The History of China - #148 - N. Song 15: A Campaign of Dunces

Episode Date: September 2, 2018

With Wang Anshi out of the picture, Emperor Shenzong's ministers find to their horror that theg uy they thought was radicalizing the monarch... had actually be holding him back this whole time. Now there's nothing to stop Shenzong from fulfilling his lifelong ambition to conquer Western Xia... nothing, that is... except the idiocy of the commanders he'll put in charge of the operation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast. Hello and welcome to the History of China.

Episode 148, A Campaign of Dunces. Last time, we concluded our in-depth look into the new policies of Wang Anshu and their immediate ramifications across the Song Empire, which may be best described as extremely lucrative, but at extreme, albeit unintended, costs. Today, then, we'll be looking at the back half of Emperor Shenzong's reign over the Song, the post-Wang fallout of the new policies, and most especially how the richest man in the world could just so catastrophically fail militarily against a state consisting of semi-nomadic step-riders. The main focus of today's episode is going to be the ill-advised and ill-carried-out war between Song China and its neighbor to the northwest, Western Xia, aka Xixia.

First, though, we've got a few major internal policy changes to cover within the imperial court at Kaifeng. Don't worry, though, we're not going to be having another mini-series on political machinations just yet. With Wang Anxia's ouster, conservatives within the court ministry we're not going to be having another mini-series on political machinations just yet. With Wang Anshi's ouster, conservatives within the court ministry had every right to believe that their time was finally at hand to roll back the erstwhile minister's novel economic innovations. Chief among these was, of course, the longtime enemy of the new policies, none other than Sima Guang, who wasted little time in writing to his allies and potential allies close to the emperor in attempting to, quote, awaken Shenzong to the evils of the new policies, end quote. Why wasn't he at court doing that himself?

Well, he'd actually been banished from the capital during Wang's tenure and was now forced to only correspond with his political allies. Emperor Shenzong, however, had other ideas. Now 27 and well into his prime, Shenzong wished little more than to further what had long been his prime ambition, personal autocratic rule over the whole of his empire, rather than merely serving as some serene figurehead to the self-serving ministers that had long held the reins of government, since long before his own life, in fact. To that end, Wang Anshi had proved a valuable learning tool, even if ultimately disposable,

in that he'd been able to watch and learn from the ever-ambitious minister both the skills and sheer ruthlessness required to advance one's own policy ambitions in the face of significant political headwinds. Having now learned all that he could from Wang, Shenzong had little compunction in casting him aside when he proved more of a liability than an asset. Now would be his own time to shine on the imperial stage, an active rather than passive ruler hellbent on matching his own greatness with the likes of the greatest of his forebearers, his great-great-grandfather, the great Song Taizong from a century before. This would prove to be one of the great ironies

of Shenzong's period of rule, at least from the conservative ministers who had so railed against the reforms of Wang Anshe, only after they had succeeded in retiring the reformist minister would they realize that Wang had actually been just about the only thing holding back the more autocratic and bellicose aspects of Shenzong's personality. You see, Shenzong had listened to Wang and his warnings like he'd never do with anyone else. Thus, by driving Wang out, by winning, Sima, Ouyang, and the other conservatives now faced an absolute monarch who saw them all as little more than tools to do his personal bidding, rather than as valuable captains of government whose advice to heed. Be careful what you wish for, I guess. Of all of Emperor Shenzong's policy

goals, the strongest and most abiding of them was his preoccupation with retaking the northern territories, specifically those lost to the state of Xixia. But related to that first goal, and only slightly lower on his docket, was his desire to fundamentally restructure the creaking underpinnings of his government that he, along with many others, deemed to be in desperate need of repair and reform. As Paul Smith explains, the bureaucracy of the Song regime was, in actuality, almost two entirely separate systems of administration, only haphazardly melded together. He writes, On the one hand, the Song founder, Zhao Kuangyin, inherited the elaborate bureaucratic apparatus of the high Tang, the three departments, six ministries, nine courts, and five directorates that, in theory, covered five directorates that in theory

