History of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Chapter 889: Battle between Qin and Feng (Part )

The "Battle of Huanghua Valley" in the Qin-Feng War also became a typical example of a classic mountain counter-encirclement war in the cold weapon period and was recorded in military history.

This battle caused a huge shock to the Later Shu. It was not only about losing four states, but more importantly, the confidence of the Shu people suffered a heavy blow. The best generals and the most elite soldiers in the country were completely defeated by the second-rate troops of the Later Zhou in their home field! From then on, the Later Shu suffered from "Zhou phobia" and never dared to covet the Central Plains again. This fear continued to affect the Song Dynasty when it destroyed Shu. The Shu army was also terrified of the Song army and was defeated by it.

Li Yangui, Yi Shenzheng and others submitted petitions to await punishment. Meng Chang comforted them with kind words and sent additional troops and food to Jianmen Pass to prevent the Later Zhou from further advancing.

In order to raise funds for the army, Meng Chang had to issue currency (cast iron coins) excessively, which led to hyperinflation, seriously affecting the economy of Shu and causing widespread complaints from the people. Later Zhou crippled Later Shu in terms of military and economics.

After the war, all the civil and military officials of the Later Shu Dynasty demanded that Li Yangui be held accountable for the defeat. Even the Empress Dowager repeatedly demanded that Li Yangui be stripped of his military power. Meng Chang could not withstand the pressure and finally dismissed Li Yangui from his military post two years later (957).

After Chai Rong withdrew his troops, he pardoned the four states, sent back the prisoners, and gave them travel expenses and resettlement fees, as a gesture of goodwill towards Hou Shu.

From the previous narration, we already know that the reason why Chai Rong stopped while he was ahead was to use troops against Southern Tang. After completing the "Difficult Road to Shu" dungeon, Chai Rong immediately opened the "Yangzhou in March with Fireworks" dungeon and started the "Three Expeditions to Huainan".

During the stalemate with Southern Tang, in order to further appease Hou Shu, Chai Rong returned another 893 "Huai En Army". In the "Qin Feng War", thousands of Shu soldiers were captured. After the war, Chai Rong asked them to choose whether to stay or go. Those who were willing to return to Shu were given travel expenses and resettlement expenses, and those who were willing to stay in the Central Plains were reorganized into "Huai En Army" and transferred to the Huainan front.

Meng Chang also sent back 80 Zhou generals including Hu Li who were captured at the beginning of the war as a friendly response to the Later Zhou. Meng Chang asked Hu Li to pass on a letter to Chai Rong.

The letter was addressed as "The Emperor of Great Shu writes to His Excellency the Emperor of Great Zhou", and then in the letter he claimed to be from the same hometown as Chai Rong (he said his family was from Xingtai and he wanted to strengthen the relationship between the two). Meng Chang was born in Taiyuan Prefecture in Hedong, and his ancestral home was Xingzhou (now Xingtai City, Hebei Province), and Chai Rong's ancestral home was also Xingzhou, so Meng Chang claimed to be from the same hometown as him.

We mentioned this letter in the previous article. Authoritative historical materials such as "Zizhi Tongjian" also have clear records saying that Chai Rong was "angry at his defiance" because Meng Chang called himself the "Emperor of Great Shu" and was on an equal footing with the emperor of the Central Plains, so he did not respond.

In fact, this letter not only uses the "Emperor of Great Shu" in the title, but also distorts the facts and makes unreasonable demands. It fishes in troubled waters and confuses right and wrong on the issue of national sovereignty. Let's take a look:
"…When the King of Jin returned to the north, China was empty. We temporarily raised the army of our poor city and recovered the territory of Chengdu. The Qin, Feng, Jie, and Cheng rivers were actually the borders of our country…"

Can you tolerate this? Can you admit it?

What Meng Chang meant was that the four states of Qin, Feng, Jie and Cheng had been the territory of the Great Shu Kingdom since ancient times and were an inseparable part of the Later Shu regime. That was why I took advantage of the demise of the Later Jin Dynasty and the fact that the Central Plains was ownerless to recover the territory of my homeland.

