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[The victory at Caishi was a victory, yes.
But what that victory actually achieved had always been wrapped in layers of doubt.
Yu Yunwen's own battle report claimed he killed 2,700 Jin soldiers, slew one wanhu and two qianhu, shot tens of thousands of enemy troops in the naval clash, and burned 150 Jin warships.
By the time the report passed into the hands of his students, the numbers had grown.
Now it said five qianhu had been captured and 180 ships destroyed.
After Yu Yunwen died, the stele at his tomb doubled everything again.
And while they were at it, they conveniently inflated the Jin army to seven hundred thousand.
Later historians were less impressed.
The Southern Song scholar Zhao Shen, writing in Records of the Restoration Era, actually bothered to investigate.
He personally visited Caishi and recorded that in winter the ford there was so shallow that only single boats could pass.
In other words, even if the Jin army had wanted to cross in force, the river itself would have stopped them.
Zhao Shen even consulted Jin sources.
According to them, only five hundred picked warriors crossed the river that day, drawn by lot, using seventeen small boats made from dismantled civilian houses.
Each boat could carry about twenty men.
Compared to the heroic legends, another source, Biography of Li Tong, sounded far more believable:
"The water was too shallow to advance. They exchanged arrows with the Song army for a long time. When both boats ran out of arrows, they were captured. One meng'an and over a hundred soldiers were lost."
This account matched several other records.
Looking at the Jin histories, Wanyan Liang's retreat from Caishi likely came down to two reasons.
First, the ford was too shallow.
Trying to ferry a hundred thousand troops across there would have taken until New Year.
Second, news arrived that his younger kinsman Wanyan Yong had declared himself emperor back home.
Morale wavered instantly. At that point, wasting time at Caishi made little sense.
The rational choice would have been obvious.
Go home. Beat the usurper. Secure the throne first.
But Wanyan Liang was not a rational man.
I marched south with a million troops to destroy the Song, he must have thought.
If I return empty-handed, what face will I have left?
So instead, he chose Guazhou, the strategic crossing facing Jiankang, as his last gamble to force a crossing and finish the war.
Yet along the march from Caishi to Guazhou, soldiers kept slipping away.
They quietly deserted, heading north to pledge loyalty to Wanyan Yong.
By the time Wanyan Liang reached Guazhou, he was furious enough to issue the harshest order of the entire campaign:
Anyone who retreats dies.
He even clarified the punishment chain.
If a soldier fled, kill his fifty-man leader.
If that leader fled, kill the hundred-man commander.
If the hundred-man fled, kill the meng'an.
If the meng'an fled, kill the regional commander.
At that point, what happened next was almost inevitable.
That very night, the senior officers, meng'an, and commanders joined forces with Wanyan Liang's own guards and staged a mutiny.
Wanyan Liang was assassinated.
The southern expedition collapsed immediately.
The army turned north and pledged allegiance to Wanyan Yong.
Thus ended the great southern campaign of a million men, not with a defeat in battle, but with a murder in the dark.
For the Jin court, the death of a tyrannical, lustful, bloodthirsty ruler who insisted on forced sinicization was a relief.
For the Song, repelling a million-man invasion was a bragging right that could last generations.
Looking back at Zhao Liang's life, it almost read like a cosmic joke.
He purged the war faction that pushed the invasion.
He effectively ended the Shaoxing peace arrangement.
He led a massive army south, lost, and somehow gave the Southern Song enough prestige to stand tall again.
Then he terrified the Jin state so badly that they abandoned his aggressive policies entirely and switched to recovery and consolidation.
You could say his contributions to the Southern Song were too many to record.
If he met the Zhao emperors in the afterlife, he might even qualify as an honorary member of their clan.]
Li Shimin lay back on his couch, sighing.
He did not even feel like sitting up.
"I thought just now," he said slowly, "that Wanyan Liang's fall resembled Fu Jian's defeat at the Fei River."
He paused, then shook his head.
"Now it seems he understood warfare even less than Fu Jian."
The comparison was not unreasonable.
Fu Jian was not Han either.
He had seized power by force, ruled over a mixed population, and still managed to soften harsh governance, support the people, promote agriculture, build irrigation, and foster Confucian learning.
Within a decade he created a period of genuine stability.
Wanyan Liang, on the other hand, had literary talent and grand ambition, yet failed both above and below.
He could not secure the state. He could not win the people.
He marched a million troops south only to become a laughingstock.
Being mocked by later generations with the nickname Zhao Liang was entirely self-inflicted.
Then Li Shimin's expression turned slightly awkward.
Why did so many disasters in later ages come from brothers fighting each other?
First Zhao Kuangyin and Zhao Guangyi.
Then the Song's Emperor Zhezong and Huizong.
Now Wanyan Liang and his kinsman emperor.
He kept that thought to himself.
Best to avoid certain topics. Yes. Avoidance was wisdom.
Qin Qiong said nothing about the politics, but the military order left him stunned.
"I have never heard of discipline so brutal," he said.
"Would that not only drive the army's heart away?"
Mutiny among generals was not unheard of.
But guards and commanders conspiring together to kill their ruler was rare even in chaotic times.
"This southern campaign," Qin Qiong concluded, "can only be called a farce."
"What a ridiculous, chaotic affair."
Zhao Kuangyin's words sounded more like a sigh than a scolding.
To him, the Jin state seemed to have punched itself half to death.
It was almost laughable.
Yet that same Jin state had later destroyed the Song he built with such effort.
So he could neither laugh nor cry.
Only sigh.
Zhao Guangyi cautiously offered what he thought was a safe comment.
"Brother, no matter what, it still counts as a great victory. And the benefits mentioned by later generations did become reality. Why not take it as something to celebrate?"
Zhao Kuangyin burst into open laughter.
"If I break your leg," he said, "and later I trip while walking, would you call that revenge fulfilled?"
Zhao Guangyi froze.
He truly did not know whether to answer yes or no.
His hesitation only made Zhao Kuangyin more irritated.
"The Jin forged hatred of national destruction," Zhao Kuangyin said coldly.
"To repay such hatred, at minimum we would have to strike straight to Huanglong Prefecture like Yue Fei proposed.
Later people mock with words and jokes. How can that be taken seriously?"
He continued, voice hardening.
"To rule a state, one must remember strength. Even Confucius said to repay virtue with virtue and wrong with justice."
"For the destruction of a state, only destroying the enemy's ancestral temples can settle it."
The killing intent in his voice made Zhao Guangyi deeply uncomfortable.
Out of habit, he tried to turn it into a debate on doctrine.
"But Laozi also said to repay resentment with virtue. He also taught that one should treat the unkind kindly and the untrustworthy with trust. Only then can one reach true goodness and true faith. If resentment always meets retaliation, how can a world of harmony ever arrive?"
Unfortunately for him, Zhao Kuangyin was not in the mood for philosophical discussion.
A moment later, Zhao Guangyi's other eye turned black as well.
Zhao Kuangyin smiled warmly at him.
"Since you believe that," he said pleasantly,
"then repay this resentment of mine with virtue."
"Remember, even if I am not kind, you must be."
"Come. Let me see your doctrine of repaying resentment with virtue."