covered every aspect of civil administration. But even by the 8th century, many of the offices had lost their functional importance, supplanted by a welter of ad hoc organizations such as the Bureau of Military Affairs, the Finance Commission, the Censorates, and the increasing number of circuit intendancies, end quote. The older Tang systems, to put it simply, had primarily empowered the ministries at the expense of the ruler. That is, they were there for the good of the system itself, rather than the individual monarch's prerogative. The newer ad hoc agencies, largely formed over the course of the five dynasties,

ran, on the other hand, in the opposite direction, routing supreme authority toward direct, centralized, personal rule by a strong emperor. The founders of the Song state had found that both models served different and perfectly justifiable sets of needs, and had thus set up theirs as a dual system of government retaining both. This was at least in part because it allowed the system to designate ministerial ranks, as in a minister's merit and seniority within the court, from the specific job title or function that he might serve at any time, which was far more personalized to the immediate needs of the court or the minister's individual

skill set. So it was a little like we all get to hold the title of senior executive manager, but everyone also knows that the senior executive manager of flower arrangement and basket weaving is not nearly as important to, say, convening a war council, than even a junior executive manager of cavalry tactics. I'm probably making a pretty bad stretch here of a metaphor, but hopefully you get the idea. But all that malarkey was not to Shenzong's taste, especially the part about diminishing his own imperial authority. To him, the labyrinthine and Byzantine bureaucratic tangle had become an embarrassment to his regime and the memory of his founders. Thus, he sought to overhaul it from the ground up. And he kept this really close to his chest also, as in even Wang Anshu from his forced retirement

in Jiangnan wrote his concerns that the emperor had never before done something without extensive prior consultation with his top officials, yet all of a sudden in 1080, he was reworking his entire governmental structure with no official consultation whatsoever. The reforms, which would come to be known as the Yuanfeng Administrative Reforms, as usual, named for the reign era during which it was enacted, meaning origination of abundance, would be modeled almost solely on the revival of the Tang Dynasty era model, casting aside the ad hoc reforms of the Five Dynasties period. And while we could get into more of the nuts and bolts and the specific changes, we'll just casually ride right on by that because, as it's pointed out by Smith,

these reforms would have little impact outside of the central government in the capital. In summation, it got rid of a large number of superfluous officials and meaningless titles, all while funneling more power to the emperor himself. Save money and do what I want, could have been the watchwords of Shenzong's personal rule. And this is the point where I feel compelled to briefly interrupt the flow of the internal reforms to bring you all glad tidings from the western barbarians, specifically some far distant land which are calling themselves the Eastern Romans, or Byzantium, which is in any case far too difficult and barbaric to utter, and so we'll just call them Fulin. These narrow-faced, high-nosed people have sent us

an envoy in the name of their chieftain, some bearded fellow by the name of Mieli Yiling Kaisa, but which their culturalist tongues insist is pronounced as Caesar Michael VII Dukas. From the Book of Song, quote, The country is called Fulin. South-east of it you go to Meluku, Cilicia. North, you go to the Black Sea. Both forty days' journey. West, you go to the Mediterranean Sea, 30 days' journey. In the east, starting from the western Daxi, the Abbasid Empire, you come to Yutian, Khatan, Huihe, and Qingtang, and finally reach China. They have, during former dynasties, not sent tribute to our court. During the tenth month of the fourth year of the Yuanfeng era, November 1081, their king, Mieli Yiling Kaisa, Caesar Michael VII Ducas, sent their first high

emissary, to offer as tribute saddled horses, sword blades, and real pearls. He said the climate of his own country is very cold. Houses have no tiles. The products are gold, silver, pearls, western silk cloth, cows, sheep, horses, camels with single humps, pears, almonds, dates, millet, and wheat. They make wine from grapes. Their musical instruments are the lute, the teapot-shaped lute, the flageolet, and the side drum. The king dresses in red and yellow robes and wears a turban of silken cloth interwoven with gold thread. In the third month of every year, he goes to the temple of Foshir, Christ, to sit on a red couch, which he gets the people to lift. His honored servants are dressed like the king, but wear blue, green, purple, white, mottled, yellow, or brown garments, wear turbans, and ride on horseback.

