Chapter 15 14. The Battle of Henan in the Wei and Song Dynasties

The purpose of the Southern Expedition of the Northern Wei Dynasty was not to destroy the Song State.The Rouran Kingdom in the north was in the reign of the fourth Khan, Da Tan, who called himself "Mou Han Hesheng Gai Khan" (meaning "winning" in Xianbei language), with great ambitions, always thinking about invading the Northern Wei Dynasty.Tuoba Si once taught him a lesson in the first year of Shenrui (AD 414), but due to the heavy snowfall, he could not continue to pursue northward and failed to eliminate the main force of Rouran.In order to beware of the powerful enemy Rouran behind him, Tuoba Si didn't want to stretch the battle line too long. His wishful thinking was to collect all the Huaibei land and rule the Huaihe River with the Southern Dynasty.

The Song Dynasty was a different scene.The newly enthroned little emperor Liu Yifu is only seventeen years old, and has not yet formed a clear concept of the emperor's responsibilities and obligations (compared to the northern prince Tuoba Tao who started to focus on training at the age of fifteen, Later, he ascended the throne at the age of sixteen and became a generation of British lords. In this regard, we have to admit that the children of nomads are precocious and wise, and they are far more energetic than those emperors and grandchildren of the Southern Dynasty).Just like to play, he didn't understand etiquette during his father's funeral, he didn't care about wars or disturbances outside the palace, he was only interested in the royal garden, surrounded by flattering little eunuchs, what's wrong with this government Well done.Fortunately, there are four old ministers left by Liu Yu in charge of various major affairs, so that there will be no confusion, but there has been a gap between the monarch and his ministers.

From east to west, the four strongholds of the Song Dynasty along the river are Fengfen (now southwest of Chiping, Shandong), Huatai, Hulao and Luoyang.When the Northern Wei Dynasty sent troops, there were two kinds of strategic opinions inside.One kind of opinion thinks that the city should be attacked first, and the other thinks that the land should be conquered first.The military generals headed by Xi Jin felt that they could take down the city first before they could gradually control the land of Henan.Cui Hao disagreed. He said: "The southerners are good at defending the city. When Fu Jian attacked Xiangyang, it took a year to defeat him. Now we have a large army pressing the border and attacking small towns. If we are blocked, our army will be greatly defeated; If the enemy sends reinforcements at this time, the enemy will be weak and we will be exhausted, and that will be dangerous. I think it is better to divide the troops and attack all the way to the north of the Huai River, and arrange small guards in various places to collect rent. As soon as Luoyang, Huatai, and Hulao are all in the north of our army, it is difficult to get reinforcements from the south. They must retreat eastward along the Yellow River, otherwise they will become things in our pocket, and we are afraid that we will not be able to attack them. Come down?" This strategy is quite correct. The strength of the Northern Dynasties is cavalry, and the cavalry is used to attack the city. If it is long, it will be short, and it is in the hands of the Southern Dynasties, who are dominated by infantry; the terrain in the Huanghuai area is mainly plains. It is the place where the cavalry plays its role. First use the cavalry to divide and surround the Song army in an isolated city, and then use the infantry to slowly digest it. This is the most efficient way of fighting.It's a pity that most Xianbei generals didn't listen to Cui Hao's tricks, so Tuoba Si decided to attack Song's cities first.

The Song army had a heavy army in Hulao, guarded by Mao Dezu, the governor of Sizhou, and Wang Jingdu, the prefect of Dongjun, was stationed on the sliding platform to the east, with a small number of troops.After Xi Jin, the governor of the Northern Wei Dynasty, led 20,000 infantry and cavalry across the Yellow River, he set up camp in the east of Huatai.The situation on the skating platform was tight, so Wang Jingdu hurriedly asked Mao Dezu for help, and Mao Dezu immediately sent 3,000 cavalry to reinforce the skating platform. Xi Jin attacked the sliding platform by force, but as Cui Hao said, he couldn't beat it, so he asked Tuoba Si for more troops in desperation.Tuoba Si was furious, and said in his heart: "I gave you 20,000 troops, but you can't beat a small town defended by thousands of Song soldiers." Many soldiers and horses went out of Tianguan, crossed Hengling, and supported Xi Jin.

The stimulated Xi Jin had to do his best to slide down the stage. After all, there were so many people, Wei Jun spent a lot of effort to take down this small town, and Wang Jingdu had no choice but to escape.Xi Jin took advantage of the victory to capture the small town tulou between the sliding platform and Hulao, and approached Hulao.Mao Dezu had a lot of experience in defending the city, and the Wei army was defeated repeatedly. Tuobasi saw that the tiger prison could not be taken down for a while, so he sent Li Teng, a fierce general, with 3,000 cavalry to station in Heyang (northwest of Mengxian County, Henan Province), to attack Jinyong and Luoyang in the south of the river.Yu Lizhen was already a well-known general in the Northern Wei Dynasty when Tuobagui proclaimed himself emperor. He was good at wielding a black spear, and his martial arts skills were superb.During Liu Yu's Northern Expedition to the post-Qin period, he respected and feared Yu Lidun who was stationed by the Yellow River, and wrote a letter himself to borrow a lesson from the Northern Wei Dynasty.When Tuoba Si heard the news, he praised him very much and named him "General Black Spear".

