At this moment, he also glanced at him with a smile, and then he was also very helpless, only to see him smile and said: "Hey, I can understand the emperor's suspicion of me, after all, I have been guarding the border for a long time and holding military power, obstructing the road of the Liao army to the south, and now this time I am also facing a choice, if I am afraid of these things this time, how can I become a mere man, even if the Liao army frames me this time, I will swear to defend Chang'an City to prevent the ambition of the Liao army's aggression." ”

At this time, all the soldiers were instantly driven, in their opinion, their commander can play a role, which is the best incentive for the whole army, plus their current national military strength Although the possibility of taking the initiative in Chang'an is relatively small, but the results are much greater than before, a sentence in history is called a general is not tired to death of the three armies, and the role of the general is often much greater than that of ordinary soldiers. But the generals of the Song Dynasty were also born as civil ministers, so the emperor was not so suspicious. The so-called power comes out of the barrel of a gun, whoever controls the army, who has the bargaining chip to control the regime, ancient and modern China and foreign countries, from this point of view, the emperor himself must master the army, otherwise the emperor will not be him, and he will become a puppet or even exterminate the clan in minutes.

The contradiction is that there are many armies in the whole country, and they are distributed in important border towns, how can the emperor lead alone? This is like the government, of course, the emperor wants to rule the people by himself, but if he can't do it, then he can only establish a bureaucratic system, which can be conveyed by the officials at each level and implement his own will.

The same is true for the army, if the emperor wants to control the whole army, then he can only establish an army system, which is pushed down by the marshal, generals at all levels, and finally to the soldiers. And rebellion means that a certain general does not listen to the emperor and leads his subordinates to rebel against the emperor.

Rebellion is actually a drawback of this system, because the emperor's control of the army is indirect, the emperor controls the generals, the generals control the soldiers, the emperor controls the generals and then the soldiers, and the soldiers are not necessarily loyal to the emperor!

The reason why soldiers are not necessarily loyal to the emperor is very simple, many soldiers in ancient times were volunteers, but compulsory soldiers, they did not voluntarily come to spill their blood for the emperor, and only a few were eager to make contributions, most of them were pulled by the strong men, and being a soldier was a profession for them to support their families.

The emperor is far away in the capital, most of the soldiers have never seen the emperor, and the generals are close at hand, plus the soldiers required for military operations to obey the generals (this is a must, the authority of the generals must be guaranteed within the army, otherwise the war will be a plate of scattered sand), the emperor's control over the soldiers is naturally weaker than the generals.

In order to prevent the generals from rebelling, they came up with various methods, in general, there are two categories, one is to separate the generals and soldiers, so that "the soldiers do not know the generals, the generals do not know the soldiers", and the other is to grasp the salary.

The first method is very difficult to operate, if you don't play enough, the general and the soldier will mingle, which is equivalent to not playing; If you go too far, such as the separation of the right to command the army and the right to train the troops, the general's trained soldiers are handed over to another general to bring, the generals and soldiers are staring at each other, and the threat to the imperial power is small, but in the same way, the combat effectiveness of the army is greatly affected, after all, which soldier will be willing to give his life to an unfamiliar general, and when he fights, he always doubts the command of the general, and the general is not familiar with the soldiers, and the dispatch is also very troublesome.

Many of the systems that use this method, such as the Tiger Talisman and the Supervision Army, are to prevent rebellion.

The second method is to seize the power of the generals to pay salaries, and the things that come from the private taxes come from the wool, and the wool comes from the sheep, and the question is who will cut the wool? Is it that the central government has cut it and sent it to the soldiers? Or did the generals cut off their own hair?

When the central government is strong and the finances are abundant, the power to cut wool will not be handed over to the generals, the generals will pay the soldiers, and the soldiers will be grateful to Dade, and only the generals will be left in their eyes, how can there be the court and the emperor?

However, in a few cases, the central government had to hand over appropriate financial power to the military generals, and letting the generals collect food and wages nearby would undoubtedly save the imperial court a large amount of labor and transportation costs, and the army would be supplied in a more timely manner, and the war would be fought more vigorously, which would be a good way to do so when the finances were not abundant.

