Influenced by Jin Yong's novels, at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, Guo Jing and his wife led beggars' disciples to defend their patriotic image in Xiangyang in order to resist the Mongols' invasion to the south, which has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. However, the novel is based on historical novels after all. The mountains and rivers are broken, and only an effective defense system can resist the machete of the fast horse, not the so-called eighteen palms of the dragon.
Xiangyang is located in the northern part of Hubei Province, and the Hanjiang River, the largest tributary of the Yangtze River, passes through the territory, so it is known as "the southern ship and the northern horse, the thoroughfare of seven provinces". For the Southern Song Dynasty imperial court whose life hangs by a thread, once Xiangyang falls and the Mongolian army goes down the river, the imperial court naturally has no danger of the Yangtze River. Collapse will be inevitable.
Such a strategic position made the Southern Song Dynasty fully support Xiangyang's defense construction, and the commander-in-chief had to be a qualified general. If Jianghu people like Guo Jing really take over the defense, it will only lead to civil strife.
As a protracted battle between Song and Mongolia, the battle of Xiangfan has always been concerned by historians. Surprisingly, this tug-of-war lasted for decades, and finally Lv Wende in The Condor Heroes was in charge. He was raised by Guo Jing because he was afraid of the enemy.
First, the critical moment was ordered.
At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, with the successive deaths of the first generation of anti-Mongolian ministers such as Meng Gong and Yu Jie, a new generation of generals, Lv Wende, came into Song Lizong's sight.
Lv Wende was born in Shouchun, Anhui. According to legend, he is a descendant of Lv Mengzheng, the prime minister of the early Northern Song Dynasty, but after hundreds of years of wind and rain, the aura of noble families has long faded in his generation. As a woodcutter, he joined the army in his early years and soon made his mark in the army because of his bravery.
In A.D. 1234, under the attack of the allied forces of Song and Mongolia, the State of Jin perished, and the Southern Song Dynasty became Mongolia's biggest rival. The Southern Song Dynasty has not recovered from the joy of revenge. Three years later, the Mongolian Khan Wokuotai launched the first war of aggression against the Song Dynasty.
In the winter of 1237, tens of thousands of Mongolian fighters besieged Shouchun, the hometown of Lv Wende, to explore the military deployment in the Huaihe River area. When Lv Wende, who was in charge of Chizhou, was ordered to rescue Shouchun, he built rows of mounds outside the city, planted colorful flags in the dense forest to attract Mongolian troops, and then led the main force to sneak into the city from the moat, becoming the only force that successfully entered the city in several support troops.
Although Lv Wende, who was born at the grass roots, didn't know how to write, he was later called a "vulgar villain" by scholars, but this doesn't mean that he is a rampaging boor. For example, when he sent food rations to Shouchun City, he swaggered half and half. When Meng Jun saw the waste of reinforcements, he thought that the morale of the city was greatly reduced, and the siege of Shouchun was thus solved.
After the First World War, Lv Wende gained great fame, and was soon appointed as the deputy commander of Ma Jun, the bodyguard, in charge of the army of Huai River and Huai River. During this period, he organized a small group with family, woodcutter and charcoal farmer as the core strength, which was called "black charcoal group" in history.
Judging from the performance behind the "black charcoal regiment", this is definitely a bloody wolf warrior regiment that can fight hard.
For decades, Lv Wende led this team to the same lake and the front line in southwest China. Where there is war, as long as Lv Wende appears, the Mongols can be repelled. Over time, he became a fireman in the Southern Song Dynasty and a nightmare for the Mongolian army.
In A.D. 1259 1 1 month, Lv Wende was promoted as the commander-in-chief of the Yangtze River defense, and the first thing he had to face was Mongolia's covet of Xiangyang.
Second, revenge experts.
Xiangyang, whether in Song Dynasty or Mongolia, is an important town determined to win. Just as both sides were gaining momentum, civil strife broke out in Lv Wende.
Liu Zheng, a master of Lv Wende, once set an amazing record of 12 Qin Bing capturing a city. Because of his outstanding military achievements, Liu Zheng was promoted to be the magistrate of Luzhou, and many generals in the south were under his control, which made Lv Wende, a veteran cadre, very unhappy.
Apart from Lv Wende's jealousy of talents, this kind of emotion was widespread in the Southern Song Dynasty, largely because of his psychological revenge for discriminating against southerners in the Northern Song Dynasty. It turned out that the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty was the capital of the capital of the Song Dynasty, and most officials in the DPRK were northerners, looking down on southern scholars. By the time of the Southern Song Dynasty, the wind and water turned, and southerners began to have revenge-like resistance against northerners.
In this way, Liu Zheng, a native of Nanyang, Henan Province, became the target of public criticism. His strategy was basically denied by Lv Wende, and his occasional exploits were also covered up by Lv Wende.
Lv Wende is not going to stop there. He promoted Yu Xing, who was in conflict with Liu Zhengyou, as the ambassador to Sichuan, suppressed Liu Zheng and waited for false accusations.
Liu Zheng was terrified and appealed to the court, but those superior leaders who supported him either resigned or suppressed him, completely breaking his idea of appealing. Liu Zheng shuddered at the thought of his colleagues who had been forced to death, and thought that he had decided to surrender to Mongolia many times.
