Biography
Family Background and Early Years
After the fall of the Northern Song, Meng Gong's ancestors left Jiangzhou and joined the “Yue Family Army” of the Southern Song anti-Jin general Yue Fei. They subsequently settled with the army in the Suizhou and Zaoyang area, both in present-day Hubei. Meng Gong was born into a military family. His great-great-grandfather Meng An had served under Yue Fei and earned military merit; his grandfather Meng Lin was likewise a subordinate of Yue Fei; and his father Meng Zongzheng distinguished himself during the Kaixi Northern Expedition, was appointed military controller of Jingxi, and guarded Xiangyang. Meng Gong was the fourth son of Meng Zongzheng and was born to Lady Ma. From childhood, Meng Gong and his brothers Meng Jing, Meng Zhang, and Meng Ying accompanied their father in the army. Military life trained him not only in martial skills but also in a keen perception of battlefield conditions.
During the reign of Emperor Ningzong of Song, the rising Great Mongol State pressed southward against the Jin dynasty. The Jin armies suffered repeated defeats, and Emperor Xuanzong of Jin was forced to move his capital to Bianjing (present-day Kaifeng, Henan). The Southern Song, which had previously paid annual tribute to the Jin while acknowledging a subordinate diplomatic status, then refused on various grounds to continue the payments. Angered by this refusal and encouraged by the powerful official Shuhu Gaoqi, Emperor Xuanzong launched a war against the Southern Song despite the danger of fighting on two fronts, hoping to compensate for losses inflicted by the Mongols. It was during this seven-year conflict that Meng Gong and his father became major commanders on the Southern Song's Jinghu front.
In 1217, the tenth year of the Jiading era, Jin forces invaded Xiangyang in strength and camped at Tuanshan. Zhao Fang, the Jinghu military commissioner, ordered Meng Zongzheng and others to resist them. Meng Gong judged that the Jin army would attack Fancheng and proposed crossing the river at Luojia Ford. His father agreed. When the Song army formed up at the crossing, the Jin troops arrived as expected; the Song forces attacked while half of the enemy was still crossing and destroyed about half of them. Meng Zongzheng was then ordered to relieve Zaoyang, and father and son became separated in the fighting. Seeing his father in a white battle robe on a white horse amid the enemy formation, Meng Gong shouted, “That is my father,” charged in with cavalry, and rescued him. For this service he received the rank of Jinyong Fuwei.
In 1219, the twelfth year of the Jiading era, the Jin commander Wanyan Eke led a force said to number 200,000 infantry and cavalry in two columns against Zaoyang. Meng Gong climbed the city wall and shot several men dead with his bow, astonishing the soldiers. Meng Zongzheng then ordered him to take an indirect route and raid the Jin positions. He broke eighteen camps in succession, beheaded more than one thousand enemy soldiers, seized large quantities of weapons, and forced the Jin troops to withdraw. For this achievement, Meng Gong was promoted to Xiaban Zhiying.
In 1221, the fourteenth year of the Jiading era, Meng Gong met Zhao Fang. Learning that he was Meng Zongzheng's son, Zhao Fang was impressed and valued him highly, appointing him commandant of Guanghua County and later transferring him to the rank of Jinwu Xiaowei. In 1223, the sixteenth year of the Jiading era, Meng Gong received the special rank of Chengxinlang for merit. That same year, Meng Zongzheng died while serving as commander of Jing-E and magistrate of Zaoyang Military Prefecture. Meng Gong left office to observe mourning. The Jinghu command sought to recall him to service, but he declined. After his father was buried he was again urged to take office, again refused, and was instead transferred to the rank of Chengzhonglang.
Command of the Zhongshun Army and Development of Zaoyang
In 1224, the seventeenth year of the Jiading era, Emperor Lizong of Song ascended the throne and specially appointed Meng Gong Zhongyilang. Soon afterward he was assigned as military inspector and city patrol officer of Xiazhou. The Jinghu command also placed him in charge of the Huyi assault cavalry and shortly thereafter made him fifth deputy general of Jingxi, acting commander of the left and right Shenjin armies.
While Meng Zongzheng was alive, he had recruited more than twenty thousand able-bodied men from Tangzhou, Dengzhou, and Caizhou within Jin territory and organized them as the “Zhongshun Army”. After his death, Jiang Hai took command. Because of the force's mixed composition and unstable condition, the Jinghu command ordered Meng Gong to replace Jiang Hai as acting commander. Meng Gong divided the Zhongshun Army into three divisions, and discipline was quickly restored.
In 1228, the first year of the Shaoding era, Meng Gong began building the Pinglu Weir west of Zaoyang. Water was carried from the Badie River along the Jianshui, across nine rises, through an elevated channel eighty-three zhang long, irrigating tens of thousands of qing of land. He established ten agricultural settlements under three jurisdictions, with Zhongshun troops and civilian households sharing the fields. That year they harvested 150,000 shi of grain. He also ordered each Zhongshun household to raise horses, while the government supplied fodder and provisions, increasing both grain and horse reserves. In 1229 he was promoted to fifth regular general of Jingxi and military commander of Zaoyang, with the three Zhongshun armies stationed under him. The next year he became military supervisor of Jingxi. He later left office to mourn his mother. In 1231, the fourth year of the Shaoding era, he was recalled as military controller of Jingxi, stationed at Zaoyang, and again commanded the three Zhongshun armies.
