the law was imposed on those who did not comply.
At the beginning of Wang Anshi's change of law, Wang Shao presented the "Pingrong Strategy" to the imperial court, stating that "if you want to take Western Xia, you should first restore the river (present-day Linxia, Gansu) huang (present-day Ledu, Qinghai)", so that the western Xia's belly can be attacked. At the same time, the Tubo tribes in the Hehuang region were not subordinate to each other, and if the Song Dynasty did not attack, it would become a major problem in the future for the Western Xia. At that time, Wang Anshi approved of this plan, so in the fifth year of Xining (1072), the Song court sent Wang Shao to recruit the Tubo tribes, and they fought and pulled, and they were able to expand the land in the Xihe area for more than a thousand miles, and recruit more than 300,000 people from the Tubo tribes, which is the so-called "Xihe Kaibian".
At that time, the Tubo chieftain Died of Illness (died in 1065), and his son Dong Felt succeeded to the throne (later generations called the Tubo regime of this bloodline the Tujue regime). After Dong Fei succeeded to the throne, he still maintained friendly relations with the Song Dynasty, united with the Song dynasty to resist Xia, and assisted the Song in attacking Xia in the third year of Xining, relieving the Siege of Huanqing of the Song Dynasty. After Wang Shao arrived in office, he successively occupied Xi (present-day Lintao, Gansu), He (present-day Dongxiang, Gansu), and Tao (present-day Lintan, Gansu), effectively eroding the territory and tribes originally controlled by the Yu Dynasty.
Political relations have always put interests first, so Dong Felt fell to the side of Western Xia, married Western Xia, and killed the Song general Jingsi in Hezhou. Dong Felt's nephew Mu Zheng also led his tribe to attack Hezhou. However, Wang Shao surprised the army, defeated the Tubo army, and captured Mu Zheng and sent him to Fenjing. After all, Song and Tubo were old friends in the past, and Emperor Shenzong of Song summoned Mu Zheng, gave him the name Zhao Sizhong, and appointed him as an official. In the ten years of Xining, Dong Felt sent people to restore relations with the Song Dynasty, but compared with before, neither side was very comfortable in their hearts. Therefore, the opening of the Xihe River, from a long-term point of view, loses more than gains. The Northern Song Dynasty weakened the Tubo regime and was unable to exercise long-term and stable rule in the local area, but in fact helped the Western Xia and the later Jin Dynasty.
In Western Xia, after Yuan Hao's death, his youngest son Yu Zuo (Xia Yizong) succeeded to the throne, and the actual rule was in the hands of his uncle Wuzang Pang. Later, Empress Wuzang was lascivious and was killed by her head Li Zonggui. In order to consolidate his power, he married his daughter to Yu Zuo as empress, and was both the emperor's uncle, the abbot of the state, and the minister of state, and he killed himself, and the subjects were afraid that he would die.
After he became an adult, he was very dissatisfied with the old man. Between the exchanges, Yu Zuo and liang shi, the daughter-in-law who did not hide Pang, secretly chen cang, and the minister of state was very angry that his son-in-law (nephew) put a green hat on his own son, and his heart was killed. The Liang clan hurriedly informed Yu Zuo that the young emperor had taken the lead, killing the Wuzang Pang family (along with his own Empress Wuzang), and finally pro-government, and establishing Liang as empress.
After Yu Zuo came to power, he vigorously promoted Sinicization (changing the surname of Li Tang to "Li"), and on the other hand, he rectified military affairs and carried out military incursions against the Song Dynasty and Tubo, but he did not gain much advantage on both sides, and also lost the land of Suizhou (present-day Suide, Shaanxi).
Therefore, the young man made an alliance with Tubo and "apologized" to the Song Dynasty. In 1067 (the fourth year of the Northern Song Dynasty), Yu Zuo died of illness at the age of 21, and the temple name was "Yizong". This young man took the throne at the age of 1, and he was pro-government for a few years, but he made a lot of achievements in the civil rule of Western Xia.
After Yu Zuo's death, his son Bingchang succeeded to the throne at the age of 7, and naturally his biological mother Empress Liang took power. Empress Liang's younger brother Liang Yi was buried as minister of state, and the Liang clan was furious.
