In 982 AD, three years after Jinyang was burned, for the sake of national defense, Emperor Taizong of the Song Dynasty ordered Pan Mei to build a new city in Tangming Town, 30 miles northeast of the old city of Jinyang on the other side of the Fen River. At that time, there was only one small street.

Tangming Town is located in the area of ​​Guandi Temple in Xiyangshi Street, Taiyuan City today. The Tangming Hotel in the south gate is named after this. The general location of Taiyuan City in the Song Dynasty ranged from the north side of today's Yingze Street in the south to the future in the north.

In the Xiaohe area, it extends to the east side of Xinjian Road in the west and to the Liuxiang area in the east. The circumference of this earthen city without bricks was only eleven miles and had only four gates. At that time, the circumference was 42 miles and there were 24 gates in total.

At this time, Jinyang City at the Daocheng Gate has become a mirage that can no longer be touched in the dreams of future generations.

After the city was built, the fearful ruler no longer wanted to see names like "Taiyuan" and "Jinyang", and replaced it with "Jinzhou Military". It was not until seventy-seven years later that the organizational system of Taiyuan Prefecture was restored.

Before Taiyuan returned to its old name, the prefectural government of Bingzhou and the county government of Yangqu successively moved into this new city. Therefore, there is a saying among the people that "Taiyuan before the Song Dynasty was a city of Jinyang, and after the Song Dynasty Taiyuan was a city of Yangqu." As the saying goes: Thirty

In one year, Hedong is Hexi, and in thirty years, Taiyuan City is Hexi, and in Taiyuan City, it is Hexi one thousand years, and Hedong one thousand years.

When Pan Mei was building the new city, in order to destroy Taiyuan's feng shui and eliminate Taiyuan's royal aura, she adopted a homophonic pronunciation to "nail" Taiyuan's dragon vein, and only built T-shaped streets instead of cross streets. Some people also gave a kind explanation for this, saying

T-shaped streets are extremely effective in stopping the galloping Khitan cavalry. However, in the era of cold weapons, the city is the last line of defense against the enemy. Once the city defense is lost, the fighting spirit and morale of the defenders will also collapse, and fierce street fighting can only be

The martyrs' last efforts to achieve a heroic outcome were meaningless compared to the war situation. Therefore, Ting Street could only be a manifestation of the ignorance and narrow-mindedness of the Zhao and Song Dynasties. By 1948, on the eve of the Battle of Taiyuan, Yan Xishan's army established street fighting in the city.

At the time of the fortifications, there were still 364 large and small T-shaped streets in the urban area. To this day, Taiyuan Old City can still see these errors that are difficult to repair in urban construction planning. In recent years, traffic transformation has been implemented to eliminate T-shaped streets.

Projects are therefore dubbed “opening up” projects.

Zhao Guangyi carefully guarded Taiyuan, but he never thought that Taiyuan would firmly protect the Song Dynasty in the subsequent wars. What makes Zhao Guangyi's descendants regretful is that if Jinyang had not been destroyed, the humiliation of Jingkang could have been avoided.

, the history of the Northern Song Dynasty will also be rewritten accordingly.

More than 140 years after Taiyuan was rebuilt, they rebelled with a cavalry force of 2,500 people. In just ten years, the Jurchens destroyed the Liao Kingdom, which had been founded for more than 200 years. Just when the Song Dynasty followed the Song and Jin Dynasties

When the alliance was negotiating for the return of all the states that had fallen after the Five Dynasties, including the sixteen states of Yanyun, Jin Taizong used the Northern Song Dynasty to accept the surrender of the Liao army Zhang Jue as an excuse to send troops to attack the Song Dynasty. The plan of the Jin army was to divide the troops

Two routes, the West Route Army, with Zong Han, also known as Nianhan in "Shuo Yue", as its commander, led an army of 60,000, set out from Datong, Xijing, to capture Taiyuan, and the East Route Army, with another member who strongly advocated attacking Song Dynasty General Zong Wang,

As the commander-in-chief, he led an army of 60,000 people from Pingzhou to Yanshan and captured Zhending. Then the two armies met at the foot of Kaifeng City and wiped out the weak Song Dynasty, which had been despised by the Jin army in the joint attack on Liao.

