The Battle of Taiyuan, the last tragedy of the Northern Song Dynasty’s resistance to the Jin Dynasty

The Battle of Taiyuan, the last tragedy of the Northern Song Dynasty's resistance to the Jin Dynasty

The story background of "Man Jiang Hong" is set at the beginning of the Southern Song Dynasty, and the filming location of this film was chosen in Visit the ancient city of Jinyang in Taiyuan. If we look back at history, Taiyuan and the entire Shanxi region at that time had already been included in the Jin realm. However, quite coincidentally, in the depressing and shameful history of the Jin era when it destroyed the Northern Song Dynasty, it was Taiyuan’s military and civilians who fought with the Jin alone. The army's performance of fighting to the death delayed the decline of the Northern Song Dynasty.

Trapped by the dilemma of lack of food and grass inside and no reinforcements outside, Taiyuan, which held on for nine months, finally fell in the autumn of the first year of Jingkang. However, compared with being frightened by the powerful enemy in the north, Taiyuan fell. In the end, the two emperors of Huiqin and Taiyuan, who only knew how to plunder the wealth of the people to please the invaders, and the bloody spirit of Taiyuan to defend the homeland will forever write a rich and colorful chapter in Chinese history.

The commander-in-chief fled and was ordered to do so in danger

In 1125 AD, the Liao Dynasty, which was originally adjacent to the Northern Song Dynasty, was destroyed by the rising Jurchen regime Jin. During the change of dynasties between Liao and Jin Dynasties, the monarchs and ministers of the Northern Song Dynasty actively participated in it, trying to join forces with the military forces under the leadership of the Wanyan family to carve up the territory of the Liao Dynasty. They could also take advantage of the situation to take back the Yanyun hometown ceded by Shi Jingtang.

However, the irony is that the army of the Northern Song Dynasty was not ready to join hands with the Jin Dynasty to destroy the Liao Dynasty. Tong Guan, the commander-in-chief of the Northern Song Dynasty’s expedition to the Liao Dynasty, had just gathered his troops, but he missed the opportunity to suppress the Fangla Uprising in the south. The Jin had the opportunity to attack the Liao Kingdom. After Tong Guan had solved the problem of "fire in the backyard", he dragged his army towards Yanjing City, hoping to wipe out all the remnants of the Liao Dynasty that had lost its fate. As a result, the Song army of the Northern Expedition not only failed to capture Yanjing quickly, but was easily defeated by the remaining forces of the Liao Dynasty in Baigou. When fleeing south through the border of Xiongzhou, the Song army was even intercepted and killed by the Liao people, and was in a state of embarrassment.

The poor performance of Tong Guan's imperial army stimulated the desire of the Jin Dynasty's top brass to expand their victory. Therefore, shortly after the Jin Dynasty destroyed the Liao Dynasty, the Jin Dynasty invited Tong Guan to negotiate as a pretense to let Nianhan and Oo Li and Li had to divide their forces into two groups and march southward, heading straight into the heart of the Northern Song Dynasty. Among them, tens of thousands of left army troops led by Jin general Nianhan (i.e. Wanyan Zonghan) set out from today's Datong area in Shanxi and raided Shanxi. Nianhan's early march was quite smooth, and the Song army was invincible in the areas he passed. Even Nianhan himself was surprised that the "Southern Dynasty" did not use high mountains that were easy to defend and difficult to attack to stop him.

Nianhan's army soon approached Taiyuan. As a popular figure in front of the emperor and "the great hero of the conquest of Yanyun", Tong Guan was in Taiyuan, but his heart had already flown back to Tokyo, because he had completely lost confidence in the previous battle with the Liao army. At this time, the Jin army threatened How could I resist the remnant power of the Liao Dynasty? Therefore, Tong Guan ignored the ridicule and obstruction of Taiyuan magistrate Zhang Xiaochun and insisted on running away. The burden of defending the city fell on the shoulders of Taiyuan magistrate Zhang Xiaochun and Wang Zhen, the commander of the Xuanfu Division who followed Tong Guan.

As the Xuanfu envoy to Hedong and the prefect of Taiyuan, Zhang Xiaochun belongs to the civil service system and is not familiar with the military. Now that Taiwei Tong Guan has abandoned the city and the Jin army is besieging the isolated city with heavy troops, he will naturally bring troops from the central military system. Wang Zhen, the commander of the Xuanfu Division, regarded him as his only savior. In the face of a powerful enemy, Wang Zhen did not give in. Instead, he resolutely led his three thousand soldiers and devoted themselves to intense defense work.