Yu Lifeng is a person who is good at fighting tough battles.Although Luoyang was the old capital of the Jin Dynasty, due to successive years of wars, the people lost their homes and were dilapidated.Song Guoshou general and Henan prefect Wang Juanzhi could only be stationed in Jinyong City in the northwest.This is the westernmost fortress on the Song Dynasty's river defense chain. It is far away from the ruling center, and it does not receive strong support, so it is relatively weak.Mao Dezu reluctantly sent Dou Huang to lead some troops along the south bank of the Yellow River to block the Wei army. How could he resist? As soon as Yu Lifeng's soldiers crossed the river, Dou Huang and others were washed away; and when they attacked south, Wang Juanzhi abandoned the city Fleeing, the Northern Wei Dynasty quickly occupied Luoyang.

In this way, Song State had lost two of the four major strongholds on the south bank of the Yellow River, the tiger prison on the western front was in jeopardy, and the defense on the eastern front was also exposed to the Wei army.Tuoba Si sent Eqing, Lu Dafei, together with Zhou Ji, Shu Sunjian and others to lead various ministries across the Yellow River from the lower reaches of the Yellow River, and attacked Fufen. Xu Yan, the governor of Yanzhou in Song Dynasty, fled without a fight, and the Wei army drove straight in. Taishan, Gaoping (now Shandong Zoucheng area) and other places fell one after another.Shu Sunjian then went east to Qingzhou and conquered Linzi (now northeast of Zibo, Shandong) and other places.The seat of the Song Dynasty in Qingzhou was Dongyang City (now Qingzhou, Shandong). Zhu Kui, the governor of Qingzhou, arranged for the people to move into the mountains and forests, fortified the walls and cleared the fields, and at the same time issued an emergency document to the court.

At this time, Tan Daoji, the general of the Song Dynasty, was also conscripting various military forces, stationed in Nanyanzhou (now the north bank of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu), and another general, Wang Zhongde, the governor of Xuzhou, stationed troops in Hulu (now southeast of Yutai, Shandong).The situation was not good, so Tan Daoji had no choice but to lead the army in person, and went to the Eastern Front with Wang Zhongde.The battle on the western front was chaotic. Liu Yizhen, the king of Luling who was stationed in Shouyang (now Shouxian County, Anhui Province), asked his general Shen Shuli to lead 3,000 people to join Liu Cui, the governor of Yuzhou, and moved the camera.

The generals Xi Jin and Gongsun Biao of the Northern Wei Dynasty attacked Hulao in the west, and the fighting was very fierce.Tuoba Si had already moved to Yecheng at this time, and he also felt that Hulao was the key to victory on the western front, so he sent troops to support it.Mao Dezu saw that the enemy was strong and we were weak, so he ordered six tunnels seven feet deep to be dug from the city, all the way to the outside of the Wei army's encirclement. Raid behind Wei Jun.The Wei army was caught off guard and retreated in all directions. The Song army beheaded hundreds of them at once and burned many siege equipment.Mao Dezu's cunning trick yielded little success, but Wei's army numbered in the tens of thousands after all, and the fact that a few hundred died didn't have much impact, and they quickly gathered back like scattered flies.

Xi Jin worried that as time went on, it would be difficult for Hulao to get support from the south, so he led 3,000 infantry cavalry, bypassed Hulao, and captured Xuchang in the southeast in one fell swoop, cutting off Mao Dezu's retreat.Here, Mao Dezu saw that the Wei army divided his troops on his own, and thought that there was an opportunity to take advantage of it, so he took the initiative to attack and started a big battle with Gongsun Biao outside the city.The two armies fought from morning to night, killing each other. At this time, Xi Jin's cavalry came back from Xuchang and joined forces with Gongsun Biao to attack Mao Dezu, killing and wounding thousands of people.After this battle, Mao Dezu completely gave up the idea of ​​taking the initiative to attack, and retreated to the city to defend, thinking of other strategies.