Alliance with the Mongols and Destruction of the Jin
As the Southern Song was still recovering from the renewed war with the Jin, the strategic situation in the north changed dramatically. After the Battle of Sanfengshan in 1232, the fifth year of the Shaoding era, the main Jin forces were shattered by the Mongols, and the noted commander Wanyan Yi was killed. The Jin lord of Hengshan, Wu Xian, escaped and gathered routed troops in the mountains around Nanyang, in present-day Henan. Within several months he reportedly assembled more than one hundred thousand men. Emperor Aizong of Jin, judging Bianjing too devastated to defend, moved first to Guide Prefecture (present-day Shangqiu, Henan) and then to Caizhou (present-day Runan, Henan) in 1233. Planning a last defense, he ordered Wu Xian to come to his aid. Wu Xian, however, believed Caizhou could not be held and intended to seize Sichuan from the Southern Song as a base; failing that, he planned to seize Song provisions along his route.
In 1233, Wu Xian sent his subordinate Wu Tianxi to attack Guanghua Military Prefecture in an attempt to open a route into Sichuan, reportedly with more than two hundred thousand men. Meng Gong advanced to meet them and approached the enemy fortifications. At the first assault the Song army broke the camp. The warrior Zhang Ziliang killed Wu Tianxi in battle and took his head. Meng Gong's first engagement ended in victory: five thousand enemy heads were taken, more than four hundred men captured, and 120,000 households recovered. For this achievement he was appointed deputy military commissioner of Jiangling Prefecture and awarded a gold belt.
Wu Xian's main force nevertheless remained in Guanghua. Shi Songzhi, military commissioner of Jinghu, asked Meng Gong for a plan. Meng Gong said that Wu Xian would move toward Lüyan, northeast of Xiangyang, and that eight thousand Song troops would be sufficient to defeat him. After Song units under Liu Quanbu and Lei Quwei checked the Jin army at Xiajiaqiao, Wu Xian indeed turned toward Lüyan. Meng Gong was delighted that the enemy had fallen into the trap. At Lüyan, Wu Xian was attacked from three sides by Song troops from Mucha, Tengyun, and Lüyan stockades, while Meng Gong's own force rapidly withdrew southward to support the defenders. Wu Xian then realized that the terrain was unfavorable, with a major river blocking the advance and mountains obstructing retreat. His army withdrew, losing three thousand men killed and more than thirty thousand laborers captured. Meng Gong then advanced north toward Dengzhou. Its Jin defender Yila Yuan, fearing a repetition of Wu Xian's defeat, submitted a petition of surrender. When Meng Gong entered the city, Yila Yuan prostrated himself and asked to die, but Meng Gong had him change his clothing and treated him with the courtesies due a guest.
In the seventh lunar month, Wu Xian's trusted officer Liu Yi surrendered and provided intelligence about Wu Xian's positions. With Wu Xian holding nine stockades at Madengshan, Liu Yi recommended advancing step by step, first taking Lijin Stockade and isolating two others. Meng Gong accepted the plan. The next day he sent troops against Lijin Stockade. Song soldiers disguised themselves as Jin troops, infiltrated the camp, and set fires to create confusion, quickly taking the position. That night they also raided Wangzishan Stockade and killed its Jin commander, known as the “Young Marshal.”
On receiving the report, Meng Gong led his army directly against Madengshan. He ordered a frontal attack while deliberately leaving an escape route to the west, where he placed an ambush. The sources describe the battle as one in which “fires lit the sky and the slain lay piled across the mountains.” Jin troops fleeing west were ambushed and suffered heavy losses; more than twelve thousand eventually surrendered. Meng Gong then turned against the now-isolated Shaowo and other stockades. Three victories were won in a single day, and another detachment took Mohouli Stockade. Only two of the nine Madengshan stockades remained. On Meng Gong's orders, Liu Yi secured the surrender of the two defending forces at Banqiao Stockade. Wu Xian believed the steep terrain of Hushan might offer a final chance and began climbing the mountain with his troops. Meng Gong had anticipated this and placed an ambush at the foot of the mountain. When Wu Xian's men had climbed halfway, the ambushers struck. The Jin army collapsed, abandoned its baggage on the slope, and its general Wushare was killed; 730 men were captured.
After the battle, Wu Xian refused to surrender and planned to retreat to Shangzhou. Meng Gong ordered a general assault on Shixue Stockade one morning. Because rain had fallen and the mountains had not yet cleared, his officers were worried. Meng Gong laughed and said, “Is this not the very opportunity that Li Su had when he captured Wu Yuanji on a snowy night?” He personally led the attack and took the stockade. Wu Xian escaped with only a few horsemen. Meng Gong accepted the surrender of more than seventy thousand of Wu Xian's soldiers and seized an uncounted quantity of armor, weapons, gold, and jade. Wu Xian's power was thereby destroyed, and Emperor Aizong's plan to move into Sichuan failed.
In the tenth lunar month of that year, Meng Gong and Jiang Hai led twenty thousand troops carrying three hundred thousand shi of rice to fulfill an agreement with the Mongols and jointly attack Caizhou. After a three-month siege, on the jiyou day of the first lunar month of the first year of the Duanping era (February 9, 1234), Meng Gong and the Mongol allied force captured the city. Emperor Aizong of Jin hanged himself, the last Jin emperor was killed in battle, and the Jin dynasty fell. Meng Gong and the Mongol commander Tachar divided the remains of Emperor Aizong. After the campaign, Meng Gong recruited fifteen thousand soldiers from the north and created the Zhenbei Army, later renamed the Zhongwei Army, which became a main force on the Southern Song's Jingxiang front.
