Chapter 30 Chapter 30 The Idiot Generals of the Tang, Song and Yuan Dynasties

In history, there are heroes and idiots. Without idiots, the greatness of heroes cannot be set off, but with idiots, the efforts of heroes are likely to be ruined. The prosperous Tang Dynasty, the Great Song Dynasty, and the Great Yuan Dynasty were all famous dynasties at one time, and established immortal feats, but at their critical moments, there were always mistakes, and there were always incompetent idiots, who appeared at the key to determine the fate of history period.To make a piece of history requires the blood of countless heroes, but to ruin a piece of history, sometimes an idiot is enough.

So in this chapter, we deliberately selected some idiots who played a disservice during the critical period of Tang, Song, Yuan and Three Dynasties.Laughing at them is not the purpose, think a little deeper about the reason, what reason, pushed them to a position that does not belong to them, and who gave them the power to corrupt history.On the battlefield of gold and iron horses, they kept writing embarrassing strokes with their unique clown roles. [Xianyu Zhongtong (Tang Dynasty)] Personally, I feel a little embarrassed to include Xianyu Zhongtong as an idiot general. To be honest, he is indeed an idiot, but it is really reluctant to count him as a general.It's not because his level is not enough, but because his ability is really limited.

Xianyu Zhongtong, named Xiang, was born in Yuyang County, and was born in Xinzheng (now southeastern Sichuan).Speaking of which, Xianyu Zhongtong himself had no predestined relationship with leading troops to fight. His family is a local rich man in Sichuan.However, Xianyu Zhongtong has a specialization in reading, and he didn't learn the ability to save the world and help the people, and he didn't know anything about leading soldiers to fight in war, but he learned a lot of flattering skills from the full volume of books, and quickly put them into use.As early as when Concubine Yang's elder brother Yang Guozhong was impoverished in Sichuan, Xianyu Zhongtong believed that he was a "rare product" and often supported him. Therefore, he rose steadily and finally became the Jiannan Jiedu envoy who holds the military and political power in Sichuan.There is nothing wrong with such a thing. In the officialdom, no one has the means to gain profits, but fighting a war is really not a joke. In addition, Xianyu Zhongtong's character is too bad. The people were destitute, and cruel officials were appointed to oppress neighboring Nanzhao and other countries.As a result, Zhang Xutuo, a ruthless official he trusted, raped the Nanzhao princess, which completely broke down the decades-long friendly relationship between Nanzhao and the Tang Dynasty, and caused a catastrophe.

In the tenth year of Tianbao, in order to avenge Zhang Xutuo's humiliation of his wife, Nanzhao sent troops to attack Tang Dynasty, and Zhang Xutuo, who had raped Nanzhao Princess, was chopped into eight pieces.As a result, it also opened the prelude to Xianyu Zhongtong, the general of the border town, a series of idiot-style military commands.After the war started, Xianyu Zhongtong was eager to grab the merits and led 80,000 elite soldiers into the territory of Nanzhao. Not to mention, the mighty momentum of the Tang army really frightened Nanzhao at the beginning. Xianyu Zhongtong quickly forced Xier River, Nanzhao King Ge Luofeng hurriedly sent envoys to seek peace, and repeatedly stated that as long as the Tang Dynasty could withdraw its troops, Nanzhao was willing to accept all the conditions of the Tang Dynasty.In fact, at this point in the matter, the Tang Dynasty has already stepped down, not to mention that the biggest opponent of the Tang Dynasty at this time is Tubo, and the existence of Nanzhao can be used as a barrier against Tubo.However, the short-sighted Xianyu Zhongtong flatly rejected Nanzhao's request for peace.In order to protect itself, Nanzhao had no choice but to fight with its back. The Tang Dynasty lost its best chance of not fighting the subdued soldiers, but the 80,000 Tang army had a great chance of winning.However, Xianyu Zhongtong immediately took another bad move: he rejected the general's suggestion of steady progress, and sent a large army around the back of Cangshan Mountain, trying to perform a good show of attacking and annihilating the powerful enemy back and forth. The idea was good, but it was too bad It's practical.To the west of the Tang army, the Tubo frontier army was watching. At this critical moment, Nanzhao could not have thought of asking Tubo for help.But Xianyu Zhongtong has a pig's brain, and he just turns a blind eye to the threat from Tubo.As it turns out, the Tang Dynasty sent a large army to attack Cangshan Mountain, but it happened to expose the side of the army to the Tibetans. The overwhelming victory quickly turned into a rout, 60,000 Tang troops were killed, and the corpses were piled up in the valley. Xianyu Zhongtong wanted to attack the enemy back and forth, but in the end he was attacked back and forth.The hateful thing is that the entire Tang army was wiped out, but only the incompetent commander Xianyu Zhongtong escaped.Under the protection of Yang Guozhong, he not only escaped the punishment of defeat, but was transferred as Jing Zhaoyin at the same level.However, a few years later, he offended the backstage Yang Guozhong because of a trivial matter, and was finally demoted. The villain became a villain in vain, but his fate was not too bad, because he died on the eve of the Anshi Rebellion. no eyes.