In June of A.D. 126 1, Liu Zheng, who was highly valued by Mongolia, was appointed as the peace envoy of the provinces. In the following two years, under the leadership of Liu Zheng, the Mongolian army was invincible all the way, and its record was impressive, which made Kublai Khan admire it. Relying on Kublai Khan's trust, Liu Zheng planned and proposed top secret action, which dragged the Southern Song Dynasty into the abyss.
It was this carefully designed action that not only weakened Xiangyang's defensive power, but also ruined the reputation of Lv Wende I and the whole family. More deadly, it quietly rewrote the fate of the Southern Song Dynasty imperial court.
Third, the fair.
For Liu Zheng, the external environment at this time is undoubtedly favorable. In A.D. 1259, Mengge Khan died at the entrance of Hechuan Fishing Town (in the novel, he was killed by Yang Guo with a flying stone), which was put an end to by both Song and Mongolia, and there was a brief peace situation.
According to Liu Zheng's plan, Mongolia took this opportunity to propose that the two sides stop fighting and exchange needed goods, and set aside a piece of land outside Xiangyang City to open up the market, similar to the current border free trade zone.
The idea of this free trade zone is perfect: the market is jointly invested and built by Mongolia and Song Dynasties, and the settled merchants cannot trade directly, but they have to do it through middlemen. As for taxation, every country needs to send a tax official to check it.
This idea is not Liu's brain-opening, but comes from precedent.
As early as the Northern Song Dynasty, the Song Dynasty opened a trade market with Liao, Xixia and Jin. However, as the Song Dynasty was a leading economic power in the world, it held the initiative in trade. Whether the market is open or not depends on the diplomatic relations between the Song Dynasty and neighboring countries.
To put it simply, the Song Dynasty was rich in resources, with tea, salt, iron and other necessities, and it was completely self-sufficient, but nomadic people like Liao were different. They can only exchange minerals, hides, ginseng and the like, which were not indispensable materials in the Song Dynasty. The horses of nomadic people were controlled by military materials, and most of the military horses in the Song Dynasty were purchased from Dali.
Just as the economic pillar of Xixia is blue and white salt, once the Song Dynasty does not buy it, Xixia's economy will collapse. It was the Northern Song Dynasty that seized the fate of Xixia and adjusted the opening scope of the market with blue-and-white salt as a bargaining chip: when the military was in a weak position, the import of blue-and-white salt was controlled; When the military is in a strong position, appropriately open the market and let Xixia people taste the sweetness.
The closed and open trade market became a barometer of the Song Dynasty and Xixia, and this relationship continued until the demise of Xixia.
It is not hard to imagine that, with such a precedent of conquering the enemy without fighting, when the Mongolian emissary conveyed to Lv Wende the request of opening the market, Lv Wende accepted it almost without thinking.
Judging from the situation at that time, opening such a market was beneficial to the Southern Song Dynasty, so even his aides confidently advised: "If the market succeeds, it will be beneficial to me, and we can make up for it."
Fourth, the dark war between life and death.
However, the subsequent development was beyond Lv Wende's expectation: not long after the market was opened, Mongolians proposed to build a wall around the market under the pretext of "distrust in the south" to protect the interests of their own businessmen.
This excuse is obviously nonsense. It was the Mongols who proposed to open the market, and it was also the Mongols who broke the promise of building the city wall. How did the Southern Song Dynasty become faithless? Lv Wende then noticed the abnormality.
As an old subordinate who has lived under Lv Wende's account for many years, Liu Zheng knows the weakness of his old club's greed for money. He lost no time in sending Lv Wende a jade belt, and Lv Wende agreed when he saw that the other party was so smart.
Mongolia, which got its wish, devoted itself to urban construction with crazy enthusiasm in the next three years. They built a castle on Lumen Mountain in the southeast of Xiangyang City. Then he built a place in Baihe, northeast of Xiangyang City.
The two castles cut off the land and water traffic in Xiangyang, making Xiangyang an isolated city.
In the fair trade, some people in the Southern Song Dynasty smuggled a large amount of cotton, grain, wood and even strategic materials such as copper, iron and sulfur into Mongolia, while in the Southern Song Dynasty, they exchanged them for some fur, jewelry and other items.
A.D. 1267, seeing that Xiangyang's internal and external deployment targets have been achieved, Kublai Khan ordered Liu Zheng to lead an army to besiege Xiangyang. The previously built Lumen and Baihecheng Castle played an outstanding role, and the army took this as a stronghold to isolate Xiangyang from the outside world.
In A.D. 1269, Lv Wende died of guilt in the army.
After Lv Wende's death, his "black charcoal regiment" continued to fight. Until AD 1273, the reinforcements were repelled many times, and Xiangyang City, which had been trapped for six years, ran out of food and grass, and it had reached the situation of digging rats and catching birds. After that, his cousin Lu had to lead his family out of the city to surrender to Mongolia.
With the fall of Xiangyang, the last barrier of the empire, the Southern Song Dynasty fell three years later.
Lv Wende, the mainstay of Mongolian resistance, personally dragged his loyal empire to the brink of collapse. Perhaps this is the fate of an eschatological dynasty.