Twice a year, during the summer and autumn, the populace must offer money and cloth to the government. In their criminal decisions, they distinguish between great and small offenses. Light offenses are punished by several tens of blows with bamboo rod. Heavy offenses with up to 200 blows. Capital punishment is administered by putting the culprit into a feather bag which is thrown into the sea. They are not bent on making war to neighboring countries, and in the case of small difficulties try to settle the matter by correspondence. But when important interests are at stake, they will also send out their army. They cast gold and silver coins, without holes, however. On the pile, they engrave the name Mi Le Fu, Michael, the king's name. The people are forbidden to counterfeit the coin, end quote. And in the

words of the great Forrest Gump, that's all I've got to say about that. If you're at all curious about whatever happened to those plucky barbarians of Fulin, huddled on the far side of Da Shi in their non-tiled houses, give Robin Pearson's The History of Byzantium podcast a listen. But anyways, let's get back to civilization. The second phase of the Yuanfeng reforms, begun in mid-1082, was much more specifically intended to do the latter of these two objectives, that is, empower the emperor. This set of changes centered on the tippy-top of the central bureaucracy, the so-called Three Departments. They consisted of, respectively, the Department of State, the Chancellery, and the Secretariat. The Three Departments had stood as the be-all,

end-all of imperial administration since the end of the Han Dynasty more than eight centuries prior. In that time, however, the distinction between those two departments and what they did had become, well, rather blurry. Thus, Shenzong took the opportunity to disentangle the three departments in such a manner that would rather insidiously weaken them all, while enhancing his own power. Quote, each department responsible for a particular set of issues, all three departments were made to share different aspects of every issue. The Secretariat was to consider and deliberate, the Chancellery was to investigate policy alternatives, and the Department of State Affairs, pinnacle of the six ministries, was to put the final policy decisions into effect. Except in the most unusual circumstances, each department was required to perform and memorialize

about its own functions alone, end quote. Thus, by making them all dependent on one another, but unable to communicate directly with one another, Shenzong had rendered them solely dependent on a supreme coordinator in order to carry out their functions effectively. Of Shenzong's reforms, this reformatting and strict division of the departments would easily be the least effective and most annoying. Yes, it did serve to enhance imperial authority, but only at the high cost of administrative efficiency. Every policy initiative had to travel through each of the three departments, then down to the ministries, and then back up to the departments in a rather ridiculous roundabout that makes me think of the laryngeal nerve of a giraffe, which has to detour more than 15 feet around the animal's aorta in total just to work the throat muscles. The rather ludicrous nature of such a system could

be overcome under a ruler as activist and empowered as Shen Zong himself, but would quickly break down when his successor, who will be an eight-year-old boy, didn't show quite the same level of interest in direct imperial oversight of the bureaucratic giraffe's neck. Even so, the three departments wouldn't be formally recombined into a fully working configuration until after the fall of Northern Song regime four decades later in 1129. Okay, so having sorted through that bit of administrative housekeeping and also read that letter from those weird barbarians to the far west, let's get to the real meat and potatoes of today's episode, Shenzong's war against the Tangut kingdom of western Xia, which you'll surely recall from episodes 136 and 143, respectively. As I mentioned at the top of

the show, Shenzong was absolutely bent on recovering the territories that had been lost to his realm by his predecessors back in the 1040s. You may remember that since the time of his accession to the throne, Shenzong had been positively eager to go on the offensive against his neighbors, and had to have been talked down by his ministers. That bellicosity was largely what explained his gung-ho attitude about the new policies, get the nation ready for the all-out war against those who had so belittled and embarrassed the glory of Song. Wang Anshi, knowing better than anyone his emperor's inner desires and reasons for backing his economic objectives, had stoked Shenzong's war objectives, but still urged temperance. In 1071, for instance,

Wang had cautioned his war-eager monarch against rushing prematurely into a war against one or both northern rival states that were far more powerful than Shenzong seemed to acknowledge, saying, quote, still beyond our capacity. His Majesty must deeply consider that our financial resources are inadequate and reliable men of talent rare. For the moment, therefore, we should concentrate on quieting down border affairs. Once our internal affairs are in order, there is an adequate supply of talented men, and we are prosperous and strong, then there will be nothing we cannot do." Against the Tanguts specifically, Wang urged particular caution. Though they seemed relatively weak at the moment, as they were under the rule of a child emperor called Bingcheng,