Xianyu Zhongtong has fought this battle all his life, saying that he is an idiot, and the reason is naturally not limited to this.As a general of Bianzhen, he was greedy by nature, he only knew how to extort money to cater to the powerful, but he didn't have the strategic vision that a general should have. The friend pushed the enemy into the arms of Tubo.What's more terrible is that the defeat of the Xi'er River caused the Tang Dynasty to lose almost all the elite soldiers in Sichuan, which greatly weakened Sichuan's defense capabilities.Nanzhao resolutely took refuge in Tubo, and cooperated with Tubo to harm the border of the Tang Dynasty year after year, bringing endless disasters to the people of Sichuan, and its disasters continued until the mid-Tang Dynasty.Such a villain with low moral character was reused and promoted just because he took refuge in Yang Guozhong. The political environment is so bad, even if there is no Anshi Rebellion, the end of the golden age of Tang Dynasty may only be a matter of time.

[Fan Yong (Song Dynasty)] French Emperor Napoleon once had a famous saying: "Don't do what your enemy expects you to do, because your enemy expects you to do it." Fan Yong in defense must be Yuan Hao's favorite enemy general.In the process of Xixia rising from weak to strong in Hexi, Fan Yong can do whatever Yuan Hao wants Fan Yong to do, he is really more obedient than Yuan Hao's own son. Speaking of it, from the point of view of character, Fan Yong is a real gentleman. He is an honest official, diligent in political affairs, and has a 100% image of a good cadre.What is even more valuable is that he has an upright character and dared to uphold his principles in front of the emperor. For example, in the farce of "Tianshu Fengchan" in the Northern Song Dynasty, he insisted on the truth and resolutely opposed the emperor's "feudal superstition", and finally saved the country from wasting money and people.Moreover, he is also very upright, good at selecting and recommending talents, and has a good reputation in the court of the Northern Song Dynasty.But a good character is a good character, but Fan Yong is a layman in war, coupled with the stubbornness unique to literati, he made repeated foolish tricks in the Song and Xia wars, and finally ruined his reputation for half his life.Speaking of it, Fan Yong's defeat can only be regarded as a tragedy of the system of civil servants leading troops in the Northern Song Dynasty.

The time when Fan Yong guarded the western border coincided with the crucial period when Wang Yuanhao of Xixia finally broke out of the cocoon after two generations of dormant cultivation.As a result, when Fan Yong was the magistrate of Yanzhou, Yuan Hao finally raised his flag to stand on his own, opened the curtain of the Song-Xia War, and chose the Yanzhou guarded by Fan Yong as the primary target of the attack.Since the Song Dynasty guarded this line of defense very strictly, Yuan Hao first wrote to Fan Yong, proposing to go to the Song Dynasty to negotiate a peace. up.Then, Yuan Hao dispatched a large number of subordinates to pretend to surrender to Fan Yong. According to the opinions of Fan Yong's generals, it is unknown whether the intention of these party troops to surrender is true or not. Even if they accept their surrender, they should be relocated to other places. I really wanted to "Huairen Quartet", but instead placed these surrendered soldiers around Jinmingzhai, an important military site in Yanzhou.So far, Fan Yong's first two steps of response have all fallen into Yuan Hao's trap.As a result, one night, Yuan Hao fired a cannon, and the party members who pretended to surrender rose out. They cooperated with Yuan Hao's army and attacked Jinming Village first.Facing the critical situation, Fan Yong made another foolish move. Even though Yuan Hao was not rushing to attack Yanzhou, and his intention to encircle and rescue Yanzhou was extremely obvious, he still sent someone to send a letter to urge the surrounding Song army to come to help.As a result, Yuan Hao set up an ambush in Haoshuichuan, and all the tens of thousands of Song troops who came to aid made dumplings.The Battle of Haoshuichuan was the first large-scale annihilation battle of Xixia against the Song Dynasty, and it was also the beginning of Xixia's transformation from a tribe subject to the Song Dynasty to a "sovereign country".If Xixia fails in this battle, the Xixia Empire, which will traverse the Hexi Corridor in the future, may only be an empty dream.

