Chapter 12 Fan Zhongyan

Fan Zhongyan (989-1052) was written in Greek.Wu County (now Jiangsu) people.He is a famous official and a famous writer, but few people know that he is also a famous general.When he was in Renzong, he was an official to participate in political affairs, which was equivalent to a deputy prime minister.He dared to remonstrate directly with Yan Yan, and actively participated in the innovation movement of "Qingli New Deal", so he was relegated many times. In the first year of Baoyuan (1038), the Dangxiang people who originally lived in Ganzhou and Liangzhou (now Zhangye and Wuwei, Gansu) suddenly established another Xixia Kingdom, proclaimed themselves emperor, and mobilized 100,000 troops to invade Yanzhou (now Shaanxi) in the Song Dynasty. near Yan'an) and other places.Due to the fact that there was no war for more than 30 years, the frontier defenses of the Song Dynasty were not repaired, the soldiers had not fought, and the Song general Fan Yong was incompetent, most of the hundreds of miles of border villages in the north of Yanzhou were looted or taken away by the Xixia army.Renzong sent Xia Song and Han Qi to replace Fan Yong, and appointed Fan Zhongyan as the deputy envoy of Shaanxi economic strategy to appease and recruit, and went to the northwest to fight against the enemy.Fan Zhongyan fully demonstrated his military talents, and the Xixia people were very afraid of him, calling him "Little Fan Laozi" and "Longtu Laozi" (Fan Zhongyan was a direct bachelor of Longtu Pavilion at the time), and said that he "has a hundred thousand armored soldiers in his chest".After several years of fighting, Xixia finally surrendered to the Song Dynasty in the second year of Qingli (1042).

When Fan Zhongyan was guarding the border, he once wrote several poems "The Pride of the Fisherman", all of which started with "Cai Xia Qiu Lai", and there is one existing poem: With a generous and desolate style of writing, he sweeps away the aura of beauty and beauty in the poetry circle in the early Song Dynasty, and expresses the scenery of the frontier fortress and the hardships of the soldiers. He also has a song "Su Mu Zhe", which is unique in writing homesickness and travel sorrow: