Is too rich the reason why the Song Dynasty was defeated by the northern minorities and eventually died?

There is a saying that the reason for the demise of the Song Dynasty is the excessive economic development of the Song Dynasty. Because the economy of the Song Dynasty was very developed, the northern minorities raided south, so the Song Dynasty finally perished.

A typical example is that there are relevant historical records. Yan Hongliang, the emperor of the State of Jin, was very envious because he saw the sentence written by Liu Yong, "There are laurel seeds in Sanqiu and lotus flowers in ten miles", so he invaded the Song Dynasty with a great army and wanted to annex the Song Dynasty and obtain great rivers and mountains in the Song Dynasty.

So, does this statement make sense?

To answer this question, first of all, let's find out whether the Jin Emperor Yan Hongliang invaded the Southern Song Dynasty because he saw Liu Yong's words and envied the "treasures" of the Southern Song Dynasty.

Because it is only recorded in unofficial history, it is impossible to judge whether this sentence is true or not. But what is certain is that Yan Hongliang not only saw this word when he went south, but even saw this word, which was not his main purpose.

In fact, Wan Yanliang went south because he killed the original emperor through a coup, and when he became emperor himself, he became suspicious of others, so he fought a cruel court battle, which caused the white terror of the whole court. Coupled with Yan Hongliang's own dissolute politics, more and more courtiers are dissatisfied with him, making him feel dangerous at any time and place. Under such circumstances, on the one hand, he wants to transfer domestic contradictions, on the other hand, he may also want to open up a new life world. Only by opening a new life world can he eliminate the threat.

In the end, Wan Yanliang met with challenges in the Southern Song Dynasty. Instead of solving the contradiction, he made it worse and was finally killed by his subordinates.

However, assuming that Wan Yanliang finally succeeded and destroyed the Southern Song Dynasty, would he move to a place where there are laurel trees in Sanqiu and lotus flowers in ten miles?

It should be said that this possibility is not great. Let's take Yeludeguang of Liao country as an example to illustrate. At that time, Ye Ludeguang took advantage of the Five Dynasties' troubled times and went south to the Central Plains, where he was wiped out. But he didn't live in the south, but soon moved to the north. On the way back, he was killed by civil strife, so the later Han Dynasty was restored. Besides, Kublai Khan, after he destroyed the Southern Song Dynasty, he did not live in the Central Plains and the South, but moved north to live in the North.

In fact, although the northern minorities have been plundering the south, they will not fight unless they have to. Why? Because fighting will kill people. Historically, when rice or wheat matured in the south, ethnic minorities in the north often went south to plunder and rob wheat and rice. And they are often hit hard by the southern border guards. In other words, in order to steal a little rice to survive, it is likely that he was still skipping in the morning and turned into a corpse in the afternoon. Sometimes it is carried back by peers, and sometimes it is abandoned in the wilderness.

However, ethnic minorities in the north have to use this method to plunder. Because they have no place to grow crops. Without such a place, crops can't be planted, leaving only the step of copying and plundering.

However, if the northern minorities have such a place or a guaranteed food source, they will rarely risk their lives to plunder the south.

Take Liao country as an example. At that time, Liao had been attacking all the way to Ai Guo. Why do they fight like this? Because they found that the Song Dynasty tried to take back sixteen counties. These sixteen counties are their lifeblood, where they produce crops. Once taken back, they have no food to eat. So they want to attack on a large scale. But later, they signed the title of Yuan Zhimeng with the Song Dynasty to ensure that the sixteen states would not be lost, and the Song Dynasty also gave them some money and food every year, so they stopped fighting. In fact, after that, Liao and Song basically didn't fight again until Liao was destroyed by Jin.

Take Xixia as an example. At first, Xixia was still fighting with the Song Dynasty. But in the end, after the Song Dynasty promised to open the border and open the monopoly market, Xixia could do business with the Song Dynasty and buy food from the Song Dynasty, so it wouldn't fight.

At the beginning, Xu Jin, laid a large territory of the Song Dynasty, and the whole Central Plains region fell into the hands of Xu Jin. However, the State of Jin did not continue to fight, nor did it "bravely chase bandits" or "fight the Yangtze River to liberate all China", which also made the Southern Song Dynasty take root in the south. What's going on here? Obviously, Xu Jinguo has gained a lot of good rivers and mountains in the Central Plains. They have a place to grow crops and have a relatively comfortable life, so they don't want to continue.

It can be seen from here that it was not the northern minorities who fought in the Song Dynasty, because they were rich. They fought when the Song Dynasty was just founded, when it was very poor. Later, when the Southern Song Dynasty was the richest, they stopped fighting. The real purpose of their fighting is to have a stable life. The reason why they don't continue to fight is because their lives are stable and they don't want to die again.

The failure of the Song Dynasty was actually due to the rise of Mongolia. It has become their belief that Mongolia has risen and expropriated land everywhere, turning all the land in the world into their pasture. In other words, for most Mongolians, the Southern Song Dynasty was actually built to develop more pastures, not because the Southern Song Dynasty was rich. Only Kublai Khan had a sense of sinicization, so he didn't turn fertile land into pasture. But this was after the Southern Song Dynasty.