Victory in the first battle, but the undercurrent is surging

Except for the city wall, Taiyuan lacks available defensive barriers. Historically, local rulers in Shanxi mostly chose to use the Taihang Mountains or the mountains in northern Saibei to build defensive positions to "defend the enemy from outside Shanxi." Even during the Anti-Japanese War, the Kuomintang would still choose to build defensive positions at Xinkou and Niangziguan. Such Shanxi's peripheral passes invested heavy troops to block the enemy, rather than placing the focus of defense inside and outside the Taiyuan city wall. Because they all know that Taiyuan City cannot be defended alone.

This truth may not be clear to Nianhan and Wang Zhen, but Nianhan underestimated the determination of the Song army to defend Taiyuan City. At this time, he could have surrounded Taiyuan City with heavy troops while going south to plunder the Yellow River. Bei's wealth is looking for opportunities to join forces with another Jin general who will not lead him, and form a pincer attack on Kaifeng, Tokyo.

However, Nianhan felt that he had rarely lost a battle since he started the army with Jin Taizu. Now he was trapped in the isolated city of Taiyuan and could not live with his face. Therefore, he decided to build various siege machines to cover the infantry and forcibly attack the city.

Facing the menacing Nianhan army, Wang Zhen also took the initiative to assume the important task of command. While he recruited the young and middle-aged men in Taiyuan City to cooperate with the defense, he also paid close attention to the enemy's movements. When Nianhan's siege equipment approached the city wall, he ordered his men to throw the lasso binding the boulder out of the opponent's machine and then pull it down with force. The Jin army used wooden chariots "covered with rawhide and wrapped with iron leaves" to withstand the rain of arrows from the Song army, carrying bundles of firewood to the city walls, trying to fill in the trenches and reduce obstacles for subsequent attacking troops.

Unexpectedly, Wang Zhen had already taken precautions. He ordered people to dig a tunnel leading to the trench, then filled it with water, and floated lights into the trench. In this way, the firewood thrown by the Jin army into the trench was instantly destroyed. It was lit, and the unburned firewood was also submerged in the water. The Jin people worked hard for a long time, but still could not break through the city defense. Seeing that both moves failed, Nianhan ordered his men to use trebuchets to throw boulders as big as buckets in an attempt to destroy the city wall. However, Wang Zhen sent people to plug the gap in time with cloth bags filled with chaff to prevent further damage to the city defenses. After the Jin army's offensive weakened, Wang Zhen ignored his physical exhaustion and commanded the death squads to leave the city to counterattack the Jin army's positions with a sword, which greatly boosted the morale of the Song army.

The Jin people had many tactics to attack the city, but Wang Zhen and his men could always find ways to exploit them. What we have listed by no means covers the whole story of the war. Even these are the results of future generations' reference to the Taiyuan prefecture at that time. Only the family letter written by Zhang Xiaochun to his son Zhang Hao became known (for details, see Li Huarui's "Review of the Deeds of Wang Zhen, a Famous General in the Northern Song Dynasty's Anti-Jin Dynasty"). From this we can see the intensity of the offensive and defensive battles in Taiyuan.

Defend in the front, cede the rear

The war in Taiyuan is in a stalemate, and the Onlibuzhi Right Route Army starting from Baozhou has arrived at Tokyo City in advance. Although the Jin army led by Ao Libu failed to capture Bianjing quickly, it maintained military pressure on the city and even defeated a night attack by nearly 10,000 elite northwest Song troops led by Yao Pingzhong. However, Nianhan's delay in coming to meet him still made him feel like a thorn in his back.

Seeing that the Song army was gathering more and more to support the Kaifeng battlefield, Yili was not worried that his unit would be in the embarrassing situation of being surrounded by the enemy, so he secretly arranged a retreat. At the same time, he used the previous failure of the Song army to rob the camp. They made a big fuss and asked the Song Dynasty monarchs and ministers to contribute a large amount of gold and silver and cede land to compensate for their "losses". Among the ceded lands was Taiyuan City, which Nianhan had been unable to capture for a long time. At this time, Song Qinzong in Kaifeng City had long been frightened out of his mind by the Jin people's blackmail. Li Gang, who had commanded the city defense, was also dismissed by them. When he got the Jin people's conditions for ceding land, he immediately agreed.

Olibu sent someone to inform Nianhan of the news and asked him to convey the Song court's order to cede territory. However, Wang Zhen did not believe that this was the intention of the court at all, and suspected that it was a trick of the Jin people, so he sternly refused.

