Northern Song's Failure at the Beginning of the War Between the Northern Song Dynasty and the Western Xia

In the middle and later period of the Northern Song Dynasty,the war between the Northern Song Dynasty and the Western Xia broke out.Though the Northern Song had far more fields,families and armed forces than the Western Xia,at the beginning of the war,the Northern Song was defeated.There are two fundamental reasons for this.First,some of the policies that enhanced centralization of state pow- er weakened the fighting capacity of its armed forces.Second,the Northern Song did not take seriously the force of the Western Xia,which directly led to mistakes in decision-making and eventually to loss in bat- tles.