and their inscrutable government seemed to be in more disorder than usual, Song China was still in no position to go around trying to dictate terms to its neighbor. Wang had warned in 1070 that, quote, if we show a strong front to the Tanguts and they decline to obey, how will the court deal with them then? We are not now strong enough to match troops with them, and if we do not match troops, then what else can we do? By being accommodating, we are least likely to miscalculate, end quote. To placate the northern-focused emperor, Wang had proposed a policy of expansion in the interim to the southwest of colonization and exploitation of the economic opportunities of the frontier areas in Sichuan and Hunan specifically, as well as the Tibetan tribal

head territories in Gansu and Qinghai. This was a long, heavily forested region pocked with karst mountain ranges and steppe plains, and could offer grazing for warhorses among its other abundant natural resources. This had been followed up in late 1075 with a rather ill-thought-out invasion of Lee Vietnam, after Viet troops had penetrated into the Song side of the southern border region, claiming first that they were hunting fleeing rebels, likely members of the Zhuang people associated with the infamous Nong Zhigao, and then made the truly unpardonable offense of

claiming that they were really there to, quote, save the people from the great sprouts and service exemption policies of the Middle Kingdom, end quote. Wang Anshe, taking personal offense at such talk, persuaded Shen Zong to launch a southward offensive against the Viettes, sending 100,000 troops to invade. Though they would prove victorious, it would be a costly, perhaps pyrrhic, victory. For as ever, the great equalizer of the south struck again, disease. Perhaps as much as half of the soldiers and their 200,000 porters were killed by the oppressive tropical heat and Shizang, so-called Swamp Fever. By the time of the conclusion of this latest Songviet War,

Wang Anshi had already lost the favor of the emperor and been shunned off into forced retirement back in Jiangnan. Smith writes, quote, But if conservatives thought that Wang's departure would bring an end to frontier expansion and war mobilization, they were deeply disappointed. With no one left to speak to Shenzong as an equal, the emperor was finally free to pursue the linchpin of his plan to recover the northern territories, the conquest of Tangut Xixia. That's right, no more delays, no more cranky uncles telling him to wait, the time to strike was now. With Wang and his restraint on the emperor's bellicosity now gone, the other ministers surrounding Shenzong revealed themselves for what they'd all really become, simpering sycophants who understood nothing so much as

that the best and surest way of advancing their own careers was to push the pro-war narrative the emperor already favored, and damn the consequences. In the 11th month of 1077, the Directorate of Armaments announced that it had completed the Emperor's recent directive to amass and stockpile weaponry in the five northern circuits. Less than a year later, Shenzong had the treasuries that had been kept over from Taizu's original war chest renamed and commemorated with a poem that he wrote himself, reading, quote, In succession, the five dynasties lost their bearings, while the northern dogs flourished. Kaizu founded our nation, and with the aim of disciplining the barbarians, he established an inner storehouse to pay for raising troops. This dream his descendant must honor. Could I dare

forget his ambition? End quote. So the tinder had been placed, the fuel poured on top of the pile, all that was needed now was an appropriate spark to light the fire of war Shenzong had dreamed of for so long. That excuse would come in early 1081, when the Xia Empress Dowager committed a coup against her own son, the Emperor Huizong of Xia, on charges that he had become too heavily influenced by, and friendly towards the

Song Dynasty. Well, yes, of course, we must ride to the rescue of our good friend Hui Zong and, yeah, restore him to his rightful place. Right. Thus, it was going to be a quote-unquote punitive expedition that was ordered from the top, and battle plans ordered drawn up and put into action by the top military minds of the dynasty in order to invade Xia, seize its capital, and bring Huizong back to Kaifeng where he could be kept, uh, safe. Yeah, let's go with safe. From Smith, quote, The battle plan called for a five-pronged attack on the Tangut capital, Let's go with safe. From Smith, quote, and Shenzong's maternal uncle, Gao Cunyu. These five men commanded combat troops of about 370,000 men,

supported by about the same number of transport troops, arrayed to converge on the Tangut capital from the south, southeast, and southwest. Added to just the sheer scale of the campaign were all of the additional logistical factors that were going to have to keep running very smoothly indeed for the Chinese army to remain functional so far afield. Things like tactical expertise from multiple levels of commanders, smooth and uninterrupted lines of communication between the units and the converging army's commanders, and the rapid coordination of forces and provisions across the vast inhospitable

