The History of China - #142 - N. Song 9: Dithering the War Away

Episode Date: May 20, 2018

Emperor Renzong of Song isn't exactly... into the whole "rule" thing. He'd much rather wile away his days talking about Confucian philosophy, writing calligraphy, and making love to his concubines. But he'll be forced to uneasily embody the might of Song China when the Tangut state of Western Xia declares its independence, triggering a massive conflict on the borderlands. Time Period Covered: 1033-1044 CE Major Historical Figures: Song: Emperor Renzong Chancellor Li Yijian Fan Zhongyan, Commander of Yanan Circuit Xi Xia: Li Yuanhao (Weiming Nangxiao), Emperor of Xia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 142, Dithering the War Away. Last time, the Empress Dowager Liu ruled over her son for 20-some years as regent of the realm before dying in 1033, thus leaving Emperor Renzong with the, ahem, mother of all Moripovich-esque reveal moments. Renzong, you are not the son of Empress Liu. And so, this time, we begin Ranzong's three-decade period of personal rule. Emperor Ranzong acted swiftly in purging his government of any and all vestiges of his not-mother's reign over him and his realm, targeting in particular the extra eunuch positions Leo had

created. In spite of this start, anyone with high hopes that Runzong's personal rule would mark the emergence of a bold, fresh vision of government would quickly come to find themselves disappointed. It's probably not going to sound too crazy about someone who let his mom continue to rule over him for some six-odd years after he should have taken over, and then seem perfectly content who let his mom continue to rule over him for some six-odd years after he should have taken over, and then seemed perfectly content to let his mom's BFF continue to rule in his name after she died. But yeah, Ren Zong was not exactly some unstoppable force of personality, drive, or ambition. Instead, he largely found himself in the first half of the 1030s at more or less the mercy of events and people beyond his control. Those powerful ministers, entrenched bureaucracies, and literal forces of

nature. And to all that, seems to have in essence shrugged his shoulders and went, well, I guess there's nothing to be done. Professor McGrath notes that, quote, Dowager Empress Leo had been keenly aware of Ren Zong's ambivalence towards power, and her attempts to pass the regency on to pure consort Yang, who had helped raise Ren Zong, reflected a possible genuine belief that Ren Zong was too ambivalent to rule effectively, end quote. Well, there was at least one thing that Ren Zong seems not to have been ambivalent about whatsoever, and that was the fact that he absolutely, positively, very much wanted to not be married to his wife anymore. His wife, or to be more specific, his prime wife, the Empress, known as Empress Guo,

and she had, unsurprisingly, been chosen by not-mother, largely for political reasons. He actually preferred another of his ladies-in-waiting, called Chang, but Empress Liu had insisted that Guo was the better match. Well, now Not-Mother was dead and could go kick rocks in the afterlife, because if Ren Zong knew anything, it was that Empress Guo was definitely not the one for him. Pretty much as soon as Empress Liu had cashed in, Ren Zong had started up what's referred to as intense sexual liaisons with a concubine known as Lady Shang. This affair, this affair, and I mean, is it really an affair? Presumably not, since they seem to have been part of a harem, but still, it's written about as though it were an affair, so I guess I'm gonna

go with that. In any case, the liaisons with Lady Shang lasted for about a year and a half, by the end of which Ren Zong had worked up the nerve to dismiss his empress from the court entirely, and packed her off to go live out the rest of her life in a Taoist monastery. The pretext given for the dismissal was that the empress, in a fit of jealous rage against Lady Shang, had gotten into a heated argument with her rival for Ren Zong's affections, and had actually made to strike the consort. But in so doing, she had scratched the emperor's neck, thus defiling the sacrosanct. Subsequently, documents were drawn up by several officials justifying the divorce on the grounds that Empress Guo had failed to yet produce an heir for the emperor, that she had struck him, and that she therefore desired to retreat from the worldly into monastic vows. Yeah, right.

