Fighting the World: the Rise of the Jurchens and the Wars of Song, Jin and Liao

In the 11th century, when the two great kingdoms of Song and Liao were coexisting, the Jurchen tribes operating in the "White Mountains and Black Waters" area gradually developed and strengthened, forming a unified trend. In order to get rid of the rule of Emperor Tianzuo of the Liao Dynasty, the Jurchen leader Wanyan Aguda took the initiative to mobilize troops to seize important border towns such as Ningjiang Prefecture. Then he conquered Liaodong, swept Yanyun, and penetrated deep into the northern part of the Great Wall. After eleven years of fighting (1114-1125), with the distant response of the Song army, the Liao Kingdom was finally destroyed. In the process of fighting against the Liao army, the Jurchens often defeated the larger ones with less, thus winning the reputation of "the Jurchens are invincible". The author has long studied the history of ancient wars and collected and researched a vast amount of literature. He did not simply pile up historical materials, but cut out the complex and simplified them. He described the specific process of the decision-making of both sides and the confrontation between the two armies in easy-to-understand language, and summarized the development laws of the war, trying to reveal the secrets of victory and defeat. Readers can observe the duel between the Jurchen cavalry and the Khitan cavalry and the Song army's infantry cavalry, the duel between the Jurchen siege method and the Song army's city defense method, and appreciate the wonderful scenes of war in an era when firearms and cold weapons coexisted and exchanges of military techniques were frequent.