Introduction: The most lamentable thing in ancient Chinese history should be that in the face of the repeated invasion of nomadic forces in the north, the response and counterattack of the two Song Dynasties were weak and weak, so that they were finally destroyed by foreign races. Therefore, even if the State Zuo lasted for more than three hundred years, the two Song Dynasties were ridiculed by historians as "poor and weak", and their military evaluation was even worse, believing that the military level of the two Song Dynasties was always hovering in a state of stagnation. Why were the two Song Dynasties so unbearable in the face of fierce rivals in the north? And why can't we build a strong armed force?
According to the comments of later generations, most people believe that the biggest reason why the two Song Dynasties were repeatedly in a passive position in the military was because in the Dispute in the Central Plains from the end of the Tang Dynasty to the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, the excellent horse-producing lands such as the north and south of the Yin Mountains and the Longyou River Valley were lost, which not only caused the two Song Dynasties in later generations to completely lose the barrier against the nomadic forces, but also lost the excellent horses for forming a powerful cavalry army, and finally the northern forces that obtained these horse-producing land repeatedly attacked and finally collapsed. So, what did the real ancient Chinese cavalry look like? Is it inevitable that regimes in the south will lack war horses?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" > naturally geodeterminal north-south imbalance</h1>
If the vision is simply placed in the Central Plains, then the Southern and Northern Dynasties are only a specific period in Chinese history, but if we break through the traditional Yixia antagonism and project the vision to the whole of East Asia, then Chinese history can be regarded as the inevitable result of many rounds of north-south confrontation. The first round was a confrontation between the Qin and Han Empires and the Xiongnu, followed by centuries-long turmoil, during which the second round was the confrontation between the Northern and Southern Dynasties, which basically separated the Yangtze River; the third round was the confrontation between the Sui and Tang Empires and the Turks; the fourth round was the long-term confrontation between the Central Plains Dynasty and the northern tribes from the end of the Tang Dynasty to the two Song Dynasties. Although the Mongol Yuan was briefly repelled by the Ming Dynasty, the Northern Yuan and subsequent Mongol ministries also maintained tense and hostile relations with the Ming Dynasty until the Manchu Qing Dynasty mixed with China, which basically smoothed out the situation of north-south confrontation.
In this north-south confrontation, the natural geography almost determines the inevitable imbalance between the north and the south. In the era of cold weapons, combat is generally based on close-quarters hand-to-hand combat, even with the continuous progress of iron weapons and the continuous development of long-range bows and crossbows, but effective killing or injury still depends on soldiers on the battlefield. In this way, the infantry on foot will suffer losses and be in an absolute disadvantage when they fight against the cavalry. Unfortunately, because the agricultural development and agricultural production in the Central Plains had already occupied most of the fields, it was difficult for the Central Plains Dynasty to have grasslands to support livestock horses. What's more, high-quality horses were generally produced in the grasslands of the north or the valley plains of the northwest, and if the Central Plains Dynasty wanted to obtain high-quality horse resources, it had to firmly control them.
Unfortunately, this is almost impossible. The Central Plains Dynasty has been accustomed to intensive agricultural production since the three generations of ancient times, and the peasants have no interest in the uncultivable grasslands and Gobi outside the territory. What's more, most of these unfamiliar lands were remote, and the labor expedition would not only put great pressure on the national treasury and affect the normal operation of the entire empire, but also be useless. It's a shame to abandon it. The occupation of these places, not to mention the fierce battle with the indigenous people, the huge casualties, because these bitter cold places can not be cultivated, and it is impossible to produce self-sufficient food. Therefore, if you want to hold on, you can only transport grain and grass from the Central Plains thousands of miles away, and even more so that the soldiers stationed in the border areas will not be able to get replenishment in time, and in the end it will inevitably withdraw the army to the Central Plains like the Western Han Dynasty abandoned the Western Regions Capital Protectorate.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="8" >-step riding against the difficult history of horse breeding in the Lower Southern Dynasty</h1>
In Chinese history, the "lack of horses" was undoubtedly the most headache for the Central Plains Dynasty. Although the Western Han Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty, and even The Cao Wei Dynasty could obtain sufficient horses by expanding their territory and capturing wars in the northwest, the large number of warhorses raised by these regimes was not only obtained by pure natural grazing! For example, the Northern Song Dynasty and the similar situation of the Song Qi Liang Chen Four Dynasties, together with the Eastern Jin Dynasty shrunk on the left side of the river, it is true that because of the shrinking territory and the lack of horse breeding grassland, resulting in a shortage of warhorses and cavalry, it is impossible to effectively form a horse armed force that can resist a strong enemy, but the problem of horse breeding in these "Southern Dynasties" is even more embarrassing.
