Soldiers in the Song Dynasty are the most special group of soldiers in China. Militarily, they have the same strict selection and assessment standards as soldiers of other times, and have strong combat effectiveness with the assistance of military science and technology. At the same time, they also participated in the comprehensive management of the city in an unprecedented depth, and it was precisely because of hundreds of thousands of imperial soldiers and their families that the commodity economy of Tokyo in the Northern Song Dynasty was prosperous.
However, since the founding of the Song Dynasty, the national policy of "valuing literature over martial arts" has made Song Bing suppressed by the literati class for a long time, lost the core right to speak on state affairs, and had no choice but to indulge in depravity in the bustling streets, leading a drunken life and finally ruining the land of the Song Dynasty.
"Selecting soldiers" is comparable to "beauty pageant": the peak of military value
If there is a pk with military value in the history of China, it will undoubtedly be the pride of the soldiers in the Song Dynasty, because at the beginning of the founding of the Song Dynasty, the figure of a general was regarded as an important basis for selecting soldiers.
According to the History of Song Dynasty, Song Taizu and Zhao Kuangyin personally selected some soldiers in the army, called "soldiers", and then sent them to various places to recruit soldiers based on them. Later, it was changed to measuring the height of soldiers with wooden sticks, which was called the "waiting rod system". According to the different heights of soldiers, they are graded and then assigned to the corresponding troops.
The imperial army in the Northern Song Dynasty was divided into upper, middle and lower armed forces. The four armies of "Pengri, Tianwu, Wei Long and Shenwei" are the upper armed forces, collectively known as the "upper four armies", with the highest rank, the highest personnel specifications and the most money. The standard of equivalent personnel has changed in different periods. During the auspicious symbol period in Song Zhenzong (1008-10/6), "from five feet eight inches to five feet five inches is five grades", that is, the height from 1.7 meters to 1.8 meters is divided into five grades.
A good figure is a good figure, which is the basic logic, but there will be more requirements when allocating. Take archers for example. During the reign of Song Renzong, the commanders in front of Rowen and Shenwei Temple demanded to shoot one stone and five fights, that is, 88.8 kilograms of arm strength; Keep the dragon straight, keep the dragon straight, and the east and west classes are equipped with a temple attendant, fighting four battles with one stone; The east and west classes are straight, and there are classes that hold the sun, hold the staff straight, dance in heaven, Wei Long, and Shenwei straight, and so on. Staff, dragon emperor, and horseback riding require killing two birds with one stone. Yue Fei, who is familiar with the "natural divine power, bows 300 kilograms before the crown", can easily pull down the bow of 187.5 kilograms before he is twenty years old.
Soldiers who did not meet the forbidden standards were assigned to uniform chores, such as Zhuang Chengjun, Zuo Yuanjun, Qiaolu Army, Shipyard Army, Logistics and Transportation Army and Heqing Army.
But there are also examples of selecting imperial guards from the Xiang army. For example, in the seventh year of Li Qing, Song Renzong (1047), "whoever recruits from all walks of life and reaches five feet seven inches (1.77 meters or more) will be sent to the next place to try to make up for the imperial army". Even the imperial army, if it doesn't perform well, may become the Xiang army. "Jiataizhi" records: "Those who retreat from the imperial army are surrendered to the Xiang army, which is called surrender to the Xiang army." According to the long scroll of Zi Zhi Tong Jian Song Shenzong, Kaifeng Prefecture and JD.COM and Jingxi Road banned soldiers. "Ma Jun failed to teach, but retired from the army, lost again, and retired from the Xiang Army."
Thousands of miles of grain, miles of company battalion:
In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, Song Taizu learned the lesson of the separatist regime at the end of the Tang Dynasty, "encamped in Gyeonggi and prepared to defend", and assembled all the troops in the world in the capital Tokyo. According to the History of Song Dynasty, Song Taizu Kaibao (968 -975) banned 654.38+093,000 people, Song Taizong Daoism (995 -997) banned 358,000 people, and Song Zhenzong banned 654.38+00 17.