Although Empress Liang was a Han Chinese, she abolished Han Yi, drove back in history, and changed back to Yuan Hao's Fa Yi. In order to establish authority, Empress Liang personally launched a war against the Song Dynasty, attacking Qinzhou, Huanzhou, Gyeongju and other places. In the fourth year of Xi Ning (1071), the Song general Zong Chen led the Song army deep into Hengshan to rush to Wu, defeated the Xia soldiers, and built the city of Wu (on the banks of the Wuding River). Seeing that the Song people were so deep into the borders, Empress Liang and her brother Liang Yi buried all the strength of the whole country and after a bloody battle, they captured the city of Laowu. Despite the victory, the domestic economy of Western Xia withered, and Empress Liang had to negotiate peace with the Song court again.
In 1076, the little emperor Bingchang was 16 years old and was supposed to be pro-government, but his mother, Empress Liang, still did not relinquish power. Bing chang liked Han culture, and once ordered the abolition of the ceremony to change the Han ceremony, but was abandoned due to the opposition of the Liang clan. In 1081, Empress Dowager Liang imprisoned her son Bingchang, who wanted to return Henan to the Song Dynasty. The emperor was trapped, and the interior of Western Xia was in turmoil for a while, and many tribes supported themselves. It was under these circumstances that Song Shenzong cut down xia in five ways and prepared to recover Lingwu.
In July of the fourth year of YuanFeng (1081), Under the pretext that Bingchang was imprisoned, Emperor Shenzong of Song asked for his guilt and sent a five-way army to cut down Xia. Among them, Li Xian was the commander of the Xihe Dynasty, and he commanded the Seven Armies of Xi Qin and the mercenaries of Tubo for a total of 30,000 out of Xihe; Wang Zhongzheng led 60,000 troops out of Linzhou (present-day Shenmu, Shaanxi); Zong Chen led an army of more than 90,000 people out of Suide; Empress Gao's uncle Gao Zunyu led nearly 90,000 troops out of Huanqing; and Liu Changzuo led 50,000 troops out of Jingyuan.
However, as long as they knew that Li Xian, the commander of the Song army, and Wang Zhongzheng, the general on the other hand, were both eunuchs, people could know that this battle could not be won. Moreover, Wang Shao, the main figure of the "Opening of the XiHe River," heard about the xingbing of the imperial court and urged him not to cause trouble. Emperor Shenzong was furious that the people who should help did not help, and demoted Wang Shao. Soon, the hero fell ill and died.
The Song Dynasty still could not escape the strange circle of history when it fought the Western Xia, that is, at the beginning it was bound to be a good news, and there would be a huge pit waiting there.
Duke Li Xian was also unyielding, and led a large army to conquer Lanzhou; Wang Zhongzheng attacked Yuzhou; Zhongzheng Duke Zhongzheng attacked YuZhou; Gao Zunyu recaptured the Qingyuan army; and Liu Changzuo defeated Liang Yibu's main force at Moqi Pass. At this point, the Song army's five-way victory flew into Beijing, and Song Shenzong was overjoyed, and asked the soldiers and horses of the various roads to immediately launch a general attack on Xingzhou and Lingzhou.
Liu Changzuo's Song army was very capable of fighting, taking the lead in entering the border of Western Xia, and slashing all the way to capture the flag and kill under the city of Lingzhou. However, Gao Zunyu secretly urged Liu Changzuo to get the first merit of Lingzhou, and strictly ordered him not to attack the city, and to wait for the two sides to attack together. As a result, the golden opportunity was lost, and the Lingzhou Xia army made sufficient defensive preparations, and dug the water of the seventh-level canal of the Yellow River to flood the Song army and cut off the Supply Line of the Song Army. Flooding, lack of food, frost and hunger, siege and heavy casualties, 100,000 Song troops, only more than 10,000 when they retreated. The more than 90,000 horses of the Song generals were also seriously damaged by the Western Xia people's tactics of clearing the field, and finally only more than 30,000 people were left. Wang Zhongzheng's Song army killed more than 20,000 people. Only Li Xiangong's army was very careful, and the whole army returned. At this point, the Song army's five-way attack on Western Xia ended in a major defeat.