While striving for territorial sovereignty, you also tactfully pointed out that the legal system of the Later Zhou regime was not legitimate, "The King of Jin has returned to the north, and China is left empty." Your so-called Great Zhou is nothing more than a self-proclaimed and independent state. Why should you inherit the Later Jin's country and people?
As has been emphasized in the previous article, as the orthodox regime of the Central Plains, the Later Zhou Dynasty, especially Emperor Chai Rong who was determined to unify the world, could not make any concessions on principle. Shu, Huai, You, Jin, etc. were all reactionary separatist forces and must be completely wiped out! There is only one China in the world, and there is no such thing as a "Great Shu Kingdom". All the land under heaven belongs to the king. How can it be said that it has been the territory of the Later Shu since ancient times?
The issue of sovereignty is not up for discussion.

However, the situation on the Huainan battlefield did not allow Later Zhou to start another war with Later Shu at this time, so Chai Rong could only choose "not to answer". Not replying was tantamount to not acknowledging the contents of the letter.

Looking at the entire letter, regardless of the content and facts, Meng Chang's attitude was still quite humble. He flattered Chai Rong and Guo Wei, and also expressed his good wish for the two countries to coexist peacefully.

When Meng Chang received Chai Rong's "no answer" attitude, he felt greatly humiliated and immediately said angrily: "When I was offering sacrifices to heaven and earth and proclaiming myself the Son of Heaven, you were just a thief. How dare you be so mean to me?"

It was precisely this sentence of Meng Chang that made some scholars really focus all their attention on the four words "Emperor of Great Shu" and ignore the more important issue of sovereignty.

In fact, Meng Chang pretended to be ignorant even though he knew the truth, because only by diverting the attention to the "Emperor of Great Shu" and "Why do we have to be so hostile to each other" could he blur the issue of the sovereignty of the four states annexed by Qin Fengjie and secretly move the issue of territorial disputes, as if Chai Rong tacitly acknowledged that the four states originally belonged to Hou Shu, but was just arrogant and unwilling to be on an equal footing with the defeated country.

To this day, many history enthusiasts have been led by Meng Chang. He pretends to be confused and leads the trend, but the value of this book lies in its determination to expose his underwear.

Half a year after the "read but not reply" incident, the "Three Expeditions to Huainan" ended, the Southern Tang ceded the entire territory of Jiangbei and followed the Zhou Dynasty, and the Later Shu was shocked again. Soon, Gao Baorong from Jingnan sent a private message to Meng Chang, urging Meng Chang to return to the Central Plains. Meng Chang told him about the "read but not reply" incident.

Soon after, news came from the border that the Later Zhou was gathering at the border again, preparing to enter Shu. At the same time, Gao Baorong from Jingnan wrote a second letter, earnestly urging him not to fight against the strong with the weak, but to quickly surrender to the Central Plains.

Recalling the "Qin-Feng War" a few years ago and the recent "Three Expeditions to Huainan", Meng Chang believed that it was indeed necessary to take this issue seriously, so he summoned his ministers to discuss it.

Prime Minister Li Hao stated clearly: "If we follow their orders, our lord will be humiliated; if we do not, we will not be able to escape a great war. Do you have the confidence to defeat the Zhou army?"

When asked this question, no one dared to say "follow it". So the generals rushed to express their loyalty, saying that Your Majesty is wise and wise, and the country is strong and secure, how can we surrender? We are willing to die in service of the king!
Meng Chang was deeply moved, and ordered Li Hao to reply to Gao Baorong in a strong and fierce way. I surrender to you, you idiot! Come to Chengdu to play with me. Afterwards, Meng Chang appointed Zhao Chongtao as the commander, and Meng Yiye, Zhao Sijin and Han Baozhen as the column commanders, and led 60,000 troops to the front line to guard various checkpoints, ready to compete with the Later Zhou Dynasty.

The subsequent story has been mentioned in the previous article. When the Later Zhou Dynasty had not yet completed the war assembly, Li Yu, who was eager to make achievements, was greedy for merit and rashly advanced, and started a group without authorization, which led to a great defeat. After rational analysis and judgment, Chai Rong decisively gave up the attack on Shu and turned to the Northern Expedition, completing the feat of "conquering the Three Passes in the North".

Hou Shu escaped danger and breathed a sigh of relief.

Half a year later, Zhao Kuangyin launched a military coup at Chenqiao and changed the country's name to the Great Song.

At the end of this year, Prime Minister Li Hao submitted a memorial saying that the Song Dynasty was powerful and had the ambition to conquer the world, and that it would be best for us to restore relations between the two countries and become a vassal of the Song Dynasty.

Meng Chang was very unhappy and replied: "You go and cool off (You go, I will take care of it later)."

