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Conquer and destroy Houshu

Main entry: The Battle of the Song Dynasty to destroy Later Shu

After the Song Dynasty pacified Jingchi, he immediately deployed an attack on Shu. When the Later Shu Emperor Meng Chang heard the news, he wanted to rely on the dangerous terrain of Sichuan and Shaanxi, so he refused to defend the troops. At the same time, he sent an envoy to ask the Northern Han to jointly rebel against the Song Dynasty. Zhao Kuangyin was arrested by the rebel general Zhao Yantao of the Later Shu. When he learned that the Shu army was deployed, he ordered troops to be sent.

In November of the second year of Gande (964), Zhao Kuangyin ordered two troops to be divided into two groups:

North Road: Wang Quanbin, the governor of Zhongwu Army, deployed the troops and horse capital of the front army in Xichuan Xingying, and Cui Yanjin, the commander of the guards and infantry, deployed the deputy capital, and led 30,000 infantry and cavalry out of Fengzhou (now Fengzhou Town, northeast of Fengxian County, Shaanxi) and headed south along the Jialing River;

East Road: Liu Tingrang, commander of the guards and horse army, deployed as the deputy chief, led 20,000 infantry and cavalry out to return to the prefecture (now Zigui, Hubei), and advanced westward along the Yangtze River.[15]

The two groups advanced and attacked together, and they agreed to attack Chengdu. Meng Chang learned that Wang Zhaoyuan was appointed as the commander of the north camp, leading tens of thousands of troops to the north to guard Lizhou (now Guangyuan, Sichuan), Jianmen (now northeast of Jiange, Sichuan). In December, the Song army on the north road occupied Lizhou.[16]

In the first month of the third year of Gande (965), the Northern Army broke through the dangerous Jianmen, defeated the Shu army, captured Wang Zhaoyuan, and then occupied Jianzhou (now Jiange, Sichuan). The Eastern Army Liu Tingrang Army broke through Badong Yehu Kuizhou (now Fengjie, Sichuan, Dongbaidi), conquered Wanzhou (now Wanxian, Sichuan), Kaizhou (now Kaixian, Sichuan), Zhongzhou (now Zhongxian, Sichuan), Suizhou (now Suining, Sichuan). The two routes were approaching Chengdu, Meng Chang surrendered and Later Shu was destroyed. [17]

Tang. The actual prime ministers still followed the Tang system, using the title of Tongpingzhangshi, and there was no fixed number. Two people were assigned to the day to take charge of the seal. In the early Song Dynasty, Fan Zhi, Wang Pu and Wei Renpu were still used as prime ministers. In the second year of Gande (964), Fan Zhi and other three prime ministers asked to retire and used Zhao Pu as prime minister. In order to prevent Zhao Pu from abusing power, Xue was appointed as chief and Lu Yuqing was appointed as chief minister (deputy prime minister), which later became customized.

Privy Councilor: During the reign of Emperor Daizong of Tang, the Privy Councilor was established, and eunuchs were used to control the secrets of the court. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the Privy Councilor was the dictator, causing chaos. During the Five Dynasties, the Privy Councilor was still in charge of the government affairs. Privy Councilor was equal to another prime minister besides the prime minister. After the establishment of the Song Dynasty, the Privy Councilor was changed to take charge of military affairs and government orders, mobilized the imperial guards, and established with the prime minister's civil and military affairs. The Secretariat and the Privy Councilor were known as the "two governments" (government, the Puppet Office). The Privy Councilor had to report to the emperor for approval of the imperial edict. The prime minister and the Privy Councilor reported the court separately, but did not know each other. The emperor thus controlled the regime and military power respectively.

The Three Divisions were in charge of the tribute and taxes of the four parties and the state finances, and their status was second only to the prime minister, and they were called "Character". The Three Divisions were in charge of the three divisions: salt and iron were in charge of industrial and commercial income and weapons manufacturing; the Ministry of Revenue was in charge of financial income and expenditure, grain and canal transportation; the Ministry of Revenue was in charge of household registration, taxation and wine detention. Except for a small part of the tax revenue of local prefectures and counties, the rest were controlled by the central government, and the three divisions were in charge of the power.

Ministry of Justice: When Zhao Kuangyin was in power, the Ministry of Justice reviewed major crimes in various places.

Bachelor's Academy: The Bachelor's Academy has several Hanlin Bachelor's College, whose responsibilities are to draft edicts for the emperor, including the appointment of the prime minister, foreign national certificates, etc. Hanlin Bachelor's College also serves as the emperor to "prepare consultants" and can directly propose suggestions on state affairs to the emperor.