And when other ministers, outraged and smelling the obvious BS on this rationale and sought to confront the emperor personally and question his decision, they were one and all packed off to regional posts well away from the capital because Runzong was not about to let someone else dictate his love life anymore. The harem purge went even further though, extending to more than 200 palace women dismissed from service, owing to the fact that Ren Zong saw them as partisans of not-mother and the former Empress Guo. But such personal matters would have to wait until the autumn of 1034. Owing to a combination of natural disasters, military defeat, unusual astronomical portents, mourning for two mothers, debauchery, divorce, and political infighting that drove the emperor to the sickbed.

In the aftermath of this whirlwind, Ranzong's advisors convinced him that he ought to dismiss not just Empress Guo, but also his erstwhile tryst, Lady Shang, as well as another of his consorts, Lady Yang. This was partly because his vigorous relationship with them was blamed for his declining health, but also because Lady Shang had been getting herself into trouble by doing things like issuing illegal orders, taking bribes, and allowing unauthorized visitors into the palace. As such, all were to be shipped off into exile, with Shang taking up Taoist holy orders and Yang sent off to a monastery. As McGrath puts it, quote,

With his empress deposed, the business of the day, once Renzong had recovered, was to find him a new empress, one that could produce an heir for him. After several girls were interviewed and rejected, the emperor and his court finally settled on Lady Cao, the granddaughter of one of Emperor Taizu's foremost generals. The official ceremony making her empress was held only a month later, as the necessity of assuring an heir took precedence over mourning rules. Empress Cao was a painter, calligrapher, and gardener, and proved a good choice as empress. Unlike Empress Liu, who had lavishly favored her own families, Empress Cao did not request or permit favors from her relatives. But even with

this matter settled, the relationship revolving Dor still was not done spinning. Later in 1035, Runzong came to realize that, well, he kind of missed his former empress, Guo, and so did the 11th century equivalent of drunk-dialing her. He sent her gifts and inquired after her health. As luck would have it, Guo had taken ill, and so the emperor sent one of his physicians to deliver her medicine. Within days, though, Guo had died, and it was widely assumed that the imperial doctor had actually poisoned her to stop this post-breakup booty call in the making. After all, what are bros for if not to stop you from drunk-dialing your ex by, um, preemptively poisoning them? Moving away from the affairs of the heart and onto affairs of the state, to say that Ren Zong was pretty uninterested in the active tasks of governance would be putting

it pretty mildly. The guy, over the whole course of his reign, just could not seem to find it in him to care all that terribly much. And don't get me wrong, that's not always necessarily bad. He certainly wasn't in terrible danger of going power mad, for instance, but at the same time, when your ministers are complaining that you're only holding court less than a hundred days out of the year, you might have strayed a bit too far into apathy land. He was, however, very interested in culture and learning. He frequently met with learned men and academicians of all kinds in reading groups of texts, calligraphy practice and appreciation, and also to discuss Confucian philosophies. One significant project the emperor oversaw was the cataloging and sheer number of the books that needed to be sorted and edited, the first year the projects alone saw more than 8,400 volumes and

scrolls sorted and revised, out of a total of some 30,669 volumes within 3,445 books. Ren Zong also vastly expanded the number of prefectural schools across the empire, in all setting them up in about one out of six of the prefectural cities across the nation. That was all well and good, but things would get a bit messy when that was combined, starting in 1034, with the extremely relaxed standards to pass the imperial civil service exam. Under previous monarchs, the exam had a pass rate of about 6-7%, at least by some figures, but this would be tripled to about 20% of the testees passing to become eligible for office. Well, what's the problem with that?

Well, you might have 800 new graduates instead of 300, but the government certainly didn't have that many new open slots within its bureaucracy. Such a backup of eligible applicants caused not only rampant favoritism in the selection process, but also a degree of social unrest when the rapidly increasing body of educated citizens began challenging the very notions of social hierarchy itself. Again, from McGrath, quote, the unprecedented spread of literati culture throughout the society compelled the emperor and scholar officials to promulgate sumptuary relegations for the people of the capital district, specifying status-appropriate headgear and clothing, housing, carts and horses, and articles of daily living for them.