Due to the redundancy of the army, it was later reduced and maintained at a scale of around 600,000. In addition to guarding the capital, the imperial army's main task is to defend the border counties. From Song Taizu to Song Shenzong, the "multi-garrison law" was adopted, and the imperial troops were stationed in the capital and other counties and rotated regularly every three years. At the same time, the imperial court also kept all members of the royal family in Beijing to prevent the royal family from rebelling outside, even for heavily armed generals. According to Wang Gong's Handy Miscellaneous Notes, every time General Pan Mei goes out with troops, he always "keeps his wife, no longer takes a few concubines in the past, or gives birth to a son, that is, sends his concubines and children to his ancestral home, and still has your special care." Imperial capital
According to the General Examination of Literature, "his wife Lu Wu has been entrusted to camp, and her name has been written in the official book". As long as they become soldiers, their families have to live with them in the barracks. Therefore, the body guards and their families account for a considerable part of Tokyo's population. Wang Zengyu inferred in "A Preliminary Study of the Military System in Song Dynasty" that the total number of imperial soldiers in Song Renzong period was about178,000.
According to "the cost of a soldier living in the camp can be given to three soldiers stationed in the camp", that is, the cost of the imperial army with family members is equivalent to three individual soldiers. Combined with the official ration ratio of children to adults 1:2 in Song Dynasty, the total number of imperial troops and military families in Tokyo is about 700,000. It is recorded in the Literature General Examination that military families "can't do business, make a living by agriculture, and eat by officials", which shows that such a large part of people are not self-sufficient, but rely entirely on the supply of the court. According to the long version of Zi Zhi Tong Jian, "One liter for adults and half a liter for children", 700,000 people need to consume about 4 million stone grains every year. However, according to Yao, the agricultural production in the Central Plains was not restored until the Chongning period, and the capital of song dynasty, with its developed canal system, became the final choice of the rulers of the Song Dynasty.
The canal system in Tokyo consists of Bianhe River, Caihe River, Zhangwu River and Jinshui River. Except Jinshui, the other three canals all have water transport functions, among which Qilu is connected, Caihe is connected with Chen, Ying, Xu, Cai, Guang and Shou, and the most important Bianhe is connected with Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
It is recorded in the History of Song Dynasty and the Records of Rivers and Channels that "the production of Jiang Cao, Huaihe River, Huguang, Zhejiang and Southeast China is millions of meters, all of which are precious and countless." Going to Xishan to lose millet from the capital, it is urgent to carry it to Hebei, and it is also inside and outside. "Except for a few years, the annual grain transportation in the Northern Song Dynasty was maintained at 6 million stones, of which 4 million stones were supplied to the imperial army and their families, and the other 2 million stones were supplied to the soldiers and craftsmen in Tokyo. As a national strategic reserve, they were supplied to the ordinary people in Tokyo together with the grain directly managed by businessmen.
In addition to food, other important materials are also transported from all parts of the country to Tokyo economically and conveniently through the canal.
Apart from food, housing for hundreds of thousands of people is also a big problem, but fortunately, Zhou Shizong has left a brand-new city for Dasong. According to "Uruguay of the Fifth Congress", in the post-Zhou Shizong period, "the capital is old, the system has not been restored, the garrison camps are more or less narrow, and there is nowhere to build the Baisiban ... It is suggested that our company build Luocheng around the capital, first set up a sign ... in it, wait for officials to celebrate painting, and set up military camps, streets, warehouses and public hospitals. Service, that is, let the people build ",Bianzhou City in the Tang Dynasty was planned and built on a large scale. Later, until the eighth year of Xining, Song Shenzong (1075), Tokyo City was not built, repaired or expanded.
According to Song Hui, "It is forbidden to go to the capital in the Song Dynasty, but the place is guarded and the territory is defended. So I chose to face each other in Zhu Shuanglong (a well-drained highland), "connecting the military camps with higher potential in the city." After Song Taizong unified the whole country, soldiers from Nantang, wuyue and Beihan and soldiers selected from local areas were transferred to Tokyo, and the number of imperial troops increased dramatically, so there was no place for the inner and outer cities, so some military camps were set up outside the city.
