Meishan Su family, Su Yun is the most virtuous

Chapter 215 Wang Shunchen!
As soon as Su Yun arrived at the entrance of Fanlou, he saw two heroic young men standing at the door with their backs straight. They were obviously different from the other young men.

One was Xu Jin whom I met that day, and the other was a young man who I seemed to have some impression of, as he seemed to be following Xu Jin at that time.

Sure enough, Xu Jin smiled and said, "Master Su, this is my fellow brother, Wang Shunchen."

When Su Yun heard the name Wang Shunchen, he immediately raised his eyebrows. This name... is very familiar, but he just can't remember it for the moment.

Su Yun smiled and bowed to Xu Jin and Wang Sun Chen, saying, "Nice to meet you. Thank you for hosting the banquet tonight. It's a great honor."

Xu Jin smiled and said, "Mr. Su, we have asked around. It is not easy to invite you to dinner. It is our honor that you can come. It is you who gave us this honor."

Su Yun laughed when he heard this, and Xu Jin and Wang Shunchen also laughed.

The three of them walked into Fanlou hand in hand, and then into the room. They started talking. After a while, the food and wine were ready. The three of them ate and drank while chatting. After the greetings, Su Yun smiled and asked, "General Xu invited you tonight. I wonder if you have any advice for me?"

Xu Jin groaned and said, "Mr. Su, we dare not take the word of teaching as an example. We are simply fans of your books."

Su Yun raised his eyebrows and said with a smile, "Why, do you like reading the Annotations to the Four Books?"

Xu Jin immediately smiled bitterly and said, "You are joking. We are just two warriors. How can we understand the meaning of the classics? We are reading the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Especially Shunchen, who is fascinated by the various war strategies in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and admires you very much.

It would be fine if we had never met you, but now that we have met you, we naturally want to get closer to you."

Su Yun smiled, but he didn't quite believe this statement in his heart. However, he was not in a hurry. He just had to wait and see. The fox's tail would be exposed eventually.

Next, Su Yun chatted and laughed with Xu Jin and Wang Shunchen normally. Then Xu Jin specifically asked about some battles in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Su Yun talked about it briefly, and then Wang Shunchen started talking from a soldier's perspective.

"...Master Su's arrangement of the overall situation is extremely brilliant, but perhaps because he has never served in the military himself, he still has some misunderstandings about some details, such as the formation, weapons, and armor..."

Wang Shunchen was very familiar with military affairs when he talked about them, and he was very proficient in some of the formations, deployments of various arms, logistics, etc., which made Su Yun very interested.

After Wang Shunchen finished speaking, Su Yun asked about the Song army. Wang Shunchen had nothing to hide and told him everything.

"…The emperor is wise and brave, but the war with Western Xia has always been difficult to achieve the desired results. The key lies in the army itself…well, and the system.

I believe that military training should be the responsibility of local officials, while generals who are responsible for fighting should not interfere, and command and training should be separated.

Generals have no contact with soldiers in normal times, and local officials cannot command troops in wartime. This leads to "soldiers have no permanent commander, commander has no permanent soldiers", which leads to "generals do not know soldiers, soldiers do not know commanders".

It would be fine if they were facing ordinary opponents, but when facing elite armies like the Liao army and the Western Xia troops, they would immediately show their weakness.

Moreover, the intensity of the training is not enough. Take the Imperial Guards for example, except for the most elite ones, what are the rest like?
There had been a small-scale military exercise before, and there had been a situation where some cavalrymen, wearing armor, could not even get on their horses. After finally getting on, they fell off their horses after running a short distance.

When practicing archery, the bow was not fully drawn, and the arrows were shot into the air. The arrows fell to the ground 20 steps away and could not hit the target at all...

All in all, one sentence is enough to describe it, which is: using frequently changed generals to control untrained soldiers, the battle is bound to be defeated.

There is no need to say more about the rest. Anyway, the disrepair of the military is hard to imagine for people like you who are not in the military...

Yongle City was defeated, and 200,000 comrades died in the ice and snow. There were certainly strategic mistakes, but wasn't it the lack of combat effectiveness that led to this?

Two hundred thousand troops, if they were strong enough, why would they hide in a city? Xia Gou would have been killed and never returned..."

As Wang Shunchen spoke, he couldn't help crying, and even Xu Jin's eyes were red.

Su Yun was also silent.

The poor combat effectiveness of the Song Dynasty army was superficially due to the lack of cavalry and the advancement of the opponents, but the main reason was actually problems within the Song Dynasty.