And it was Fan Yong's series of stupid responses in the Battle of Haoshuichuan that made Yuan Hao perfect. In front of Yuan Hao's unsophisticated deception methods, he was like an obedient 3-year-old child, making concessions time and time again. What Yuan Hao was happy about, showed the heroic spirit of a literati "who will go to hell if I don't go to hell", bravely jumped into the trap again and again, and finally made tens of thousands of Song soldiers a delicious meal in Yuan Hao's pocket.The reason for this is that on the one hand, Fan Yong is a man of no plans and is indeed not a talent for commanding troops. On the other hand, it is precisely because of his good character that he always has the idea of ​​"convincing others with virtue" in his head, but he does not know that war is life and death. Games are by no means the rigid morality in books.Such pedantry, I am afraid that only Song Xianggong in the Spring and Autumn Period can compare with it, and this is precisely the tragedy of many civil servants in the Northern Song Dynasty.Fortunately, there were still some sensible people in the Song army. Under the dangerous situation of Yanzhou being besieged, several groups of Song army stormed the rear of Xixia, and finally rescued Yanzhou safely, and Fan Yong lost his life.However, the expansion and rise of Xixia has become an irreversible trend with the victory of the Haoshuichuan Battle. After the Chanyuan Alliance, the Northern Song Dynasty court, which had been peaceful for a few days, was once again dragged into a protracted war.In retrospect, Fan Yong, who commanded incompetently in the first battle of Haoshuichuan, could hardly be blamed.

However, Fan Yong, who was incompetent in leading troops, still did an inconspicuous good deed in the days of guarding the western front. It was this good deed that finally changed the passive battle situation of the Northern Song Dynasty against Xixia.When he first arrived in Yanzhou, there was a soldier who violated the military law and deserved to die, but Fan Yong made an exception and pardoned him because he cherished this soldier as a hot-blooded hero.Many years later, it was this little soldier who led the army to repeatedly inflict heavy losses on the Xixia iron cavalry on the battlefield, and became the most feared God of War in the Song Dynasty by the Xixia army. He was the famous Di Qing.

[Fan Wenhu (Southern Song Dynasty, Yuan Dynasty)] It is not uncommon for a defeated general to harm one dynasty, but to harm two dynasties is the rarest of rares. Fan Wenhu, a general from Song Dynasty to Yuan Dynasty, is just such a rare product.Kublai Khan, the Yuan Taizu who swept the world, would never have dreamed that this high-ranking general of the Southern Song Dynasty who rebelled on the front line was actually a good-for-nothing. The last years of the Southern Song Dynasty was an era of government corruption. The military generals of the Southern Song Dynasty were naturally good and bad. Some were loyal but incompetent, and some were capable but morally corrupt. General Fan takes the second place, no one dares to take the number one place, it's really Wenhu, who will compete with the villains in the world.