Knowledge of decrees and laws was restricted by forbidding private individuals from copying out collections of legal documents. End quote. That's right, the peasantry is just far too educated. They are reading the laws. They are dressing all uppity. That is not okay. At least as troublesome across the 1030s was the weather itself, and even the earth. Toward the end of 1037, the capital and its surrounding areas were rocked by chains of earthquakes over the course of five days,

with subsequent quakes being reported in the weeks and months to come, and even years to come, across neighboring provinces. From McGrath, quote, shocks a day. The earth cracked, geysers spouted, and more than 12,000 people were killed, with some 5,600 people injured and 50,000 cattle injured or killed, end quote. Predictably, such catastrophes led to further catastrophes, such as widespread famines when dikes failed or rains didn't come on time. This was capped off in 1037, just two days after the earthquake at the capital began, when a meteor shower plunged the imperial palace into a full-blown panic. It seemed that both the earth and heaven itself were declaring against the Song regime, or at least some component of it. Ren Zong's ministers warned the emperor that these devastating disruptions

were surely due to him allowing the Chancellor, the Yijian, to dominate his court, suppress open discussion, and appoint his favorites to high office, a warning that Ren Zong came to heed. Taxes were canceled for the victims of the earthquakes, and a clean sweep was made of those appointees made by the Chancellor, rather than the usual selection process. Perhaps, with the right tweaks and the changes to government, heaven would once again smile upon the Song, but before those internal changes could change the divine dissatisfaction, an external threat would require the state's full attention.

We spoke at length about the background and initial formation of the Tangut state of Western Xia, or Xi Xia, back in episode 136, so I'll not get too terribly bogged down in that here again. Suffice it to say that since its creation as an independent but subsidiary state of both Song and Liao in 986, reaffirmed by the Chanyuan Treaty of 1004, Western Xia had grown considerably, from a handful of towns and groups of pastoral nomads within the Ordos Loop or the Yellow River, to a formidable cavalry empire that spanned not only the Ordos but reached far into the northwest along the Gansu Corridor leading out of China proper, and he who had been responsible for its great expansion into the west, Li Deming, died in 1032 and was succeeded by his son, Li Yuanhao. Now, though the Chinese accounts of Yuanhao are steeped in rumor and legend, we still know more from them about this particular Tangut ruler than of all of the other Xiao rulers combined. He was an extremely learned individual, speaking both Chinese and Tibetan fluently, and having studied by his adulthood law, divination, as well as military strategies and the classical texts of Buddhism. In spite of, or perhaps because

of, his wide berth of education and cultural knowledge, unlike his father, Yuan Hao did not aspire to cozy up to the Song Chinese, but rather to forge a completely independent path for him and his people. This was shown early in his reign, when he formally cast off the royal surnames bestowed upon his family by both the Tang and the Song, Li and Zhao, respectively. Instead, he took up a traditional Tangut surname, which is pronounced, I believe, as Nui Mi in the Tangut language itself, but is pronounced as Weiming in Chinese, with his full name transliterated as Weiming Nangxiao, though he'd typically not be referred to by this name. year and a half of his reign, Yuan Hao had transformed Xia from a disparate trading confederation into a far more centralized and militarized state. This was all in service to his goal of making Xia the socio-political equal of at least the Liao Empire. Ruth Dunnell writes that Yuan Hao was, quote, unquestionably the most talented and imaginative of the Tangut rulers,

and left an enduring imprint on the structure of the Xia government as well as the popular mind, end quote, even as his push to centralize authority among the notoriously dissolute stepwriters would ultimately culminate in his assassination at their very hands. In addition to changing his given name, Yuan Hao would also be the first Tangut ruler to take up the title of Wu Zi, the Tangut equivalent of Kai Han, or Emperor, and, quote, which was glossed in the Chinese as Qingtianzi, meaning the Blue Sun of Heaven, or the Sun of the Blue Heavens, end quote. Probably the most extreme of Yuan Hao's nativistic decrees, though, was in 1034, his decree that all men within his realm must shave their heads in the following style, quote, the top part of the skull was shaved, leaving a fringe across the forehead and down the sides framing the face, end quote. Once the decree had been promulgated, if after three days