After the powerful Jin Dynasty was destroyed by the Liao Kingdom, which was stronger than the Song Dynasty, the cowardly and mediocre Zhao and Song Dynasties lacked long-term strategic vision and active contingency measures in the face of the rapidly changing diplomatic situation, and did not know how to ease relations with Xixia in a timely manner.

The northwest frontier defense force with stronger combat effectiveness was deployed to strengthen the defense of the northern border, and no mobile troops were deployed in second-line strategic locations such as Taiyuan. Hu Man's raid to the south completely exceeded Zong Han's expectation that there would be several fierce battles, and he was still dreaming of surrendering.

The Song Dynasty, which surrendered and sacrificed in exchange for the Yanyun Prefectures, was caught off guard and either collapsed or surrendered, and retreated steadily. The Jin Dynasty's Western Route Army successively captured the four prefectures of Shuo, Wu, Dai, and Xin.

Speaking of Tong Guan, one of the six thieves in the Northern Song Dynasty, everyone who has read "Water Margin" is familiar with him. The highest official in Taiyuan of the Song Dynasty at that time was Tong Guan, who was ridiculed as the concubine. This man was deeply loved by Song Huizong

The favored eunuch held the position of Xuanfu envoy to Shaanxi, Hedong, and Hebei. He was responsible for commanding the military forces in these three regions. His official residence was located in Taiyuan. In addition to his victory in the conquest of Fangla, Tong Guan also fought with Xixia and Liao.

In the war, he did not know how to run an army but was very good at concealing defeats and falsely reporting military achievements. It was his two failures in conquering the Liao Dynasty that exposed the corruption and weakness of the Northern Song Dynasty to the Jin army, which gave rise to the ambition to invade the south.

In fact, Ma Kuang, the general of the Song Dynasty who had been on many missions to the Jin Dynasty, had long been aware of the Jin soldiers' southern invasion and warned Tong Guan to take precautions early. He was still intoxicated and complacent about taking back the empty city of Youzhou with one million Yanjing rental fees.

Tong Guan turned a deaf ear to this. On the eve of the Jin army's southern invasion, Ma Kuo, who had participated in the negotiations with Yanjing, went to Zong Han's army again to discuss taking back Wei and Ying Erzhou. The arrogant Zong Han laughed and said: "You are still expecting to get these two

Prefecture? The front and back of the mountains are all the land of the Jin Dynasty. What else is there to say? Only if you offer all the prefectures and counties as atonements can we forgive you for taking Zhang Jue. You can go back now. I will send someone soon.

Go to Xuanfu Division."

After Ma Kuo returned to Taiyuan, the shocked Tong Guan did not follow Ma Kuo's advice to deploy defenses to meet the enemy, but made preparations to flee south. Soon, the Jin envoy came to Taiyuan and reported that the Jin army had invaded south.

situation, and asked the Song Dynasty to cede the land north of the Yellow River. Tong Guan, who was at a loss, was about to flee back to the capital. Zhang Xiaochun, the prefect of Taiyuan, dissuaded him and said: "The Jin people have torn up the covenant, and you should lead all the soldiers to fight against the enemy. If you return south,

, the morale of the military will inevitably be shaken. This is tantamount to handing over Hedong to the Jin people. Once Hedong is lost, how can Hebei be preserved? Please stay and serve the country with us, not to mention the dangerous terrain of Taiyuan, the strong people, and the Jin soldiers.

We can capture it." The shameless Tong Guan actually said: "My duty is to propagate and protect the country, not to defend the territory. If I must stay, what do you want me to do?!"

On December 8, Tong Guan escaped from the front line in Taiyuan. After hearing the news, Zhang Xiaochun clapped his hands and sighed: "Master Tong is so majestic at ordinary times, but when the situation changes suddenly, he becomes frightened and runs away. What face does he have to see the emperor?!" It was this Tong Guan.

After returning to the capital, he refused to accept Song Qinzong's appointment to stay in Tokyo and fled south with Huizong. When the guards blocked the pontoon bridge and asked Huizong to stay amidst the cries of pain, the fleeing general actually ordered his pro-Shengji army to fire arrows.

He immediately shot down hundreds of people. As a result, Tong Guan was demoted amidst public condemnation and was executed by Emperor Qinzong of the Song Dynasty during his exile.

