The Study On The Military Logistic Transport Of The Song Dynasty

In Song Dynasty, military logistics was mainly transported over land, via waterways as well as by seawhich was still in immature stage. Livestock, porters, soldiers and transport vehicles provided majormotive power for land transportation. Water transportation was comparatively preferred.Therefore, people of Song resorted to various measures to rectify and preserve waterways,trying to ensure accessibility to maximum extent. In order to enable Song military abundantlyprovisioned during wartimes, baggage transport team carried out rigorous security measures,and established relative epidemic prevention system to relieve stress of logisticstransportation by ensuring military security. Each soldier was provided with a certain amount of food,which was varying in kinds and light in size. It could supplement stamina, was easily portable andmaintained the needs of a short-time war. Military weakness of Song had a close relationship withdeficient war-horse resources. Although a thorough system of horse policy was founded, thespecies of horses that could be used as war-horses were rare. Besides that, high death rate ofhorses in the long distance transportation was hardly solved properly. These wereimpediments for the development of Song cavalry. Logistics transportation of Song was relativelyconsummate in institutional construction, but was barely satisfactory in implementation. Wrong commandof generals altogether with disjointed logistics supplies directly led to the failures in Yongxi NorthernExpedition and invasion of Luoyang in Duanping Year, which showed the important position and influenceof logistics transportation in wars.