a man had been found in contravention of the order, he was permitted to be killed on sight. Such restrictions on hairstylings would come to far greater infamy during the Manchu domination of China under the Qing dynasty beginning in the 15th century, but it is interesting to note it occurring far earlier here as well. Two years after the head-shaving decree, Yuan Hao ordered the adoption of a new and native script that had been under construction since the time of his father. Comprised of some 6,000 characters, work within the officialdom to copy Chinese, Tibetan, and Buddhist documents into Tangut began at once. Sadly, no copies of such works are known to have survived the ages, and knowledge of the Tangut

form is only recorded in Chinese transliterations of Xisha titles of office, which were used so as to avoid any suggestion of parity between Song officials and their Xia counterparts. Conscription among the Xisha was universal among males aged 15 to 60, which meant that at its heights under Yuan Hao, the Tangut army could field a force of between 150,000 to 300,000 cavalry, the core of which far exceeded in quality any cavalry force the Song could hope to muster. Yet this would be constantly tempered by the dual fact that such numbers were almost certainly inflated

by large numbers of non-warrior horsemen impressed to fill out their ranks, and that Xia could never overcommit to any one conflict, lest to weaken itself too much to an attack from its other neighbor, the ever-opportunistic Liao. Conflict between Song and Xia would touch off in 1038 as a culmination of a period of escalating tensions and border skirmishes, masked by ostensibly good-natured correspondences between the two courts. The breaking point would come in the 10th month, when the 30-year-old Yuan Hao was formally enthroned as the Emperor of Great Xia, and then bestowed temple names on his

ancestors as well as declaring his own independent reign era, which, as we'll all recall, was one of the big triggers to conflict a would-be independent state could pull. Yuan Hao sent out a special emissary to Kaifeng, bearing gifts of both horses and camels, as well as the news of his establishment of the Tangut state as its own independent imperial power, and requesting recognition as a friendly but sovereign western neighbor. Having had some advance warning of what just exactly was happening over with the Tangut monarch, Emperor Renzong and his officials were not taken completely by surprise by the emissaries, but instead, after proffering the usual courtesies befitting a subordinate state's ambassadors, refused the offered gifts and issued

a counter-edict demanding compliance with their former master suzerain status. Obviously unable to accept such a response, the Xia embassy rejected it, as everyone knew that they would, along with the gifts Ranzong offered them, and were duly escorted back to the border. At that point, the Song Emperor revoked all of the Tangut Emperor's Chinese titles and ranks, as well as closing off the frontier markets of the Western state. To this, Yuan Hao returned his Song paraphernalia to Kaifeng, along with what was deemed by the Chinese court to be an impudent letter declaring the tanguts and chinese are different countries and their lands are vastly dissimilar this is not a case of usurpation why is your resentment so deep and in accordance with the ancient Tolbat tradition, aspire to be emperor. What is wrong with that? End quote.

To which I imagine Ren Zong responded, It's treason then. Major hostilities would be put off until the following year, though, 1039, because of two factors. First, the Sun Court was already deep into the planning and preparations for the triennial worship of heaven and earth, which, as we've talked about before, was kind of a big deal. Then there was also the fact that, well, Song was a bit cash-strapped at the moment. This is not to say that it was poor,

it just didn't have the liquidity to immediately mobilize a force capable of dealing with what it deemed to be a border rebellion. Nevertheless, Ranzong did fire off a quick missive declaring Wei Ming Yuan Hao an outlaw and offering 100,000 strings of cash for his capture, as well as appointing two lauded generals as intendants of pacification along the frontier. Thus, it would be the Xia armies with the initiative to strike first against Song outposts in late 1039. An initial strike into Fuyuan Circuit was repulsed by the zone commander Lu Xiuqin. At the same time, a force of some 30,000 cavalry encircled the city of Chengping Cai, but the deputy commander within the city was able to break through the siege lines with a force of 1,000 or so troops and attack the Xia flanks, forcing them to retreat.