Relief of the Jiang-Huai and Jingxiang Fronts
In the sixth lunar month of 1234, the first year of the Duanping era, the Southern Song launched a northern expedition intending to recover Kaifeng, Henan, and Yingtian prefectures. The Mongols moved south after learning of the campaign, and formal Song–Mongol warfare began. In the eighth lunar month, before the main Mongol army arrived, Meng Gong escorted Zhu Yangzu, a registrar of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices, rapidly to Luoyang to pay respects at the tombs of earlier emperors. After the rites, he returned and remained at Xiangyang in command of the Zhenbei Army.
At the end of that year, Meng Gong went to the capital to report the military situation to the Bureau of Military Affairs and was received by Emperor Lizong early the following year. In spring 1236, the third year of the Duanping era, he moved to Huangzhou, built fortifications against the hills, and repeatedly repelled the enemy. In autumn he was given command over the forces of Huangzhou, Qizhou, Guangzhou, and Xinyang; in winter he relieved besieged Qizhou. By then Xiangyang had fallen after a mutiny. Officials in many prefectures of Jingxi and Hubei had fled or died, and Jiangling was in grave danger. Meng Gong was ordered to relieve it. He deployed feint forces that made the Mongols hesitate to cross the Yangtze, then directed attacks that broke twenty-four enemy stockades and forced the Mongol army back, checking the collapse of the Jingxiang front.
In 1237, the first year of the Jiaxi era, he was enfeoffed as Founding Baron of Sui County and appointed prefect of Jiangling and deputy pacification commissioner of Jinghu. That winter the situation in western Huainan became critical. Meng Gong went to relieve Huangzhou, prevented the Mongol army from crossing the Yangtze, and held the city. Contemporaries regarded it as an unprecedented victory since the beginning of the Song–Mongol war.
Direction of the Jinghu and Sichuan Defenses
In 1238, the second year of the Jiaxi era, Meng Gong was appointed military commissioner for Jingxi and Hubei and concurrently prefect of Yuezhou, replacing Shi Songzhi in overall command of the Jingxiang theater. Emperor Lizong ordered him to recover Xiangyang and nearby territory. Meng Gong adopted a gradual advance, first taking Yingzhou and Jingmen, then recovering Xinyang, Fancheng, Xiangyang, and Guanghua. After the campaign he continued recruiting troops locally, raising the forces in Jingxiang to nearly 130,000. He memorialized that the Mongols maintained few troops in the area, making Xiangyang easy to retake but difficult to hold. He recommended stationing one hundred thousand troops there and developing the defenses carefully. The court did not support such a large garrison, so Meng Gong withdrew, and the Xiangyang–Suizhou area became territory that neither side permanently occupied.
At the end of 1239, the third year of the Jiaxi era, Mongol forces advanced eastward after entering Sichuan, crossed the Yangtze at Wanzhou, and threatened the prefectures of the middle Yangtze. Meng Gong had already stationed troops at Xiazhou, Guizhou, and Shizhou. He now moved west, sent troops to meet the Mongols at Daya Stockade in Guizhou, forced them to retreat, and later assisted in recovering Kuizhou. To prevent a Mongol advance from Sichuan into the two Hu regions and deep into the southern bank of the Yangtze, he proposed three defensive lines: first, a deputy military commission based at Kuizhou to guard the Yangtze below Fuzhou and Wanzhou; second, defenses at Dingzhou and Lizhou; and third, defenses at Chenzhou, Yuanzhou, Jingzhou, Chenzhou, and Guiyang. The court did not approve the plan.
In 1240, the fourth year of the Jiaxi era, acting on intelligence, Meng Gong sent Zhang Ying, Ren Yi, and Jiao Jin respectively toward Suizhou, Xinyang, and Xiangyang to disrupt Mongol recruitment and farming operations. He sent Wang Jian to infiltrate Shunyang and burn timber accumulated for shipbuilding, and Zhang De and Liu Zheng into Caizhou to burn Mongol grain stores, successfully striking rear bases under Mongol control.
That same year, with the Jinghu situation stabilized but Sichuan still troubled by war, the court transferred Meng Gong to the Kuizhou defense. He was appointed military governor of Ningwu Army, pacification commissioner of Sichuan, pacification and military commissioner of Jinghu, and military commissioner of Kui Circuit, giving him responsibility for the upper and middle Yangtze and creating a coordinated Jinghu–Sichuan defense. After reaching Kuizhou, Meng Gong reformed Sichuan administration, addressed longstanding abuses, mediated the dispute between Sichuan pacification and military commissioner Chen Longzhi and his deputy Peng Daya, combined military farming with civilian martial training to address shortages in military provisions, and promoted capable men such as Li Tingzhi. In 1241, the first year of the Chunyou era, Mongol forces invaded western Sichuan, took Chengdu and Hanzhou, and killed Chen Longzhi. In 1242, Meng Gong learned through intelligence that the Mongols planned to invade Jingxiang and sent several forces to assemble at Xiangyang. The Mongols instead moved toward Sichuan, taking Suining, Luzhou, and Xuzhou, but withdrew after failing to take Jiading. At year's end, Meng Gong was appointed acting Junior Guardian and advanced to Founding Duke of Handong Commandery. He again memorialized the court, identifying three major problems in the Jinghu defenses: no troops were stationed at Chenzhou, Yuanzhou, or Jingzhou; the river defense line was too extended; and overall manpower was insufficient.
Later Years and Death
In the twelfth lunar month of 1242, Yu Jie was appointed pacification and military commissioner of Sichuan and took over its defense. Meng Gong returned to Jingxiang in 1243. In the following years the Jinghu front experienced relatively few Mongol incursions. While sending troops to support defenses at Shouchun in western Huainan and Jingjiang in Guangxi, Meng Gong also dispatched forces northward to raid Shenzhou, Zhenping, and other places. In 1245 he built the “Three Seas” military waterworks at Jiangling, linking nearby rivers and lakes into a large defensive system. That same year the Gong'an Academy and Nanyang Academy, founded at Gong'an and Wuchang, were completed to accommodate displaced scholars from Jingxiang and Sichuan.
