Chapter 44 Chapter 12 The Battle of Song and Jin Quarrying

In the 12th century, the Jurchen tribe in my country rose up in the northeast and established the Jin Dynasty.The power of the Jin Dynasty continued to expand southward, and the Northern Song Dynasty was destroyed in 1127 AD.In the same year, Zhao Gou proclaimed himself emperor, and his capital was Lin'an (now Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province), which was called the Southern Song Dynasty in history.The Southern Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty formed a situation of confrontation between the North and the South.The social development and culture of the Jurchen people are backward compared with the Han people, but the military power of the Jin Dynasty is stronger than that of the Southern Song Dynasty, so the Jurchen nobles have always wanted to destroy the Southern Song Dynasty and rule the whole of China.

In the 19th year of Shaoxing, Emperor Gaozong of the Southern Song Dynasty (AD 1149), civil strife broke out in the Jin Dynasty. Hailing King Wan Yanliang murdered Jin Xizong and became emperor himself.Wan Yanliang is cruel, vicious, licentious and tyrannical, and ambitious.After he came to power, he wanted to continue to wage wars and destroy the Southern Song Dynasty to consolidate his dominance. In September of the 31st year of Shaoxing (AD 1161), Wan Yanliang forced the people of all ethnic groups to conscript and form an army of 600,000 people, known as a million, and divided his troops into four directions to attack the Song Dynasty.His plan is to cross the Huaihe River in the east and go straight to Lin'an.This road is flat and is the main route for the Jin army to attack, led by Wan Yanliang himself.The central route is Caizhou to attack Xiangyang, and the west route is Shaanxi Fengxiang to attack Dasan Pass.The other way is the navy, which goes straight to Lin'an from the sea.Before sending out troops, Wan Yanliang feasted all the ministers and yelled arrogantly: The Southern Song Dynasty will be wiped out within a hundred days at most!

Wan Yanliang overestimated his own strength and underestimated the strength of the soldiers and civilians of the Southern Song Dynasty.Just before and after he sent troops to the south to commit crimes, Wei Sheng and Wang Youzhi, the rebel leaders of the Southern Song Dynasty, raised troops to recover Haizhou (now Xinhailian City, Jiangsu Province), Yizhou (now Linyi County, Shandong Province) and Daming (now Hebei Province) that had been occupied for a long time. South of Daming County in the province).The resistance struggles of the rebels in various places effectively disrupted the rear of the Jin army and dispersed the strength of the Jin army.Within the Golden Army, since the day Wan Yanliang dispatched troops, more than 20,000 people deserted on the way.What's more serious is that some Jurchen aristocrats took advantage of Wanyan Liang's opportunity to lead the army to the south, launched a coup to abolish his emperor title, and supported Wanyan Yong as the new emperor (later Jin Shizong).But Wan Yanliang, who was walking on the road to the south invasion, was still in the dark.

Besides, in the Southern Song Dynasty, when Wan Yanliang was about to make a big move southward, Song Gaozong still lived his life of pleasure as usual, "when will the singing and dancing in the West Lake rest", and he was still fantasizing about making peace with Jin.But the Jin court did not buy his account, and refused the entry of envoys from the Southern Song Dynasty seeking peace.After being insulted, Song Gaozong had to issue an edict of resistance in a pretentious manner. At the beginning of October, the Jin army approached the north bank of the Huaihe River, and the Song and Jin armies faced each other across the river. The Southern Song Dynasty was facing a very severe situation.Han Shizhong, the famous general in the Southern Song Dynasty, died long ago, and Liu Qi and Wu Lin were also old and seriously ill.Wang Quan, the capital commander (senior military officer) who was in charge of Huaixi's defense, was a man who was greedy for money, sex, life and death.Liu Kai ordered him to lead the army to fight, but he cried with the concubines, and loaded the soft furniture into the official ship, ready to escape at any time.Liu Kai ordered him to be stationed in Shouchun (now Shouxian County, Anhui Province) several times, but he repeatedly delayed; later, he had no choice but to send the army to Luzhou (now Hefei City, Anhui Province), which was far from the front line of the Huaihe River.The Jin army rushed to cross the Huaihe River, and the royal power gave up Luzhou and Hezhou (now Hexian County, Anhui Province) successively, and retreated to quarrying after crossing the river.Jin Bing followed and chased, and in less than half a month, he entered the north bank of the Yangtze River from the north bank of the Huaihe River.The veteran Liu Kai is in charge of Huaidong's defense.Due to the containment of Huaixi, he received an order to retreat to the Yangtze River. He first used boats to ferry the people from Jiangbei to Jiangnan, then withdrew from Huaiyin and Yangzhou, and finally retreated to Jingkou (now Zhenjiang City, Jiangsu Province) to deploy defenses.