Wu Shu (兀朮), also known as Zong Bi (宗弼), was the fourth son of Jin Taizu (金太祖) who beat Yan Aku, so he was also known as the Fourth Prince.
Wu Shu was known for his "rough courage" in the Jin army, and whenever the battle was fierce, he always ignored the "intersection of arrows and stones", took off his helmet, and supervised the battle, "personally risking the front and not taking refuge" ("History of Jin", vol. 79, "Biography of Li Qiong"). He had already emerged in the war against the Liao. At the beginning of the Song-Jin War, as a subordinate of the Second Crown Prince, he participated in the siege of Kaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, and led a Jin army to attack Tangyin County. After the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, Wu Shu became a subordinate of the new Right Deputy Marshal Yu Liduo (Zong Fu), and continued to attack the Southern Song Dynasty with Yu Li Duo, and because of his repeated military achievements, his status quickly rose, becoming the vanguard of the Jin Dynasty's war against the Southern Song Dynasty.
From the autumn of 1129 to the spring of 1130 (the seventh to eighth years of the Jin Dynasty, the third to fourth years of the Southern Song Dynasty), the Jin Dynasty saw that the Southern Song Emperor Zhao Cuo had fled from Jiangbei to Jiangnan, and decided to cross the river in pursuit, in an attempt to capture Zhao Shuo and destroy the Southern Song Dynasty in one fell swoop. Wu Yu served as the main general of the invasion of Jin in the south of the river, first defeating the Song army at Suiyang (present-day shangqiu city south of Henan), then capturing Shouchun (present-day Shou County, Anhui), Luzhou (present-day Hefei, Anhui), and Chao County (Chao County, Anhui), marching his army directly to the Yangtze River, defeating more than 10,000 Song soldiers at Hezhou (Anhui He County), and then successfully crossing the Yangtze River, entering Taiping Prefecture (present-day Dangtu, Anhui) and Jiankang Prefecture (present-day Nanjing, Jiangsu), taking the Guangde Army (present-day Guangde, Anhui), and directly attacking Hangzhou, where the southern Song Dynasty's small court was inhabited. Prior to this, Emperor Gaozong of Song had fled from Yuezhou (present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang) to Mingzhou (Ningbo), and fled by sea boat via Dinghai to Taizhou (Linhai, Zhejiang) and Wenzhou. After Wu Shu arrived in Hangzhou, he used Hangzhou as his command center, sent his troops to conquer Yuezhou and Mingzhou, and sent a golden army to follow the Southern Song Dynasty monarchs into the sea for three hundred miles.
Wu Shu drove straight into Jiangnan, all the way to Mingzhou, which was the culmination of jin bing's military activities in the south. Although its success was due to factors such as the bravery of Wu Shu and the good fighting of jin soldiers, it was mainly the corruption and incompetence of the Southern Song Dynasty. Du Chong, who was guarding Jiankang Province at the time, was a coward who once destroyed the anti-gold facilities of Zong Ze, a veteran anti-war general, in the former capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, Tokyo (present-day Kaifeng, Henan). However, such a person was highly used by Emperor Gaozong of Song to let him guard Jiankang Province, how could he win the battle? Finally, Du Chong himself ran to Jiangbei and surrendered to the Jin Dynasty. Therefore, the invasion of Wu Zhuo is like entering no man's land. However, because the Jin soldiers were not accustomed to fighting in the water towns of Jiangnan and suffered setbacks under the city of Mingzhou, the Jin soldiers who went to the sea to pursue Song Gaozong were also scattered by the Song army's fleet because they could not adapt to sea activities, and were forced to withdraw. Seeing that it was not easy to eliminate the Southern Song Dynasty, Wu Yu declared in February 1130 that "the search for mountains and seas was complete" and led the southern invasion of Jin soldiers to be captive
Plunder the wealth and retreat north along the canal.
In March 1130, when Wu Yu led his army back to Zhenjiang, he was defeated by the Song general Han Shizhong, and the whole army was besieged in Huangtiandang for forty-eight days. In order not to destroy the entire army, Wu Shu expressed his willingness to give Han Shizhong all the belongings looted from Jiangnan, and also to give them famous horses, but Han Shizhong severely refused. Later, relying on the guidance of a Han who had lost his national temperament, Wu Shu dug up the old stork river to open the Qinhuai River, and only then did he escape to Jiankang. At Jiankang Province, Wu Shu was received by reinforcements from jin soldiers and defeated Han Shizhong's boat division before he was able to cross the river and retreat north of the river. When Wu Yu evacuated Jiankang Province, he set fire to Jiankang Province for three days, taking many strong men and women prisoner, and killing many old and weak residents, causing serious damage to the prosperous Jiankang Province. The Song general Yue Fei rose up in pursuit, annihilated some of the Jin soldiers, and intercepted some of the property looted by the Jin army. This was the first time that Wu Shu had been attacked by the Yue family army.
The failure of the invasion of Jiangnan made Wu Shu regard Jiangnan as a fear from then on. According to the "Chronicle of the Great Golden Kingdom", "Wu Zhu returned from the south of the river, and when he first arrived in the north of the river, every time he met his relatives, he would hold on to each other and cry, and complained about the hardships and dangers of crossing the river. The commander of the Jin Army, Sticky Han, and another general, Tart Lazy, wanted to invade Jiangnan again, but Wu Shu objected. The Jin army also no longer regarded Jiangnan as the main target of the attack on the Southern Song Dynasty. But this only shows that Wu Shu realized that Jiangnan was not a place where the Jin soldiers played their advantages, and did not show that Wu Shu had learned a lesson from the fiasco, that his basic position of insisting on invading the Song had not changed, and that he was still the vanguard of the invasion of the Song.
In the autumn of 1130, the Jin Dynasty decided to put the main direction of the war against the Song dynasty in Shaanxi, and ren Liduo was made the right deputy marshal, responsible for the attack on Shaanxi. Wu Shu was also transferred to Shaanxi. In mid-September, the Song and Jin sides opened a position in Fuping, Shaanxi Province, for a decisive battle. Wu Shu led the right wing of the Jin army to attack the Jingyuan army led by the Song general Liu Kun, but was met with stubborn resistance and was once surrounded by Song soldiers. Later, because the Jin left-wing army led by Lou Fu defeated the Huanqing army led by the Song general Zhao Zhe, the Song army was completely defeated, and Wu Shucai was defeated and won, and together with Lou Mu, he won the Battle of Fuping, and took advantage of the victory to pursue and occupy most of the Five Roads in Shaanxi in the Southern Song Dynasty.
After the Battle of Fuping, the Jin general Lou Mu, who was in charge of the Shaanxi Battlefield against the Song Dynasty, fell ill and died of illness, and Wu Shu succeeded Lou Mu and became the main general of the Jin Army's Shaanxi Battlefield. But in the battlefield of Shaanxi, he suffered a worse defeat than the invasion of Jiangnan.
In October 1131, Wu Shu personally led the main force of the Shaanxi Jin army of tens of thousands (more than 100,000 in one work) to attack the Song general Wu Jiu's shangyuan (present-day Baojinan, Shaanxi). On the ninth day of the first month, the Jin soldiers led by Wu Shu built a pontoon bridge to forcibly cross the Weishui River, and from the Baoji Company camped thirty miles, from the tenth day of the first month, they fought against the Song soldiers led by Wu Jiu. Wu Shu is determined to take. However, Wu Jiu occupied favorable terrain, and while using powerful bows and crossbows to shoot in turn and hold the dangerous pass, he sent an army to cut off the passage for the Jin army to transport grain, and set up an ambush on the way for the Jin army to retreat. After more than thirty rounds of fighting with Wu Jiu, Wu Yu suffered heavy losses, and when he retreated, he was ambushed by the Song army, resulting in the collapse of the whole army, more than 300 generals and generals were captured by the Song army, a valley more than twenty miles long was full of corpses of the Jin army, and Wu Yu himself was hit by two arrows, almost captured by the Song army. The Jin army was almost completely destroyed. This was the second fiasco suffered by Wu You since his military career, and the worst since the Jin invasion of the Song Dynasty.