Fan Yongji, who had earlier defected from the Jin to the Song and then from the Song to the Mongols, whose original name was Puzhulu Jiuzhu, secretly contacted Meng Gong and offered to surrender. The Southern Song court was suspicious and rejected the offer. Meng Gong lamented, “For thirty years I have sought to recover the hearts of the people of the Central Plain; now my purpose cannot be fulfilled.” In 1246, the sixth year of the Chunyou era, he repeatedly asked to retire. Five requests were denied before he was finally permitted to retire as acting Junior Preceptor and military governor of Ningwu Army. On the third day of the ninth lunar month (October 13, 1246), he died at the Jiangling prefectural seat. He was posthumously granted the title Grand Preceptor, enfeoffed as Duke of Ji, and given the posthumous name Zhongxiang. He was buried at Jinzi Mountain in Wuchang County, present-day Ezhou, Hubei.
His Family and His Early Campaigns
Meng Gong, courtesy name Puyu, styled the Recluse of the Thatched Hut, was a native of Zaoyang in Suizhou though his ancestral home was Jiangzhou, and the fourth son of the general of the left guard Meng Zongzheng; his great-great-grandfather Meng An and his grandfather Meng Lin had both been officers under Yue Fei, and his father, having followed Yue Fei's army, settled in Suizhou, being of a bold and generous nature and great courage who "was ever to be found in the midst of the battlefield"; in the second year of Kaixi, when the Jin general Wanyan Dong invaded Xiang and Ying, Meng Zongzheng led loyal braves to harass him from strongpoints and seized his baggage, and being noticed by the pacification commissioner Wu Lie he was made a chengjie lieutenant and magistrate of Zaoyang, and afterwards became a bingyi lieutenant and commander of the western capital region, stationed at Xiangyang. The four Meng brothers were all taken by their father into the army from childhood, and the training of campaigning gave Meng Gong not only good skill at arms but a keen eye for the shape of a battlefield. In the tenth year of Jiading, 1217, when the Jin attacked Xiangyang and camped at Tuanshan, Meng Gong judged that they must be aiming at Fancheng and proposed to his father that they cross the river at Luojia ferry, which Meng Zongzheng approved; the next day, as the armies were drawing up at the crossing, the Jin did indeed come, and the Song released their hidden troops while the enemy was half across and destroyed half of them. Meng Zongzheng was then ordered to relieve Zaoyang, and in the fighting father and son were separated; and Meng Gong, seeing among the enemy horse a man in a plain robe on a white horse, cried that it was his father and at once led his cavalry into the enemy array and brought him out, being rewarded for it with the rank of jinyong second lieutenant. In the twelfth year of Jiading Wanyan Eke came against Zaoyang with two hundred thousand foot and horse in two columns and encircled the walls, and Meng Gong shot from the wall so that the officers and men were astonished and awed; and his father sending him by another road to raid the Jin, he broke eighteen stockades, took more than a thousand heads and brought back a great store of weapons, so that the Jin fled, and he was raised to xiaban zhijing. In the fourteenth year of Jiading he was presented to the military commissioner Zhao Fang, who saw him once and thought him remarkable, appointed him commandant of Guanghua and promoted him to jinwu commandant; in the sixteenth year he was specially made a chengxin gentleman, and when his father died and the commissioner recalled him to office he declined, and again declined after the burial and took office, and was made a chengzhong gentleman. On the accession of Emperor Li he was specially made a zhongyi gentleman, then made inspector of the horse of Xiazhou and inspector of the city, and the Jinghu military commission made him commander of the Tiger-Wing swift cavalry, and again he was appointed fifth vice-general of the western capital and acting commander of the Shenjing left and right armies. Formerly, in his lifetime, Meng Zongzheng had recruited more than twenty thousand braves from the three prefectures of Tang, Deng and Cai within Jin territory and formed them into the Loyal and Compliant Army under Jiang Hai, and because its composition was mixed the army was unsettled, so that the commission had Meng Gong replace Jiang Hai as its acting commander; and Meng Gong on taking the command divided the Loyal and Compliant Army into three, and the army at once became quiet.
The Pingyan Weir and the Defence of the Western Capital Region
In the first year of Shaoding, 1228, Meng Gong built the Ping weir west of Zaoyang, eighteen li from the city to the army's west, running from the Badie river along the Jianshui, the water crossing nine mounds with an eighty-three-fathom flume, irrigating a hundred thousand qing of fields; he set up ten villages in three jurisdictions so that soldiers and people tilled in shares, and that year the harvest was a hundred and fifty thousand shi; and he further ordered each household of the Loyal and Compliant Army to raise its own horse with the government supplying fodder and grain, "so that the horses multiplied." In the second year he was raised to fifth regular general of the western capital and commander-general of the Zaoyang army, that army garrisoning the three Loyal and Compliant armies; in the third year he was made military supervisor of the western capital, and went into mourning for his mother; and in the fourth year of Shaoding he was recalled to office as commander of the western capital and stationed at Zaoyang, still commanding the three armies.