Two interesting things happened at the end of this year:
The first thing is that the Queen Mother of Later Shu had a dream in which a divine being dressed in black came to her in a dream. The divine being claimed to be the dragon guarding the emperor in the palace and came to ask for leave from her because the world was so big and he wanted to go see it. So Meng Chang built a shrine in Zhaojue Temple according to his mother's instructions and gave the property certificate to the dragon.

The Holy Dragon of Guard went out and lived outside, and people talked about it privately, saying that it was a bad sign.

The second thing is more interesting, and it almost evokes people's distant memories - "Nanzhao invades". At this time, the Nanzhao regime in the Erhai Lake area had perished, and was replaced by the "Dali Kingdom", whose ruler was named Duan Sicong. Duan Sicong planned to invade militarily, but his prime minister Gao Hou strongly opposed it, saying that Nanzhao colluded with Tubo in its heyday and jointly used troops to attack Shu, but still could not invade. The protracted war dragged itself down and led to the destruction of the country. Now the Zhou Lord is wise and powerful, and has great ambitions. Sooner or later, the Meng family in Shu will be annexed by it. We should repair the city, prepare for war, and wait and see. Why bother to go on an expedition and bring disaster to ourselves? Don't think you can be so awesome just because you are called "Sicong". Don't try to tear the onions and end up being cut by the leeks.

Duan Sicong thought what he said made sense, so he canceled the invasion plan.

The Dali Kingdom and the Duan family will be mentioned later, so I will just briefly mention them here. In short, the imperialists are determined to destroy us. Whether it is Nanzhao or Dali, Chengdu is the gentle and wealthy place that they dream of, and they want to take a bite of it even in their dreams.

In 962 AD, as the Song Empire grew stronger, Meng Chang became increasingly afraid that Song troops would enter Shu, so he began to make intensive preparations for war. Among them, the most controversial measure was the issuance of iron coins.

Cast iron coins, tin coins, lead coins, etc. were all common financial measures in ancient times. They can be simply understood as today's quantitative easing. To put it more simply, it means issuing more currency and running the printing presses crazily.

Shu lacked copper but had a lot of iron, so iron coins were often used instead of copper coins. In addition to Shu, other separatist regimes also used iron coins, such as Southern Chu. In addition to being limited by objective mineral resources, warlords subjectively used iron coins and lead coins as a means of cutting leeks. The most embarrassing one was Liu Rengong of Youzhou in the late Tang Dynasty. This gentleman directly issued "mud coins". He could obviously rob them, but he generously gave away mud.

From ancient times to the present, monetary policy has been closely related to the rise and fall of a regime. Insisting on using copper coins may not necessarily lead to problems, while using iron coins rationally can also create economic miracles. For example, Ma Yin's Southern Chu regime, through a series of financial reforms based on cast iron coins, made Southern Chu prosperous and once became the commercial center of China.

Meng Chang began to mint iron coins during the Qin-Feng War, but it was only tried in border areas at that time. In 962, it was issued nationwide. The direct reason for the excessive issuance of currency (cast iron coins) was to raise military pay and solve the urgent problem, but the harm it brought was also considerable.

First of all, it was inconvenient to circulate. The value of iron coins was lower than that of copper coins. If you wanted to buy a piece of silk, you had to carry hundreds of kilograms of iron coins. Because of the inconvenience of iron coins in circulation, paper money, Jiaozi, first appeared in Shu.

Secondly, there is the proliferation of counterfeit currency (privately minted). The equipment and technical thresholds for casting iron coins are much lower than those for casting copper coins. As a result, the crime of counterfeiting currency (privately minted iron coins) continues despite repeated bans. In the face of huge profits, lawbreakers continue to risk their lives.

The third is the disruption of normal production and operations. Based on the above-mentioned reasons for private casting, the government had to "ban ironware", just like the copper ban, but ironware is used more widely among the people, such as kitchen knives, pots and pans, farm tools, etc. In order to prevent private casting, the government must strictly control the use of ironware among the people, which seriously affects the daily production and life of the people.

The fourth is that it will trigger hyperinflation, which is also a chain reaction caused by the above reasons.

The fifth, more fatal, is the vulnerability to financial sniping. Simply put, foreign forces "counterfeit money" and then buy domestic and regional goods, disrupting the market order, thereby accelerating currency depreciation, hyperinflation, and wealth shrinkage...

In 962, Meng Chang took the first step towards the abyss.

The abyss has been waving at Meng Chang for a long time.

(End of this chapter)