The phoenix that falls to the ground is not as good as a chicken.

- Han proverb

In 1274, Dalai, who was conquering the city south of the Yangtze River, received an order from Kublai Khan to quickly rush to Goryeo and command the 15,000 officers and soldiers and 900 warships of all sizes stationed there to defeat the Wa Kingdom (present-day Japan) in the Eastern Ocean.

Dalai disagreed with the Wa Kingdom, which was far away on the ocean and had no practical value, and thought that it was the right thing to destroy the fertile Southern Song Dynasty. Sure enough, the Yuan army encountered a strong typhoon in the sea adjacent to the Wa Kingdom. The storm destroyed most of the warships, and the Yuan army had to withdraw hastily.

The Japanese people called the typhoon that saved Sheji a kamikaze.

Dalai was unfavorable and failed to live up to the high hopes placed on him by the Great Khan, so he was severely reprimanded by Kublai Khan, removed from all official positions, and sent to the outside of the capital to relax.

In the spring of 1275, at the age of 45, Nuhai led the Yuan army to conquer the military capitals of Anqing and Chizhou in Anhui Province, and marched against the metropolis of Jiankang (present-day Nanjing, Jiangsu Province).

The defense line of the Yangtze River in the Southern Song Dynasty collapsed in an instant.

The soldiers and civilians stationed in Changzhou swore to fight to the death, and after the fall of the city, they were slaughtered by the Yuan army. Soon, Pingjiang (located in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province) also fell.

The capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, Lin'an, was panicked, as if the end of the world was about to come.

On February 4, 1276, the imperial court sent officials to the Yuan army camp to sue for peace, but Nuhai and other generals refused.

At this time, the emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty, Song Duzong, had died two years ago due to excessive drinking, and Zhao Xian, who was only 3 years old, ascended the throne as a little emperor with the support of the traitor Jia Yidao.

Empress Dowager Xie held the 5-year-old little emperor Emperor Song Gong and surrendered to the Yuan army on behalf of the Southern Song Dynasty royal family.

The commanders of the Yuan army, Boyan and Nuhai, sent officials into the city to pacify the people of Lin'an, forbade killing and plundering, closed warehouses, and confiscated treasures, but a large-scale surrender ceremony was held in Lin'an City, which humiliated the Southern Song Dynasty, which relied on orphans and widows to support itself.

The childish-looking Emperor Song Gong presented Nuhai with a jade seal and a letter of surrender. The Southern Song Dynasty officially declared its demise.

Nuhai immediately sent Emperor Song Gong, his mother, grandmother, and other Southern Song dynasty members to Dadu.

Kublai Khan summoned Emperor Song Gong in the splendid and magnificent new palace, named him the Duke of Yingguo, and also gave the title of Empress Quan and Empress Dowager Xie, and better settled them.

In contrast, the royal clan of the Jin Kingdom was all killed after the fall of the Great Mongol State, and no one remained. In the final analysis, it was because the Mongols did not have a direct hatred for the Southern Song Dynasty. Some people say that it was this kindness of the Mongols that made Emperor Yuan Shun and the clan safely return to the desert from Dadu when Zhu Yuanzhang overthrew the Great Yuan Dynasty 100 years later, which can be regarded as repaying the Mongols for not killing back then.

Although Emperor Zhao Xian of Song Gong and his mother lived a worry-free life in Dadu, they were constantly monitored everywhere and could not get the freedom and happiness of the past.

The situation in the south has not fully stabilized either.

In that year, Yang Shufei of Song Duzong was escorted by his uncle Yang Liangjie and took his sons Yiwang Zhao Yu and Guangwang Zhao Yu successfully escaped at the time of national disaster, and met with Lu Xiufu, Zhang Shijie, Chen Yizhong and Wen Tianxiang, the former ministers of the Southern Song Dynasty, in Jinhua, Zhejiang, and made Zhao Yu the marshal of the world's soldiers and horses, and Zhao Yu as the deputy marshal.

Nuhai led the Yuan army to continue to pursue Zhao Yu and Zhao Yu.

Zhao Yu, Zhao Yu and others had no choice but to flee to Fuzhou.

Soon, everyone elected Zhao Yu, who had just turned 7, to ascend the throne as Emperor Song Duanzong. Zhao Yu added his younger brother Zhao Yu as the king of Wei, Zhang Shijie as the general, Lu Xiufu as the privy councillor who signed the book, Chen Yizhong as the prime minister, Wen Tianxiang as the Shaobao and Xinguo Gong, and organized the anti-Yuan work together.

The Yuan Dynasty saw that the remnants of the Southern Song Dynasty did not give up, and set up Zhao Yu as the emperor, so they stepped up the pace of eliminating the Song and Zhao royal families.

In 1277, Nuhai led the Yuan army to capture Fuzhou.

Song Duanzong's small court in exile in the Southern Song Dynasty fled to Quanzhou.