In this great defeat, if the Song Dynasty monarchs and courtiers meditated and recuperated, they could also learn from the failure. However, Emperor Shenzong of Song was in a hurry to attack the heart, and the following year launched a large-scale attack on the Western Xia. As a result, Yongle was defeated, and the Song army once again lost its troops and returned home.
There were three people who lost the Western Xia War this time: Xu Xi, Zhong Chen, and Shen Kuo (author of "Mengxi Pen Talk").
Originally, both Zhongchen and Shen Kuo (then Known Prefecture of Yanzhou) advocated operating in the Hengshan area, and Zhongchen suggested building a city in Yinzhou, and then planning Xiazhou, Yanzhou, Huizhou, and Lanzhou in turn. Shen Kuo proposed to build a city eighty miles west of Xia Prefecture, which was agreed by Emperor Shenzong of Song and sent Xu Xi and others to command.
Xu Xi went to the northwest and talked with Shen Kuo very happily, and the two finally decided to build Yongle City first. These two literati had no military strategy, Yongle was not far from the ancient city of Yinzhou, there were cliffs on three sides and no water springs, and although the land was dangerous, it lacked the deadliest water source. The seeders objected. Xu Xiguan was big, did not listen, and transferred the seed to Yanzhou.
In September of the fifth year of Yuanfeng (1082), Xu Xi sent more than 200,000 troops and people to build Yongle City in fourteen days, and Emperor Shenzong of Song gave him the name "Yinchuan Village". Then, Xu Xi, Shen Kuo, and the others returned to Mizhi, leaving only more than 800 people to guard.
XiXia heard the news, knowing that Yongle City was in the throat of the key place, and immediately gathered more than 200,000 foot riders to compete.
Upon hearing the news, Xu Xi left Shen Kuo to guard mizhi and led more than 10,000 troops to Yongle City and took a front in front of the city. Xu Xi, a man who wrote twenty-four articles of the "Zhi Zhi" in the early years of Xi Ning, was able to enter the imperial court. In fact, Xu Xi is a person with great ambition and talent. When the People of Western Xia came to the country, he still did not believe it, and said loudly: "If the enemy comes more, it is a great opportunity for me to make meritorious contributions and become rich." ”
Like a moth to a fire, Xu Xi went straight to Yongle City.
The Western Xia army crossed the Yongding River, and the general Gao Yongneng suggested that he take his half-crossing to launch an attack, and Xu Xi actually had the benevolence of Song Xianggong and replied: "You know what, Wang Shi is not a drum. Speaking of words, Xu Xueshi actually "led the soldiers to resist the battle with a knife" and personally came to the forefront.
Thinking that when Yuan Hao died of illness, the Song Dynasty generals had suggested that they should take advantage of the turmoil in their country to raise troops to recruit, and the Song minister Cheng Lin was also a scholar who could not eat the ancients, saying that "the loss of the fortunate people is not so huairou and far away", and lost the perfect opportunity to attack Western Xia.
Soon, there were more and more Western Xia soldiers following, boundless, and the generals of the Song Army were afraid. The Song general Qu Zhen suggested that the troops be collected into the city to avoid the troops, but Xu Xi did not listen. Soon, the two sides engaged. The vanguard of the Song army was originally the most courageous, they looked glorious and dazzling. However, when they encountered so many wolf-like Western Xia armies, these people were timid in their hearts, and the engagement was not long after they failed. The Western Xia army took advantage of the victory and defeated the Song army.
Xu Xi hurried into the city and was surrounded by the Western Xia regiment.
Many Song soldiers were trapped in the city of Sorrow, and the drinking water was quickly exhausted. The danger of this city is very dangerous, the flat ground is raised, but it is more difficult to drill out the water than to ascend to the sky, and before long, the soldiers died of thirst. The Song army was indeed heroic, and most of them still refused to fight with weapons.
Qu Zhen advised Xu Xi to take advantage of the fact that he still had some strength to break through, but Xu Xi did not listen; Gao Yong could persuade him to do his best to recruit death squads to fight, but he did not listen.
As a result, after heavy rain overnight, many cities collapsed, Yongle City fell, Xu Xi and Gao Yongneng all died in the rebellion, and only four generals of the Song army escaped.
