The eleventh year of Emperor Gaozong's Shaoxing of the Song Dynasty was a crucial year in the history of relations between the Southern Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty. After fifteen years of fierce war, both the Song and Jin sides were exhausted, and both sides felt that they could not conquer each other by force and war, and began to enter the stage of peace negotiations. On the Jin side, jin Xizong was in the reign of Emperor Huanyan Hela, who was a moderate dove, and under his vigorous facilitation, the "Shaoxing Peace Talks" between Song and Jin began to proceed intensively.
As the mainstay of the main war faction, Yue Fei was extremely disgusted with the current situation of Song Jin's discussion and peace, and he insisted that using force to attack the Central Plains, recover lost land, welcome the Second Saint, and return to the old capital was what Emperor Gaozong of Song should do. Irreconcilable contradictions arose between kings and subjects because of war and grand plans. Emperor Gaozong of Song could not wait to make peace with Jin Guo, and The stubborn Yue Fei had become a huge obstacle to his peace talks. Emperor Gaozong of Song finally revealed his fierceness, and on December 29 of the eleventh year of Shaoxing, he gave Yue Fei death in the prison of Lin'an Province, causing thousands of ancient injustices.
In April of that year before Yue Fei was killed, he was still ignorant of the dangerous situation he faced, and he was still thinking about a strategy to destroy the Jin Kingdom. The practice of the Song-Jin war for more than ten years has confirmed that in addition to some units such as the Yue Family Army, the Southern Song Army had the strength to resist the Jin soldiers head-on, and on the whole, it did not have the conditions to encircle and annihilate the Jin Army on a large scale on the frontal battlefield and fully grasp the conditions to take the initiative. In order to realize the grand cause of returning the Second Saint and recovering the Central Plains, it is necessary to win by surprise.
After all, Yue Fei was an unborn genius, and he finally developed a brilliant plan to destroy the Golden Kingdom. The Compilation of the Three Dynasties Northern League records that when Yue Fei inspected the defense on the Chuzhou front, he summoned Li Bao, who was under the command of the former escort army and deputy commander of the two Zhejiang West Roads. Although Li Bao was not very famous, he was a tiger general of the Yue family who grew up in the Song-Jin War.
Yue Fei summoned Li Bao, gave him a face-to-face opportunity, and proposed a bold idea with a breakthrough. The strength of the infantry and cavalry of the Southern Song Army could only barely match the Jin soldiers on the frontal battlefield. However, the Jin army had a fatal weakness: it was not good at water warfare, and it lacked a water division that could fight in battle, and the water division was the strength of the Southern Song Dynasty.
Therefore, Yue Fei believed that the Southern Song Dynasty should make a big fuss from the water division, send an elite water division from the south of the river to sail north, directly attack the Shandong, Hebei, and Liaodong coasts of the Jinguo ruling areas, launch a landing operation, unexpectedly attack Jinguo Prefecture, encircle and annihilate its living forces, open up a second battlefield against the Jinguo, and cooperate with the land troops to form a pincer offensive, which is very likely to reverse the song and Jin war situation.
Li Bao was thrilled to hear Yue Fei's plan, and in the same month he organized a small-scale marine division to sail north from Zhejiang and directly attack Shandong. The Jin dynasty was caught off guard, and Li Bao's sailors achieved fruitful results, "riding the sea to Liaodong, and the Liaotu was a big disturbance" and "burning Dengzhou and Wendeng County and returning", which initially confirmed the feasibility of Yue Fei's clever plan.
Twenty years later, in the thirty-first year of Shaoxing, the war between Song and Jin was once again fierce. The Jin lord yan liang sent his troops to the country, marched on land and water, and attacked the Southern Song Dynasty in a big way, all the way to the north bank of the Yangtze River, the Southern Song army could not resist, the defensive line was broken through one after another, and for a while it fell into a huge crisis that had never been seen before, and Song Gaozong panicked.
At the critical moment, Li Bao, who was still serving in the Song Army's marine division, remembered this wonderful plan that Yue Fei had formulated in those years. He stepped forward and took the initiative to ask for help, asking to lead the sailors out of the sea to the north and directly pound the nest of the Golden Kingdom, "the subjects look up to the heavenly power, hide their surprises, and attack them because of their shock, but they can get their will", "If there is no one to do anything, there is no forgiveness for death."
In October of the 31st year of Shaoxing, Li Bao led the sailors to sail out to sea and went north to the coast of Shandong. And successfully ambushed the main force of the Jinguo Water Division on TangDao, "yes, broke the Jin army 70,000, captured more than 3,000 people, chased the Jinguo Gongbu Shangshu and the water army to control Su Baoheng, beheaded the Jin people's royal family, the deputy capital of the water army to control Yan Zhengjianu and other six people, and obtained tens of thousands of their unified army seals and documents, armor, and grain." Those who cannot lift up the remnants shall burn them, and the fire shall not be extinguished for four days and nights."
The Jin army, which was planning the battle of crossing the river on the Yangtze River, heard that the rear of Shandong was attacked by the Song army, more than 70,000 people were annihilated, and for a while the army was in a state of great confusion, the soldiers had no fighting spirit, and fierce infighting occurred, the Jin lord Yan Liang was killed in infighting, and the Jin soldiers collapsed in the battle of quarrying and fled in a panic. Historians believe that Li Bao's surprise attack on the sea according to Yue Fei's clever plan was the turning point of the Song-Jin War, "if there is no victory on Tang Island, Liang's death is not expected, and the danger of Qiantang is also worrying." The ingenious tricks left behind before Yue Fei was killed allowed the Southern Song Dynasty to escape a catastrophe of national subjugation, which once again verified his foresight. If he had not been victimized by the traitors, the Song-Jin War was likely to be a different outcome.
References: "Compilation of the Three Dynasties Northern League", "Chronicle of the Year Since Jianyan"