On December 18, the Jin Dynasty's Western Route Army broke through Shiling Pass. The vanguard had already reached the city of Taiyuan. The Shaanxi local army's Linfu was already available. Lu Yanyan, Liu Guangshi and other troops rescued Taiyuan with a total of 40,000 troops.

, was defeated by the Jin army on the north bank of Fenhe River outside Taiyuan City, losing more than 10,000 people and then collapsed. By the way, Zhe Keqiu is a descendant of the famous general Zhe Congruan, and Yang Ye’s wife Zhe Taijun is the star of Zhe

Among the generals of the Zhe family, he had the greatest influence among the people. He once suppressed Song Jiang and was later appointed by Zhang Xiaochun as the second general of Hedong. Zhe Kecun was another famous general of the Zhe family. He was defeated on the way to rescue Yanmen and was defeated.

He was captured in Guo County and escaped back to the Song Dynasty the following year.

The Jin army, which had not yet encountered effective resistance, was stubbornly blocked under the city of Taiyuan. At this time, there were only 3,000 Shengjie troops led by Wang Zhen in Taiyuan. The Shengjie army was a force that Tong Guan recruited for himself when he was in charge of the northwest border defense.

With tens of thousands of pro-army soldiers, Wang Zhen, who was born in the army, was gradually promoted from an ordinary soldier to the capital commander of the Xuanfu Division. After following Tong Guan to suppress the Fangla Uprising, he made the northern expedition to the Liao Kingdom and was defeated at Baigou. Tong Guan fled Taiyuan.

, leaving him as the deputy governor responsible for guarding the city.

At the same time, Song Huizong passed down his son Zhao Huan as Song Qinzong. Zong Wang, the commander-in-chief of the East Route Army of the Jin Dynasty, once led 1,500 cavalry to defeat 25,000 Liao soldiers supervised by the emperor. Under the guidance of the surrendered general Guo Yaoshi

, even across the vast plains thousands of miles away, it was like entering an uninhabited land. Tens of thousands of Song troops on the south bank of the Yellow River fled in the face of the wind. Amid Zong Wang's wild laughter, 60,000 Jin troops took a dozen small boats that were searched and spent five days and five nights.

Time calmly crossed the unguarded natural chasm of the Yellow River, and on the eighth day of the first lunar month of the first year of Jingkang, troops arrived at the gates of Kaifeng.

According to the Jin Army's strategic deployment, the West Route Army not only had to join forces with the East Route Army to launch a general offensive in Kaifeng, but in order to block the Song Dynasty's northwest frontier defense force, which was the only one that could compete with the Jin Army, and prevent the Zhao and Song Dynasty courts from rushing to Shu from the west route, Zong Han also had the responsibility of

The important task was to capture Luoyang, a strategically important place. Taiyuan could not be captured for a long time, but Zong Han could not delay the opportunity, so he had to leave his general Yin Shuke to continue the siege, while he led his army to gallop south.

While the Jin Dynasty's Eastern Route Army was waiting for the Western Route Army, the cowardly and indecisive Song Qinzong was still hesitating between war and peace. In the end, he accepted Zong Wang's withdrawal conditions of ceding the three towns of Taiyuan, Zhongshan and Hejian.

Li Gang, who was left behind in Tokyo and resigned in anger, was retained by Emperor Qinzong of the Song Dynasty and then seized the land-ceding edict.

Soon, more than 200,000 Qinwang troops from all walks of life in the Northern Song Dynasty gathered in Kaifeng. Faced with a favorable situation, the hot-headed Song Qinzong hastily agreed to the young general Yao Pingzhong's "knock on the golden camp at night and capture Zong Wang alive" without careful analysis and deployment.

It is ridiculous that such a military secret was leaked three days before it was implemented. On the first day of February, Yao Pingzhong's army who made a surprise attack at starry night was defeated by the Jin army who was waiting for him. Yao Pingzhong broke through and escaped, and disappeared until decades later.

Only then did someone leave a record of his appearance in Sichuan. After the failure to rob the camp, Song Qinzong was forced to fully agree to Zong Wang's withdrawal conditions. The Jin Dynasty's East Route Army withdrew its troops and returned north on February 9th, and Zong Han, who had already marched to Zezhou, Shanxi, also

After receiving the Song Dynasty's promise to cede territory, he returned to Taiyuan.