In this great defeat, the Song army lost 230 generals, more than 10,000 elite soldiers, and the most pitiful thing was that more than 100,000 servants who did not return after the construction of the city were also ghosts under the sword of the Western Xia soldiers.
The siege of Yongle, planting and watching, there was no timely rescue. Soon after, he died on his back at the age of 57. He was the son of the famous general Zhong Shiheng, brave and good at plotting, and the defeat of Yongle City, he had already foreseen it.
However, this person was also a person who was eager for success and quick profits, and he was a "fraudulent child", and it was he who attacked Western Xia in the fifth way of the Song Army a few years ago, and it was he who threw up Emperor Shenzong and said: "There is no one in the Xia Kingdom, and the emperor has always been a widow, and the subject has been holding his arm since then!" Therefore, the Divine Sect was "strong and determined to go west." Therefore, two major defeats in two years, it is difficult to blame them.
Shen Kuo, who was sitting guarding Mizhi, was supposed to lead an army to save Yongle, but when he heard that tens of thousands of Western Xia troops were attacking Suide and endangering Guanzhong, he went to rescue Suide. Because he had previously supported Xu Xi in building Yongle City, after the war, he was demoted to the post of deputy envoy of the Junzhou regiment. From the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, Shen Kuo only served as a virtual official like the Guanglu Shaoqing Branch, and his political life was completely over.
Of course, he lived in Runzhou for 8 years before he had time to write the huge work "Mengxi Pen Talk". Although his portrait can often be seen in primary and secondary school textbooks, he is not a well-known person in the history of history, and is only listed in the appendix of Shen Wei, the ninety-first literary minister of the "History of Song".
In addition, Shen Kuo's character is very poor. During Wang Anshi's reign, Shen Kuo was appointed as an envoy to visit, and when he returned to Beijing, he would praise the good law for great convenience. Wang Anshi resigned, and Shen Kuo was made the third envoy, and immediately presented the various drawbacks of the new law to the chancellor Wu Chong, and Song Shenzong was very disgusted with his personality.
Shen Kuo and Su Shi had always been old colleagues, Su Shi was sent to Hangzhou, Shen Kuo was sent to Hangzhou as a visiting envoy to Zhejiang, and before leaving, Song Shenzong instructed him to "meet Su Shi well". Su Shi was very happy to see his old friend, and the two talked cordially. Shen Kuo asked Su Shi to give him a copy of the poem he had written after arriving in Hangzhou to "read it", and Su Shi immediately agreed. As a result, Shen Kuo used Zhu Pen to comment on Su Shi's poems one by one, and secretly presented Li Ding, who had a festival with Su Shi, indicating that Su Shi had a lot of sarcastic words about the imperial court in his poems. The "Wutai Poetry Case", which almost cost Su Shi's life, actually started from Shen Kuo.
After the Battle of Yongle, Shen Kuo was idle and abandoned Runzhou, and like no one else, he greeted Su Shi with "great respect".
It is particularly worth mentioning that This great scientist Shen Kuo, who is unique in ancient times, fears his wife like a tiger and is often beaten by his wife Zhang Shi with a blur of flesh and blood. After Zhang's illness and death, everyone was happy for Shen Kuo, but unexpectedly, Shen Kuo was used to abuse, and once the tigress died, he was in a trance every day, and he had to commit suicide by diving into the water, and soon after, he died of depression. It is conceivable that Shen Kuo, who wrote "Mengxi Pen Talk", was almost covering his bloody face every day and "creating" with difficulty.
When Song Shenzong heard the news of the defeat, he wept bitterly and indignantly, and could not eat for several days. In the early dynasty, he wept bitterly to his assistants. Indeed, since the opening of the border in Xining, only 6 fortresses such as Yelu and Mizhi in the Western Xia Kingdom were left, but Lingzhou and Yongle were defeated twice, and 600,000 people died in the battle of song soldiers and civilian servants and the Border Dependents of the Shuqiang. As for the expenditure of the Song Dynasty, it is an astronomical amount, and it cannot be counted, which is definitely a big deal to vomit blood and lose money.
Song Shenzong was too "strategic", and if he defeated Western Xia, he would definitely use his troops to fight the Liao Dynasty in Hebei. Therefore, Wang Anshi's change of law was to some extent caused by Emperor Shenzong's desire to accumulate wealth and fight with the Western Xia.
