Chapter 466
Tianlong Part 8
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In the third year of the Qiande era, the Song Dynasty destroyed the Later Shu. Wang Quanbin requested to take advantage of the situation to conquer Yunnan. Zhao Kuangyin drew a line across the Dadu River with a jade axe and said, "This place is not mine." He used the river as the boundary and did not conquer Dali.
Although the story of "Song wielding the jade axe" is not recorded in detail in official history, it is widely circulated among the people and has gradually become a symbol of the Song Dynasty's policy towards the southwest.
Although it's just a rumor, upon closer examination, there's some truth to it.
At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, the Liao people in the north occupied Yan and Yun, and often went south to raid the border. The border troubles were serious, so the country's strength and military power had to be focused on the northern frontier, and it was really difficult to send troops to the wild southwest.
Moreover, Dali is located in the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, which is characterized by continuous mountains and crisscrossing rivers, as well as the barrier of tropical rainforests filled with miasma. The Song army, which was mainly composed of infantry, was not good at mountain warfare, and the transportation of supplies was extremely difficult. More than half of the supplies could be lost in a hundred miles, making the cost of conquest ridiculously high.
Although the Dali Kingdom was located in the southwest, it had a stable regime, a well-equipped military, and was familiar with the terrain, allowing it to defend itself by relying on its natural defenses.
Even if the Song Dynasty were to manage to conquer Dali by chance, subsequent governance would be a challenge—the region has many ethnic groups with diverse customs, and their allegiance to the government is unpredictable, requiring the constant deployment of large numbers of troops and the expenditure of huge sums of money to appease and control them.
Furthermore, Dali's economic structure, which is mainly based on mountain agriculture and animal husbandry, could not bring considerable tax revenue to the Song Dynasty in the short term, and the benefits of its rule were far less than the long-term investment.
At the beginning of the founding of the Song Dynasty, the national policy adopted was "to guard the interior and weaken the exterior." Its core task was to consolidate internal rule, digest the newly pacified territories such as Later Shu, and prevent the recurrence of regional separatism. It was always cautious about expanding its territory.
Meanwhile, Dali always maintained a subservient attitude towards the Song Dynasty, actively sending envoys and paying tribute. The two sides conducted trade through the Tea Horse Road, allowing the Song Dynasty to reliably obtain urgently needed warhorses and medicinal herbs, while Dali absorbed silk, porcelain, and culture from the Central Plains. This mutually beneficial and peaceful relationship was far more worthwhile than the time-consuming and laborious conquest and rule.
The Dadu River also served as a natural geographical barrier, creating a natural buffer zone between the two sides. This not only prevented war on the southwestern border but also allowed the Song Dynasty to focus on dealing with the core threat from the north, making it the optimal choice after rational consideration.
Furthermore, the Tang Dynasty's conquest of Nanzhao exhausted the nation's resources, ultimately leading to chaos and countless losses, and sowing the seeds for the An Lushan Rebellion. This serves as a cautionary tale for the Song Dynasty, which was unwilling to repeat the same mistakes.
Therefore, Zhao Kuangyin used the Dadu River as a natural barrier to establish a border with Dali, thus avoiding the hardships of war in the southwest and also enabling trade along the Tea Horse Road to ensure peace on the border.
On a side note, in hindsight, the reason Yunnan was so crucial to conquer was based on the military principle of "defending the Yangtze River by defending the Dnieper River." In other words, if we were to establish our dominance in North China today, we would inevitably have to take Shanxi, because what if a Li Cunxu emerged from there?
With Shanxi secured, Guanzhong must be taken to prevent the emergence of another Yuwen Tai.
Having control of Guanzhong, one must then seize Hanzhong to prevent the emergence of another Liu Bang.
With Hanzhong secured, Sichuan will inevitably be taken, lest another Zhuge Liang emerge.
With Sichuan in our possession, we don't know what else might emerge, but taking Yunnan would always give us some peace of mind.
This logic was confirmed when the Mongols moved south.
Before this era, however, when the Central Plains regimes conquered a region, they had to consider the costs involved. The region had to be suitable for farming, not too fragmented, easy to manage, have transportation routes for large armies to pass through, and ensure logistical support. The local population also had to be Sinicized and not purely barbarian, nor could they have a deeply rooted local identity.
These things were unlikely to exist in Yunnan at that time.