Pu Shougeng, an Arab merchant in Quanzhou City, refused to borrow a boat from the prince's teacher, Zhang Shijie, and later heard that the Mongolian generals who led the army were Hui people, so he immediately sent someone to get in touch with Nuhai and surrendered to the Yuan army.

Zhang Shijie led the death squad to desperately grab the ship, and hurriedly carried the emperor out to sea to escape.

The exiled court of the Southern Song Dynasty went into exile in Guangdong. They were going to flee to Leizhou. Unexpectedly, a violent typhoon was encountered in the South China Sea, the boat capsized, and Song Duanzong fell into the sea and almost drowned.

Chen Yizhong, the prime minister of Zuo, suggested taking Song Duanzong to take refuge in Champa (in present-day southern Vietnam). He himself went to Champa to investigate, but did not return, and finally fled to Siam (present-day Thailand), where he died.

Song Duanzong contracted a disease because of falling into the water, and soon died of illness.

The crowd also elected Song Duanzong's 7-year-old brother Zhao Yu to the throne.

After Zhao Yu ascended the throne, Lu Xiufu and Zhang Shijie, the prime ministers of the left, escorted Zhao Yu and fled to Yashan, established a local stronghold, and prepared to continue to resist the Yuan army.

Yashan stands in Yamen Town, Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province today, bordering the land in the north, the water in the east and west, and the southern end extending and inserting into the South China Sea in isolation, which is easy to attack and difficult to defend.

Wen Tianxiang was detained while participating in negotiations with the Yuan army. He seized a rare opportunity to secretly flee back to Jiangnan, gathered a group of officers and soldiers who had fallen into the Southern Song Dynasty, and once again raised troops to resist the Yuan army.

For a time, the officers and soldiers scattered to the south of the Yangtze River and even to the Central Plains responded in droves, and the momentum was enormous.

The Yuan army hurriedly summoned Dalai and ordered him to lead an army of 400,000 to encircle and suppress Wen Tianxiang's army.

Wen Tianxiang, who led troops against the Yuan in Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces, was captured by Dalai's subordinate and traitor Zhang Hongfan at Wupoling in Haifeng County because he could not receive support from the exiled imperial court. At this point, the remnants of the Southern Song Dynasty's anti-Yuan forces on land were completely wiped out.

Dalai immediately sent someone to escort Wen Tianxiang to Dadu.

Kublai Khan considered that Wen Tianxiang's influence among the people was very huge, and wanted to use the method of recruiting him to calm the people's hearts, and successively assigned Zhang Hongfan and the former prime minister of the Southern Song Dynasty to do ideological work for Wen Tianxiang, but he was driven away by righteousness.

In the end, Kublai Khan had no choice but to send the fallen monarch Zhao Xian to persuade his former minister Wen Tianxiang to surrender.

In the past, they were each other's monarchs and ministers of the court, but now they are both prisoners of different races. When Wen Tianxiang saw the 8-year-old emperor, he immediately cried bitterly, knelt down for a long time, and only said four words from beginning to end: "Holy Driver, please go back." ”

Zhao Xian didn't know what to say when he saw this situation, so he stayed there for a long time and didn't want to leave.

In the first month of 1279, Nuhai, Dalai and Zhang Hongfan led a large number of Yuan troops to launch a general attack on Yashan. They first broke through the Yamen, and then arrived at the Yashan Mountain, forming a three-sided encirclement of the remnants of the Southern Song Dynasty.

In the face of a strong enemy, Zhang Shijie, who was under great pressure, thought day and night, looking for a good way to break the enemy.

The aides suggested to Zhang Shijie that he should seize the exit of the bay first, which would be tantamount to seizing the route of retreat to the west.

Zhang Shijie vetoed this suggestion in order to prevent the unstable soldiers from fleeing. He ordered the burning of palaces, houses, and strongholds on land, and ordered the use of a chain of ships to connect nearly 1,000 military ships in a line with large ropes and arrange them in the bay, and specially arranged Zhao Yu's boat in the middle of the army.

Seeing that the remnants of the Southern Song Dynasty were resisting stubbornly, Nuhai ordered the Yuan army to carry flammable materials such as hay and grease in small boats, ignite them, and rush into the Southern Song fleet along the direction of the wind.

The Southern Song army reacted quickly, smearing the exterior of the ships with mud and placing a long log on each boat to block the burning ships, making the Yuan army's fire attack ineffective.

Seeing that the sailors could not attack, Nuhai immediately ordered the sailors to block the bay. Dalai commanded the army to block the roads for the Southern Song army to obtain fresh water and cut firewood.

The officers and soldiers of the Southern Song Dynasty braved the scorching tropical sun and ate dry food for more than ten days, but they were so thirsty that they had to drink seawater, which caused many soldiers to vomit and diarrhea, and their bodies became very weak.

Nuhai divided the Yuan army into four and stationed one team in each of the three directions of the Southern Song army's east, south, and north. Zhang Hongfan led a team stationed a few miles away from the Southern Song military camp, and agreed to play music as a signal for the various teams to launch a general attack.

