Jingjing Area In The Defense Of The Southern Song Dynasty

Described as “holding the center of the land under the heaven”,the Jing-Xiang District has been a hotly contested spot in military.Located back to the sea and being dispirited,the Southern Song Dynasty had been invaded by the enemy from the north ever since.For the central location and convenience of connecting Szechwan and Jianghuai,the Jing-Xiang District naturally had been taken the core region for defense.The Xiangyang-centric Xiang-Han defense line,the Jiangling and Ezhou-pivoted Yangtze River defense line and the front-lined Tang-Deng district,for being geograghically easy to hold but hard to attack,all had crucial effects on the defense of Jing-Xiang District.For the weakness of Southern Song armed force,added with discordancy and appointment errors,the Longxing and Kaixi Northern Expedition still ended up with failures.Thus the Southern Song Dynasty had always been in the passively defensive position in the long years.View from all the Song-Jin and Song-Yuan wars,similar with other war zones,the defensive focus of Jing-Xiang District also had been shifting followed with the offensive focus of the northern enemy,as it had been doing from Xiang-Han frontline with Jin to E'zhou hinterland since the rise of Yuan.Within the 150 years of north-south confrontation,despite of the frequent argument of “ restoring the homeland”,the court and the commonalty of Southern Song Dynasty gradually accepted the reality of self-defending depending on the advantageous terrain of Szechwan,Jing-Xiang and Jiang-huai war zones facing the fundamental tone of “defending the southeast” and fading national power.Thanks to appropriate defense of the war zones especially the connective defense of Jing-Xiang District,the Song Dynasty also survived through crisis.Nevertheless,the situation was capsizing,the court could not be saved,after fiercely fighting with the Mongols for nearly 40 years,the collapse of Jing-Xiang war zone resulted by Xiangfan's fall completely shattered the lingering worn defensive system of Southern Song Dynasty.The survival of Southern Song is based on Jing-Xiang District—it got proved for the last time by the perishing of Song right after the fall of Jing-Xiang.