He really thought of a clever plan: it turned out that Mao Dezu was from the north, and he had an old friend with Wei Jiang Gongsun Biao.He took the time between battles to communicate with Gongsun Biao, talking about friendship, and deliberately altered many places on the letter; on the other hand, he secretly sent spies to sneak into the Wei camp to expose Gongsun Biao's conspiracy with the Song army to Xi Jin.Gongsunbiao didn't care about personal relationships, and honestly handed over Mao Dezu's letter to Xi Jin. He originally wanted to show his innocence, but he never thought that Xi Jin was already wearing colored glasses, and those redacted places became suspicious points.Xi Jin asked his subordinates to bring letters and report the news to Tuoba Si. Tuoba Si was originally unhappy with Gongsun Biao, and the Taishi Ling Wang Liang who was around him happened to have a grudge with Gongsun Biao, and he kept saying that Gongsun Biao had improperly set up the army, so that the tiger prison could not be released for a long time.Tuobasi believed that Gongsun Biao knew foreign countries, so he sent people into Gongsun Biao's tent at night and hanged him to death. (Mao Dezu's plan is the same as Cao Cao's plan to separate Ma Chao and Han Sui back then, but although the plan achieved the goal of getting rid of Gongsun Biao, because Tuoba Si's handling method was secretive and appropriate, there was no division within the Wei army. disappointed.) The Northern Wei Dynasty continued to increase its troops in the direction of Hulao, and Qingzhou on the eastern front was also strong and determined to win.Shusun Jian surrounded Dongyang City with 30,000 cavalry, and there were only 1,500 people in the city.Zhu Kui is a very capable official. In addition to repairing fortifications, he repeatedly dispatched surprise troops to defeat the Wei army, and also dug tunnels in surprise attacks, destroying a large number of Wei army's siege vehicles.However, the Wei army had too much advantage, and they attacked day and night. The walls of Dongyang North City were destroyed in many places, and the number of soldiers in the city became less and less. When Tan Daoji's army reached Pengcheng, there were not many people. Facing the emergency situation in Hulao and Dongyang, he could only rescue one side. The two powers invaded each other. Finally, he decided to take light soldiers to Dongyang, where the road was near and the soldiers were weak. city. (Sorry, General Mao...) Shusun Jian under Dongyang City, facing a city defended by thousands of people, fought from the winter of the first year to the summer of the second year (AD 423).The weather is gradually getting hotter. Most of Wei's troops are Xianbei cavalry from Fortress. Where has such weather been seen before? The plague began to spread in the army, which could not be controlled.When Shusun Jian heard that the Song army's reinforcements were coming, he gritted his teeth and ordered to give up the attack, burned the camp equipment and retreated to the sliding platform.When Tan Daoji arrived in Dongyang, he had just run out of food and could not pursue him, but anyway, Dongyang City was saved. Hulao was not so lucky. Although Mao Dezu was very tenacious and repelled the attacking Wei army time and time again, there were too many Wei troops gathered from all directions, and the supplies in the city began to be scarce.The Song army hung ropes in the city to fetch water from the Yellow River.After Tuoba Si knew about it, he expected that the Song army was short of water, so he ordered the ships to be lined up by the Yellow River to prevent the enemy from taking water from the source of the Yellow River.In this way, the defenders in the city can only live on groundwater.Before the Wei army was finished, they dug tunnels to release the groundwater in the city, which was extremely ruthless. After Shusun Jian arrived at the sliding platform, he continued to march westward and attacked the tiger prison together with Xi Jin.So far, Hulao has been besieged for more than two hundred days, without fighting every day. Song soldiers died in battle, while Wei soldiers fought more and more.After the outer city was breached by the Wei soldiers, Mao Dezu rebuilt three city walls inside the city, and the Wei army broke through two more, leaving only one city wall.Mao Dezu vowed to live and die with Hulao City, resisting day and night externally, and comforting soldiers internally.The conditions for the soldiers were harsh, and many of them fell ill. Soldiers who were healthy could not sleep at night, their eyes were dry, and they were injured when they wiped them with their hands. However, no one wanted to escape or surrender. Mao Dezu, a northerner, struggled to support himself, but the southerners in the south didn't know what he was doing.Liu Cui, who was stationed in Xiangcheng, was the closest army to Hulao, but he was afraid of the strength of Wei's army and dared not attack.Shen Shuli, Tan Daoji and other troops were farther away, and they only guarded the city and did not move a step towards the tiger prison. Hulao City, which was running out of ammunition and food, was finally captured by the army of the Northern Wei Dynasty in April of the first year of Jingping (423 AD).Mao Dezu was captured and killed by the Northern Wei Dynasty.Only Fan Daoji successfully broke through with more than two hundred people and returned to the south.Si, Yan, Yu and other prefectures of the Song Dynasty basically fell into the hands of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and the only "win result" was to keep Qingzhou.Wei Guo took three important towns on the south bank of the Yellow River by storm (strictly speaking, only Hulao was a major battle), but also lost 30% of its troops due to war and plague.In a big battle, neither side could have the last laugh. If Tuoba Si followed Cui Hao's suggestion when sending out troops, how would history be rewritten?