Why did the Southern Song Dynasty settle in a corner? People don’t like the Northern Expedition!

For a long time, the partial peace of the Southern Song Dynasty and the unfinished Northern Expedition were often blamed on the emperor's incompetence and the treacherous ministers such as Qin Hui who harmed Zhongliang. But in fact, the mainstream of the people in the Southern Song Dynasty did not want the Northern Expedition. The vast majority of them did not have a strong desire for the imperial court to regain the Central Plains, as described in some poems, but preferred to stay in a corner and seek stability. The poor were war-weary in the early Southern Song Dynasty. Speaking of the Northern Expedition in the Southern Song Dynasty, we often think of Lu You's words before his death: "Wang Shibei set the day for the Central Plains, and he never forgot to tell Nai Weng for family sacrifices." We also think of Li Qingzhao's "Where is my hometown? I forget it unless I am drunk." Or Xin Qiji's "Looking northwest to Chang'an, there are countless pitiful mountains." But these are actually just the wishful patriotic feelings of the literati and do not represent the wishes of the majority of the people at that time. The Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas where the Southern Song Dynasty was based have been known as the fertile land in the southeast since ancient times. "Half of the world's taxes are collected." However, this was not the case in the early Southern Song Dynasty. After 20 years of Hua Shi Gang's conquest by Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty, the Fangla Uprising that swept away millions of people, and the turmoil of the Song and Jin wars, the population here has dropped sharply and it is desolate. It has become a place haunted by bandits, thieves, rebels and jackals. At the beginning of the Southern Song Dynasty, the land area was only more than half of that of the Northern Song Dynasty, and the population also dropped significantly. However, the military pressure from the north did not diminish at all. In order to cope with wars in the Southern Song Dynasty, the standing regular army was maintained at about 400,000 in peacetime, and the number increased much when the war was intense. When the people of the Southern Song Dynasty were in urgent need of recuperation and resumption of production, such a large army was a heavy burden on the people of the Southern Song Dynasty at that time, both in terms of military supplies and personnel replenishment. Looking at taxation, the average national fiscal revenue in the early Southern Song Dynasty was about 45 million guan per year, of which about 13 million guan was used for royal expenses, about 24 million guan was used to support the army in peacetime, and all other expenditures were only 7 to 8 million guan. Once a war breaks out, military spending will increase exponentially. The government will continue to pass on these extra costs to the people through inflation and increased exorbitant taxes. Therefore, the number of subjects and the level of taxation in the Southern Song Dynasty were unprecedented in Chinese history, often reaching about double that in the Northern Song Dynasty. It can be seen that just supporting the army during peacetime was already beyond the capabilities of the people of the Southern Song Dynasty, and when war broke out, even their survival became a problem. Therefore, for the poor people at the bottom of society, the main conflict is the issue of food rather than ethnic conflicts. Their wishes can only be as Jiang Kui expressed in "Yangzhou Slow" - "A waste of ponds and trees are still tired of talking about soldiers." , as long as the northern regime does not invade, it is absolutely unwilling to fight, let alone the Northern Expedition. The rich resisted the war in the middle of the Southern Song Dynasty By the middle and late Southern Song Dynasty, the living standards of the people, especially urban residents, had been greatly improved. At that time, China had completed the shift of its economic center of gravity to the south, and the environment in the south was far superior to that in the north. At this time, the economic strength of the Southern Song Dynasty had been greatly enhanced. Is there a strong desire to regain the lost land in the north? In fact, the people, especially the wealthy class, did not have much interest in regaining the relatively backward north. More importantly, at that time, the people of the Southern Song Dynasty were divided due to the widening income gap, which produced a group of very wealthy businessmen, manual workshop owners and skilled workers, and then formed a middle-class citizen class. Their lives were better than those of officials. All good. For example, the magistrates in the Southern Song Dynasty were generally from the third or fourth rank, with an annual salary of about 400 guan (1 guan was 1,000 Wen), while the annual salary of a skilled worker in the cotton weaving industry reached 600 guan. This increasingly large middle-class citizen class has both wealth and wealth, and is content with wealth. Once the Northern Expedition begins, all kinds of taxation, corvee, and military service will increase exponentially, which will inevitably affect their vested interests. And even if the Central Plains were recovered, the imperial court would inevitably "make up for the excess losses", that is, levy heavy taxes from wealthy areas, and then use the money to relieve areas that were damaged by military disasters or were originally poor. Of course, the people of the Southern Song Dynasty did not want to be Imposition of heavy taxes. In view of this, the middle-class citizens will inevitably oppose the war with all their strength. They have 2