However, decentralization of financial power is a double-edged sword, the integration of military generals and financial power, although it can increase the flexibility of the army and enhance combat effectiveness, but it will also greatly increase the probability of military generals rebelling.

In the past few relatively large rebellions, such as the Anshi Rebellion, that is, because the central government has delegated financial power, the military salary is issued by the generals, and the soldiers are very supportive of the generals, so they dare to rebel, otherwise like Zhong Hui, they may be killed by their own subordinates first.

In view of the military coup d'état of the five dynasties at the end of the Tang Dynasty (too many to count), the Song Dynasty carried out a comprehensive weak army action, what to rule the military with civility, separation of financial power, subordinate restrictions, etc., completely extinguished the signs of general rebellion, and the subsequent dynasties used it and made improvements, so after the Song Dynasty, there were very few military generals who rebelled, and there were almost no successes, and more mutinies, such as the Miao Liu mutiny.

From the Anshi Rebellion to the official establishment of the Great Song Dynasty, during this period of more than 200 years, the land of China has experienced countless wars and regime changes.

Behind this devastating chaos is the extreme expansion of the power of the samurai group.

And Zhao Kuangyin, a member of the martial arts power group and experienced this kind of chaos, was determined to put an end to this chaos.

In fact, Zhao Kuangyin is ambivalent about the mentality of the martial arts group:

On the one hand, he is undoubtedly a vested interest in the martial arts group, he relied on his family's military merits to start, and relied on his own military generals to successfully seize the throne and establish the Great Song Dynasty;

On the other hand, he is in the midst of it, and he is also well aware of the destructiveness and instability of the samurai group. As he said to Zhao Pu, the founding prime minister: "The five generations of Fang Zhen were cruel, and the people suffered from it, and I ordered more than 100 Confucian ministers to be elected to govern the great domain, even if they were greedy, they were not as good as the military ministers." ”

On the night of the ninth day of the seventh month of the second year of Jianlong, in Bianliang City, Tokyo, Zhao Kuangyin gathered his generals to drink together. The generals were busy asking why, and Zhao Kuangyin said: "Who doesn't want to do it if you are in this position." Under the crazy hint of Emperor Taizu, the generals wrote the next day to request the removal of the forbidden army from their positions, the removal of military power, and the retirement home after being rewarded. Although these people will still have the opportunity to go on expeditions and hold local positions in the future, they no longer have the military power to influence the situation.

This is the famous "glass of wine releases military power" incident. At this point, did Song Taizu put an end to the problem of the expansion of martial arts power for five generations?

Apparently not.

If a banquet can relieve the intractable diseases that have plagued China for more than 200 years, and make thousands of martial arts class put aside their own interests and be willing to be a member of the ruled, wouldn't the emperor be too good to do it?

In fact, the removal of the military power of the cronies and generals was only part of the plan to "cut the feudal domain" in the early Song Dynasty.

Just as at the banquet where the military power was released with a glass of wine, Zhao Kuangyin said that he would rather be a festival envoy than the emperor, expressing the fact that the authority of the festival envoy was close to that of the emperor. This was the dilemma faced by the military generals in the early Song Dynasty, that is, the excessive expansion of the power of the military generals' feudal towns.

From the middle of the Tang Dynasty, because the war extended from the frontier to the interior, the feudal towns set up by Tang Xuanzong were also set up from the frontier all the way to the interior. The Jiedu envoys of these feudal towns not only have absolute leadership over the army, but also have independent leadership over the control of finance, civil affairs, and trade within their jurisdictions, so being a Jiedu envoy at the local level is like being an independent kingdom as a soil emperor. At that time, the rule of the central government over the generals of the feudal towns was like the rule of Zhou Tianzi over the princes in the Spring and Autumn Period, which was extremely unstable.

Internally, instability remained.

Because the feudal town was a member of the samurai group, if he wanted to control the administrative power in his jurisdiction, he had to send his own close military generals to serve as administrative officials. As a result, the positions of administrative officials at all levels were also occupied by the samurai group. After these middle- and lower-ranking officers themselves became full-fledged in the local area, there were not a few people who challenged the authority of the moderation.