First, the military was suppressed while the civil officials were respected. The status of the military declined and they became subordinate to the civil officials. Moreover, outstanding people were unwilling to join the army, which greatly reduced the quality of the soldiers.

Furthermore, the repeated decline in the quality of soldiers forced the dynasty to expand the number of troops to make up for the lack of quality, but the increase in the number led to a continuous increase in fiscal expenditures. The financial shortage led to insufficient funds for maintaining the troops, making it difficult to ensure the normal supply of soldiers, which further declined the quality of soldiers.

This created a vicious cycle. The army was incompetent and had to be expanded in number, which eventually dragged down the Song court's finances. After all, a million-strong army was of little use.

The Chinese nation has never been a weak nation. From the pre-Qin Dynasty to the Han and Tang Dynasties, our people have always been quite martial.

In the Song Dynasty, the military strength dropped sharply only because the ruling class adopted a policy of valuing culture and suppressing military power.

In short, the poor combat effectiveness of the Song Dynasty army was ultimately caused by internal reasons. There were also external reasons, but they were not the main factors.

Su Yun was silent for a while and said, "I heard that the Northwest Frontier Army is the most elite army in the Song Dynasty. It shouldn't be like this, right?"

At this moment, Xu Jin said: "The training may be slightly better, but not much better. The problems of the army have existed since the time of Emperor Taizong. It is not uncommon to see things like sucking the blood of soldiers, withholding military funds, and deliberately reducing training to save money and food for personal gain.

Think about it, if a civilian official who is in charge of training the army cannot lead the troops into battle, then whether the training of the troops is good or bad does it have anything to do with him?

Therefore, civil servants who have a little conscience may just follow the regulations and be a little perfunctory, which is already very good, but those who have no conscience will simply not give you training.

When the war started, the generals took over the soldiers and saw that they couldn't even form a simple formation. How do you think we can fight this war?
How else can we fight? We can only fight conservatively, such as building fortresses, clearing the fields, and then waiting for the enemy to penetrate deep into our territory and get tired of burning, killing, and looting, and then defeat them by intercepting their food supply routes and so on.

Rather than saying he defeated me, it would be better to say he used his wealth to consume me to death."

Su Yun became more silent. These two were both military personnel. They were naturally very familiar with the military's ills and were unlikely to lie.

Su Yun suddenly remembered that he had read a book in his previous life. The book told the story of the Jingkang Campaign.

It is said that during the Jingkang period, the Jin army reached the Yellow River, and the Song court dispatched an elite imperial guard stationed in the capital to meet the enemy.

The people of Kaifeng went to see the Song army off, but when they returned they all burst into tears.

Because they saw that these so-called elite troops could not even get on the war horses, and even if they were barely helped onto the horses, they could not ride steadily and had to lie on the horse's back.

Another thing mentioned above is that many soldiers at that time were unwilling or unable to carry the rations themselves after receiving them, and often hired people to carry them to their homes.

With such qualities, how could they fight in the battlefield? Su Yun shook his head. During the Song Dynasty, it was probably difficult for the army to stand up.

It’s okay for Emperor Zhenzong, Emperor Renzong and others, but even a powerful man like Emperor Shenzong Zhao Xu could not change the current situation, which shows how difficult it was.

However, Song Zhezong, who came later, was a tough guy sent from heaven. He was in charge of the government for only seven years, but he was able to defeat the Western Xia and force them to surrender. He could truly be called a tough guy sent from heaven, but he died too short.

The problems of the Northern Song Dynasty’s army can be said to be a culmination of the shortcomings of the armies of all dynasties. They had all the problems that other dynasties had, and they also had problems that other dynasties did not have.

The only thing such an army can rely on to win a battle is to have an extremely powerful general who can use strategy to compensate for the army's lack of combat effectiveness and barely fight an undefeated battle.

Seeing Su Yun was silent, Xu Jin quickly raised his glass and said, "Come on, let's not talk about those unpleasant things and drink!"

Su Yun raised his glass, and the wine tasted bitter as it went down his throat. He thought of the mountains of corpses and seas of blood that he had often dreamed of in the past few days, and he felt uncomfortable in his heart.

Seeing that Su Yun was unhappy, Xu Jin quickly changed the subject and said, "Master Su, that day I saw a bandit chief being shot through by an arrow. The arrow was so powerful that it went straight through his chest. Who shot that arrow?"

Su Yun nodded and said, "I shot it."

Xu Jin glared and said, "Ah, Master Su is also an expert in archery. My brother Wang Shunchen is a master archer. He can shoot with a heavy bow at high speed and with amazing accuracy. He is the best among the imperial guards in the capital!

Mr. Su, how about we find some time to play some archery together?"