In the winter of 1133, Wu Shu, who was the marshal of the Jin Dynasty Zuo Dujian, once again led an army to attack the Southern Song Dynasty Shukou. The Song general Wu Xuan, who was guarding Shangyuan, voluntarily withdrew due to the lack of food for his army. After occupying Shangyuan, Wu Yu led more than 100,000 Jin troops in February and March 1134 to attack Xianrenguan (at the junction of Feng County and Luoyang, Shaanxi) defended by Wu Jiu, preparing to invade Sichuan in one fell swoop. Wu Shu's military operation, "from the marshal down to the room, showed no intention of returning" (Jin Shi Compilation, vol. 149, "Yang Congyi's Epitaph"), was determined to seize Shukou and drive into Sichuan. The Song general Wu Jiu had already laid out the defensive facilities of Xian Ren Guan. Therefore, this battle was more intense than the Battle of Shangyuan, and the two sides fought repeatedly for a longer time. From 27 February to 2 March, Wu Yu commanded the Jin army to launch a continuous attack on the Song positions. The golden soldiers were heavily armored, one in front, two behind, the front one was killed, and the back one put on the former's armor and continued to advance. The Song army continued to adopt the tactic of defeating the enemy at Shangyuan, occupying dangerous terrain, firing arrows at the Jin soldiers with the bow of the divine arm, and casting cannon stones to destroy many of the Jin army's key facilities. In the first three days of fighting, Wu Shu was wiped out by a large number of living forces by the Song soldiers, but still refused to retreat. From March 1, Wu Jiu led his army to launch a counterattack, and after two days and one night of bitter fighting, the Wu army finally fled in defeat. Since then, Song and Jin have been in a stalemate situation on the Shukou front.
Although Wu Shu suffered repeated defeats when he invaded the Southern Song Dynasty, because he had a reputation for "rough courage", and the Jin Dynasty presided over the war against the Song Dynasty, Sticky Han and Yu Liduo, died one after another, and Wu Shu's status in the Jin Dynasty and the Jin Army continued to rise. In October 1137, Wu Shu was promoted to right deputy marshal and became one of the commanders of the Jin army, and also became a key figure in the Jin Dynasty's main war faction against the Song Dynasty.
By this time, the emperor of the Jin Dynasty had been replaced by Jin Xizong. The jin ruling clique split into two major groups around the issue of war against the Song Dynasty and internal political reform, and waged a fierce struggle within the Jin Dynasty. A faction led by Shang Shuling Pu Luhu (Zong Pan) and the left deputy marshal Tart Lazy had the upper hand in the struggle. In view of the turbulent situation in the Central Plains, they advocated returning the Henan and Shaanxi regions to the Southern Song Dynasty and concluding peace agreements with the Southern Song Under the condition that the Southern Song Dynasty paid tribute to the Jin Dynasty. This claim soon turned into action, and the Song and Jin reached an agreement in the autumn and winter of 1138. Vulture opposed the deal. He secretly played Jin Xizong, saying that Pu Luhu and Tart Lazy advocated returning the Henan and Shaanxi regions to the Southern Song Dynasty, and must have colluded with the Southern Song Dynasty in an attempt to rebel. In July 1139, Emperor Xizong of Jin killed Pu Luhu on charges of treason, and at the same time deposed Tart Lazy from his military power and made Him the Left Chancellor of Yanjing Xingtai Shangshu. Wu Shu was promoted to marshal of the capital and became the supreme commander of the Jin army. In August, Tart Lazy plotted a rebellion in Yanjing, and Wu Chu was promoted to Taibao and the leader of Yanjing Xingtai Shangshu Province because of his meritorious service in hunting and killing Tart Lazy, and still served as the marshal of the capital, becoming the most prominent real power figure in the Jin Dynasty who concentrated military power and political power.
After Wu Shu won the political struggle, he abolished the peace agreement with the Southern Song Dynasty. In May 1140, Wu Shu was ordered to retake Henan and Shaanxi, and personally led his troops from Liyang across the Yellow River to take Fenjing, and sent a marshal to the Right Supervisor Army to march into Shaanxi. Because the Southern Song Dynasty had not yet seriously deployed defenses against Henan and Shaanxi, most of Henan and Shaanxi were soon reoccupied by Jin soldiers. However, Wu Yuwan did not expect that in the small city of Shunchang (present-day Fuyang, Anhui), he would be hit by a broken head and bleed.