Although the envoy of the Song Dynasty, Lu Yundi, came to the city to convey the imperial edict to cede Taiyuan, the soldiers and civilians of Taiyuan, like the two towns of Zhongshan and Hejian, rejected this humiliating imperial edict and started a bloody battle with the angry Jin soldiers. It had been nearly half a year since the Jin Dynasty set off to the west.

At this time, the road army was increasingly exhausted and lacked food and grass. Zong Han used the "city locking method" to build heavy fortifications to surround Taiyuan, leaving General Yin Shu to continue the siege, while he led the main force to withdraw to Datong.

After Zong Han returned to the north, his fierce general Yin Shuke wiped out the surrounding prefectures and counties of Taiyuan, and used his partial divisions to seize Wenshui, Xidu Valley, Qixian, Taigu, and Yuxian, and defeated Fan Kui, the local army of the Song Army who rescued Taiyuan.

Shi Shen, Gao Fengbu.

After the lifting of martial law in the capital, under pressure from the war factions and public opinion, Emperor Qinzong of the Song Dynasty realized the strategic significance of the Taiyuan defense war and the important position of the three towns in the "national shield". On March 16, he issued an edict to re-secure the three towns and seal the officials of the three towns.

position, and commend them for their efforts in defending the city.

In May of this year, the Zhao and Song dynasties organized the Central Forbidden Army for the first time to rescue Taiyuan. General Zhong Shizhong marched westward from Jingxing, Hebei Province, and the other two generals, Yao Pingzhong's adoptive father Yao Gu and Zhang Xiaochun's son Zhang Hao, came from Changzhi and Fenzhou respectively.

Moving north, the three armies formed horns with each other to jointly break the siege of Taiyuan.

Zhong Shizhong was born into a family of generals for generations. His grandfather Zhong Shiheng and his elder brother Zhong Shidao were both famous generals in the Northern Song Dynasty. He led his troops from Jingxing, Hebei into Pingding, Shanxi, and quickly recovered Shouyang and Yuci. However, due to Yao Gu,

Zhang Haojun failed to respond in time, and the middle part of the Zhongshi Division returned to Zhending, Hebei Province.

At this time, the important minister Xu Han misunderstood the intelligence and concluded that the Jin army was about to withdraw all troops. He urged Zhongshi Zhong to advance troops many times, and even scolded him for staying and watching despite having heavy troops. Zhongshi Zhong was forced to leave behind the heavy supplies of food and grass.

, set off lightly, and at the same time agreed that Yao Gu and Zhang Hao's armies would advance in separate directions. Soon, the forward of the central division reached the stone bridge twenty miles away from Taiyuan, and the Chinese army arrived at the stone pit in Shouyang. Since there were no encounters along the way,

The Jin army resisted, causing this veteran general who had been on the battlefield to commit a taboo of being careless and unprepared. When the Zhong division received a report from Tan Ma that there was an attack by Jin soldiers from Yuci, they mistakenly thought that it was the Jin army from the north.

Unexpectedly, the scattered troops who returned turned out to be the main force of the Jin army that came to block the attack. The Song army hurriedly accepted the challenge, winning three out of five battles and moving forward hard. However, Yao Gu's general Jiao Anjie, who was afraid of the enemy and was timid, panicked and reported the military situation.

The report claimed that the Jin Army's commander, Zong Han, had arrived, causing Yao Gu and Zhang Hao's armies to hesitate and fail to join forces with the central part of the Zhong Division as agreed. When the central part of the Zhong Division was forced to retreat to Shaxiong Ridge, they were attacked again by the Jin Army.

The Song army was surrounded by heavy troops, short of military supplies, and the morale of the Song army was low. Almost the entire army collapsed. Zhongshi, who had only a hundred soldiers left, was wounded four times and still fought hard, eventually sacrificing his life for the country and suffering on the battlefield. After defeating the middle part of the Zhongshi, the Jin army

The main force calmly returned to the army, defeated Yao Gu's tribe in Pantuo east of Qixian County, and defeated Zhang Hao's tribe in Jiaocheng. The Song court's first effort to rescue Taiyuan failed even though it had all the advantages. Afterwards, Jiao Anjie was captured.