Su Yun's eyes lit up when he heard this, he knew who Wang Shunchen was!

This was a famous general during the reign of Emperor Huizong!

During the reign of Emperor Huizong of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Song army once fought against a rebellious Qiang tribe. At the beginning, the battle was going badly and even the commander was ambushed and killed in battle.

At that time, the defeated Song army was surrounded and blocked by the enemy, and was huddled together in front of a narrow pass. If nothing unexpected happened, it would be on the verge of defeat and destruction.

At this critical moment, an officer named Wang Shunchen stood up.

He just stood there alone with his bow, waiting for the enemy to come within range.

Rushing in the front were the seven most valiant and fierce cavalry vanguards under the Qiang chieftain.

Wang Shunchen believed that if this vanguard was not defeated, the Song army would surely collapse due to low morale.

So he declared in public: "I will put a flower between the eyebrows of the first cavalryman."

As a result, the seven enemy cavalrymen were still charging, so Wang Shunchen shot three arrows, and three enemy cavalrymen fell off their horses and died, and all of them were shot in the face.

The remaining four enemy riders were frightened and turned their horses around to run, but they were pierced through the back by Wang Shunchen's arrows and fell off their horses and died.

Tens of thousands of enemy troops were frightened by Wang Shunchen's miraculous archery skills, and no one dared to attack.

Wang Shunchen thus gained precious time and began to reorganize the Song army.

Not long after, the enemy rushed up again and a fierce battle broke out.

The fierce battle lasted from the afternoon to the evening. In nearly four hours, Wang Shunchen shot thousands of arrows, and every arrow hit his target. His fingers were broken and his arms were covered with blood.

In the end, thanks to Wang Shunchen's bravery and responsibility, the Song army escaped safely.

This is not some unofficial history, but a record in the History of Song Dynasty.

The History of Song Dynasty certainly has problems of various kinds, but as long as it does not involve literati, does not insult military generals, and simply praises military generals, it is probably still credible.

This guy is awesome. He can shoot arrows a thousand times. What does that mean? He’s a human Gatling gun!

Moreover, this person is a bully. Hehe, [I want to stick a flower between the eyebrows of the cavalry in the front], only a bully can say this.

Su Yun was immediately in high spirits. Hearing this, he stood up and said with a smile, "Why wait? I feel good now. Let's go to my house and try it. I have wine and food in my house. Let's go!"

Xu Jin and Wang Shunchen looked at each other and immediately saw the surprise in each other's eyes: Now they are close, their relationship is close, and they can be considered friends in the future!
The two of them stood up quickly, not wanting to leave the banquet, and immediately followed them out.

Su Yun was walking in front, and a very beautiful woman was swaying in front of him. When the woman saw Su Yun was about to leave, she became anxious and quickly stopped Su Yun and asked, "Mr. Su, do you still remember me?"

Su Yun glanced at the woman. Hmm, she's very pretty. She seems to be the famous prostitute named Liu Xianglan, right?

But at this moment Su Yun was anxious to go back and see Wang Shunchen's level, so he had no patience to talk to a prostitute. Even if this prostitute was as beautiful as a fairy, even if she was a fairy, what was she compared to a famous general?

Therefore, Su Yun nodded and said, "Oh, Mr. Liu, hello. I have something to do now, so I'll take my leave first. We'll talk again when we have a chance."

Then Su Yun moved and passed by Liu Xianglan. Liu Xianglan was stunned for a moment: Is there anyone who can ignore her beauty?
By the time she reacted and turned around hastily, Su Yun had already gone downstairs. Liu Xianglan quickly leaned over the railing and shouted, "Master Su, please stay! Master Su, please stay!"

Her voice was clear and pleasant to the ear, and it immediately attracted the attention of everyone in the building. When they looked, they were surprised to see that it was Ms. Liu!
Mr. Liu's voice sounded so anxious. Who was he calling? Who was so awesome that Mr. Liu had to speak out to keep him?

All the guests in the building stood up and looked down from the fence. They saw a young man who heard the words and asked the two young men beside him, "Didn't you pay the bill?"

Xu Jin quickly said, "I've paid it!"

Su Yun looked at Liu Xianglan and said, "Mr. Liu, the bill has been paid. You can go ask your shopkeeper."

Su Yun bowed and turned to leave.

Liu Xianglan said anxiously: "Master Su, please don't leave. I have something private to tell you!"

As soon as these words were spoken, the whole building was in an uproar.

Someone suddenly said, "You haven't heard that Mr. Liu seemed to be in love with a young man before. Could it be this guy?"

(End of this chapter)