The Battle of Shunchang was also an important battle in the history of the Song and Jin wars. As Wu Shu marched south with great momentum, the Song general Liu Kuizheng led the former Wang Yan's Eight-Character Army to Shunchang. The team that had fought against the Jin soldiers in the Taihang Mountains, led by Liu Kun, decided to hold on to Shunchang and vowed to survive with Shunchang. When Wu Shu first arrived in Shunchang, he saw that the garrison conditions of this small city were very poor, and he had more than twenty times the strength advantage of the Song army, and he once ordered with arrogance: "The walls of Shunchang City are like this, you can kick down the tip of your boots." When they came to the Japanese government, they would eat, and the women who received them would listen to themselves, and all the men over the age of thirty would be killed," preparing to massacre the city of Shunchang. However, the stubborn battle of the Shunchang army and people beat Wu Shu to a terrible end, and the elite cavalry led by Wu Shu, who claimed to be invincible, was also defeated in this battle (the Compilation of the Three Dynasties Northern League" quoted Yang Ruyi's "Shunchang Victory over the Broken Enemy"). Wu Yu was forced to retreat to Fenjing. In July, Wu Shu was successively attacked by the Yue family's army at Haocheng and Yingchang (present-day Xuchang, Henan), and the "kidnapped horses" were completely annihilated, and Wu Shu himself fled. At that time, Under the blows of the Yue family's army, Wu Yu wanted to evacuate Henan to avoid its front.
It was only because Emperor Gaozong of Song was afraid that the victory of the Song army would not be conducive to his rule, and colluded with Qin Ju to force the Song army to be a division, that Wu Shu was relieved from the predicament and occupied Henan and Shaanxi, which had been returned to the Southern Song Dynasty.
After several exchanges, Wu Shu finally saw clearly that the rulers of the Southern Song Dynasty did not want to resolutely resist the Jin, so after several months of rest, he again led his army to attack the Southern Song Dynasty in December 1140 under the pretext of the Southern Song Dynasty's generals Yue Fei, Zhang Jun, Han Shizhong and other generals stationed in Jiangbei. Although Wu Yu's march this time achieved several small victories, he was defeated by Song soldiers at Tuohao (拓跋皐, northwest of present-day Chao County, Anhui), and he finally saw that it was impossible for the Jin army to win on the battlefield, and had to express his willingness to negotiate peace with the Southern Song Dynasty, and used a secret letter to instruct Qin Ju to kill Yue Fei, who insisted on resisting Jin. The surrender faction of the Southern Song Dynasty actively cooperated with Wu Shu, first removing Yue Fei and other generals from their military power, and then falsely accusing Yue Fei of plotting treason on the charge of "false accusations" and putting Yue Fei in prison. Wu Shu exerted military pressure on the Southern Song Dynasty and cheered on the Southern Song surrender faction to step up its fight against the Anti-Japanese faction.
In November 1141, Wu Shu finally made a peace agreement with the Southern Song Dynasty on behalf of the Jin Dynasty, and the Southern Song Dynasty declared itself a vassal to the Jin Dynasty, paying 250,000 silver and 250,000 silk horses every year, and the two countries stopped the war with the Huai River and the Qinling Mountains as the boundary. Yue Fei, the national hero of the Southern Song Dynasty, was killed after the conclusion of this peace agreement. However, because of this peace agreement, Wu Shu was promoted from Taibao to Taifu, and later to Taishi Lingsan Province, and has always maintained the positions of Marshal of the Capital and Shangshu Province. Until his death in October 1148, Wu Shu was the most prominent figure in the Jin Dynasty.
Looking at Wu Shu's life, he was indeed an important pillar of Jin Dynasty rule. Jin Shizong once said that in the history of the Jin Dynasty, after sticking to Han, there was only one person. For the Jin Dynasty, Wu Shu was indeed a meritorious man. However, because Jin's war against the Song Dynasty was an unjust war, And Wu Shu had always been a main warrior figure, and he had brutally killed and plundered the people of many parts of the Southern Song Dynasty, bringing deep disasters to the people of the Southern Song Dynasty, and also bringing suffering to the Jurchen people of the Jin Dynasty and other ethnic groups. Therefore, as a historical figure, he has nothing to affirm, even if he is not placed among the reactionary figures.