As a general in command of the Southern Song Dynasty, Fan Wenhu's background was very hard, and the father-in-law was exactly the traitor Jia Sidao who caused the Southern Song Dynasty to become a mess.The so-called upper beam is not straight and the lower beam is crooked.From the very beginning of the Song-Mongol War, Fan Wenhu has repeatedly shown his true nature in front of the Mongolian army.In the battle for Xiangfan in 1269 AD, General Fan led the main naval force of the Southern Song Dynasty to assist Xiangfan. Fleeing wildly, leaving tens of thousands of troops to be slaughtered by the Mongols.Fortunately, he was protected by his father-in-law. Not only was General Fan not "accounted for", but he was promoted to a higher rank.Two years later, during the battle for Xiangfan, Fan Wenhu was jealous of the commanding power of the famous general Li Tingzhi, and even boasted to his father-in-law that he could wipe out the Mongols by leading the army alone.It is a good thing to have ideals, but don’t brag if you are not capable. With the support of the father-in-law, General Fan marched into Xiangyang independently. The good-for-nothing kind.Sure enough, Fan Wenhu's army fought against the famous general of the Yuan Dynasty, Ashu, in the rapids, and they collapsed at the first touch.More than 100 officers and tens of thousands of officers and soldiers in the Song Dynasty were captured by the Mongols.Two months later, Fan Wenhu ran into Ashu again at Lumen. This time he didn't even have the guts to fight, and ran away overnight. Hundreds of excellent warships and tens of thousands of officers and soldiers became the spoils of the Mongols again. Four years later, the Mongolian soldiers forced Anqing, and Fan Wenhu, who was guarding Anqing, was so frightened that his legs became weak that he didn't even have the courage to escape. For the sake of the Mongols, the Mongols readily accepted Fan Wenhu's surrender and ordered him to be the vanguard in destroying the Song Dynasty.Not to mention, after the rebellion, Fan Wenhu was really majestic for a while. He was incapable of fighting the Mongols, but he turned his gun to fight the Song Dynasty, but he was like a "tiger" out of the cage. He took the lead in capturing Lin'an and captured the Queen Mother of the Song Dynasty. So far, Master Fan, who has been a long-legged general for so many years, has finally passed the addiction of "swallowing a thousand li like a tiger". After the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty treated this "meritorious official" who destroyed the Song Dynasty more politely, and General Fan was indeed the one who would do things, so he got mixed up in the post of Shangshu Youcheng within a few years.If life goes on like this, Fan Wenhu will probably be able to leave a reputation as a "famous minister of the Yuan Dynasty" in the history books. Unfortunately, the good times don't last long. The two famous water warfare generals Shi Tianze and Zhang Hongfan passed away one after another, so General Fan, who was also a water warfare general, had no choice but to rush the ducks to the shelves.It is said that Japan was really not strong at that time and could not be compared with the Central Plains regime. Kublai Khan also gave Fan Wenhu enough trust and 100,000 sailors, a total of more than 3,500 warships, and went straight to the East.But it turns out that an idiot is an idiot after all.Not long after Fan Wenhu's army arrived in Japan, they caught up with the typhoon.Although natural disasters are inevitable, General Fan's response to the typhoon was extremely dull, and he watched thousands of warships being ravaged by the storm at sea.However, although the Yuan army suffered huge losses, its strength still remained, and it was not that it was impossible to fight. The morale of the Yuan army generals was even higher, and they called for battle one after another, expressing that they would fight with their backs and fight the enemy to the death. General Fan was very happy to praise the soldiers With their courageous spirit, they jumped on a warship and ran back to the country in a blink of an eye, throwing tens of thousands of troops on the Japanese island.As a result, the leaderless Yuan army quickly collapsed under the counterattack of the Japanese army, and tens of thousands of troops became Japanese prisoners.This unexpected victory made the Japanese ecstatic, and they all attributed the cause of victory to the "Kamikaze", but to be honest, even if there was no typhoon, it would be difficult for the Japanese to lose in the face of such a long-legged general. What is even more unbelievable is that Fan Wenhu, who was defeated in the war, concealed the truth of his defeat under the protection of Mongolian officials. He was not tracked down until a year later.From this point of view, General Fan's ability to fight in the military is really not covered.In 1301 A.D., Fan Wenhu, who had enjoyed all the wealth and honor, died of illness at home as the prime minister. What he left to history is his countless foolish battlefield performances and his reputation as a long-legged general.And the Yuan Dynasty, which reused such incompetent rats, was doomed to not last long since the founding of the country. [Also first Timur (Yuan Dynasty)] Just listening to this name makes people feel domineering enough. The first two characters are "Yexian". He was an outstanding battlefield leader in the peak era of Mongolian Wara, and once staged a good show of capturing the emperor of the Ming Dynasty alive.The latter "Timerlane" was the Baisheng emperor who defeated the invincible opponents in Central Asia in the 15th century.Combining the names of the two elites on the battlefield and using them as your own name, what kind of outstanding person should such a "strong alliance" man be? The answer is: one is a fool on the battlefield. Also first Timur, a famous official at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, his elder brother was Tuotuo, a famous official at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.Speaking of which, the two brothers