A Strategic Study Of The War Between The Tang Dynasty And Koguryo

The Tang's Conquering Koguryo is a war intrigued by Koguryo's civil strife invasion of new Luo, while the Tang Dynasty aiming at recovering Han dynasty. This paper will make a study of the war strategy of the Tang and Koguryo. First, it will carry out a retrospect on war. Second, it will discuss and analyze the adjustment of Tang's strategy, including going on steadily and surely, the harassment, converging attack from both north and south. Third, the strategy of, which includes, being good at using favourable geographical position, sticking to the lonely city. The war lasted for 23 years, that is from 645(Zhenguan 19th year) to 668(Zongzhang 1st year). The former is the year Emperor Tai Zong Going on an expedition himself, the latter the year Tang overcame Koguryo's capital.The course of the war can be divided into 3 periods: first, Emperor Tai Zong going on an expedition himself; second,the harassment of Tang on Koguryo; third, Tang's general offensive and the extinct of Koguryo.Before Emperor Tai Zong Going on an expedition himself, the armed force has carried out a thorough deployment: enlisting soldiers, employing the national minority armed force and gathering the army of Xinluo and Baiji to carry out a probing attack first. And it feinted in east and attacked in the west, the battle for the first time announcing a victory, successively occupyed more than 10 cities of Liaodong area, wipe out Koguryo's 150,000 principal forces lead by Gao Yan Dao and Gao Hui Zhen, and broke off the outside help. But afterwards long attack ampere of city didn't succeed, so they were forced to withdraw under Jack Frost and difficult provision.Summing up the experience and lessons of the failure in the war the emperor going on an expedition himself, Emperor Taizong and his subjects thinks that " Koguryo's cities are backed by mountains, so, it is hard to defeat them " .Thus Tang gave up large scale attack, carried out a harassment instead. The war shifted to the harassment stage but. Emperor Gaozong of Tang dynasty continues carrying out harassment war after ascending the throne, which brought about a heavy blow on Koguryo.When the effect of the harassment battles is more and more obvious, Emperor Gaozong was beginning to set about a final full-scale offensive war on Koguryo. The first two were just because of Jack Frost and heavy snow, so the Tang army returned without accomplishing anything. The internal conflict of Koguryo has given the Tang Dynasty a golden opportunity, Emperor Gaozong of Tang dynasty has decided on the spot, launched a full-scale offensive on Koguryo. The capture of Xincheng cith and Pueyo city made the breakthrough of the Yalu River line of defense just like turning round one's little finger. Tang stationed its army outside the Pyongyang city, the king surrendered, Koguryo become extinct.During Emperor Taizong going on an expedition himself, his policy advancing both by land and water was definitely right. But, just because of his expedition himself ascertained at the same time the policy going on steadily and surely. This made the navy advantage couldn't be brought into full, what's more, it also lost the chance of attacking Wugu city and Pyongyang city. The Tang emperor and subjects had learned from experience unceasingly after failing, and carried out appropriate adjustment on the strategy , adopted the harassment war advancing both by land and water. The result of the harassment battles is "tired from rushing around "till the " depression for a vast area" "disunited", and ultimate reach "win without battle ", this was one of most important causes that Koguryo is destroyed ultimately. After the extinct of Baiji by the Tang Dynasty in 660, Tang opened up the second front to fight Koguryo, which made both north and south converging attacking strategy possible. Koguryo had to battle two gleams, this made the extinct of Koguryo just sooner or later. Both north and south converging attacking strategy, just like the harassment war, was one of most important causes that Koguryo is destroyed ultimately.The sharp contrast between Tang and Koguryo was Tang changed its strategy with the situation, while that of Koguryo remained unchanged. In battles with the Sui Dynasty, Koguryo armed forces' main strategy was to make good use of the topological advantage, clinged tenaciously to two defense lines, namely carries on the positional warfare and the defensive war. During the war with Tang, the Koguryo armed forces believed blindly its own experience, still insisted these two kinds of strategies. In Emperor Tai Zong going on an expedition himself, these two kinds of strategies of Koguryo armed forces' were definitely effective. For example, the 1st defensive line was sure to hold Tang army for a long time, Jack Frost was sure to make Tang fruitless. The adjustment of strategy by Tang, that was harassment, made the defensive line useless. When Tang army had adapted to the winter, the advantage of Koguryo had all gone. This made Koguryo inferior to Tang, so the former had to be passive beaten by the former.Another comparatively obvious strategy of Koguryo was to stick to the lonely city, look for an opportunity to exterminate the enemy. This thought made the technology of keeping the city into full play. Having not been broken for a long time, Anshi city was a very obvious example. What's more, Koguryo at the same time adopted a policy of evacuating noncombatants, and hiding provisions and livestock, which made a great difficulty to Tang army. Launching an initiative attack, looking for an opportunity to exterminate an enemy was another active strategy of Koguryo, which could destroy some enemy troop. That mobile war, lures the enemy in deep were effective way to defeat Sui army, but this successful strategy did not get sufficient bringing into play to Tang army. Being hardest to understand was when Tang was exterminating Baiji, Koguryo showed no emotion, not giving Baiji aid actively and effectively, which made Tang army defeated Baiji smoothly, thus opened up the 2nd battlefields to Koguryo, we could not but say this was a very big mistake by Koguryo.Although the reason of the extinct of Koguryo regime has many reasons, Koguryo army strategic fault is definitely among one of them.