The exhausted Southern Song army heard the sound of music coming from the Yuan army barracks and mistakenly thought that the Yuan army was holding a banquet, and their originally high vigilance relaxed slightly.

At noon, Zhang Hongfan led the naval division to attack the military camp of the Southern Song Dynasty from the front. Soldiers with shields on their backs hid in the shipyards covered with cloth and approached enemy ships in a rain of arrows.

As soon as the ships on both sides of the Great Yuan and the Southern Song Dynasty approached, Nuhai immediately ordered the trumpet to be sounded to launch a general attack. The sailors on board removed the cloth and fired arrows in unison, breaking through seven Southern Song Dynasty ships in a row.

The army of the Southern Song Dynasty was suddenly in chaos.

Dalai personally led the Yuan army to charge into battle, all the way to the center of the Southern Song Dynasty army.

Seeing that the general trend had gone, Zhang Shijie hurriedly dispatched elite troops, cut off the big rope, and led the rest of the more than 10 ships to break through.

However, the little emperor Zhao Yu's ship was trapped in the middle and could not break through.

Lu Xiufu saw a large number of Yuan troops swarming in, and in order to prevent the little emperor from falling into the hands of foreigners, he picked up the 8-year-old Zhao Yu on his back and flew into the choppy South China Sea......

Seeing that the emperor, the backbone of his heart, had thrown himself into the sea, the Zhao and Song royal families of more than 800 people then committed suicide by jumping into the sea en masse......

More than 100,000 soldiers and civilians of the Southern Song Dynasty also jumped into the sea one after another crying......

When Wen Tianxiang heard the tragic situation, his liver and intestines were broken, and his anger could not be eliminated, so he wrote a poem:

Karma came to the South Sea,

People are in chaos.

The bloody waves beat the heartbreak,

The wind blows the sideburns.

Later, Lu Xiufu's body was found by nearby people and secretly buried.

The Yuan army saw a suspected corpse of the little emperor Zhao Yu on the sea, and saw a child with clear eyebrows, wearing a dragon robe, wearing a crown, and a jade seal hanging on his body.

The soldiers of the Yuan army took off the jade seal from the child and handed it to Nuhai and Dalai.

Neither Nuhai nor Dalai knew Chinese characters, so they asked Zhang Hongfan to recognize them.

Zhang Hongfan looked at it again and again, and confirmed that this was the jade seal of the Great Song Dynasty, and the drowned child was definitely Zhao Yu.

Nuhai hurriedly sent someone to retrieve Zhao Hao's body.

However, Zhao's body had disappeared by the time the Yuan army returned. It is said that it was preemptively collected by the local people and buried in Chiwan Village in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province.

Zhang Shijie planned to use the name of Yang Shufei to find the descendants of the Song Emperor Zhao as the new emperor, waiting for the opportunity to recover the motherland. However, after hearing the death of Emperor Zhao Yu of the Song Dynasty, Yang Shufei had committed suicide by throwing herself into the sea.

Soon after, Zhang Shijie encountered a storm at the foot of Pingzhang Mountain (present-day Yangjiang City, Guangdong Province) and unfortunately drowned.

The Battle of Yashan meant the fall of the Zhao and Song dynasties, and also the complete destruction of the remnants of the Southern Song Dynasty.

Seeing the remnants of the Southern Song Dynasty collapse, the prime minister of the Great Yuan Dynasty, Polo, and even Kublai Khan himself personally persuaded Wen Tianxiang to surrender, but there was still no result, and in the end he had to fulfill his loyal soul.

Zhao Xian's ending was also very tragic.

In 1288, Kublai Khan decided to send Zhao Xian to Tibet to study Buddhism, and ordered Zhao Xian's mother, Empress Quan, to become a nun. A royal mother and son were sent to the Buddha realm in this way. From then on, flesh and blood separated, and the ends of the world separated.

Zhao Xian chose to become a monk in the Lama Temple in Tibet at the age of 19 and obtained the Dharma name Hezun. In order to forget the pain of losing his country, he devoted himself to learning the Tibetan language, and within a few years, he had already emerged in the Buddhist circles, becoming an expert in translating Chinese Buddhist scriptures into Tibetan, and also served as the chief abbot of the Sakya Monastery in Lhasa, and became a Buddhist master in Tibet at that time, lecturing and studying Buddhism everywhere. Later, he translated the "Treatise on the Hundred Methods of Mingmen" and the esoteric "The Theory of Entering the Righteousness of the Cause of Ming", leaving an inscription on the title page, claiming that he was a monk of the King of the Han Dynasty and respected the magic treasure, and was included in the list of translation masters by Tibetan historians.

In 1323, at the age of 54, Zhao Xian ended his career as a lama and ended his 47-year life as a captive, and embarked on the path of Buddhism. After he settled in Tibet, he never entered the Central Plains and the motherland in 35 years!

The Great Yuan Dynasty finally unified the entire Han Central Plains and Jiangnan, which was also the first time that the Central Plains and Jiangnan were completely conquered by the nomads in the north.

Nuhai and Dalai were highly praised by Kublai Khan for their great military achievements.