Therefore, Zhao Kuangyin did not want Yunnan and regarded it as a scrap.
This was true for most emperors before Zhao Kuangyin.
For the next two hundred years, there were no large-scale wars between the Song Dynasty and Dali. Dali recognized the Song Dynasty as the legitimate dynasty and paid tribute to the Song Dynasty every year. The Song Dynasty was able to maintain peace in the southwest border region and concentrate on dealing with the threat from the north.
In retrospect, if the story of "Song Huiyu's axe" is true, although it reveals Zhao Kuangyin's petty nature, it also shows that he was good at making choices.
However, this also contributed to the conservatism of the entire Song Dynasty.
From the emperor to the ministers, everyone operated within the circle drawn by Zhao Kuangyin. Their greatest ambition was nothing more than to recover the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun and have a relatively stable northern frontier. They had no ambition to expand their territory to thousands of miles and encompass the four seas.
In the imperial court, whenever the topic of expanding territory was raised, whether in the southwest Dali or the south Jiaozhi, the example of "Song wielding the jade axe" would be cited to refute the Tang dynasty's conquest of Nanzhao and the difficulty of governing the southwest.
Over time, a conservative spirit permeated the culture, and complacency became the consensus among the Song Dynasty's rulers and officials.
The "Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun" in the northern frontier became the sole obsession of the emperors and officials of the Song Dynasty. All military and financial resources, as well as their plans and calculations, revolved around this corner of the land. Their vision extended only to the Great Wall, and they completely forgot that the world was vast and that there were still thousands of miles of coastal frontiers and fertile lands in the south to conquer.
Thus, the Song Dynasty was always preoccupied with the defense of its northern borders, maintaining a million soldiers every year, but these were mostly defensive forces, lacking the courage and drive to expand its territory.
The high-ranking officials in the court were either obsessed with maintaining internal stability, adhering to the policy of guarding the interior while weakening the exterior, and strictly preventing the resurgence of regional warlords; or they were eager to negotiate peace with Liao and Xia, exchanging annual tribute for peace, and regarded temporary peace as a good strategy.
Even those ministers who advocated war only sought to recover the "Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun" and secure the northern frontier. No one dared to cross the boundaries drawn by Zhao Kuangyin, let alone think of going south to subdue the Indochina Peninsula, expanding westward to the Western Regions, or controlling the South China Sea.
The saying goes, "Aim high and you'll get somewhere in the middle; aim for the middle and you'll get somewhere low."
The successive emperors and ministers of the Song Dynasty were only interested in recovering the "Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun" and stabilizing the northern frontier, but in the end, even this wish could not be realized.
Historically, the Yan-Yun region remained unrecovered for generations. Before the Liao dynasty was destroyed, the Jin dynasty rose up, and the northern frontier was engulfed in constant warfare. The annual tribute of silver and silk depleted the national treasury. In the end, it was because of the desire to recover the "Sixteen Prefectures of Yan-Yun" that Emperor Huizong allied with the Jin to destroy the Liao dynasty, leading to the Jingkang Incident and the fall of the Northern Song dynasty.
Furthermore, lacking an expansionist spirit, the Song Dynasty's navy, despite possessing the strongest foundation in the world, remained confined to its coastal waters, never venturing south to explore the Southeast Asia. This allowed smaller kingdoms of the Indochina Peninsula, such as the Joseon Dynasty, Champa, Khmer, Srivijaya, and Bagan, to dominate key maritime routes and reap the benefits of trade. The Indochina Peninsula, with its vast fertile plains and thriving commerce, remained unnoticed by the Song Dynasty, squandering a potentially lucrative territory. This conservative mindset persisted through generations. From Zhao Kuangyin onward, successive Song emperors and ministers became increasingly narrow-minded and lacked ambition.
As a result, the Song Dynasty was always better at maintaining its existing order than expanding its territory; better at internal stability than external threats. Despite its wealth, power, and bustling cities, it could not escape the fate of being passively attacked. It possessed a vast territory but lacked the power to protect it, ultimately losing half of its country and ending up in a precarious situation in the south.
This must all be attributed to the conservative calamity sown by "Zhao Kuangyin's jade axe stroke back then".
It wasn't until Zhao Yu assumed power that the conservative and long-standing problems that had plagued the Song Dynasty for a century were finally broken.