Public security, fire control, picketing and epidemic prevention: the capital guarded by the imperial army
In order to manage millions of people, especially the imperial guards and their families, the rulers in the early Song Dynasty set up a comprehensive urban management institution-"Xiang", and the military attache in the imperial army was responsible for this matter. "Xiang" began in the Five Dynasties. When the armies of various regimes entered the cities, different defense zones were formed. Later, the Song Dynasty adopted the township as the basic unit of urban management, forming a "township-square" secondary urban management structure.
According to Song Yao Hui, in the first year of Daodao (995), "the name of the square inside and outside the capital was changed, in the old city (that is, the inner city), with 20 sides in the left first compartment, 16 sides in the second compartment, eight sides in the right first compartment, and two sides in the second compartment; Within the new city (i.e. the outer city), there are nine lanes in the east, twenty lanes in the west, twenty lanes in the south and twenty lanes in the north. Later, due to the rapid increase of population, three lanes of JD.COM, Jingxi, Jingbei and Jingnan were established outside the new town.
Besides Tokyo, there are carriages in major cities in China, such as Bingzhou, Qiantang and Wenzhou. After the Southern Song Dynasty, there were many compartments. As a comprehensive management institution of a city, automobiles can only be established in cities with a certain population. It should be noted that the carriage is managed by the imperial army and has no direct relationship with the carriage.
"Township" undertakes many social functions, the most important of which is to maintain public order and fire control in the city. For example, it is recorded in the Long Edition of Continuing Education as a Mirror: In February of the fifth year of Yuanfeng, "Kaifu said that there were a large number of people who took the sin in the left and right compartments and were locked in a narrow mouth".
Another example is the Collection of Manuscripts of the Song Dynasty, which records: "In June of the second year of Dazhong Xiangfu (1009), Beijingers were ordered to leave a fire, and they had to wait for the inspection to rescue them, so that their houses were burned down and shillings were opened to the government. In the future, if they left a fire, the soldiers who explored the fire went to report for inspection and rescued the robot when painting, but they didn't arrive for inspection, they would be saved by the inspection of their cars first." Du Jing Inspection Bureau is the superior of Automobile Inspection Bureau. After the fire broke out, Du Jingjian had to arrive at the scene and ordered the fire to start, which delayed the best rescue time, so it was later stipulated that the vehicle inspector could take the opportunity to put out the fire first.
In Tokyo, there are many institutions in every carriage-military patrol shops. According to the "Tokyo Dream Record", "there are 300 patrol shops in Longfang Lane, and there are five soldiers in the shop, who are responsible for the night patrol; There is also a brick watchtower in the high place. There are people looking forward to it upstairs, there are several government offices below, and there are more than 100 garrisons. " In addition, township officials are also responsible for distributing social relief funds, preventing and controlling public epidemics, assisting water conservancy management, maintaining scientific research order, picketing counterfeit and shoddy goods, and investigating registered population.
In order to deal with such complicated public affairs, in addition to the imperial soldiers, there are also civil servants in each carriage, such as reasons, carriage codes, streets, officials and scribes. "Li" is responsible for bills such as house deed and tax deed, as well as official debates of past businesses; "Xiang Dian" is responsible for the citation and interpretation of legal provisions related to litigation; "Jiezi" is responsible for maintaining street order and measuring boundaries; The "executive" is responsible for supervising shops in all walks of life; The "book hand" is responsible for handling some chores.
It is precisely because there are too many civil affairs that military attache is difficult to deal with. Therefore, in the fourth year of Tianxi (1020), the court began to divide the military compartments between the clerk and the judge (the clerk was in charge of the court affairs), and strengthened the management of the civil servants in the compartment.
Bow and crossbow, Qiang Bing of science and technology: the peak of the cold weapon era
Weapons production in the Song Dynasty was mainly carried out through official workshops. The weapons workshops in the Northern Song Dynasty were divided into two systems: the imperial court and the outer court according to the different supply objects.
The craftsmen used in the Imperial Palace, such as Sabre Bureau, Saddle House and Imperial Palace Life Museum, are all experts selected from the workshops of the Imperial Palace. The weapons made are not only supplied to the palace and awarded to courtiers, but also distributed to the palace as legal weapons.