After the change of law, the national strength accumulated slightly, but the vitality of the world was already injured, and then two consecutive major defeats, in fact, the Song Dynasty fell into a more difficult situation.
Soon, the Western Xia came to "talk about peace", and the Song Dynasty had to "give" the old coins according to the number, and still handed over a large number of silver veils to the Western Xia every year to "buy" peace.
Under the anger, less than 3 years later, Song Shenzong died at the age of 38.
Finally, let's sum up Wang Anshi's personality. In terms of personal ethics, Lao Wang was diligent and frugal, had no extravagant desires, took care of every opportunity every day, and was 100% a typical example of a good cadre of the Song Dynasty who devoted himself to his work. However, this man, "went to prison to repay the grievances of the eyes, insulted the old and rewarded the youshi, liked to be slanderous and entrusted with the heart, put the pawns to detect and slander, destroyed the suicide note of the ancestors and worshipped the Buddha, complained about the brothers of the same family (Wang Anguo, which was completely opposite to Wang Anshi's political views) and gave people the Pai Ye, the son died and died (his son Wang Yun died first), and the house was used as a temple to bless the floating tuye"—all of these became the great handles despised by the later generations of scholars at that time.
Wang Anshi was lonely in his later years, but the poems he composed were elegant and fresh. Reading it carefully, there is a sense of senran coldness, and now I have excerpted a small poem to show his state of mind at that time:
Desolate smoke and rain help people to be sad, and the wet clothes are not self-aware.
Except for the spring breeze and sand, it is just like when sending a woman across the river.
The tragedy of Wang Anshi's change of law is actually the tragedy of the times. Emperor Renzong of Song reigned for 42 years, "dissolving the world and resting it." Resting with the people is a good thing, and the bad is "disbanding to rest." The people of the world are sluggish, buying peace with "old coins" for the Western Xia and Liao kingdoms, losing money to buy Gou An, and the whole country sinking into a false atmosphere of tranquility, without the spirit of being energetic and promising, this is the most terrible thing.
Since then, the song dynasty has been afraid of soldiers, and military affairs have become taboo.
When Emperor Shenzong of Song succeeded to the throne, he was worried about the poverty of the country every day, so he credulously believed in Wang Anshi's plot to gather and change the law, causing disturbance in the world, and the purpose of the rich country was not really achieved.
In essence, the strategy of Song Shenzong and Wang Anshi to enrich the country and strengthen the army is essentially the word "gathering wealth", thinking that if there is money and grain, they can be invincible to the world, and completely ignore the role of the spirit.
On this point, the "experience" in Chinese history is numerous: Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao, was born in Xiaoting and had no surplus grain, and eventually unified China; the Qin Dynasty had six kingdoms of reserves, and the nine states were enriched in Guanzhong, which collapsed overnight; Liu Yu, the founder of the Southern Song Dynasty, was worried about internal and external troubles, and only used the financial resources of three Wu and one place to break the Later Qin and kill Murong Chao, which frightened the Northern Wei also to rest his breath; An Lushan gained power, embraced Chang'an, according to the dangerous pass, the gold and silver mountains, and Tang Suzong's remote Lingwu, and eventually restored the country.
It can be seen from this that the plague of the Song Dynasty is "really not poor." At the time of Emperor Shenzong of Song, if he kept the well-off of the previous dynasty, enhanced the people's sense of distress, did not rush to achieve success, did not covet small profits, did not swell his face and become fat, accumulated 20 years, and went west to the north to seek revenge, he might succeed in one fell swoop.
In Western Xia, although Emperor Bingchang of Xia was symbolically restored, Liang Yiburi gave his daughter to the unfortunate emperor as empress. Liang Yibu died of illness shortly after burial, and his son Liang Yikui attacked feng guoxiang. In the same year, Empress Liang also fell ill and died, but the imperial power was still in the hands of the Liang clan.
In the following year, Xia Huizong died of depression, and his son Qianshun was helped to the throne of God, and another 3-year-old doll, was for Xia Chongzong. At the same time, she was also the head of a newly released Empress Liang (liang yiburi's daughter).
(Source| "Song Liao Jinxia: Civilization on the Blade" author | Meiyi, Tiandi Publishing House| publishing)