At that time, it was a veritable "era of martial man politics", and the so-called power came with the soldiers.

Moreover, for Zhao Kuangyin, the threat of the warriors is empathetic - he himself relied on the support of his own warrior group to change from a military head to a head of state. No matter how much affection he had for the Zhou regime, his subordinates could not share it here, and once the forces led by Zhao Kuangyin became bigger and stronger enough to overthrow the central forces, these warriors who were eager for further wealth and prosperity would inevitably try their best to encourage and promote their success. Although Zhao Kuangyin was completely capable of suppressing his own trusted generals, he could not directly control the new political forces formed around these generals, and the Song Dynasty would not be able to last long if the problem was not solved institutionally.

Therefore, it was not enough for Zhao Kuangyin to remove his cronies from military power, he also needed to point the butcher's knife of reform at the local feudal town system. In this regard, Zhao Kuangyin and his advisers' strategy was: "seize its power, control its money valley, and collect its elite soldiers."

Taizu's first knife slashed at the power of the leader of the feudal town:

After the first batch of feudal generals were deposed, the imperial court immediately granted high-ranking officials Houlu and made them live in Jingshi to control them, and in the end of the Song Dynasty, although the status and authority of the warriors were low, the treatment of the warriors was extremely favorable. At the same time, the imperial court would appoint civil officials in Beijing to serve as the chief executive of the former feudal town, and this official position later evolved into official positions such as the governor and the prefect. Not only that, but the term of office of the governors was also limited to three years, and the mobile bureaucrats could not form forces, which also solved the problem of the feudal officials supporting the army and respecting themselves.

The second knife is to weaken the power of local middle and lower-level officers:

Just as the Jiedu envoy was replaced by officials such as the governor, the imperial court also began to appoint the magistrate to serve as the local administrative official in the local area, instead of the town guard and the general.

At the same time, the selection of magistrates and counties is also linked to the imperial examination, and the central government uniformly evaluates and appoints them, which cuts off the monopoly of local warriors in the power to elect and appoint officials. At the same time, county lieutenants, similar to today's police forces, were set up to maintain local law and order, thus depriving the grassroots generals of the power to interfere in county-level administration. It is worth mentioning that the county lieutenants were also appointed by the central government.

The third knife is to disintegrate the general's cronies and further weaken the cohesion and appeal of the feudal town:

In order to expand the power of his cronies, the former feudal generals delegated the civil work in their jurisdictions, such as taxation and civil affairs, to their own cronies, while the civilian officials who were originally responsible for these tasks were marginalized.

After the reform of Song Taizu, it was strictly forbidden for generals to hand over the authority of civil officials in their jurisdiction to their own cronies and military generals, so local civil officials were able to regain administrative power. As soon as this road was opened, the demand for civil officials in the Song Dynasty increased greatly, which objectively stimulated the vigorous development of the imperial examination system. From now on, military generals only have the power to train and lead troops, and are not allowed to interfere in the administrative affairs of prefectures and counties.

After a series of reforms by Zhao Kuangyin, Taizu of the Song Dynasty, the Song Dynasty established a complete bureaucratic system from the central to the local, and the Jiedu envoy gradually evolved from the original independent princes into a kind of virtual honor, and the martial arts politics that lasted for more than 200 years also came to an end, and the Song Dynasty finally entered the era of "civil politics".

However, civil politics has developed to a certain extent, but it has embarked on the track of emphasizing literature and suppressing military force, which has gradually become another malaise of the Song Dynasty, which must have been unimagined by Song Taizu and Song Taizong. This is why it is said that the Song Dynasty is the hell of the military generals, the paradise of the ministers, this time the Song Dynasty Chang'an City encountered the southern invasion plan of the Liao State, Yelu Longxu was despicable and shameless by nature, if it was Yelu Long continued not to be reborn before, it may be a robbery, but now that history has changed, what kind of changes will it take, this time the invasion of the Liao State has developed, and the good show is ahead?