After being executed, Yao Gu was demoted to Guangzhou.

Among the troops that rescued Taiyuan, there was a general named Yang Zhi. As a "big bandit", he followed Tong Guan in the Liao Dynasty in the fourth year of Xuanhe and served as a vanguard. Yang Zhi later fought with the Jin soldiers in rescuing Taiyuan.

In the battle, the army was defeated in Yuxian County, Shanxi Province, and its end was unknown. It was probably either dispersed with the defeated army or killed in the rebel army. In the twelfth chapter of "Water Margin", Yang Zhi said: "The Sa family is the third generation of generals and the fifth prince.

There is no historical evidence for this, but the Yang Zhi who rescued Taiyuan should be the prototype of Yang Zhi in the novel "Water Margin".

In the face of a formidable enemy, fierce political disputes were still going on among the top officials of the Song Dynasty, and the strife and exclusion had not stopped. It was under this situation that Li Gang, the main combatant and a civil servant, was forced to take on the important task of rescuing Taiyuan for the second time.

However, Li Gang was repeatedly constrained by his colleagues and suspicious of Qin Zong. At that time, he could directly command only 12,000 soldiers, and he only received 200,000 from the 1 million military supplies he applied for. Not only was he stopped from recruiting war horses in the capital, but he was even

Dismissal of the local troops he had recruited. Li Gang planned to conduct necessary rest and training first, and then go out on the expedition after being fully prepared. However, Song Qinzong denounced him as refusing the order, and had to leave in a hurry in early August.

The central government of the Song Dynasty's second rescue of Taiyuan was very aggressive. In addition to Li Gang, there were also the Jie Qian Department stationed in Qin County, the Liu Department stationed in Liaozhou, Zhe Keqiu stationed in Wenshui, Zhang Sizheng Department, and the stationed troops in Tun.

Fan Qiong's troops at the North and South Pass planned to use the superior force of divided troops to encircle and annihilate the exhausted division that could penetrate deeply alone.

The eunuch Tong Guan, who was deeply favored by Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty, had tens of thousands of troops in his hands. However, in such a major military operation related to the survival of the country, Li Gang's request to unite all the armies under one unified command was rejected.

As the Xuanfu, Li Gang only had the reputation of controlling all the armies, but in fact he had no control. All the generals directly obeyed the orders of Song Qinzong who was far away in the capital. They worked independently and did not coordinate with each other. In fact, as long as we recall that in the early Song Dynasty, the generals must follow the instructions of the expedition.

It is not difficult to understand the actions of Song Qinzong because of the foolish approach of using the formation map issued by the former emperor. The centralized system of the Zhao and Song dynasties not only ruined the Song Dynasty's second rescue of Taiyuan, ruined Taiyuan, but also ruined their own family.

More than 160 years of splendid country. Yin Shu, who had been on the field for nearly a year, could face the scattered Song army. He first concentrated his main force to defeat the Liu tribe, and then defeated the Jie Qian tribe at the North and South Passes, and Zhang Sizheng's troops at the North Pass.

Wenshui and Zhe Keqiu's troops were stationed in Zixia Mountain. After the Song army was defeated and lost tens of thousands of people, the second rescue mission to Taiyuan failed. Li Gang was demoted for "specializing in war discussions and losing troops and money".

The short-sighted Zhao and Song dynasties did not learn the lesson from the Zhang Jue incident, and angered Jin Taizong by instigating rebellion against the old ministers of the Liao Kingdom who had surrendered to the Jin Dynasty.

The imperial edict to attack the Song Dynasty. The Jin army's troop deployment and march route for the second southern invasion were basically unchanged from the previous one. However, in response to the failure of the east and west routes to coordinate the last time, the east route army was left alone to block more than 200,000 Song troops with the Yellow River at its back.

In the dangerous situation, the second southern invasion aimed to strengthen the coordination between the east and west routes in order to achieve the strategic goal of attacking from both sides and linking up with Kaifeng. In order to achieve this goal, the strategic focus was to capture Taiyuan and open up the west route. Taiyuan, once again

Become the target of public criticism.
To be continued...