This article is the fourth article of the Song Treatise, Volume II, Taizong. Reading time: 12 minutes
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" > Editor's note:</h1>
Since Taizu established the forbidden army in the Song Dynasty, the recruitment system has gone from 378,000 to 1.4 million people in the Song Renzong Dynasty, the number of "fat" troops, but there is no corresponding national defense combat effectiveness, soldiers have not matched the loyal and patriotic ideological education, professional soldiers spend a lot of money and food, low-quality redundant soldiers lead to foreign wars defeats and few victories, Wang Fuzhi believes that the main reason is that military training is not law-breaking, generals are useless.
Song Jun's bright red battle robes
Can untrained soldiers get them to fight? A: No. Can soldiers who train every day let them go to war? Answer: Even less.
Because, what is usually called military training, is nothing more than setting up the flag, beating the drum, shouting loudly, advancing, retreating, coming back, rotating, attacking, assassinating, dodging, charging, and there is no situation in which you live and die, life and death, so that its whole body is vigilant and its heart is shaken. In this way, training soldiers is tantamount to teasing them. Training every day is tantamount to teasing them every day. Mastery of training, that is, mastery of teasing. Once faced with a strong enemy, the eyes are flying, and everything that is taught and learned in the ordinary day is forgotten. Even if it is not forgotten, it is still of no practical use.
Therefore, soldiers who are training every day cannot let them go to war.
Song general Yang Zaixing
But even so, how can an untrained soldier be allowed to fight? In fact, there are no special requirements for the method of military training, as long as soldiers are trained in war.
Ancient military training was carried out in hunting throughout the year, and prey such as animals and animals were like their own enemies; catching animals and beasts was like killing the enemy; expelling them against their heads was like challenging the enemy; and sacrificing their prey after hunting was like being rewarded for merit. Pursuing profits for fear of losing, shooting through the head of the enemy for fear of killing them unhurriedly, everyone scrambling to follow the enemy for fear of falling behind others, with the mentality of definitely killing the enemy, as if they were incompatible, so that the training of troops can be used to fight in the future.
But in ancient times, the people who used the army stopped after venting their anger at the wars between their neighboring friends, not because they must let them die at my hands as they did with Yidi and the thieves, and they could not live with them. Comparing the enemy to a beast is enough for military training. I am man, and the enemy is man, and man is of the same kind, and his death cannot be regarded as indifferent as the killing of beasts. Once they fight me to the death, it is not like a man can kill a beast and a beast cannot kill a man.
Military training based on this principle has been passed down to later generations, and it seems that there is still a sense of drama; it is only training the rhythm of action such as riding, shooting, advancing, and retreating, and not being able to summon up courage when things are really encountered, which is of little use to war. Moreover, abandoning this principle for military training can only be said to be an abuse of force, a blasphemy and a mockery of force.
The Song generals Han Shizhong and Liang Hongyu and his wife
Marching and fighting, the battalion has a certain system, the troops have a certain decree, the dispersion and assembly pay attention to a certain position, the lurking and appearance pay attention to a certain timing, and the general must understand these truths, but if he does not have the courage, even if he practices these principles quite skillfully, once he reaches the critical juncture of life and death, he will be confused and forget all the things he has learned. Besides, the soldiers, let them go to the left and let them go to the right, all obey the command of the generals, and they don't care what the art of war says should or should they not?
Therefore, the only thing that can be relied upon to enable people to survive, to make people sacrifice but not to fail, is courage. But courage cannot be lifted up through daily training. Therefore, in military training, it is necessary to try to fight many times, and then the courage of the soldiers will gradually be cheered up by not being afraid. Practice every day, train every day, tease the soldier without any seriousness, and he will fail even faster.
Therefore, if there are no battle-hardened soldiers who can use it, it is better to use newly recruited soldiers. In the past, when the Han Dynasty attacked the slaves, less than a hundred years before the time of Han Gaozu, although all the people who had been together with Han Gaozu and pacified the world through hundreds of battles had died, their descendants had also been knighted by the marquis because of their merits, and they all took martial arts as their family business for generations, and it can be said that Ping felt the military. However, as soon as Emperor Wu of Han issued the order of the Gold, he stripped them all of them of their titles.