terrain of the Ordos Loop. That's the sort of operational Rube Goldberg device that would give even many modern commanders nightmares, and Murphy's Law began tuning up its instrument in the background almost at once. Also, it's not as though such weak points in the plan were unknowns to the Song army. 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. Like I'd said before, just a decade prior, many of the same commanders now leading the force had been involved in the last attack against Xia, which had turned out to be a, well, what's a stronger word than catastrophe? The previous campaign had fallen to pieces on very much the same weaknesses displayed by this latest plan. To briefly summarize it, the Song armies

had penetrated into Xia-controlled territory, taken the position and fortified it, only to belatedly realize that their forward operating base of choice actually had no access to independent water supply, and required a ludicrously indefensible 50-mile-long supply route to resupply. Then, there was the fact that the prodigious egos of multiple military generals hell-bent on taking all the glory and credit for themselves virtually ensured that the need for them to, you know, work together and stick to the original plan was tossed out the window as soon as the rubber met the road, leading them all to pursue their own strategies and causing total confusion. In the end, amid mass mutinies by minority peoples conscripted into the armies,

the Grand Campaign had ended in an embarrassing rout and ignominious failure, not to mention the summary cashing of the idiot commanders who had allowed this to happen. But this time, oh this time, they had had ten years to learn from those mistakes and build up their war chests and forces and gain valuable experience, so this time, they were totally going to screw it up again, and in very much the same ways. The campaign was launched from the 8th month of 1081, and began, much to everyone's delight, and I imagine secret surprise, with a sweep of stunning successes across the board. Within a month, the army of General Li Xian had taken the enemy city of Lan Zhou, the stronghold that sat astride and guarded the Gansu Corridor of the long-disused Silk Road into the western reaches of the Dynasties of Yore, but had been under either

Tibetan or, more recently, Tangut control for the past four centuries. This allowed the Song armies access to the Ordos reaches of the Yellow River and a direct path to the Xia capital city, Lingzhou. Meanwhile, General Zhong Ou took his forces and swept to the western side of the Ordos Loop, seizing Mizhi, Shizhou, and Xiazhou cities by the 10th month, and thereby gaining control of the Hengshan Highlands, the very site of the Song Route a decade prior. It was all going according to plan, and the other generals began to tighten their noose around the Tangut capital. For their part, the Tangut government was taken largely by surprise,

especially as it was in the throes of the internal squabbling between the forces loyal to the Empress Dowager and those loyal to her now-imprisoned son, Huizong. The Empress Dowager Liang, referred to as a fierce warrior in her own right both on and off the battlefield by Ruth Dunnell, rejected her generals' plans to confront the invaders on the field of battle, and instead approved of a plan put forth by her senior-most generals that would center all of their efforts on defense of the capital Lingzhou itself, effectively wringing it off in a strategy known as strengthening the walls and clearing the fields. The Xia forces would form an impenetrable barrier around the

capital region and allow the Song forces to close in, extending their vulnerable supply lines, which could then be attacked at will by the Tangut's world-class light cavalry. This would prove to be the undoing of the Song invasion. Smith writes, Supply problems soon beset Gao Chunyu and Liu Changzhuo at one end of the campaign in Lingzhou, This would in fact culminate in the Song armies themselves turning on their beleaguered supply masters, when after suffering from chronic shortages of much-needed materials to continue their offensive push, decided that it was those lazy porters who were the real problem. In what was described as a, quote, grisly slaughter of hundreds of labor conscripts, end quote,

the fiscal intendant of Fuyen Circuit himself led his forces against the horrified conscripts, quote, slicing through the foot tendons of fleeing porters and leaving them to crawl helplessly to their deaths, end quote. So, yeah, good luck sleeping with that image in your head tonight. This horrific slaughter, and its total pointlessness, was later compounded to an absurd degree when it was found out after the war that the other intendants from the same circuit had actually been selling off provisions entrusted to their care and on their way to the front lines for their own personal profit. Meanwhile, out on the front lines of Yuzhou, it was quiet. Too quiet. The eerie emptiness of the region, where there had been zero contact with the enemy forces

