158013

Reasons for the Song Dynasty’s repeated defeats in foreign wars

In the past, when we saw the foreign wars of the Song Dynasty, we always felt aggrieved, because his foreign wars generally had a simple process model. First, the local area suffered successive destructive foreign invasions, and then the army was defeated. With a sense of crisis like a mountain falling, in the end the Imperial Guards took action to barely withstand the danger, and then began the peace talks of losing power and humiliating the country.

We feel that the performance of the Song Dynasty in foreign wars is too aggrieved. He has no energy to solve any potential threats, and can only be in an endless cycle of being beaten and then being beaten and then peace talks.

Now let’s take a closer look at the history of the Song Dynasty. In fact, the Song Dynasty’s foreign wars have always been in a relatively weak state. Of course, some historians believe that it was the defense mistakes of the Youyun 16 states at that time. Yes, the last of the nomadic civilization A defensive barrier is broken, so the advantage of defense is often lost on the battlefield of Yimapingchuan.

In that protracted foreign war, the Song Dynasty’s military advantages could not be brought into play, so it behaved so unbearably. In fact, this is only a certain aspect of a historical dimension. In fact, there are other reasons that restricted the Song Dynasty army from exerting its combat effectiveness. The Youyun 16 Prefecture is very important to the Song Kingdom, but there is another more important reason that makes the Song Dynasty The dynasty has become extremely weak in the face of foreign wars.

This mysterious restrictive factor is the arms of the Song Dynasty. In our impression, the Song Dynasty was the first dynasty to use firearms. It seems that there are still some slight advantages in individual combat capabilities, but the historical phenomenon makes us mostly embarrassing. Pushed to the corner of history. In fact, this is not to blame for the Song Dynasty. Although his basic combat ability passed due to equipment factors, he was extremely weak in foreign wars, because all the enemies he faced at that time were mainly cavalry.

The rapid combat capability and mobility reached a commanding height in history. At that time, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty could only rely on his own powerful cavalry to fight against foreign forces, but the monarchs of the Song Dynasty had no choice.

The reason is very simple. If you want to train a strong cavalry, you must not only have excellent cavalry generals, but also have many excellent horses. From the beginning of Xixia, as a vassal state of the Song Dynasty, he would attack a large number of horses to the Song Dynasty every year, which also became the main source of cavalry in the Song Dynasty at that time. Later, there was a coup in Xixia, and he also moved towards independence and rose to become a national organization against the Song Dynasty, so the source of cavalry in the Song Dynasty was interrupted.

After the absence of cavalry, the Song Dynasty could only develop the infantry’s equipment capabilities to the extreme, which led to the heavy infantry units trained by the later imperial regime. Since the government is extremely rich, they have equipped their heavy infantry to the teeth, and most of the army has the most elite weapons and armor.

Theoretically speaking, they can single out the cavalry with infantry and win the battle, but their mobility is extremely weak, and the Imperial Guard cannot defend the territory in a timely manner locally. Therefore, in front of those cavalrymen who were as fast as lightning and as agile as arrows, the Song Dynasty’s army could not launch its combat effectiveness at all. It could move its army back and forth between multiple battlefields, and was finally dragged down by the war situation.

So if we look back at the history of the Song Dynasty, we will find that the wars of the Song Dynasty were not only territorial issues, but also the weakness of the defense line. The key was the lack of arms.

Without a strong arm, he would not be able to confront the northern minorities, and at the same time it would not be able to ensure deterrence against neighboring countries in a timely manner. In the end, this kind of political weakness accumulated from generation to generation, and the Song Dynasty became the dynasty with the weakest foreign attitude in Chinese history. All of them had to rely on peace negotiations and buying old coins in exchange for peace.