The Destruction of the Jin
In the sixth year of Shaoding, 1233, the Mongol general Nayan Buqan, pursuing the Jin sovereign Wanyan Shouxu, pressed on Cai and ordered Meng Gong to guard E and to attack the Jin governor of Tang and Deng, Wu Xian. Wu Xian was then holding the angles with Wu Tianxi and with the Deng commander Yila Yuan, doing his utmost for the Jin and wishing to bring Wanyan Shouxu into Shu, and raiding Guanghua with a sharp edge; and Wu Tianxi was by origin a farmer of Deng who "in the confusion had gathered two hundred thousand men and become a scourge of the frontier." Meng Gong pressed on his rampart and took it at the first drum, the brave Zhang Ziliang cutting off Wu Tianxi's head to present it, and in that action took five thousand heads, took prisoner more than four hundred officers and men and two hundred and twenty thousand households, for which he was made deputy commander-general of Jiangling prefecture and given a golden belt. The commission having asked his opinion on the frontier, Meng Gong said that if the Jin moved toward Lüyan eight thousand men would not be too few, but that the stockades of Mucha, Tengyun and Lüyan must be under command for it to succeed; and presently Liu Quan and Lei Quwei fought the Jin at Xiajia bridge with some success, and shortly after the Jin attacked Lüyan, at which Meng Gong rejoiced that his plan had worked and at once ordered all the armies to pursue them there, pressing them against the great river before and the mountain passes behind with the stockade troops closing on four sides, so that the Jin abandoned their baggage and fled, and he took fifty-two armored men, three thousand heads and horses, cattle and camels beyond counting, and returned more than thirty-two thousand of their people. Yila Yuan sent his retainer Ma Tianzhang with a letter to submit, yielding five counties, twenty-two towns, a hundred and ninety-three officers, fifteen hundred horse and fourteen thousand foot, thirty-five thousand three hundred households and a hundred and twenty-five thousand five hundred and fifty-three souls; and Meng Gong entering the city, Yila Yuan prostrated himself at the steps asking for death, but Meng Gong changed his dress and cap and received him with the courtesy of a guest. By the biography of Wu Xian in the History of the Jin, in the fifth month Yila Yuan surrendered his city to the Song, and Shi Songzhi, learning the truth about Wu Xian's army, had Meng Gong lead five thousand men against it at Shunyang; but Wu Xian, whose men were then cutting wheat for the army's food, only discovered them within two li, and coming out with a hundred of his guard, while Meng Gong dared not advance, and presently his men gathered to five or six hundred and heavily defeated Meng Gong's army, Meng Gong escaping with several hundred — a defeat for Meng Gong in that action. In the seventh month Wu Xian's favourite general Liu Yi came over with two hundred braves and told Meng Gong that of the nine stockades Wu Xian held, the great one was Shixue mountain, covered in front by the three stockades of Madeng, Shawo and Hushan, and that unless those three were broken Shixue could not easily be taken, but that if Lijin stockade were broken first, then Ziwangshan would fall too and Hushan and Shawo be left isolated; and Meng Gong following his plan, the next day sent troops against Lijin, where Lu Xiu with a black banner led his men in and the Jin never suspected them of being Song troops, so that they seized the lanes, raised a great shout, set fires and killed almost all of them; and that night the braves Yang Qing and others stormed Ziwangshan stockade and Wang Jian entering the tent cut off the Jin general's head, which at dawn proved to be that of the Jin's Little Marshal. On the day bingchen he marched out to Madeng, sending Fan Wenbin against its front gate and Cheng Ming and others to cut the western road, one army investing Qishilie and one the Little Marshal's stockade, "the fires lighting the sky and the slain heaped like hills," and those who fled being taken by Cheng Ming's hidden troops, while twelve thousand three hundred of the braves old and young came over; and on the army's return, meeting the Jin west of Shawo, they won a great victory, three battles and three victories in one day; and not long after Ding Shun and others broke the Mohouli stockade. Meng Gong then summoned Liu Yi, saying that this stockade being broken, Banqiao and Shixue must be shaken, and asking whether he could bring them in; and Liu Yi asking leave to choose three hundred women to flee home as if escaping with recruiting notices upon them, Meng Gong consented, and the flower-legged Wang Xian sent in his submission in writing that same day. Meng Gong, further reckoning that Wu Xian would climb to the top of Hushan to spy out the land, ordered Fan Wenbin at dawn to seize Hushan and camp below it, with ambush before and the road of return blocked behind; and presently Wu Xian's men indeed climbed the hill, and halfway up the hidden troops rose on every side and his men lost their heads, "lying heaped in the gorges so that the mountain was red with them," and his general Wusha Re was killed, seven hundred and thirty taken and their armour thrown away like a hill. At dusk Meng Gong moved up to the Xiaoshui river, and Liu Yi returning reported that Wu Xian would not submit but meant to go to Shangzhou and hold the passes, at which Meng Gong said the advance could not be delayed, and at the tenth watch of the night summoned Fan Wenbin and the rest and gave them their orders to attack the nine stockades of Shixue the next day; and the rain having not yet cleared and Fan Wenbin being troubled by it, Meng Gong said that this was the hour for seizing Wu Yuanji on a snowy night, and riding straight to Shixue he divided his troops to attack, fighting from the hour of the tiger to that of the serpent, so that the nine stockades all broke at once and Wu Xian fled, being overtaken at Nianyu stockade where, seeing them, he changed clothes and escaped; and fighting again at YinhuLu mountain his army broke again and he fled with five or six horsemen, while seventy thousand of his men surrendered