Wang Zhen resolutely defended the city, but Zhang Xiaochun, a civil servant, was pessimistic because he had been waiting for reinforcements from the imperial court for a long time. Now, combined with his many years of experience as an official, he is more inclined to believe that the cession of Taiyuan was a matter for the imperial court. original intention. As a result, Zhang Xiaochun "meeted with the Supervisors one day to plan and surrender to the enemy." That is to say, Zhang Xiaochun took the opportunity of eating to summon his colleagues in the Supervisory Department, and went behind Wang Zhen's back to study how to "surrender to the Jin people without losing dignity" in the future.

However, there is no airtight wall in the world. Wang Zhen quickly noticed Zhang Xiaochun’s unusual movements and threatened those who dared to surrender, and he was able to temporarily frighten the city. capitulation faction. At this time, undercurrents surged in the seemingly united Taiyuan City. After Ori refused to retreat, Nianhan knew that his strategy of attacking Kaifeng had failed, so he had to retreat to the north. But with Nianhan gone, the Jin army's siege of Taiyuan was still not lifted, but was handed over to his subordinate Yin Keshu. .

Almost at the same time, Song Qin Zongfang learned that Taiyuan had not yet been lost, so he denied the previous cession of territory under the persuasion of ministers. In order to gain the initiative in the future war against the Jin Dynasty, the Song Dynasty sent the northwest frontier defense forces led by Zhong Shizhong and Yao Gu to the aid of Shanxi. As a result, Yao Gu was defeated and Zhong Shi died in the battle. After that, the Song court appointed Li Gang to organize reinforcements.

However, Li Gang lacked confidence in conducting field battles with the Jin army. "Since Chen Shusheng does not know how to fight, he is afraid that he will be incompetent and interfere with state affairs" (Volume 54 of "Xu Zi Zhi Tong Jian Chang Bian Supplement"). Later, he saw that he could not prevaricate, so he had to Even though he took command to help, his attitude was still negative and he stayed in Huaizhou, which was thousands of miles away.

During this period, the food shortage in Taiyuan City became more and more serious, and human tragedies of cannibalism of relatives continued to occur. "Nine out of ten soldiers and civilians in the city died of starvation." In order to further isolate Taiyuan, Nianhan's troops looted the southern Shanxi area, causing a large number of refugees to cross the river into Henan.

The Fall of Taiyuan

The fear of the Jin people going south continued to spread. In the same year that Nianhan returned to the north, Jin Ting launched another invasion of the Northern Song Dynasty. This time, the Taiyuan soldiers and civilians still refused to surrender, but they themselves also lost the basic physical strength required for resistance due to long-term lack of food. In September of the first year of Jingkang, the Jin people climbed to Taiyuan City, "as if they were walking on flat ground." When Wang Zhen learned that the city wall had been breached, he gathered the remaining troops and tried to engage in street fighting with the Jin people, but it was difficult to save the overall situation of the city's fall.

Seeing that there were more and more enemies around him, Wang Zhen was unwilling to be humiliated and committed suicide by jumping into Fenshui with Song Taizong's "Jade Face" in mind. Ironically, when the Song Dynasty destroyed the Northern Han Dynasty, it was Emperor Taizong of the Song Dynasty who was resentful that Taiyuan was difficult to conquer and ordered all the houses in the city to be burned down. Later, floods flooded the city, bringing disaster to this historic city.

Compared to Wang Zhen who would rather die than surrender, Zhang Xiaochun chose to surrender because the fall of the city had become a fait accompli. After entering the city, Nianhan massacred the city without saying a word, and forced Zhang Xiaochun to identify Wang Zhen's body, then cursed and stabbed his body with knives and halberds until the flesh was bloody, to cover up the embarrassment of being held back in Taiyuan for nine months.

After the fall of Taiyuan, Kaifeng, Tokyo, completely lost the only fortress to contain the Jin people from going south, and had to face an enemy with twice the strength alone. A few months later, Kaifeng was lost, and the Northern Song Dynasty, which had lasted for more than a hundred years, collapsed. When Mr. Wang Guowei, a modern scholar, collected relevant information about Wang Zhen's defense of the city, combined with the historical facts at that time, he couldn't help but sigh - "Since Hedong fell, Bianjing cannot be defended. However, the situation of Jingkang, so those who can support it for one year will be officially extended." It's also". The defense of Taiyuan also became the last strength of the Northern Song Dynasty to resist the Jin Dynasty.