History of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Chapter 959 Terminator——Zhao Kuangyin 3
3. Collect their elite troops
The most typical of these are the two times of "releasing military power over a cup of wine", which have been introduced in detail in the previous article and will not be repeated here.

1. Collect all the best soldiers in the world

In May 960, Zhao Kuangyin issued an edict that the Palace Guards and the Imperial Guards should conduct a strict screening of the Imperial Guards and promote the bravest to the upper army, thus creating an elite among the elites; local counties should send local troops to the capital in batches, nominally to fill the vacancies of the Imperial Guards, but in reality, the elite forces of the local troops were kept in the central government, while the old, weak, sick, disabled and pregnant were sent back to the local areas. The capital was of course unable to support such a large army, so Zhao Kuangyin asked the local troops to return to the local areas for training and then send them back to the capital after they were trained.

Therefore, historical records record that "all the fierce and rugged men were included in the imperial army." All the brave men in the world were absorbed into the central imperial army.

Later, Zhao Kuangyin set up the "garrison law", that is, the central imperial army was stationed in the local area, and the local army exchanged garrisons. In fact, this operation had already existed in the Tang Dynasty. This was not Zhao Kuangyin's original creation, but an improvement, such as increasing the number of people changing garrisons, adjusting the frequency and location of the change of garrisons, etc. In this way, the local vassal towns lost the so-called "direct troops", and the local troops were no longer the private armed forces of the vassal warlords.

A year later, in May 961, Zhao Kuangyin again issued an edict to carefully select the imperial guards and local troops, select elite troops, and eliminate the old, weak, sick and disabled.

In November 962, Zhao Kuangyin held a military review in the western suburbs. Looking at the boundless and powerful army, Zhao Kuangyin could not hide his joy and said to his attendants with great satisfaction: "Since the Later Jin Dynasty, the number of imperial guards has always been maintained at more than 11, but they are all shoddy, and only a few can really be used. I have selected them one by one, removed the old, weak, sick and disabled, and retained the essence, and trained them strictly. Now they are the strongest elite in the world!"

2. Forbidden Tooth Soldiers
In July of the fourth year of Qiande (966), Zhao Kuangyin issued an edict, "Forbidding generals to take elite soldiers from the army as guards." The book begins with an introduction to the guard system since the Tang Dynasty. The most famous is the Xuzhou guards, who were the warm-up actors for the chaos of the Five Dynasties. Guards, also known as "Ya Bing", are simply the private armed forces of local vassal states. While Zhao Kuangyin collected elite soldiers from all over the world, he suppressed the private armed forces of the generals of the vassal states through administrative orders, which further widened the gap between the military strength of the central and local governments.

Only the emperor is allowed to have imperial guards, and the local governors are not allowed to have their own soldiers.

3. Ban "archers"

As mentioned earlier, in order to transfer power from the vassal states to the local areas, Zhao Kuangyin set up county lieutenants and "archers".

The county-level administrative units have "archers", which are an important part of the local armed forces. Their main job is to deal with "gangs of thieves" - large-scale organized criminal groups. It is beyond the scope of ordinary patrols, and the use of regular troops is a bit overkill and the procedures are cumbersome. Therefore, "archers" with a force value higher than the police but lower than the regular army came into being. Simply put, "archers" are very similar to our armed police.

In November 968, Zhao Kuangyin issued an edict to reduce the number of "archers" in various counties, on the grounds that the world was now clear and the evil forces had been effectively curbed.

The imperial edict clearly stipulated that if the county magistrate or county lieutenant dared to retain the "archer" establishment, he would be severely punished (and his crime would be reset).

The local regular army had to be reduced, the guards of the vassal states had to be disbanded, and even the police force had to be weakened. Zhao Kuangyin's reduction of local military strength was all-round and three-dimensional, with no blind spots in sight.

In short, the best talents in the world are in the imperial court.

4. The Imperial Guards became a "nesting doll"

The elite troops of the whole country were all in the Imperial Guards. The local vassal states no longer had the strength to compete with the central government. So what should be done if the Imperial Guards rebelled? Zhao Kuangyin was an emperor who came out of the Imperial Guards. Of course, he was extremely alert to this and the reform of the Imperial Guards was urgent.

Zhao Kuangyin's idea for the reform of the imperial guards was relatively simple and clear. Simply put, it was to continuously "mass-doll" it.

The first is to change the left-right fight to a three-legged tripod. The original imperial guards were two systems with dual cards and dual standby - the Imperial Guard Division and the Imperial Guard Division in front of the palace. Zhao Kuangyin split the Imperial Guard Division into the Imperial Guard Infantry Division and the Imperial Guard Cavalry Division, and together with the Imperial Guard Division in front of the palace, they were collectively called the "Three Yamen" or "Three Divisions". Under the command of the "Three Yamen", there were "Four Guards", and under them were "Four Wings", and power was divided and restricted layer by layer. The second is to separate the power to mobilize troops from the power to command troops. Zhao Kuangyin returned the power to mobilize troops to the Privy Council, and the above-mentioned "Three Yamen", "Four Guards", etc. only had the power to command troops. In a word, those who mobilize the army cannot command the army, and those who command the army cannot mobilize the army.

