Chapter 25 Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin

The main dynasties in Chinese history are different, but Zhao Song is the most prominent.Strange to say, although the lords of entrepreneurship in various dynasties seized the country by military force, only Zhao Kuangyin was a professional soldier.Others, such as Han Gaozu was the pavilion chief, Tang Gaozu and Sui Wendi were nobles, Yuan Taizu and Qing Taizu were leaders of ethnic minorities, and Ming Taizu was a farmer. Their political backgrounds were the first to establish the empire.Only Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin started his career with military merits, that is, he was still an active senior general on the day he founded the dynasty.

Therefore, we can see from the "History of the Song Dynasty" that Zhao Kuangyin was lucky to build ships, observe the manufacture of warships, observe water rocks, inspect artillery vehicles, inspect and practice water warfare, and personally teach medical officials to depose those who are not good at their skills.He himself is also highly skilled in martial arts. He is a top-notch expert in horseback riding and archery. Since he is an emperor, he can't show that he is superior in both intelligence and virtue.But Zhao Kuangyin does not cover affairs with abstract ideas.His concept of being a sage king can be brought out to show real people and facts, and he can be regarded as the one who can tell the truth among the emperors of all generations.He asked Shi Shouxin and others to hand over their military power. He once said: "Life is like a white horse passing by, so those who love wealth and honor just want to accumulate money for themselves and entertain themselves so that their children and grandchildren will not be poor. Why don't you let go of your military power and go out to guard the great feudal clan? Choose a good land, a house, and a market, and establish a permanent and immovable business for your descendants. Buy more singers and dancers, drink and enjoy each other day and night, and live forever. , Isn’t it good?” Because of his straightforwardness, Song Taizu did not use the tricks of Han Gaozu and Ming Taizu to massacre heroes.The chiefs of the small courts conquered by him during the unification period were also given preferential treatment, and there was no suspicion of killing in previous dynasties. It is said that he himself had made a "vow" not to kill ministers and speech officers. On the one hand, it is also due to his self-confidence.

Zhao Kuangyin was ordered by his mother, Du Shi, to pass on to his younger brother Zhao Guangyi (Taizong), and there were no conspiracies around him because of inheritance issues throughout his life.Although this kind of record could not be maintained in Zhao Guangyi's dynasty, after all, there were fewer disputes among palaces in the Song Dynasty than in other dynasties.During these 319 years (including the Northern Song Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty from 960 to 1279 AD), there were also incidents where the queen mother was in power, but it did not constitute a female problem, and there was no eunuch dictatorship in the Song Dynasty.

Complimenting or criticizing individuals is not the purpose of this book.Besides, Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin was not as vicious as an ordinary emperor, nor was he perfect.He was often drunk, and once the horse he was riding fell to the ground, he got up and stabbed the horse to kill him.Another time when it rained when he held an open-air banquet, he became very angry, which made many officials panic. It can be seen that he also has a rough character, and he is also impulsive and sometimes unable to control himself.It's just that the Zhao and Song dynasties did not use the politics of terror as the basis of their imperial career for a long time.Although this cannot have nothing to do with Zhao Kuangyin's personal character, it is still due to the historical situation.Over the past three hundred years, China has had certain national goals, and the imperial court has become a competitive institution.Under these conditions, the situation is obvious, and there is no need for a lot of pretentiousness, so its government is more enlightened than other dynasties.

In 960 A.D., Zhao Kuangyin was ordered by Emperor Gong of the Later Zhou Dynasty to crusade against Khitan. He went to Chenqiaoyi, less than a day away from Kaifeng, and was promoted as emperor by his subordinates wearing a yellow robe.This situation is similar to that of the Western Roman Empire, and it has also been seen in China during the Five Dynasties.Even the Later Zhou Dynasty itself was born under this circumstance. Emperor Gong Guo Zongchuan was a seven-year-old child. Because of the coup in 960 and the establishment of the Northern Song Dynasty, there was no resistance. The miracle of a major dynastic birth through bloodshed.

After the expeditionary army returned to the capital, Song Taizu gave up his plan to conquer Khitan, and this plan was also put on hold for life.He resumed the war between Kaifeng and the Taiyuan (Northern Han) axis in his later years, but it was also stopped because of the stubborn resistance of the other side. During his seventeen years in power, he focused on using military power to flatten the independent or semi-independent countries in the south.Consciously, he completed a "big historical" task: in the first half of the second millennium AD, the majority ethnic groups in southern China had a long and large-scale struggle with the ethnic minorities in the north, and both sides had to make long-term struggles. Prepare.Because of Zhao Kuangyin's long-term plan, the Northern Song Dynasty became the sixth short dynasty instead of the five dynasties.But Zhao Kuangyin did not completely forget the stubborn enemy in the north.He once told Zhao Pu that if he wanted to restore Youyan Sixteen Prefectures one day, he would fortify the Gubeikou area in the northern mountains.This plan was not implemented until four hundred years later under the guidance of Zhu Yuanzhang.