The Song frontier force then capitalized on its momentum, driving the Xia army back and even destroying several of the Tang that the best way to prosecute this war would be to enact a policy of a full-on offensive since, as they aptly pointed out, a decade of defensive strategies had clearly not dissuaded the Tanguts. Nevertheless, those ministers advising an offensive war were in the extreme minority, and both the court and the emperor widely agreed that a large scale offensive was simply not feasible at this point. From McGrath, quote, valleys, this area was mostly sparse grasslands with very low rainfall. Its population, made up of mostly non-Han pastoralists, were few and scattered. Distances between settlements were so great that more horses, mounted archers, local militias, tribal alliances, and fortified bases were needed to counteract Li Yuanhao's ability to bring large concentrations of mounted forces

together for massive raids. The distances, terrain, and enemy tactics required mounted warfare, preparation for which would need two or three years to train troops and to augment and replace detrained Imperial garrison forces, end quote. Thus, in spite of their initial setback, the initiative would remain with the Xishu into 1040. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost

beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. Yuan Hao would direct another attack against the Song in early 1040, this time aimed at the Yan'an Circuit and its fortress at Jinming in particular. This assault

would prove far more successful than the first, and result in the capture of both the local commanding officer and his son, and shortly thereafter surrounding and taking the fortification itself, after tricking the garrison commander into leaving it unguarded. McGrath points out that a major reason for these early Song missteps was due to the clunky nature of its border command structure, an error that was seen by those in the field even at the time. Up to this point, each region had 10,000 troops in two zones of 5,000 each, and an additional 3,000 per district. Whenever there was an incursion, the lowest ranking commander nearby was sent to deal with it. And while that might have worked for low-level raids, against a concentrated attack, such localized and disunified resistance was

laughably insufficient. It would be up to the newly appointed Yan'an prefect, Fan Zhongyan, to recognize and correct this self-defeating strategy, reorganizing the area into six commands with 3,000 troops apiece, but all under his centralized directive, to be sent to incursions across the prefect as the number of raiders dictated, in other words, a policy of proportionate response. This change up to the Song strategy proved so effective that even the Tangut generals wrote to one another of its impressive results, telling their other commanders to steer well clear of Yan'an, quote,

Apart from the silver lining that was the Yan'an defensive strategy, however, the clouds remained pretty dark for the Song prospects along the rest of its frontier throughout 1040. By mid-spring, Tangut forces had overrun Jinming and attacked fortresses at Anyang, Saimun, and Yongping, resulting in a complete shake-up of the military command structure, including allowing the Bureau of Military Affairs to confer with the Chancellery, breaking the imperial injunction against such fraternization between civil and military officials that had existed since the beginning of the dynasty. Above all was the concern that the Tanguts might be in cahoots with the Liao, or at least seeking such an alliance. Trying to stave off that possibility, the Song court sent an emissary

to the Liao supreme capital, announcing an offensive campaign against the Xia. That would backfire, however, when the expedition met with a disastrous defeat near Weizhou, leading to the loss of some 5,000 men. Following such a string of successes, one might naturally assume that Wei Mingyu and Hao would seek to capitalize on such an advantage and press the attack. Instead, as winter descended, and as the new year of 1041 rolled around, the Tangut Emperor dispatched an emissary to Prefect Fan Zhongyan at Yan'an, asking for peace. The overture was brushed off by the commander as insincere. Nevertheless, he did convince the planners back at Kaifeng to at least postpone any counterattack

until the spring thaw, when, as he saw it, the Tangut horses would be at their weakest since their supply of fodder would have run to its lowest. In the meantime, Fahn continued his regional policy of defense in depth, the likes of which would have made even Erich von Ludendorff proud. Fahn chained together systems of older walls and actively constructed new ones between fortified settlements, as well as walling off dozens of forts during that winter in a massive display of engineering manpower. Yet the third phase of the Songxia War would be most marked by the disastrous loss of some 6,000 Chinese soldiers in mid-1041. Anticipating and trying to preempt another Xia strike against the

Weizhou Prefecture, the intendant of Huanqing raced ahead of the line with 18,000 ready conscripted levy troops intending to strike at Li Yuanhao directly before the Tangut leader was prepared. A sub-commander named Ren Fu was ordered to take several thousand of these light cavalry and attack the encamped Tanguts at Huaiyuan, some 35 or 40 miles west of the regional Song fort. The initial attack met with some success, and Commander Ren's forces killed several hundred Xia soldiers. But then, the step-riders do what the step-riders always do, the feigned flight. That is to say, they pretended to break and rout, leaving behind horses, camels, sheep, and other items to enhance the ruse. And Commander Ren, of course, gave in to the temptation to pursue and eliminate this clearly broken force.

