Study On The Tactical System Of The Song Army Defensing The Liao Army

From the 10 th century to the 11 th century,the Song and Liao fought for the control of You Yun region,triggering a 25-year war,which was called the Song and Liao War.In the course of the war,the Song army was defeated one after another.Under the guidance of the strategy of "defending the inside not the outside" and "worshiping culture and suppressing military",it turned to comprehensive passive defense.In the course of a series of battles against the Liao army of Khitan,the Song army showed two distinct phenomena of crossbow strike and defense phalanxes,which constituted a tactical system of defensing the Liao Army with both offense and defense.This tactical system was initiated in the Song Taizong period,and developed and matured in the Zhenzong period,and was widely promoted and applied.In actual combat,the tactical system of imperial Liao of Song Army mainly shows:Firstly,the Song army was different from the Tang Army.Under the guidance of the crossbow could defense cavalry idea,the crossbow attack was regarded as the core part of the attack system against the enemy.Therefore,the Song Army regarded the crossbow as the primary weapon in its Arsenal,not only expanding the proportion of bowmen in the army,but also taking the crossbow training as the core of the military training of the whole army.At the same time,the Song Army constantly improved the combat performance of the crossbow,and the striking power,striking distance and applicability were constantly improved to enhance the actual combat effectiveness.moreover,under the background that cavalry tactics had dominated the battlefield,the Song army still persisted in formation and array warfare.In a series of battles such as Qigouguan,Xuhe and Wangdu,the Song main force formed a square formation to resist the impact of the Liao cavalry.Generally speaking,the formation system of the Song army mainly refers to the whole array and the regular array system awarded by the emperor.The central phalanx composed of infantry and chariots is the core,and cavalry is divided on all sides to cover the ring defensive deployment.The Song Army was keen on defending the central army phalanx,which was largely influenced by the overall passive defense strategy,coupled with the mainstream social advocacy of war suppression theory,and the war thinking became more and more negative.Compared with other tactics,the fighting method of the Song army,which relies on strong bows and crossbows while not giving up all its strength to defend the phalanxes,is a transitional tactical system with both traditional cold weapons and cold and hot weapons.Based on its reflected characteristics,the author called it "bow and crossbow striking phalanx".In general,it uses cold weapons represented by crossbows to carry out combat,which conforms to the basic characteristics of square array tactics in cold weapons era,but gives up shock.The fighting process is quite different from the traditional cold weapons combat system mainly based on fighting.At the same time,it is highly consistent with the firearm phalanx in the era of cold and hot weapons in the fighting mode and fighting process,but it is essentially different from it because it is not equipped with firearm.It can be seen that influenced by a series of realistic conditions,mainly the ultra-high intensity military oppression of the Liao Army,the precocious bow and crossbow striking phalanx of the Song Army became a relatively abnormal tactical system on the battlefield at that time,which had both the tactical characteristics of the era of cold weapons and the era of cold and hot weapons.The bow and crossbow striking phalanx was a tactical system established by the Song army in order to gain the advantage of battle space,based on the theory of " the far beats the near",based on the relevant principle of the game between time and air elements in battle,after a long period of military practice in defensing the Liao Army.Its two major advantages are: on the one hand,compared with the weapon system of the Song army and the Liao army,there is a certain effective strike distance advantage;On the other hand,the range advantage of the crossbow could give the Song army a period of one-way attack.The theory of "the far beats the near" reflects the objective law of military development and is the core principle of firearms tactics defeating cavalry tactics.Therefore,it was used by the Ming Army,which was equipped with firearms,to ending the military situation in which the Mongol cavalry were unable to meet their opponents for quite a long time.The success of the Ming army shows that the fighting principle embodied by the bow and crossbow striking phalanx of the Song Army completely accords with the historical trend of the development of military tactics.However,the bow and crossbow striking phalanx tactical system of the Song Army was limited by the development of productivity and technology.There was a fundamental deficiency in the striking power,especially the weapon performance,coupled with improper tactical deployment and the imbalance between attack and defense,so it was impossible to defeat the enemy.