Although both Han dynasties maintained a considerable number of horses and cavalry, the Cao Wei regime in the Three Kingdoms inherited the excellent cavalry and warhorses from the northwest and north, and was able to suppress the main infantry of the Shu Han and Sun Wu armies, and even had the spare power to flatten the Wuhuan on the grassland. However, by the end of the Western Jin Dynasty, the cavalry and warhorses of the Central Plains had long been exhausted by the Rebellion of the Eight Kings and internal and external wars, so what was left to the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the subsequent regime was only an infantry army established with local troops and northern displaced people as the main body.
Therefore, in the Battle of Feishui, Jian Jian could summon "more than 600,000 soldiers and 270,000 horsemen" to attack, and the Eastern Jin side could only gather 80,000 Northern Province soldiers, and almost all of them were infantry. Due to the huge impact and running ability of the cavalry unit, the infantry is in an extremely disadvantageous situation in battle: victory cannot be pursued, and defeat cannot escape. Even if the Southern Dynasty could trade through Liaodong, Chuandian and Hexi, exchanging horses for cloth, salt, iron, etc., and could also obtain some war horses through war prisoners, it was really a drop in the bucket.
In the face of the northern cavalry that learned martial arts from an early age and rode and shot superbly, although the Southern Dynasty could hastily gather tens of thousands of cavalry troops to go to the battle, even the small imperial court of the Southern Song Dynasty could gather 80,000 warhorses through trade and expropriation of subject horses, but it was really a pebble. Because the northern territory has been lost, the close forces are also far away, and it can be said that the water cannot quench the thirst of the near. Therefore, the "cavalry Cao", which had been set up since the time of Cao Wei to manage cavalry and horse politics, had to be abandoned in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. During the reign of Emperor Ming of the Liu Song Dynasty, Huaibei was captured by the Northern Wei, and after losing Shandong and other northern regions, the Southern Dynasty completely lost hope of restoring its cavalry units.
In the previous Yuanjia Northern Expedition, Liu Song was able to gather "eight thousand fine horses, pointing directly at the Tiger Prison (Guan)", but with the age of the horses and the losses of the war, in 450, the Northern Wei Xiaowu Emperor Tuoba Tao personally led the army to the south, forcing the Liu Song court to recruit all the men in the Gyeonggi region to go to the Yangtze River to guard. Although the warriors and local bureaucrats had horses in their hands, they could only let themselves go unchecked due to the lack of uniform training and strict cavalry warriors, and finally in the local rebellion they had the unexpected weapon to suppress the central armed forces that lacked horses...
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="14" > conclusion</h1>
According to geography and tradition, the nomadic tribes on the Mongolian plateau and the northwestern steppe have their own natural advantages over the farming peoples of the Central Plains. Not only in East Asia, but also in the face of the cavalry warriors in the Eurasian steppes, the Roman Empire in the West was still overwhelmed. In order to make up for the shortcomings of the lost horse farm, the "Southern Dynasty" also made contact with the Western Regions through Sichuan and Shu, and purchased Shu horses and Dian horses through the southwest, but because most of these horses were short in stature, they could not undertake combat tasks. In addition, due to the slackness of the imperial court, the abolition of ma zheng, and the decline in the quality of the army, it seems reasonable that the "southern dynasty" was destroyed by the northern regime, which was full of martial virtue and rapidly rising.
Author: Su Can, our special guest author
Reference: Li Shuo, Three Hundred Years of the Civil War: China's Military and Regime in the 4th-6th Centuries