With an iron fist, he broke the shackles of "the borders drawn by Zhao Kuangyin's jade axe," abandoning the outdated notions of the court and its officials that they were confined to the northern frontier and content with a corner of the country. The borders that the emperor and his ministers once regarded as the golden rule were, in his eyes, merely expedient measures by Zhao Kuangyin due to the limitations of the times, not an insurmountable iron law. The disaster of the Tang Dynasty's conquest of Nanzhao was a lesson from the past, but not a shackle that would bind the Song Dynasty. The miasma in the southwest and the dangers of the southern frontier were not excuses for not moving forward.
Zhao Yu knew that the more he defended the country, the weaker he became, and the more he sought peace, the less peaceful it would be. Therefore, he overruled the objections of others, abandoned the conservative path established by Zhao Kuangyin, and devoted himself to expanding the territory, making the Song Dynasty unprecedentedly large.
Now, only the Dali Kingdom remains. Once the Song army crosses the Dadu River, Zhao Yu will completely break the constraints imposed by Zhao Kuangyin's "Song wields the jade axe".
It is worth mentioning that Zhao Yu wanted to recover Yunnan not only because of his "territorial integrity complex," but also because he knew that Kublai Khan, the Yuan emperor, had pioneered a military route from beyond the Great Wall through western Sichuan to Yunnan, and then from Yunnan to attack the core area of agricultural civilization. This made Zhao Yu realize the strategic value of Yunnan, that if something happened in Yunnan, it would mean something happened in the Central Plains.
Since Zhao Yu had already conquered the entire Indochina Peninsula, the Dali Kingdom was now like a nail driven into the heart of the Song Dynasty. Moreover, according to the points made by Zhang Chun and Li Lin, the ministers of the Song Dynasty realized that Dali could threaten the stability of the Song Dynasty. Therefore, this time when Zhao Yu wanted to attack Dali, the entire Song Dynasty supported Zhao Yu's decision, and no one opposed him anymore.
Given the current situation, everyone believes that Dali may surrender without a fight, since the Song Dynasty has basically pacified the whole country, leaving only Dali as its last remaining territory.
Therefore, Zhao Yu sent an envoy to Dali to tell Duan Zhengyan and his ministers that if they submitted, the King of Yunnan would be granted a title and his family and the nobles of Dali would be allowed to choose a place to live in Beijing.
Unexpectedly, the Duan family of Dali remained unmoved, commanding an army of 50,000 and occupying their ancestral homeland by Erhai Lake. They resisted unification by force and mobilized young men throughout the country to take up arms to defend their homeland.
With the advice and suggestions of his ministers, Emperor Duan Zhengyan of Dali even wrote a letter to Zhao Yu, saying:
Throughout history, the use of military force to seize power and change dynasties has been a common occurrence.
However, the military records of the Song Dynasty are poor!
In the past, when the rebellion of Fang La was quelled, the people of Jiangnan were massacred, millions died, women were abducted, agriculture and sericulture were destroyed, and fields were ruined.
I did not believe it, but the word spread, and my doubts grew, so I hesitated and did not dare to follow it hastily.
Dali has been a remote and isolated place since ancient times, and no royal army in history could fully subdue it.
During the Qin and Han dynasties, communication with the Central Plains began, but only through the dispatch of envoys; there was no actual expansion of territory. When Zhuge Liang led his southern expedition, he did not leave any troops to garrison the region, yet the various barbarian tribes submitted on their own. By the Tang dynasty, 120,000 armored soldiers were dispatched to conquer Nanzhao, but the entire army was wiped out, leaving only chaos and turmoil.
Duan Zhengyan succinctly summarized the previous relationship between Dali and the Central Plains regime in just three sentences.
The Qin dynasty unified China by conquering the six states, but due to its short lifespan, its development and management of Yunnan stopped at the "Five-Foot Road".
Emperor Wu of Han also sent envoys to Yunnan in an attempt to open up the road to Yunnan, but they were stopped at Kunming due to obstruction from local tribes.