and armour and weapons beyond count were taken, and Meng Gong returned to Xiangyang and was transferred to xiuwu gentleman and deputy commander-general of Ezhou and Jiangling prefecture. The Mongol court sent the pacification commissioner Wang Ji to propose a joint attack on Cai, and the military commissioner consulting Meng Gong, he asked to go with twenty thousand men, and was therefore made to command all the generals; and twenty thousand Jin horse coming south by way of Hengshan in Zhenyang, Meng Gong advanced with drums and the Jin were beaten and fled, and he pursued them to Gaohuangpi and took twelve hundred heads. Buqan sent Tuhuate, Moheguochu and Axi to meet him, and Meng Gong hunted with them and ate raw meat and drank with them, riding into their tent, at which Buqan was pleased and swore brotherhood with him, drinking mare's milk together. A myriad of Jin coming out of the east gate to fight, Meng Gong cut off their retreat and drove them into the Ru river, taking eighty-seven of their junior officers; and learning from a man of Cai who had come over that the city was starving, Meng Gong said that they were already pressed and must hold their ground to the death against a breakout, and agreed with Buqan that the northern and southern armies should not encroach on each other. The Song broke the weir and laid the tiger nets, and Buqan sent the wanhu Zhang Rou with five thousand picked troops into the city, where the Jin hooked two soldiers away and Zhang Rou was shot like a hedgehog, and Meng Gong waving his vanguard forward rescued him and carried him out. At dawn Meng Gong pressed on the stone bridge and hooked out the living prisoner Guo Shan, and the Jin coming suddenly upon them, Meng Gong rode into the array and beheaded Guo Shan to display, so that the army's spirit rose again and they fought to the death, pressing on Chai pool and setting up a stockade, taking a hundred and two of the Jin and three hundred odd heads; and the next day he ordered the generals to take the Chai pool tower, the Jin contending for it while the Song troops went up one after another, and the Jin decking out beautiful women to bewitch them, whom his officer Zhang Xi and others killed, so that the tower was taken with five hundred and thirty-seven of its officers and men. The men of Cai relied on the pool for their defence, it being five or six fathoms above the Ru river, and on the wall the golden-letter tower concealed a great crossbow, and it was said that a dragon lay below so that none dared approach and the officers and men were doubtful and afraid; and Meng Gong drinking with his officers and passing the cup again, said that Chai pool was not made by heaven and earth, that the tower's crossbow could shoot far but not near, and that what they relied on was this water, which once let out would run dry at once; and when they said the dikes were strong and hard to cut, he said that the strength was only in the two ends of the dikes, and that cutting their flanks would do; and the pool was indeed cut, filled with brushwood and reeds, and the army crossed to attack the city, taking two of its generals and beheading them, and taking its right vice-inspector of the palace guard Wen Duan, whom they tore to pieces below the wall, and pressed on the earth gate. The Jin drove out their old and young and boiled them into oil, which they called human-oil bombs, and men could not bear the cruelty, so that Meng Gong sent a Daoist to reason with them and stop it. On the day xinchou of the first month of the first year of Duanping, 1234, black air pressed on the city and the sun had no light, and men who came over said that the city had been cut off from grain for three months, that saddles, boots and broken drums were all boiled to pulp, that the old and weak were allowed to eat one another, and that the armies fed daily on the bones of men and beasts mixed with cress and mud; and Meng Gong ordered all the armies to hold silence and move scaling ladders to the wall, and on the day jiyou leading his troops to the south gate he reached the golden-letter tower and set up the ladders, ordering the generals to advance at the drum, where Ma Yi went up first and Zhao Rong after him, and ten thousand vied to climb, fighting a great fight on the wall, taking the surrender of the Jin chancellor Wugulun Kaolao and killing the marshal Wulinda with two hundred of his officers. The west gate being opened they brought Buqan in, and Jiang Hai took the Jin assistant administrator Zhang Tiangang and brought him back. Meng Gong asking where Shouxu was, Zhang Tiangang said that when the city was in danger he had taken his jewels into a small room, ringed it with grass and weeping hanged himself, saying "when I am dead, burn me," and that the smoke and flame had not yet died out; so Meng Gong and Buqan divided Shouxu's bones between them, and got the Jin posthumous seal, jade belt and gold and silver tally-plates in due shares, and returning to Xiangyang he was specially made a wugong gentleman and placed in charge of the palace horse office, and raised to commander-general of Jiankang prefecture and acting head of the palace horse office. After the destruction of the Jin, the keeper of the imperial sacrifices Zhu Yangzu and the attendant Lin Tuo went to pay homage at the eight imperial tombs, and spies reported that the Mongol army was said to be coming to contest Henan prefecture, with scouts already at Mengjin, and Shaanxi, Tongguan and Henan all reinforcing their garrisons and laying ambushes, so that all feared to go forward; but Meng Gong said that the army of eastern Huai, going up the Bian from Huai and Si, would take more than ten days to arrive, whereas he would choose picked horse and ride fast and finish the business within ten days, and so travelling day and night he reached the tombs with the two envoys, proclaimed the imperial tablet and completed the rites before returning. Afterwards the commission memorialised to keep Meng Gong at Xiangyang as commander-general also of the Zhenbei Army, which was the fifteen thousand picked veterans of the central plains whom he had recruited, stationed at Chaobei, Fancheng, Xinye, Tang and Deng.