The Shao regrouped at a predetermined location near Dusk, and then joined up with a far larger attacking force, making their way along a nearby river. In the meantime, the Song army was itself strung out across miles and miles of empty steppe land, and tired out their mounts to boot. So, when the Xia force attacked the exhausted and completely out-of-formation Chinese line, it was nothing short of a massacre. From McGrath, quote, The Song generals, realizing they had been tricked, were unable to regroup. Tangut shock troops hit them in the front while other ambushed the Song flank.

When the fighting ended, Renfu, the field commander for Huanqing Circuit, a number of his subordinate generals, including Song Yi, and more than 6,000 troops died in battle at Haoshui Bridge. This was the worst Song defeat since the founding of the dynasty. And I just have to pause a moment and marvel at this, the loss of 6,000 troops being the most devastating loss that the Song had ever suffered up to this point. Perhaps not in terms of sheer numbers, but in terms of morale and battle impetus. That really does show just how pacifistic the early Song was in comparison to virtually any

other period of Chinese history. If we think back to the Mid-Tang, for instance, and even the relatively minor one and only clash between it and the Abbasid Empire at the Talus River in modern Kyrgyzstan, a battle deemed so unremarkable that Tang historians barely even bothered to record it at all, which alone saw the deaths of some 20,000 to 30,000 Tang troops, though granted they were primarily non-Chinese border troops, which probably explains their expendability. Still, to go from a loss of 20,000 being a meh border loss, to now a loss of 6,000 being some shattering moral defeat, is illustrative of how times

certainly have changed for the fortunes of Imperial China. The defeat was deemed by Ren Zong's chancellors to be so terrible that for a period of ten days they all kept news of the battle from the emperor. Ren Zong wound up finding out only because an old soldier and caretaker of the palace grounds had read it in a letter and told it to him when asked. And you can be sure that when next he met his reticent chancellors, he gave them all an earful for their keeping war-sensitive information from him and for trying his patience. For the remainder of the year and into the next, any idea of going on the offensive was shelved, and it was back to the defensive.

Twenty battalions, round about 12,000 troops, were reassigned and reorganized into the ever-victorious army and assigned to the borders with strict orders to fiercely defend any Tangut incursion, but to refrain from penetrating into Xia territories. The shocking Chinese defeat had done more than just stall out the Song advance, however. By being so soundly beaten by what was, on paper anyway, an inferior state, the Song empire was now at risk of being viewed by the Khitan as easy pickings. Once he'd learned of the outcome of the Battle of Hao Shui Bridge, the Liao Emperor, Xing Zong, ordered his troops to begin amassing along the Song Liao border.

Uh oh. The good news for Song was that its defensive outlook was far better facing the Liao than it was against the Xia, since there were more fortifications in place, as well as more natural barriers to cavalry incursion. All of these were staffed in each of the northern Borden provinces, with garrisons of 100,000 or more troops, a two-year supply of grain or fodder, and a budget of 1 million strings of cash and 2 million bolts of silk, 50,000 sets of armor and weaponry, and 300 ships that had been secretly constructed and sailed into Hebei. Even so, this ominous troop buildup prompted the Song court to abandon one of the most onerous stipulations of the Tianyuan Treaty and to begin reconstruction and repair of the walls and moats across 21 border prefectures.