As for the comparison between Zhuge Liang's decision not to leave any troops to garrison the capital and the Tang Dynasty's deployment of 120,000 troops, Duan Zhengyan wanted to tell Zhao Yu that if His Majesty were to emulate Zhuge Liang and merely spread his benevolent rule to help our agricultural production and optimize our management system, without bringing in the violent machinery of the army, then everyone would be happy. If you want to fight against others, our Dali Kingdom would be very willing to contribute troops and resources. However, if you want to emulate the Tang Dynasty and resort to force, then the fate of Xianyu Zhongtong, the Jiedushi of Jiannan during the Tang Dynasty, who suffered a defeat at Erhai Lake, with 80,000 of his 120,000 troops killed or wounded, is a case in point.
Duan Zhengyan continued:
"Our Duan family of Dali originated from the Tianbao War of the Tang Dynasty. Our ancestor Duan Jianwei decisively defeated the Tang army, making outstanding contributions to the Nanzhao Kingdom. He was promoted to Qingping official by Geluofeng. Six generations later, our ancestor Duan Siping became the Jiedushi of Tonghai, governing a region. He later joined forces with Gao Fang and Dong Jialuo to destroy the Dayining Kingdom, established his capital at Yangjumei City, and founded the Dali Kingdom. For over 370 years, the Duan family has spent nearly 400 years cultivating this land."
"Your Majesty now wishes to use force. Although Dali is small, its people and soldiers are united in their hatred of the enemy. If Your Majesty insists on using force, Dali will surely fight back with all its might, even if it means total destruction!"
Then, Duan Zhengyan changed his tone, lowered his stance, and said again:
"Your Majesty, we of the Duan family of Dali, are willing to submit to Your Majesty and guard the Yunnan frontier for generations, serving as a bulwark for the Great Song Dynasty. We earnestly request Your Majesty to bestow upon us the title of King of Yunnan, so that the Duan family may continue its ancestral rites. We firmly believe that Your Majesty's power and virtue are both renowned, and that Your Majesty will not recklessly wage war. We humbly request Your Majesty's grace and permission to grant us hereditary titles. All ritual implements and local products are prepared. We await Your Majesty's decree and will rush to court to receive the investiture. We humbly submit to Your Majesty's wise decision!"
Duan Zhengyan's letter can be described as a combination of soft and hard tactics, neither humble nor arrogant, and it showed no intention of unconditional surrender. He only wanted his Duan family to guard the Dali Kingdom for generations and become a vassal state of the Song Dynasty.
Upon seeing this, Zhao Yu did not reply to Duan Zhengyan's letter at all.
Seeing that Zhao Yu had not replied to his letter, Duan Zhengyan wrote another letter to Zhao Yu, in which he said:
"His Majesty has not given a reply. Could it be that the Great Song intends to send troops to Dali?"
The people of Dali are diverse and fierce, extremely difficult to tame. The region is covered by mountains, each with its own customs, language, and dialect, and their likes and dislikes vary greatly. Even if Your Majesty were to conquer them by force, I would like to ask how you would govern them?
In the past, Emperor Wu of Han abandoned the ways of his predecessors and recklessly waged war against our Dian region, causing immense depletion of resources and resulting in more losses than gains. Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, unable to tolerate minor grievances on the borders, launched a military campaign against us, only to suffer a complete defeat and bring years of calamity to Sichuan and Jiaozhi, becoming a major threat to the Central Plains. From this, we can see that gaining the empire cannot solely rely on military might.
In my humble opinion, it would be best if the two countries swore an oath of blood, each settling in their own territory and sharing peace. Would that be wonderful? If my Duan family were to commit any disloyal or unjust acts in the future, Your Majesty could then send troops to punish us, which would not be too late.
I would like to further inform Your Majesty: The soldiers of the Great Song Dynasty are skilled in fighting on plains. My Dali is a remote and desolate place. If Your Majesty's army comes, you will suffer the hardships of sleeping in the open and the pain of wandering in other places. Moreover, the southern border is plagued by miasma and epidemics. If your army is exhausted and runs out of food, you will not be able to defeat my Dali and will become a laughing stock in the world!
We humbly request Your Majesty to carefully consider and decide upon this matter. This is hereby announced.
After reading Duan Zhengyan's second letter, Zhao Yu smiled coldly and thought to himself, "You, Duan Yu, how dare you speak to me like that? Very well, after I capture you alive, I'll take all your Wang Yuyan, Mu Wanqing, and Zhong Ling'er for myself!"
After thinking for a moment, Zhao Yu picked up his pen and wrote a reply to Duan Zhengyan, in which he "reasoned" with the male protagonist of "Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils"...
...(End of chapter)