The countries that Zhao Kuangyin destroyed included Jingnan (Hubei), Hunan (now Hunan), Shu (Sichuan and part of Shaanxi), Southern Han (Guangdong and Guangxi) and Southern Tang (Jiangsu, Jiangxi and part of Anhui).Wuyue (one part of Zhejiang and Fujian) controlled by Qian Yao only paid tribute, and Qian also agreed with him to visit him in Kaifeng "once in three years", but its territory has not yet entered the rule of the Song Dynasty. Tingzhang is still in Huawai, and it will not be able to sweep south of the Yangtze River until Taizong's reign in the Northern Song Dynasty.

After Zhao Kuangyin completed his partial unification, he sent officials to spend the land of the people everywhere, but he never ordered the redistribution of the land among the people.He also ordered "equal taxation", but generally speaking, he still followed the system of the Five Dynasties, and only made partial adjustments, without large-scale reorganization.He has no conscription system, which is the only one seen in all dynasties.The military service of the country under his rule was also avoided as far as possible from the civilians, and was served by the "Xiang Army" (see below).The entrepreneurs of the Song Dynasty used milder punishments than those of the previous dynasties, but they did not pretend to be sympathetic to the corruption of officials.However, he also said that "the salary is not fresh, and it is not fair to be responsible."So he raised the salaries of all staff at all levels.The official salary of the Song Dynasty was also higher than that of other dynasties.He set up a national reserve army, which was used as a closed pile storehouse.He once said: "When the five million coins are over, you should redeem Yanji from Khitan." He also said to the left and right: "I will buy a Khitan head with twenty-four silk. Its elite soldiers are only 100,000 and only two hundred Ten thousand pieces of silk, and the enemy is gone." Very few Chinese monarchs would admit such frank self-interest, and Zhao Kuangyin clearly knew the great power of the national economy.His silk accumulation plan once inspired the sixth emperor Shenzong Zhao Suo.About a hundred years later, Shenzong wrote a self-made poem on the treasury: "Five seasons lost pictures, like Kong Chi, the ancestors of art made the country, thinking about punishing AI, setting up the inner mansion, recruiting scholars for the foundation, and protecting the great-grandson, Dare to forget Juezhi?" The above thirty-two characters, with each character as the name of a library.After the thirty-two warehouses were full, another twenty warehouses were established.But neither his ancestors nor his great-grandchildren saw that economic power can be turned into military power, but there are various principles of organizational structure in it, not just two million pieces of silk, but one hundred thousand elite soldiers of the opponent.This topic is related to the history of the entire Song Dynasty, and should be analyzed in the following sections.

The Song Dynasty claimed to be centralized.In Zhao Kuangyin's approach, the first emphasis was on the military system and finance.In terms of armaments, the central government controls the "Forbidden Army", the town soldiers in the states are called "Xiang Army";This method is also inherited from the "Yajun" system of the Five Dynasties.The central government often transfers its strong soldiers to the states and towns, and eliminates the old and the weak.At first, the "sample soldiers" were used to call all the prefectures to select troops to go to the palace, and later they replaced them with wooden poles. The prefectures and towns had the responsibility to recruit and train according to their stature.Although the imperial army is the central army, it is dispatched and stationed in various places on time, and the flow is endless.In terms of finance, the revenue of each locality is also divided into three departments: "Shanggong", "Sending Envoys", and "Liuzhou". "Shi" is a transshipment envoy, whose duty is to transport property from various places to the center.When the dynasty was first established and when the countries in the south of the Yangtze River were conquered at various stages, these resources were transported to Bianjing with all their strength, so that the warehouse was overflowing.Just like the "Song History" "Shihuo Zhi" said: "So foreign power began to be cut, and the profits belonged to the public."The government of the Northern Song Dynasty also inherited the system of the Five Dynasties, with the Privy Council in charge of military affairs, and the three divisions (Yantie, Ministry of Households, and Duzhi) in charge of finances, each of which is the most important official office in the central government.He also used literature to know the prefecture’s military, and broke the habit of local chiefs dispatching county-level officials since the end of the Tang Dynasty, and re-appointed prefecture and county officials. indeed regularized.

