Farming is not disturbed by the age of often, the border will be no merit officials can not.
Forty-two years are like a dream, and the spring winds have blown tears across the Zhaoling.
This is a poem written on the wall of the Yongzhaoling Mausoleum, which summarizes the peak moment of the Song Dynasty, and the protagonist is Song Renzong. Song Renzong was so low-key that he didn't even look like a king. As the longest reigning emperor of the Song Dynasty, he had no outstanding performance in civil and military affairs, no earth-shattering achievements; in dealing with state affairs, he also consistently chose to trust the prime ministers, leaving his own affairs to be handled by his aides. However, the surface of the inaction but to the entire Song Dynasty brought the most economically developed era, which is why the poem said "forty-two years as a dream" reason, and not only the people have benefited, even the ministers are the same, face to face with the emperor will not be punished, the heart of the matter can be outspoken. And this era is the ancient history of the most nostalgic era, this is Renzong Shengzhi.
Song Renzong
Shao's Record of Witnesses describes the scene when Song Renzong died, and the people were all sad, young and old, women and children, all in tears. It also describes how the smoke from the burning of paper money covered the sun. So what do the people of the Song Dynasty miss?
Song Renzong was just a representation, or a concrete anchor for an ideal dynasty, and what he took with him in his death were the most tolerant years of the Song dynasty. Renzong's reign was an unforgettable era and a heyday left behind in history, but too many people, in their remembrance of Song Renzong and the era he created, did not realize that danger was also approaching the Song dynasty at this very moment, and that just as the Song monarchs and ministers were all attempting to create a perfect dynasty, there were a number of hidden dangers hidden behind the heyday.
Song Renzong
The biggest problem of the Song dynasty was the weakness of the military, which came from the three redundancies. Redundant soldiers, redundant officials, and redundant expenses have long been a cliché of Northern Song history, but few people will go deeper to understand the causes and dangers of their formation. In the "Song history - food and goods," there is such a set of data, from the period of Song Zhenzong had 912,000 soldiers, to the period of Renzong is immediately expanded to 1,259,000 people. However, the number of strong does not mean that the military power of the strong, in the period of Emperor Renzong left a stain and military related, that is, Emperor Renzong period launched the Western Xia war failed.
Li Yuanhao, the founder of the Western Xia
The reason for the military weakness was again related to the system set up by the Song Dynasty, a dynasty born after the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. In order to avoid a situation where warlords would grow in power, Zhao Kuangyin, the founder of the Song dynasty, established a series of systems, of which there were three important ones, namely the weakening of local political power, the collection of elite soldiers in the military, and the constraints on financial power. In order to prevent turmoil, the Song rulers set up a lot of regulatory departments, in the normal bureaucracy and attached too many regulatory measures. For example, to suppress the prime minister so set up the vice prime minister, the original prime minister's power to divide. At the same time will be divided into military power to the Privy Council, but also the financial power into the three departments. The Song emperor was able to sit comfortably in the courtroom, but the ensuing problem was the complexity of the bureaucracy and the inefficiency of the bureaucracy when it came to keeping each other in check.
Back to the military, although military power was vested in the Privy Council, the Privy Council was divided into many departments. For example, the power to mobilize troops was in the hands of the Privy Council, but the three offices responsible for military training (the Palace Front Department, the Horse Guards Department, and the Foot Guards Department). . This also led to the fact that the generals who trained the soldiers were not the generals who led the soldiers to war, and there were many problems in cooperating with the soldiers. Fighting generals take over the soldiers troops well unfamiliar, and the soldiers for the general's loyalty also needs to be improved, numerous uncoordinated under the natural can not win the war, which is the root of the reasons for the failure of the war of the Western Xia.