Huangzhou, Jiangling and the Recovery of Xiangfan
In the second year of Duanping, 1235, Meng Gong was made head of the palace horse office and stationed for the time at Huangzhou; and taking leave of the emperor, Li Zong said to him that he was a famous general's son, loyal and diligent for the state, whose deeds in destroying Cai and the Jin were illustrious; and Meng Gong answered that it was due to the majesty of the ancestral temple, the emperor's virtue and the toil of the three armies, in which he had no part. Asked about recovering the north, he answered that he hoped the emperor would lighten the people's burdens and store up talent to await the opportunity; asked about peace negotiations, he answered that he was an armored soldier who should speak of war and not of peace; and he was given generous gifts, and made prefect of Guangzhou and then of Huangzhou. In the third year of Duanping Meng Gong reached Huangzhou and raised the walls and deepened the moat, sought out the army's equipment, so that border people came in daily by thousands, for whom he built thirty thousand rooms and gave generous relief; and fearing that soldiers and people would be mixed together, he made use of the high mounds to build the two stockades of Qi'an and Zhenhuai for the armies, and built the two forts of Zhangjiashan and Wujiashan for the Van, Tiger-Wing and Flying Tiger camps, being made head of the interior pacification office and commanding the troops of the four commanderies of Huang, Qi, Guang and Xinyang. The Mongol army attacking Qizhou, Meng Gong sent troops to raise the siege; and attacking Xiangyang again, the governor of Sui Zhang Guishou, the governor of Jingmen Zhu Yangzu and the governor of Ying Qiao Shi'an all abandoned their commanderies, Shi Ziren of Fuzhou died there, and Jiangling was in danger, so that an edict called for help from the river and western Huai, and all said that none was fitter than Meng Gong; who sent Zhang Shun across the river and followed with his whole army, the Mongol force dividing into two, one attacking Fuzhou and one at Zhijiang and Jianli weaving rafts to spy on the river; and Meng Gong changing flags and uniform colours and going to and fro in rotation, and at night lining the river with torches for tens of li together, and sending his cousin Zhao Wu and others to fight while he himself went to direct them, broke twenty-four stockades and returned twenty thousand of the people. In the first year of Jiaxi he was enfeoffed as baron of Sui county and made prefect of Gaozhou, training commissioner of Zhongzhou and prefect of Jiangling with the deputy command of Jingxi and Hubei, and shortly after commander-general of the armies of Ezhou. The Mongol general Temo entering Hanyang and Kouwen Buhua into Huaidian, the governor of Qi Zhang Keda, Li Shida of Shuzhou abandoned their commanderies and Dong Yaochen of Guang surrendered his prefecture, and joining the men, horses, grain and weapons of the three commanderies they attacked Huangzhou; and Meng Gong entering the city, the soldiers and people rejoiced saying "our father has come," and pitching his tent on the gate tower he laid out the defence and saved the city, beheading forty-nine who had tarried and displaying them; and with the rewards for the campaign sent by the emperor's own hand and the golden bowl specially given him, Meng Gong added fifty ounces of silver of his own and gave it to his generals; and the officers and men fighting bitterly for a whole month with the sick and wounded in succession, Meng Gong sent physicians to tend them so that they wept with gratitude. The Mongols, having re-formed, launched attack after attack day and night, bombarding Huangzhou with firearms and burning all the towers on the wall, but Huangzhou held and the gaps were filled at once, so that the Mongols could not get up; and again they came up to the wall to dig through it, whereupon Meng Gong had a second wall built inside at the place they were digging and a great pit dug on the inner side of the breached wall as a trap, called the pit of ten thousand, so that when the Mongols broke through they found a solid wall before them while the front ranks were pushed into the pit by those behind and crushed with stones and logs by the Song; and in the spring of the second year of Jiaxi, 1238, the Mongols at last withdrew. In the spring of that second year he was made Ningyuan army transmitting commissioner and bearer of the imperial arms, commander-general of the armies of Ezhou and Jiangling; and Meng Gong declining on the ground that the rewards for the three armies had not been issued, the edict said that merit unrewarded would make men ask what the emperor was about, and that he should not decline, since the ranks of nobility began with the generals; and shortly after he was made vice-head of the privy council and deputy military commissioner of Jingxi and Hubei and staff officer of the inspecting office, and soon after commissioner and prefect of Yuezhou. He then ordered the Jiangling command to move against Xiang and Ying, whereupon Zhang Jun recovered Yingzhou and He Shun recovered Jingmen; and in the twelfth month Liu Quan fought at Zhongtou, Fancheng and Langshen mountain with repeated victories reported; and in the first month of the spring of the third year Cao Wenyong recovered Xinyang and Liu Quan recovered Fancheng and so recovered Xiangyang, for which Meng Gong was made head of the privy council and commissioner and prefect of Ezhou, while Liu Quan sent Tan Shen to recover Guanghua and Xi and Cai submitted, and Meng Gong had troops meet them and got more than a hundred braves, enrolled as the Loyal Guard Army. When the edict first came to recover the capital region and Xiangyang, Meng Gong said that Ying was needed for the transport of supplies and Jingmen for sending out surprise troops, and so directing his plans and sending his troops deep, he reported victory everywhere he went; and in his memorial he said that to take Xiang was not hard but to hold it was, not because the officers were not brave nor the chariots, horses and weapons not fine, but because the strength of the thing was insufficient, adding that Xiang and Fan were the root of the court, won by a hundred battles and needing to be tended like the vital breath, and that without a hundred thousand armored men they could not be held in shares; and he set up a vanguard army with the men of Xiang and Ying who had come over enrolled in it.