were rare and famous ministers of the ruling class in the late Yuan Dynasty.During the period when his elder brother Tuotuo was prime minister, he did a lot of good deeds by purging the imperial court, respecting Confucianism and Confucianism, and compiling the history of the Song Dynasty. It also ushered in a period of relative political clarity for the Yuan Empire in the last days.It's not bad for the younger brother to also Timur first. He, who has been monitoring the censor for a long time, has helped his elder brother a lot by rectifying the administration of officials and cracking down on corrupt officials.However, the Yuan Empire at that time, in the backlog of ethnic and social conflicts, had long been like an inflated powder keg, which might explode at any time.Finally, thousands of river workers revolted in Yingzhou because they could not bear the oppression of the river officials in the Yuan Dynasty. "The stone man with one eye provoked rebellion across the Yellow River", which ignited the vigorous fire of the peasant war at the end of the Yuan Dynasty. When the war broke out, the Yuan Dynasty government was caught off guard. The local army of the Yuan Dynasty, which had been fighting for a long time, collapsed under the attack of the rebel army. The uprising in Yingzhou soon turned into an anti-violence struggle that swept across the country.Most of Henan, Shandong, and northern Jiangsu became the sphere of influence of the rebel army.Several troops sent by the Yuan Dynasty to suppress were wiped out by the rebel army one after another. Now that the matter has come to this point, Tuotuo has the courage of a great statesman.The idea is indeed not bad, but the choice is the wrong person.Ye Xiantie Mu'er logically became the commander-in-chief of the suppression of the chaos, the governor of the elite troops of the Yuan Empire, and rushed to the Central Plains in a mighty manner.Although it is true that the brother who fights the tiger is right, but the key problem is that the brother must have the ability to fight the tiger.First of all, Tie Mu'er has done a good job in anti-corruption work, and killing the enemy is not his strong point. The battle started in Henan, and Tie Mu'er had good luck first. The vanguard general Gong Buban beside him was a ruthless character who could fight.Unexpectedly, the peasant army launched a decapitation operation at night, killed Gong Buban, and was so frightened that he ran against the wood first, and retreated dozens of miles one after another, even giving up the hard-earned city.If the Yuan Dynasty government is defeated and changes generals, the loss is estimated to be small, but Tuotuo bet his treasure on his younger brother like a gamble, and sent hundreds of thousands of troops to reinforce him. The elite troops have almost tied the safety of the Yuan Empire to one body.But after that, the funniest scene in the history of war happened. The Generalissimo, who shouldered the heavy responsibility of countering the rebellion, was afraid of the last failure, so he led his troops to Shahe and dared not leave.If you don't go, don't go, maybe you can still stop and find a good strategy to defeat the enemy, but I didn't see any specific actions of "planning strategies" by this general. Instead, he started "feudal superstition" in his tent every day. "Activities, asking God for divination all day long, pinning the hope of victory or defeat on the instructions of the "God".For a whole month, the 300,000 Mongolian troops did not fight, retreat, or leave. They watched the commander burn incense and worship Buddha and dance to the gods all day long, and started the most ironic "sit-in war" in the history of Chinese warfare.In this way, the soldiers were exhausted and morale was low. The instructions of the "gods" did not wait, and the rebel army took action first.One night, the rebel army carried out a night attack, which was probably a tentative attack, and the 300,000 yuan army blew up the battalion on the spot.First, Mu'er was a fool, thinking that there was a military coup, he pulled his horse and fled without saying a word, running faster than Fan Wenhu, the long-legged general of the Southern Song Dynasty. The 300,000 yuan army went inside without knowing it, trampling and attacking each other, and by dawn, there was no one left.In the end, Tie Mu'er only brought back 10,000 remnants, and a late-night bombing of the camp reimbursed 290,000 troops. This is indeed a miracle in the history of Chinese warfare.Such "heheqigong" was "created" by Ye Xiantie Mu'er, an extraordinary general. After the defeat, although Tie Mu'er escaped punishment under the protection of his brother Tuotuo, the Yuan government suffered a lot.The 300,000 troops lost by Mu'er are also the most elite troops directly under the Central Committee of the Yuan Dynasty, including the "Ace Army" such as the Aso Army, which can be called the thickest old team. lose money.Since then, although Timur's elder brother Tuotuo personally went out to suppress the rebel army and won successive battles, he had to rely heavily on the private army of the Mongolian nobles and the Central Plains landlord regiment to train their armed forces. The central government of the Yuan Dynasty has gradually been emptied up.After Tuotuo was unjustly killed by the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, the local forces of the Yuan Dynasty, which lost the control of the powerful officials of the central government, joined forces to stand on their own.The funny thing is that when Zhu Yuanzhang launched his Northern Expedition, the local warlords in the Yuan Dynasty were still fighting each other endlessly, which directly led to the ending of the Ming Dynasty's bloodless capture of Yuan Dadu.Speaking of it, the defeat of the Yuan Dynasty was the beginning of the strange battle of the Battle of Shahe.As for Tie Muer first, he was exiled to Yunnan with his elder brother after Tuotuo was framed and dismissed from office. His descendants are probably still singing folk songs in the lakes and mountains somewhere in southern Yunnan today.