But this overt flouting of the treaty stipulations in reconstructing the old static defenses necessitated answers. As such, in the spring of 1042, two Liao emissaries arrived at Kaifeng and were granted an audience with the emperor. They had been sent to demand an explanation for the treaty violation, as well as the buildup of Chinese troop strength in Hebei, and furthermore to press for ten counties south of a defensive border pass. This was clearly a highball first offer, and the Song court responded as such, instead only offering an increase to the annual payments made to Liao. To this, the Liao emperor replied, alright, but we at least get to call it tribute from now on. To which the Song negotiator

said, alright, but only if you convince the Tangut to come to the negotiation table. At the same time, back in Song, Chancellor Louis Jian recommended that declaring that the provincial capital of Hebei East, called Daming City, be declared the northern capital of Song, thereby indicating that Ren Zong might move there to more directly oversee a potential northward strike against Liao, should negotiations fail to pan out. This was particularly meaningful because Daming was where Taizong had last led the Song against the Liao and personally rode out against them before the Liao had negotiated the Chanyuan Treaty four decades prior. Such actions may have finally pushed the Liao into abandoning ideas of invading Song territories, but at least as much it was the sheer amount of extra treasure the Chinese negotiators had been authorized to offer the Catan court for not attacking. They doubled the annual payment of silver to 100,000 ounces, as well as an additional 100,000 bolts of silk, bringing that to 300,000 total. McGrath is quick to point out, though,

that even these payments of half a million strings of cash per year paled in comparison to the defense budget for the northern borders at the height of the Liao threat, which had seen the allotment of the equivalent of 12 million strings in the course of a single month to assist in border expenses. So this deal, in spite of its expense, was comparatively a bargain. The Catan threat had been averted. Still, that did leave the Tanguts yet to be dealt with. In the late fall of 1042, a massive force of 100,000 Xishua cavalry attacked into southern Ningxia, utilizing a mixture of hit-and-run tactics as well as focused attacks. The Chinese garrisons took heavy losses to the initial assault, some accounts numbering more than 9,000 casualties, yet they held firm. In spite of the size of the Xia force, enough time had

elapsed and enough troops reassigned to this front that the numbers game along the border had reversed to decisively favor the Song armies. The forward-most bases held garrisons ranging from 50,000 to 70,000 troops each, and all backed up by the garrison of Shanxi, which housed some 400,000 troops, now ready to deploy westward now that the Liao problem was solved. Even so, strategic initiative remained on the side of the offense, since Yuan Hao was able to choose the time and place of any encounter, and the Song was still forced into a position of response and reaction. Nevertheless, by early 1043, the Tangut forces had fairly well exhausted themselves.

One major sticking point that had been pre-empting all attempts at negotiation with the Xisha was that the Song kept demanding that Li Yuanhao accept nominal vassalage to the Song and refer to himself as Chen or Subject in official missives to Ranzong's court. The tense negotiations with the Gitan had resulted in the imperial court giving some ground on the issue in 1042, secretly instructing the chief negotiator with the Tangut court to accept peace terms that would allow Li Yuanhao to use his native title, Wu Zi, so long as he referred to himself as Chen in missives to Kaifeng. To this, in early 1043, Yuanhao proposed a counteroffer to Ranzong, writing,

quote, the son, emperor of the Xisha state, Ning Xiao, submits a letter to the father, emperor of the Great Song, end quote. What this was, was an attempt to utilize the familiar status that had been used between Song and Liao since 1004, with the two emperors referring to one another as older and younger brother, respectively. And here was Yuan Hao saying, listen, I don't even have to be the littlest brother, I'll be the son of this whole thing, so how about it? Nevertheless, it was deemed a bridge too far for the Song court, and the terms were rejected. Several months later, a counteroffer arrived at the mobile court of Yuan Hao, now offering to invest the Tangut ruler as Xu, ruler, a title greater than Wang,

meaning prince or king, though not as great as huangdi, meaning emperor, as well as offering to send yearly gifts to the ruler of Xia of 100,000 bolts of silk and about 15,000 kilograms of tea. To this, Yuan Hao replied with an 11-point set of demands that would also need to be met for him to feel satisfied with such an arrangement, including an increase to the annual gift, greater trading privileges, and permission to sell salt directly to Chinese buyers. It was pointed out again at the Song court that the Tangut were pretty much directly plagiarizing the Liao set of demands back in 1004, confirming in the minds of most of the court that, whatever the Katana ambassadors might