despite the Song army having driven deeply into their territory, so unnerved the commanding general, Wang Zhongzhen, that he was driven to extreme paranoia, fearing that he and his army's movements were being spied upon by invisible Tangut scout units just waiting for them to let their guard down. General Wang ordered that no cooking fires were to be allowed when encamped, meaning of course that the soldiers under his command were forced to eat their already rapidly dwindling supplies of rice raw, which, let me tell you, is no fun at all. Between the contagious paranoia spreading through the soldiers, not to mention the actually contagious camp illnesses spreading like wildfire due to the extreme cold of the nights

without any source of warmth and, you know, eating raw, dirty rice from old bags, it wasn't long before mutiny was on the tongues of the Song army in Yuzhou, who rapidly came to the conclusion that they need only kill their general and the two government watchers with him, and they would be out of this mess. Wang Zhongzheng was barely able to escape the wrath of his enraged soldiers, and I'm not sure what became of the two fiscal intendants that they'd also planned to kill. But in any event, it was made perfectly clear that the forward momentum of Wang's army through Yuzhou was totally stalled out, and it was quickly ordered to retreat back to the city under Song control. And as Joseph Heller is remembered as having said, just because it's paranoia doesn't mean they aren't really after you.

Because it turns out that the Tanguts really had been waiting for an opportunity to present itself, and there are few opportunities in war quite as juicy as having a starving, sick, and mutinous army trying to retreat back to safety and a hot meal. Sweeping down on the haggard Chinese force, they harassed the columns of soldiers all the way back to Yuzhou City. Between the Xia harassment and the sickness continuing to sweep through their ranks, the Song army lost something like 20,000 soldiers over the course of their retreat. Alright, so that's not great. But what about what's going on over at Lingzhou? How are the other four armies doing with the siege of the capital city? Oh, you know, just everything that could go wrong doing so at the worst time. So we already covered the supply problem issue,

but that was just compounded by poor communication between the Song armies, as well as just outright stupidity and incompetence up and down the command structure. Again, from Smith, quote, neither Gao Chunyu nor Liu Changzhuo were able to coordinate their arrival at Lingzhou, and when Gao did begin to attack in the 11th month of 1081, he discovered that his troops had brought no siege equipment, end quote. Now let's just pause and rewind and think about that for a second. The whole point of this campaign was to besiege a walled, heavily defended city of Chinese design, which we all know by now are essentially built from the ground up as specifically anti-siege machines in the first place. And they forgot, forgot to bring their siege equipment.

But they had come all this way, so they were just going to have to give it the old college try anyway. For two and a half weeks, the Song armies besieged Lingzhou to basically no effect. All the while, their commanders bickered with one another about this strategy or that strategy, and whose fault all this was, and meanwhile, the troops themselves were rapidly beginning to come to the conclusion that it wasn't this general or that general screw-up that had resulted in this fiasco, but rather that all of this was all of their fault, and that they should mutiny. They wouldn't get the chance to, though, because after 18 days, when the Tangut defenders

had observed that the Song armies were well and truly on the verge of breakdown, they determined it was time to send them plummeting over that edge. Lingzhou, like every Chinese city of any consequence, was fed by canal systems. Now, as the Chinese bickered among themselves, Tangut troops were secretly dispatched to simultaneously cut and otherwise redirect the canals, thereby flooding the Song camps with river water. And that, as they say, was that. Up to their wastes in filthy water, that even now washed away the little food and equipment they'd remembered to bring with them in the first place,

the Song army knew that the game was up, and ordered a long overdue withdrawal. Yet once again, seeing the enemy pack up and leave was the perfect opportunity for the Tanguts to, that's right, send out the cavalry riders to harass them from all sides. Being picked off one by one from enemies you can't strike back at is a heck of a thing for an already thoroughly demoralized, starving, and river-water-filthy force to undergo. And so it was that what had begun as an orderly, if thoroughly demoralized retreat, rapidly devolved into a panicked rout, once again. It had been meant to be the shining capstone to the policies Emperor Shenzong had spent a decade putting into place with exactly this campaign in mind, and yet in less than four months,

the invasion of Xisha had gone from glorious reconquista to utter humiliation. And yet the war wasn't over. The worst was still yet to come. Though the failure of the five-pronged strike meant to lop the head off of Xisha might have convinced more reasonable men that maybe somewhere in all this a mistake might have been made, the leadership of the Song armies contained no such man. And in any case, the emperor would have been unlikely to listen. In spring of the following year, the majority of the court, having cheer-led Shenzong into this war already, continued to shake their pom-poms and call him to continue the assault.