The Relief of Shu, the Three Layers of Fence, and His Last Years
In the autumn of the third year of Jiaxi, 1239, the Mongol generals Tahai and Tuxue led their army into Shu, claiming eight hundred thousand, and Meng Gong added camps and distributed warships, sending Zhang Ju by a side road to Junzhou to block them; and the Mongols crossing the Wanzhou lake shoals so that Shi and Kui were shaken, Meng Gong's elder brother Meng Jing, then deputy pacification commissioner of Hubei and prefect of Xiazhou, sent urgently to plan the defence, and Meng Gong asking it of the headquarters went west with his army, while Meng Jing sent Jin Duo's army to meet them at Daya stockade in Guizhou, Liu Yi won at Qingping village in Badong county, and Meng Gong's younger brother Meng Zhang chose two thousand picked troops to hold Lizhou against the Shi and Qian road; and Meng Gong judging exactly that the Mongol main force under Wang Shixian must cross the river by way of Shi and Qian, he stationed two thousand men at Xiazhou and a thousand at Guizhou, sent Yu Dexing to reinforce the pass of Wanjia valley in Guizhou, his brother Meng Ying with five thousand picked troops to Songzi in support of Kui, and his brother Meng Zhang with two thousand to Lizhou, so that the defence was interlocking and mutually supporting; and Meng Jing's officer Liu Yi beating the Mongols at Qingping and Meng Jing winning a great victory at Daya stockade west of Guizhou, the Mongols fled leaving armour and weapons to Kui — the famous battle of Daya stockade — after which Meng Gong's rank was raised to viscount of Sui county. In the beginning of the fourth year of Jiaxi, Meng Gong learned by his intelligence that Zhang Rou was farming in Henan and gathering ship timber at Shunyang in Dengzhou, and so sent Zhang Hanying out by Sui, Ren Yi by Xinyang and Jiao Jin by Xiang to harass them by separate roads, and sent Wang Jian with hidden troops to burn the gathered timber, and reckoning that the army must feed itself from Cai he sent Zhang De and Liu Zheng in separate columns into Cai to burn its stores — the battle of Dengrang — and he was made commissioner of the Ningwu army, pacification commissioner of Sichuan and prefect of Kuizhou. Having charge of Sichuan, Meng Gong gathered three hundred and fifty-nine men of Macheng county, Bahe, Anleji and Guanggongdian, all veterans of the border, calling them the Ningwu Army and giving them to Meng Zhang; and the Uighur Aili Badulu bringing over more than a hundred braves, a hundred and fifteen old and young and two hundred and sixty horses, he formed the Flying Falcon Army, changing Aili's name to Ai Zhongxiao and making him its commander. The Mongols reaching Sanchuan, Meng Gong ordered that no officer on garrison duty should lose an inch of ground; and when the acting prefect of Kai, Liang Dong, pleading lack of grain, asked to return to his office, Meng Gong said that this was abandoning the city, and having him brought to Kuizhou had Gao Da behead him and display his head, so that the generals obeyed his orders with care. Meng Gong further said that the danger of Yuan was not that of Chen nor that of Jing that of Yuan, and that all three prefectures must be provided for, Jing most urgently; and setting out the three worries of Jinghu, he quoted Lu Kang's words that Jingzhou was the fence of the state and that if it were endangered it would not be one commandery lost but a matter for the whole realm to contend over, and said that the present situation was much the same and the stakes the highest. When Yu Jie, on his way to proclaim the imperial instructions in Sichuan, passed by Meng Gong, Meng Gong, finding Chongqing short of grain, gave him a hundred thousand shi of garrison-farm rice and sent Jin De with six thousand troops to relieve Shu, making Meng Zhijing commander-general of the supporting office. Afterwards he was enfeoffed as marquis of Handong and made military commissioner of Jinghu, made vice-guardian and duke of Handong, and in the fourth year of Chunyou made prefect of Jiangling. Reaching Jiangling and climbing the wall, Meng Gong sighed that Jiangling relied on its three seas but that the marshes had turned to mulberry fields, so that the enemy had only to crack his whip to be outside the walls; and he restored eleven inner defiles and made ten more without, some tens of li from the city, and turned the waters of the Ju and Zhang, which had formerly entered the river west of the city, eastward to pass north of the city into the Han, so that the three seas became one, "storing and releasing according to their level, a vast flood for three hundred li," with a million seven hundred thousand days of labour while the people never knew of the corvée, and he drew a plan and sent it up. At first Meng Gong had stationed the Zhenbei Army at Xiangyang, but Li Hu and Wang Min mutinied and the Zhenbei broke up, whereupon he recruited heavily and deserters came over without cease; and when the provincial governor Fan Yongji secretly offered to submit, giving the commission he had received as pledge, Meng Gong memorialised the court and was refused, at which he sighed that for thirty years he had gathered the men of the central plains and that now his purpose could not be fulfilled; and his illness grew grave and he asked to retire, being made vice-guardian and commissioner of the Ningwu army in retirement, and dying at the seat of Jiangling prefecture on the day wuwu of the ninth month. On the first day of that month a great star had fallen within the borders with a sound like thunder, and on the night of his death a great wind tore the roofs and broke the trees; and when the news came the emperor was shocked and mourned and suspended the court, gave a thousand ounces of silver and a thousand bolts of silk, specially conferred on him the rank of junior guardian, raised him three times to grand preceptor, enfeoffed him as duke of Ji and gave him the posthumous name Zhongxiang with a temple called Weiai. By Liu Kezhuang's spirit-way stele, in the year jiyou the elders of Jingxiang who had fled their homes asked that a temple be built and a posthumous name and stele granted, and the matter being referred to the imperial sacrifices, the temple was named Weiai, while the erudite Weng Fu and the examining officer Chen Jian asked that his posthumous name be Zhongxiang. His tomb is in Zijin mountain in Xianyu township a hundred li southwest of Wuchang county, with a stele reading that he was grand preceptor of Song, enfeoffed as duke of Ji and posthumously named Zhongxiang, and in 1984 it was listed among the first group of protected sites of Ezhou city. Meng Gong was deep in the study of the Changes, appending four lines to each of the sixty-four hexagrams under the title Admonitions of the Mind, and wrote a Buddhist treatise called Sayings of the Hutless, besides a deathbed poem beginning that where there is life there must be death and that with no hut there is nothing to say.