The foreign DPRK mainly undertakes the task of weapons manufacturing in Beijing and other places. Among them, the east and west workshops "make weapons, weapons, flags, oil clothes, rattan paint and utensils", and the east and west are widely equipped with gunpowder and firearms. Bow and crossbow academy "makes bows, armor, weapons, flags, swords and stirrups", and crossbows make arrows.
At the beginning of the Northern Song Dynasty, there were 79,365,438+0 military schools and craftsmen in Dongxifang, but after the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty, the number decreased to about 5,000, while Wanquanfang had nearly 4,000, and the crossbow yard and crossbow yard also had more than 1000.
Because the sixteen states were never recaptured, the Song Dynasty lost the excellent horse farm in the north, so the quantity and quality of cavalry could not compete with the Liao army in the battle. For highly mobile cavalry, crossbowman is the best means of suppression. With the development of handicraft industry and technological progress, the performance of Bitang crossbow has been greatly improved, not only the loading speed has been greatly improved, but also it can be launched at a place five feet away from the enemy (1.5 meters), and various kinds of multi-person crossbows have appeared, greatly expanding the range of the crossbow. Among them, the most representative is bow and crossbow.
The magic pen bow was invented in Zongshen era. According to the History of Song Dynasty, when Song Shenzong saw that it could shoot more than 240 steps (note: 1 step =1.536m), it was half a shot into the elm, that is, it could shoot into the hard elm at a distance of more than 370 meters, so he was "good at reading" at that time.
It is also recorded in Yuhai, and Song Huizong praised him for "shooting far away to attack hard and going forward bravely". Since its establishment, Shenbi Bow has made great achievements. In the first year of Jingkang (1 126), Jinbing besieged Tokyo. At that time, Li Gang, assistant minister of the Ministry of War, led the broad masses of soldiers and civilians, and stopped the nomads from invading by means of arm bows and bed crossbows. Even Jin Jun, the general of 8 Jin Army, is very afraid of the strength of the arm bow.
Because of this, Song Jun has strict restrictions on the use of this artifact, and only "the first step of the military crossbowman" is qualified to "learn the arm bow"; Moreover, the damage and loss of the bow will be severely punished by exile.
Song Jun's bed crossbow is another killer weapon. Unlike the arm crossbow, it needs only one person to operate it, and it often needs several people to cooperate to operate it.
A * * * in the general introduction of martial arts classics records seven kinds of crossbows, most of which even require 70 people to operate at the same time. Therefore, Mao, a poet in the Song Dynasty, commented in Wu Bei Zhi: "Although fighting and crossbows are the strongest, they consume a lot of people, so they can be defended without fighting."
Usually, large bed crossbows are used to defend cities. The battle of defending Tokyo started, and when nomadic people attacked the city, the three bows (bed crossbows) "hit three people at a time"; Small bed crossbows are also deployed with the army. For example, in "Wulin Master", it is recorded that Song Taizong designed a flat, brave and all-round array, and it is recorded that "every time a chariot is punished, 22 soldiers ... six people hold a crossbow", and only three people need to operate it.
Arrogance and extravagance: the northern song dynasty, which was in chaos.
The demographic dividend of more than 100 million in the Song Dynasty enabled the country not to lack strong soldiers and commanders, nor to lack new military scientific and technological inventions. However, since the founding of the People's Republic of Song Taizu, the national policy of "emphasizing literature and restraining military force" has directly led to the suppression of military commanders by civilian officials, and important military command has fallen into the hands of civilian officials and even eunuchs. The Emperor of the Song Dynasty hoped that talented military commanders would put pleasure first, which would inevitably lead to top-down corruption in the army.
With the acquiescence of the imperial court, the military commanders in the Song Dynasty lived like landlords. When Song Taizu "released the military power with a glass of wine", he advised Shi Shouxin and other founding generals: "Why not release the military power, choose a good farmland house, and make a career for future generations." So after that, Shi Shouxin "specialized in amassing wealth and amassing huge sums of money". In "Friends' Talk", Shangguan Rong talked about another founding hero, Mi Xin, and lamented that he "camped in the suburbs and built a house in the house, counting the days by the months, so it was called a thousand miles".