All of the above facilities have a tendency to stimulate the national economy.The income of the Song Dynasty in commercial aspects, such as tea, fan, salt and wine, exceeded that of previous generations.The government minted a large amount of money again. The expansion of money started at the time of Taizu, and then increased to five million coins a year. The sum of six years of casting.As a result, the mineral production of the Song Dynasty also broke the previous record.Kaifeng was the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, and Lin'an (Hangzhou) was the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty. They focused on the convenience of water and land transportation. In this regard, they did not take into account the needs of military and national defense. Chang'an or Luoyang, due to Zhao Guangyi's opposition).

The above is not different from the general history books.What does this have to do with "big history"? From a long-distance point of view, after the Second Empire was conceived by the Northern Wei Dynasty, the Sui Dynasty and the early Tang Dynasty inherited the interstitial organization and system, which made this flat society develop and grow.After the mid-Tang Dynasty, the improvement in quality made the various regions uneven, and the complexity of the situation exceeded the summation of the mediocre system of the early Tang Dynasty.Before and after the Anlushan rebellion, the Li and Tang dynasties attempted to regain control of the situation through various methods, such as the "Guohu policy", using recruits to create ten defense zones, cutting down feudal towns, setting up the Shence Army, and using eunuchs as supervisors. It has only partial effects, contrary to its bureaucratic system and the spirit of founding the country, and the two-tax system has only one order, which promotes differentiation. This will only cause the collapse of the Tang Dynasty and the emergence of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms was a situation of division. In a word, it can also be called warlord separatism.However, the military pays attention to reality and manages the yards in a step-by-step manner. Although it will increase the tax revenue, it will be presided over in the spirit of decentralization. According to the situation in various places, it can also form a relationship between the government and the people.There is also a set of decrees left over from the Tang Dynasty, so although Zhao Kuangyin was a warrior but able to control himself, he also got a virtuous prime minister like Zhao Pu, and established the purpose of first securing the interior and then fighting the outside world, so that a divided empire can be reunited. close together.Its emphasis on military technology and financial organization has also become the consistent style of the Northern Song Dynasty. However, when everything was going smoothly and the unification was completed according to plan, the Zhao and Song Dynasty also ambush some future difficulties for themselves in advance.Replacing decentralization with centralization, and returning to the bureaucratic system, cut off a natural connection between the governor and the governed in each region, and the difference in the range of numbers in various places is even greater, making it even more difficult technically master.As mentioned above, China has developed an economic system and society dominated by water transportation in the south and a system and society dominated by animal husbandry in the north.The former is overconfident in its own advantages in appearance and numbers, and has not imagined that the long-term historical confrontation between the two may be determined by the differences in time and organizational tenacity.Moreover, the length of the supply line also has a great impact on the entry and exit of the battlefield. These factors cannot be seen thoroughly by the parties involved at a glance, and even after hundreds of years, historians who sorted out the original historical materials still have not seen clearly.On the day of Zhao Kuangyin's death in 976 AD, even according to the traditional standpoint of "concluding the coffin", he was considered a very successful figure.Paying attention to career success is also the purpose of Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin's life.He once displayed the portraits of famous generals of past dynasties in the two corridors of Wuchengwang Temple, and instructed on the spot that only those who "have always had flawless achievements" should be entitled to enjoy them.Because of this, 23 people including Ban Chao and Qin Shubao were promoted; 22 people including Zhang Fei and Guan Yu were dismissed, and Guan Zhong made a special statue to enshrine.This is also completely contrary to the traditional habit of always humming "died before leaving the teacher, which will make the hero burst into tears", and indulging in a tragic mood can be regarded as a knowledgeable attitude.It's just that personal biographies can be finalized, but history cannot be finalized, and there is no dynasty with flawless achievements.After Taizu's entrepreneurship, the history of the Song Dynasty left many specious phenomena: a country headed by soldiers, paid attention to national defense from the beginning, and focused on military affairs, which was not as good as any other major dynasties.Its private economy also has prominent phenomena, but it cannot grasp this advantage.It tries to pay attention to reality and not be blinded by abstract ideas, and in the past three hundred and nineteen years under its leadership, most of the outstanding people produced have been philosophers.The "scholar" first appeared as an official title, and it became an object of ridicule since the Song Dynasty.How do we explain these contradictions? The following sections shall present our preliminary insights.However, even from the above phenomena, it can also be asserted that there is a limit to its ability to explain Chinese history with a short-distance and short-sighted perspective.