Moreover, the only general whose force had achieved anything approaching success the year prior, Li Xian, who had taken Lan Zhou after all, likewise forcefully claimed that the campaign of 1082 couldn't possibly be as bad as the campaign of 1081. Surely this time we'll win. Surely. Enter stage left, the man who would lead this new strike against the Tanguts, a man with zero military experience, but who had had the emperor's ear for some time now, and had risen to special prominence following the disaster of the prior year by loudly and repeatedly denouncing the generals of that campaign as having been too cowardly to defeat the Xia forces.

The court minister, Xu Shi. Well, fine then, said Shen Zong. Sounds like you're just the man for the job. And Xu, now General Xu, wasn't going to make the same mistakes as those cowards who'd lost the last incursion. No, no. He was going to make a far older set of mistakes, a virtual repeat, in fact, of the failed Song invasion of Xisha a decade ago. Those who don't learn from the past, dot, dot, dot. Steering well clear of the areas that his

predecessors had lost the year prior, Xu decided to take and hold, as his forward position, the city of Yongle, fortify it, and dare the Tangus to break themselves against his fortifications. There was just one little hitch to that brilliant plan. Yongle was right across the small stream from Luowu, the very site I mentioned earlier where Zhong'ou had made the fatal mistake of biting, holding, and fortifying. Zhong'ou was still at court, by the way, and did his level best to point out that,

no, you idiot, I already tried that. There's no independent water supply, it's totally indefensible, and your supply lines will be completely at the mercy of their cavalry raids. If you wall yourself in there, you're not building yourself a rock upon which the Tangut tide will break, you're building yourself a sandcastle that will be swept away. Xu Shi, however, was having none of this, it can't be done, or you're a suicidal moron, or it's a total death trap, clap trap. No, no, he'd prove all those haters and doubters wrong by, by, well, listen, the point is he would prove all those haters and doubters wrong.

Xu Xi and his army marched out in mid-spring 1082 and duly constructed their impenetrable fortress at Yongle, which Emperor Shenzong then elevated with the title of Yinchuan Fortress. With the walls and defenses finished and in place, all he needed to do now was wait for the Tangus to show up and attempt to dislodge him. A moment General Xu loudly and repeatedly proclaimed would be the crowning moment of both his and the Emperor's glorious victory against the dirty Tangut barbarian hordes. It was well understood, after all, that it would only be a matter of time. Yongle was a point of strategic importance that the Xia forces could not but contest. And on that point at least, if no other, Xu Shi was absolutely right. Again from Smith,

When in the ninth month of 1082 the Tanguts actually converged, however, Xu Shi's braggadocio turned to horror. For as he looked out over the new walls to the west, there stood 300,000 Tangut troops stretched out as far as the eye could see. And now the fates of his 35,000 troops were sealed, for Xu Shi's stubbornness was compounded by his incompetence. End quote. Looking out at the veritable sea of enemies from his sand castle fortress, Xu's lieutenant commanders twice begged him to take the initiative, do something, and strike out against the Tangut force before their position was completely overwhelmed. The Shah's preeminent heavy cavalry force, a legendary group known as the Tieyao or the Iron Hawks, hadn't fully formed up into attack formation yet, meaning that a sudden strike might just be enough to throw the enemy into disarray.

But Xu Shi refused, maintaining that all of his forces must stay behind the now clearly farcical safety of their walls. Well then, begged others, walls or no, let's at least recognize that we're thoroughly outmatched here and retreat before we're totally surrounded and subsumed. As punishment for that suggestion, Shu Shi had his forces actually stand outside the wall gates and take the initial assault head on. And it got worse. Of the survivors of that initial clash, half again would wind up dying not from enemy action, but simple dehydration. After all, the stream that was the only water supply for some 50 miles around was outside the city walls, meaning that it was now under the control of the Tangut forces, forcing the, quote, parched soldiers to drink what liquids they could wring out of horse manure, end quote.