In the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, according to the Records of the History of the Song Dynasty and the Draft of Yao Ji, the military commander Zhang Jun "collected six million stones a year", which was equivalent to the fiscal revenue of the richest Shaoxing government at that time. After Zhang Jun's death, his descendants donated the real estate in Zhou Zhen and Xuyi on Huaidong Road to the imperial court, with a total area of over 37,000 mu. As a member of the hawks, Han Shizhong was also "endowed with farmland and private fertile land with an annual income of tens of thousands of stones".
In the Song Dynasty, military commanders not only sat on the ground to collect rent, but also managed commercial activities such as restaurants and even used their soldiers to do private work. For example, "Zhao Qing Gong Xianji" records that during the period, Shaanxi banned soldiers "during which there were hundreds of craftsmen, musicians, group embroidery, calligraphy and painting, cleverness, etc., mostly generals, second officials, or five or seven hundred people, or more than a thousand people." In addition, military commanders also eat empty salaries by falsely reporting quotas.
According to "Song Yaohui", "If there is no one, there is a so-called virtual coupon; There are people who are untrue, and there are so-called liars. And the officers in charge of the army or peers with the military academy are private. "
The military expenditure brought by this kind of "false certificate" and "false name" has also caused a great burden to the country. In the second year of Song Renzong Baoyuan (1039), Fu Bi, the prime minister, couldn't help sighing: "From wealth to the world, ten have supported the army, and the army can be said to be too much, and the money can be said to be exhausted!"
Although the senior generals in the Song Dynasty were well paid, they could annex land and run other businesses, but most of the soldiers at the bottom could only maintain their own food and clothing. According to the record in the Complete Music, "Count all the gifts you receive, and you won't be hungry if you have a wife and children." Therefore, the low-level petty officers also started a small business to survive.
Su Shunqin, a poet in the Song Dynasty, once wrote: "I wandered in the dusty city all day long, taking exquisite workmanship and embroidery as my profession, taking clothes as a tool, not being a soldier, and learning to become a habit, arrogant and extravagant." ("Su Wen Ji")
Some people pay people to serve in the army instead of themselves because they make money by running other businesses. Ouyang Xiu pointed out this phenomenon in "The Original Disadvantages": "The guards stay in the house, don't hold their quilts, but make people hold them; Soldiers are forbidden to send meals, not to pay, but to hire people to pay. "
It is conceivable how lax the military discipline was at that time, so the watchtower and the city gate without soldiers appeared in the riverside map of Qingming Festival, but after the army patrolled a pile of barrels next to Sundian, three naked imperial soldiers appeared. They should have just finished drinking and were about to transport the wine back to the barracks.
Success is a soldier, so is failure.
The strategy of "emphasizing literature and restraining martial arts" in the Song Dynasty achieved a highly developed era of culture, and also relieved the actual threat of soldiers to the imperial court since the Tang Dynasty.
In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, soldiers from all directions gathered in the capital Tokyo. These soldiers and their families constitute the population base of Tokyo's development. In order to supply a large population, materials from all over the country gathered in Tokyo through the canal system, which made Tokyo's commodity economy prosperous. In order to manage cities with hundreds of thousands of people, new urban management institutions and systems have also been established.
Soldiers who have lost the right to speak cannot rise to fame on the battlefield, so they indulge in the glitz of the market.
Corruption within the army is shocking, and most senior generals have accumulated a lot of wealth through the prosperity of commodity economy and the preferential policies of the imperial court. The majority of junior noncommissioned officers either become coolies of senior military commanders or live on the streets. The army is busy making money every day, but military training is not serious.
On the surface, the million-strong imperial army can be described as a mighty and majestic division, but its actual combat effectiveness has been seriously weakened.
The Emperor of the Song Dynasty knew this very well, which explained why he couldn't wait to make peace with the other side after winning the victory of foreign troops, and kept the peace by paying tribute to the neighboring minority regimes.
In the long run, at the last moment of life and death, even if the soldiers are determined to kill the enemy, they will already be unable to return to heaven and defend the land of Dasong.