The generals sent by Emperor Wu who crossed the desert, killed slaves, and raced across northern Sai, such as Wei Qing, Huo Fuyi, Li Guang, Cheng Buzhi, Su Jian, Gongsun Xie, and others, were all selected from low-status families, and had neither read the military books of Sun Wu and Wu Qi, nor had they heard the sound of war drums, but it was with their vigor when they were just rising that they displayed the national prestige of the Han Dynasty in the desert. And the han army's officers, Jianji, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, Tianzi has not personally inspected, the generals have not had time to train them every day to stop, assemble, and other steps to fight, their expedition orders were issued when they joined the army, and soon charged on the dangerous battlefield, but it was enough to train them in this way. Therefore, to conduct military training, to train soldiers without fighting, such training is better than not practicing, such training is just teasing them.
Yue Fei
In addition, there are other situations. For example, there are those who have to go through battle and cannot be beaten. Fighting weak enemies many times and winning by chance, I wanted to use such an army to confront the strong, which was also not possible. However, this was the case when Emperor Taizong of Song appointed Bin and Qingmei as generals to seize Dangzhou. Although these generals all participated in the Song Dynasty's war to eliminate the separatist regime and unify the world, their merits were also limited.
After the Southern Han Dynasty, the lord of the Southern Han Dynasty was obedient and tyrannical, the Later Shu lord Meng Chang was desolate, the Southern Tang Lord Li Yu's life was rotten, they were weak in a short period of stability, completely relaxed their preparations, as soon as the Song army arrived, their rule was like a spring ice cube, suddenly dissolved; the Northern Han regime in Hedong had a slight ability to self-entrench, Song Taizu could not defeat it, the Song army was dragged under Taiyuan City, and later Song Taizong led a large army to personally march and personally command the siege of the city, before destroying the Northern Han.
From this point of view, the general situation of the talents of these Song generals can also be understood. Fortunately, it was the weakness of the other side that made them accomplish their feats of sweeping away the separatist regime. They led the army and drove straight in neatly, and before the drums were set up, the enemy was already defeated, and there was no need to worry about the dangers of flying in front of them, the sharp knives were close to the body, and at that time they were still using the image of benevolence, honesty, generosity, and humility to eliminate the emperor's suspicions and suspicions and the jealousy of the prime minister. By the time of Emperor Taizong, these people were getting older, afraid of being suspected of their merits, and wanting to remain rich and noble in their later years was even more intense. At this time, they were expected to fight against the khitans, who had always been powerful, and as a result, the Battle of Qigou Pass resulted in more than half of the Song army's casualties.
Was the defeat of the Song army due to its own excessive numbers, so that the enemy's attack was not in accordance with the rules? Of course not. Relying on the enemy who once defeated the weak and small, he went to confront the powerful enemy, and as a result, the enemy's elite cavalry rushed, a position that he had never seen in his life, and he could not fight with the enemy at all, so what if the whole army was defeated? Zhang Qixian said: "It is better to select soldiers than to select excellent generals."
It can be seen that the generals of the Song Dynasty were not good at fighting, which was known to people at that time.
But didn't the Song Dynasty really have the courage, fortitude, indulgence, and generals who could command troops outside, and small generals who could also fight against the enemy? No. It was the Song Emperors who were too suspicious, people did not dare to express themselves with talent, fear and worry, conformity, and ways to avoid being impeached before it was too late. Therefore, except for these veteran generals, there was no one else who could do it, and since the defeat of the Battle of Qigou Pass, until the fall of the Song Dynasty, the Song army never cheered up again. I don't know if they held military training later, but even if they did, it was soldiers playing in the ranks, generals playing in the tents, and emperors playing in the court, playing with each other.
alas! This is the reason why the Song Dynasty weakened!
Text/Editor Ji Huan
Original: Wang Fuzhi Translation: Wang Jiachuan Gongzi Quan