The Censorate: The Song Dynasty followed the Tang system, and the imperial court established the Censorate as the highest supervisory institution. The Taiwan branch was divided into three courts: the Taiyuan, the Palace Court, and the Censorate. At first, there was no full-time job, and other officials worked part-time. The Censor Zhongcheng was the highest official of the Censorate. [28]

Checking and balancing in civil and military affairs

Based on the reasons in the "Taizu Oath Monument" such as "not killing scholars and officials or writing to talk about the affairs of the people", later generations believed that the family rules of the Song Dynasty, which "respected literature and suppressed martial arts" were decided by Zhao Kuangyin when he was in power. However, Zhao Kuangyin actually suppressed martial arts but did not value literature too much. He once said to Zhao Pu: "The five dynasties were cruel and the people were deeply harmed. I asked more than a hundred capable Confucian ministers to divide the great vassals. Even if they were all greedy, they were not as good as those of a warrior." In Taizu's opinion, appointing literati was far less powerful than that of a warrior, and would not endanger the fundamentals of the regime as a warrior. [29]

Imperial Examination Reform

After the founding of the Song Dynasty, the lessons learned from the accumulated problems in the Tang and Five Dynasties were fully learned from the imperial examinations, and a series of measures to prevent problems from happening in the imperial examinations, the most important of which are:

The lock-up system: that is, after the candidates for "Zhi Gong Ju" (the chief examiner), "Quan Zhi Gong Ju" (the deputy examiner) are determined, they are immediately locked in the tribute court, cut off their contact with the outside world, and avoid the phenomenon of examiners leaking test questions to relatives and friends.

The system of sealing: after the candidate's examination is over, a special person will paste the names, hometowns and other parts on the candidate's examination paper with paper and hand them over to the examiner for judgment. The names cannot be opened and announced until the final score is counted, otherwise it will be cheating. This is also the origin of the sealed test paper system in later exams.

Transcription system: According to the Song people, after the implementation of the seal system, the problem of candidates writing marks and code words on the test papers occurred in the subject field. Therefore, the "transcription" system appeared. That is, after the candidates handed in the test paper, the court hired a group of copywriters to re-reprint the test papers and then handed over to the examiners. The purpose is to further eliminate the omissions of the "transmission" measures.

No test: that is, a special examination room for the children of examiners is set up. In such a special examination process, examiners are sent to invigilate the examination and review the papers to prevent the occurrence of favoritism and fraud. At the same time, the children of the powerful ministers of the current dynasty often have to re-examination once more to identify whether someone uses his power to improve the scores of incompetent children. [28]

Concentrated military power: lift the military power of the imperial guards and transferred them to other places to act as military governors. Then weaken the real power of the military governors and make them have false reputations. Then, the commandership of the imperial guards was divided into three, and they were directly responsible to the emperor. The Privy Council was established, and the Privy Council had the power to mobilize troops but did not directly lead the army. However, the generals who commanded the army did not have the power to mobilize troops, so that they could restrain each other. The law of garrison was implemented. The policy of "guarding the inside and the outside" and "internal and external ministers" was implemented. Half of the troops were stationed in the capital and half were everywhere.

The army in the early Song Dynasty was divided into four types: imperial guards, wing soldiers, rural soldiers and foreign soldiers. The imperial guards were the main force of the army. After Zhao Kuangyin ascended the throne, he strengthened the strength of the imperial guards from all aspects:

The first was to choose the training. The imperial guards selected the strong nationwide as a military officer. Zhao Kuangyin initially selected strong soldiers as soldiers and sent them to all parts of the country, and ordered the local people to recruit them. Later, they changed to wooden slabs and set the size. The local officials selected them to the capital according to the example. The standard for the imperial guards at that time was the pipa legs, namely those with thick thighs, those with wide shoulders and thin waists, and those with high heights of five feet and five inches to five feet and eight inches. The imperial guards gathered in the capital, and Taizu personally taught and strengthened training, and gave them a salary that was better than that of other states.

The second is construction. About half of the imperial guards are stationed in the capital and its vicinity, and half are divided into garrisons of the border and several important towns in the mainland. The imperial guards must be replaced every year or two years. One is used to hard work and avoid laziness, and the other is that the commander is not easy to defend, which leads to a situation where "the soldiers do not know the generals, and the generals do not know the soldiers", "the soldiers do not have the commander, and the commander has no troops", and "the generals cannot specialize in their troops". Finally, there is military power. The imperial guards gathered in the capital are commanded by the front commander and guards.

The commander of the horse army and the commander of the guards and infantry are in charge of the commander of the guards, and are called the Three Yas. The Three Yas are only responsible for the management and training of the imperial guards in normal times and have no right to dispatch them. The power of the imperial guards to mobilize the imperial guards belongs to the Privy Council, which is directly commanded by the emperor. The imperial guards go out to fight, the emperor sends generals, and the emperor personally formulates the combat strategy, and the generals cannot change it without permission. In this way, all powers of the imperial guards to select, build, garrison, go to war, marching, and combat are concentrated on the emperor.
Chapter completed!