This combination of moves greatly restricted the military commanders’ hands and feet. Throughout the three hundred years of the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties, there were no more rebellions by local military commanders or imperial guards (the rebellion of Li Yun of Luzhou and Li Chongjin of Yangzhou happened in the early Song Dynasty, before the reform was completed, and was suppressed in the blink of an eye, so it does not count; there was also the "Miao-Liu Mutiny" during the period of communication between the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties, but that was a farce initiated by two idiots on the spur of the moment, so it also does not count).

Some people also believe that it was Zhao Kuangyin's reforms that weakened the combat effectiveness of the Song Dynasty's army, which led to the demise of the Song Dynasty, and they then sneered at Zhao Kuangyin's military reforms.

This is definitely a serious misunderstanding, a misunderstanding caused by insufficient understanding of history. In fact, the combat effectiveness of the Song Dynasty army was very strong.

First of all, the Song Dynasty lasted for 319 years and had 18 emperors, making it one of the longest-lived dynasties in Chinese history. Some scholars believe that the word "one of" should be removed, and the Song Dynasty is the longest, because the judging standard is from the unification of the six kingdoms by Qin Shihuang to the abdication of Puyi, so the 800-year Zhou Dynasty was removed first, and the 406-year Han Dynasty was divided by Wang Mang for 15 years, so the Eastern and Western Han Dynasties should be regarded as two dynasties.

Seeking common ground while reserving differences, even if the Zhou Dynasty and the Han Dynasty are included, the Song Dynasty is still indisputably ranked third, longer than the Tang Dynasty, which is known as the "Golden Tang Dynasty".

If the Song Dynasty was really a weakling in warfare, how could it have survived for more than three hundred years?
Secondly, the cruel matching mechanism of the Central Plains region. Different from the excellent matching mechanism of the African region of the Tongliao universe, the Song Dynasty has been mixed in high-end games from beginning to end, and its opponents are the Liao of the Khitans, the Xixia of the Dangxiangs, the Jin of the Jurchens, and the terrifying Mongolian cavalry.

The Khitans were the overlords of the grasslands and a great empire that flourished for a time. Today, there are records of Central Asia, West Asia, and the Arab region paying tribute to the Liao Kingdom, not to mention the ancestors of the Koreans on the peninsula. The pronunciation of "China" in Russian today is still similar to "Khitan". Even the fighting nation of Mao Xiong has a deep memory of it, which shows the fierce strength of the Khitans back then.

The Tanguts' Xixia was a very mysterious ancient regime. The reason why it is mysterious is that it was unfortunately destroyed by the Mongols. The Mongols carried out a systematic cultural genocide against them, trying to erase the evidence of their existence. Think about it, why did the Mongols hate them so much? The Xixia were obviously hardcore and ruthless, and they made the Mongols suffer enough;

The Jurchens basically have no chance to show off their power in this book, but we should have heard of their fighting ability, such as Wanyan Zongbing who fought against Yue Fei, and their descendants who once again ruled the Central Plains in the late Ming Dynasty and changed the country's name to "Qing";
There is no need to say more about the Mongolian cavalry, they swept across the Eurasian continent. The Song Dynasty was eventually destroyed by the Mongols, but it was not shameful to be defeated by the sword of the world's number one swordsman. Besides, the Song Dynasty also killed Mongke Khan (grandson of Genghis Khan, son of Tolui, and brother of Kublai Khan) in the Battle of Diaoyucheng. Mongke Khan was the only emperor of the Mongol Empire to be killed in war.

He outlasted the Liao, Jin, and Xixia dynasties, and even killed the emperor of the Mongol Empire before his death. Think of Li Yunlong's quote, "Even if the King of Hell comes, I will still pull off a few of his beards."

This is the combat effectiveness of the Song Dynasty army.

Finally, why does the Song Dynasty still leave people with the stereotype of "weak Song"?
In addition to the fact that its opponents are too strong, it also has a lot to do with literary works. For example, works such as "The Generals of the Yang Family" and "The Biography of Yue Fei" exaggerated the combat effectiveness of enemies such as Liao and Jin in order to highlight the heroic image of the protagonists and create a tragic atmosphere. Another example is "Water Margin", in order to show the wisdom and courage of the 108 heroes of Liangshan, the official army of the Song Dynasty was always pressed to the ground by the heroes with the halo of the protagonist. Even in Mr. Jin Yong's martial arts novels, in order to show the extraordinary martial arts of the protagonists, the regular armies of Song, Liao, Jin, etc. all became passers-by, and were knocked down in a moment. The TV series and movies adapted from martial arts novels even turned the army of the Song Dynasty into a background wall, except for the five scum in fighting and the natural stupidity.

Lacking knowledge of official history and having been brainwashed by "Water Margin" and martial arts novels since childhood, it is not surprising that we have preconceived stereotypes about the Song Dynasty army.

I won't go into details here, but in short, remember that the Song Dynasty army was very powerful, even comparable to the Tang Dynasty army during its heyday.

Thanks to my old friend "江湖留白" for the monthly ticket support! Happy Dragon Boat Festival!

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(End of this chapter)