say to the contrary, the two northern states were clearly in cahoots with each other against China. We can imagine the confusion they must have felt then, when less than a year later, these two supposedly in-league barbarian states were at each other's throats and breaking out into open war with one another. Negotiations went back and forth over the course of the rest of the year, over this and that point, but by late 1044, learning that the Xia had managed to defeat a Liao expeditionary force along the borders, the Song court seized the initiative and dispatched an emissary to finally conclude peace with the ruler of Western Xia, Wei Ming Yuan Hao. The terms of the treaty were very much the same as they had been with the Liao.

In addition to the annual payments I mentioned before, it was stipulated that the Song emissaries and their gifts would be received at a border city and not at the Tangut capital. The Songxia War was significant not because of its size or its existential threat to the Chinese state, but instead because of what it revealed about the nature of Song China and its capability of force projection, or rather, lack thereof. Compared to even other campaigns of Ranzong's own predecessors, such as Taizong against the Liao, the total war casualties of the Song armies was relatively minute, sitting at about 20,000 in all. But it was emotionally more significant than the outcome of the Liao-Song war, precisely because it had had to conduct a very similar treaty with a far smaller and more remote state than the behemoth that was the Liao. Looking back with historical omnipotence

of what's to come, we can see on full display the critical weakness of the Song military and its defensive stratagems that will, in due time, lead to its downfall. Defense largely delegated to local civilian officials, indifference to military preparedness and coordination, and a debilitating over-reliance on non-Chinese allies to ensure border security. It was telling indeed that the commander at Yan'an, Fan Zhongyan, had managed to utterly dissuade attacks by the Tangut against his territories by dint of merely reorganizing his command to a more responsive, coordinated system, and equally telling that such a system was not more widely adopted outside of Yan'an.

Li Yuanhao had never held the resources to deeply penetrate Chinese territories, nor of conducting much more than raids against lightly defended targets and armies in the field. Over the course of four years of fighting, he had only been able to launch five major attacks with middling results at best. Yet this nevertheless succeeded in intimidating Emperor Ren Zong and his court into accepting Xia independence and agreeing to pay it off to conclude the fighting. As McGrath put it, Ren Zong and his civilian court had dithered the war away, never fully accepting the opportunity to go on to the offensive

because of their fear of delegating adequate autonomous power to regional governments or the military. Such dithering and hand-rigging will, we will come to see, not stand up to the steppe forces that are capable of seriously threatening the Chinese core. And so it is here that we will end off this time. Next time, with the war against Xishu concluded, Emperor Renzong will once again turn his focus inward and dabble in a series of reforms being pressed by a cabal of his up-and-coming advisors. But change often meets with considerable pushback, and when the resistance comes, Renzong will retreat into comfortable but crippling inertia. Meanwhile, though the northern border is pacified for now, the south will once again erupt into rebellions, demanding a response.

Thanks for listening. Before leaving you off today, as you might have been able to hear in today's episode, I'm just now getting over a major bout of flu that left me pretty well on my back, and quite literally without breath, for about a week. Fortunately, I'm now on the mend, although still not quite 100% just yet. Hopefully I'll get there in the next few days or so, because believe you me, I'm more than ready to not be coughing anymore. As another little update, as of next Monday, I'm going to be out of office for a week, heading with a school trip to Chengdu, Sichuan, with about 40 students to go pet pandas and camp and hike around China's interior. Fun stuff.

So, suffice it to say, I don't anticipate getting much work done on the next episode while I'm in a tent in the jungles of central China. So be that as it may, while you're waiting, I suggest that you go and check out Noah Tessner's The History of Vikings podcast, which is cutting a bloody swath of mayhem and historical mischief through the iTunes rankings. Gods, plunder, booty, and glory all await, so don't delay. Odin's Blessing awaits at the History of Vikings podcast. Thanks once again, and see you next time. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the

work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.