Fanfiction 11: A preliminary study on the military system, organization and serial number of the Shao Song Imperial Camp - Dreaming of a sword in the world
Preface: By the tenth year of Jianyan, when the Northern Expedition began, the front army consisted of Yue Fei's 45,000 troops, the central army consisted of Li Yanxian's 40,000 troops, Li Qiong's 25,000 troops, Wang De's 25,000 troops, the rear army consisted of Wu Jie's 50,000 troops, the left army consisted of Han Shizhong's 40,000 troops, the right army consisted of Zhang Jun's 25,000 troops, the navy consisted of Zhang Rong's 15,000 troops, the cavalry consisted of Qu Duan's 30,000 troops, and the navy consisted of Li Bao's 5,000 troops.
The detailed verification of the military strength is as follows:
In the 12th chapter of Volume 5, "Response", the total establishment strength is as follows: Han Shizhong's troops increased from 30,000 to 37,000; Wu Jie increased from 30,000 to 38,000; the Imperial Camp Central Army increased from 50,000 to 65,000, among which it is clearly stated that Wang De's troops increased from 15,000 to 17,000, and Li Qiong increased from 15,000 to 18,000, so Li Yanxian's establishment strength should have increased from 20,000 to 30,000, but the exact number of people is unknown; Yue Fei's troops increased from 35,000 to 40,000, Zhang Jun remained at 25,000, Zhang Rong remained at 15,000, and Li Bao remained at 5,000 to 6,000; "The Imperial Camp Cavalry led by Qu Duan increased from 15,000 to 20,000"; the reserve army is 10,000, in the western part of Jiangnan.
This was the end of the sixth year of Jianyan, that is to say, after the military expansion was completed, at the beginning of the seventh year of Jianyan, the total number of personnel in the Imperial Camp would be 3.7+3.8+6.5+4+2.5+1.5+2=24, totaling two hundred and forty thousand.
The 37th chapter of Volume 5, "Summer Rain", clearly states the intention to expand the army. By autumn, the imperial camp had a full complement of 300,000 cavalry and naval forces, not including the navy.
The military expansion plan did not disclose the number of personnel, but the logistics and the scale of conscription in various places showed that the vast majority of the new personnel were still allocated to Han Shizhong's troops, Wu Jie's troops, Li Yanxian's troops and Qu Duan's imperial cavalry.
Volume 5, Chapter 42, Imperial Decree, there is an imperial decree, the front army, right army, navy, and naval forces, a total of 90,000 troops, are to be dispatched to Hebei. This should be 45,000 front army, 25,000 right army, 15,000 navy, and 5,000 navy.
The emperor also ordered Wang De, the left deputy commander-in-chief of the imperial camp central army, Li Qiong, the right deputy commander-in-chief, and Qu Duan, the commander-in-chief of the imperial camp cavalry, to immediately send all 80,000 troops of their own army to march westward in order. The book repeatedly describes the imperial camp cavalry as having 30,000 troops. Based on this statement, if the cavalry had 30,000 troops, Wang De and Li Qiong would each have 25,000 troops.
In the next imperial edict, Han Shizhong, commander of the left army of the imperial camp, Li Yanxian, commander of the middle army of the imperial camp, and Wu Jie, commander of the rear army of the imperial camp, formed the Hedong Front Army with 130,000 troops, with Han Shizhong as the commander-in-chief, and marched to Hedong. The imperial edict given to Han Shizhong alone required him to immediately send all 40,000 troops across the river. So here Han Shizhong's army was confirmed to be 40,000, and the other two armies were probably 50,000 for Wu Jie and 40,000 for Li Yanxian (each of which had an increase of about 10,000 troops compared to Chapter 12).
Part I: A Preliminary Study on the Compilation System
1. The development of the traditional four-tier command system, the method of appointing generals, and the personal guard system.
1. Traditional four-tier command system:
The traditional four-level command system of the Northern Song Dynasty, which was passed down from the Five Dynasties, was a du-ying-jun-xiang. According to the records in Volume 1 "Military System" and Volume 2 "Daily Review Method" of the first volume of "Wu Jing Zong Yao", "generally speaking, a hundred people form a du, five du forms a ying (command), five ying forms a jun, and ten jun forms a xiang, which are either affiliated with the front of the palace or the two guards". But in fact, they are not uniform. During the reign of Emperor Zhenzong, there were already one jun with ten commanders, and some juns had only 1-2 commanders (such as the Yunqijun). Therefore, it is certain that the jun is the upper level of the ying (command), but there is no need to delve into the specific number of personnel. The National Museum has copper seals such as "The Record of the Fifth Du of the Second Command of the Fourth Left Army of the Divine Guard", which indicate the numbers from du to xiang.
According to the above, one city consists of one hundred people (approximate number, the same below), one battalion consists of four hundred people (cavalry) or five hundred people (infantry), one army consists of 2,000-2,500 people. A unit should have a quota of 20,000 to 25,000 people, which is actually very difficult to achieve.
In fact, in the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty, the meaning of the "xiang" as an organization was already in name only, and it was mostly used as a number mark or to temporarily organize a large army, such as Eunuch Tong's Dragon God Guard Four Xiang Commander.
In addition, the meaning of "jun" as an organization is different from "jun" as a unit name. As a name, "jun" generally indicates the origin of the unit (the place of recruitment), organizational characteristics (for example, those with characters such as "xiao" and "jie" are mostly cavalry), etc.
2. Establish a new organization of troops, divisions, generals and armies.
After Wang Anshi implemented the law of appointing generals, the imperial army formed a new organization of team-unit-general-army. The "army" in the new organization is an army divided into "armies" of front, back, left, center and right. It is not a fixed organization, that is, the new organization actually still has only three levels: team-unit-general. During combat, several generals will be organized and divided into front, back, left and right armies, and there will be selected vanguard armies, etc. During war, each army will appoint a general as the commander (it can be seen here that the commander is not a regular position). This is because Shaanxi Road is a loess plateau terrain, which makes it difficult to launch a large-scale battle. In the later period, the Song Dynasty also pursued a shallow attack and digging style of building a strong camp and fighting a stupid battle, resulting in the actual battles between the Song and Xia dynasties being mainly on a scale of thousands to tens of thousands of people, so a large organization was not set up for a long time.
However, the ranks below the general were actually in charge of the troops and had fixed subordinate relationships. The book once described that Wu Jie was the first general of Jingyuan Road. However, the method of placing generals was not applied to all regions. Before Jingkang, it was still parallel to the capital-camp-army-wing (which existed in name only at this time).
Under the new organization, a large team is basically the same as the previous large team, with about fifty people, a small team has about two hundred and fifty people, and one general leads a thousand people.
However, according to the idea of Emperor Shenzong, one general would be appointed for each place, and the establishment was not a fixed number, nor a quota of thousands of people. Of course, it was not actually implemented later, and the details remain to be studied.
3. The personal guard system and class under the general system:
Beiwei military system (team-unit-general-army).
Because of the general collapse of Jingkang, the army lost its central control and naturally evolved into a military system with generals as the core. In order to ensure control of the army, the generals expanded the personal guard system of the generals, until the personal guard of the generals in command was as many as an army (traditional organization). As the personal guard of generals such as Han, Zhang, and Yue, the Beiwei Army, after being recognized by the court, finally obtained the organization of the Control Department under the background of Zhao Jiu's special strengthening of the Control Department, and was re-integrated with the traditional command system.
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