Rain would eventually arrive, but far too late for the defenders of the so-called Yinchuan Fortress. As a storm broke overhead, the Tangut soldiers swarmed the walls, cutting down the severely weakened defenders where they stood, or as they attempted in vain to flee. They were cut down without mercy, though a little more than 12,000 would find their way out of the carnage, and some reports claim that Xu Shi may have somehow snuck his way out of the slaughter alive, though such reports are unverified. And I, for one, hope that he at least met the same grisly fate as the one he'd forced upon 13,000 of his own soldiers.

The stunning, but not so unexpected, loss at Yongle finally brought about the end to Shenzong's dreams of reclaiming the Northlands from the Tanguts, and in so doing, utterly broke the emperor's spirit. The cost had proved staggering. In human terms alone, over the course of the two campaigns in two years, Song had lost a combined 600,000 soldiers and officers at Lingzhou and Yongle. The emperor appeared in tears before his officials in late 1082, berating them all for not giving him better advice, and exclaiming,

Not a single one of you said that the Yongle campaign was wrong! I have to imagine by this point, Zhang O had ground his teeth down to nubs, but thought better of voicing his opinion on the imperial scapegoating. And indeed, even by Shenzong's own later admission, there actually had been officials who had warned against such foolishness, including several who had directly warned the throne that Xu Shi's cockamamie scheme would bring the nation to ruin, and Shenzong had simply chosen not to listen to them. It was only in the wake of such abject and total failure that the veils had finally been lifted from his blindly ambitious eyes, that he had been willingly led down the primrose path by suck-ups and sycophants who wanted to advance their own careers by telling the emperor what he wanted to hear rather than what he needed to hear. As stated in the extended continuation of the Zizhe Tongjian, the emperor began to realize that his frontier officials could not be trusted.

Moreover, he had become weary of war, and had no more ambition to conquer the Western Xia. End quote. In any event, both sides had been thoroughly exhausted by the clash, and it would take more than a decade for them to have recovered enough for hostilities to break out again. For now, at least, the Song once again accepted the Tangut peace overtures, hat in hand.

In what would prove to be the final years of his reign in life, Shenzong shifted decisively in his mindset and policies from reformism and progressivism and back to the stodgy but safe conservatism of the old guard, the so-called Jiu Tang men, those like the formerly banished Sima Guang. In 1083, for instance, he formally cashiered a state counselor for railing against Sima Guang's quote-unquote perverted views. In short order, those officials and ministers associated with or sympathetic to Sima and his ilk were recalled to Kai Feng, and otherwise lifting official censures against his erstwhile political critics.

By the autumn of 1084, that piecemeal recall and turning to old guard conservatives picked up to something like a frenzied pace. This seems to be because, that though he was only 36, he was ill and sensed he was dying. He insisted to his ministers that he officially designate an heir, whose training and protection he felt could be best, and indeed could only be trusted to, Sima Guang and his stodgy, unfun, but unfailingly trustworthy and wise regency. The decision of naming an heir was chock-full, as it often is, with intrigue and political machinations, all the more so when the heir in question is a child,

as all of Shenzong's progeny still were. In the end, though, it would be the obvious choice, his eldest son, Zhao Shu, from his empress, Zhu, who would be named as the crown prince. In the second month of 1085, as Shenzong's health slipped further into moribundity, he agreed, at this point only by nodding weakly from his deathbed, that the eight-year-old be formally made Taize, and that a regency be assumed by Shenzong's own mother, the Empress Dowager Gao, until the emperor should recover. Recovery, however, was a pipe dream.

Shenzong's strength was spent, and in the third month of 1085, he died. Zhao Shu was proclaimed the new emperor, and authority over all national and military affairs was transferred to the now Grand Empress Dowager Gao, and now the Regent and Dowager Empress Xuanren. End quote. And so, with that, we've done it. We've gotten to the end of Emperor Shenzong's 17, has it really only been 17? Years on the throne.

And all of those crazy changes, rises, and falls of this activist, reformist emperor enacted upon the Song Empire. What a rollercoaster ride. And so, next time, we get into the last two and a half emperors of Northern Song, leading to its decline, and, well, we'll get to that in due course. Thanks for listening. 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.