The barnyard history is rich and vivid, which can greatly make up for the lack of classical historical books; however, the barnyard official wild history is mostly based on folklore, and in the long period of word of mouth, its mistakes and errors far exceed the classic historical books. In the legend of Huang Chao and Li Shun, there are two more obvious errors:
The year in which Huang Chao and Li Shun were born is unknown. When Huang Chao responded to Wang Xianzhi's rebellion in the second year of Emperor Qianfu of Tang (875 AD) and joined the rebel army, he was at least seventeen or eighteen years old. Then, by the time he was in the fourth year of the Tang Dynasty, that is, in 884 AD, he was at least twenty-six or seventeen years old. And the Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin founded the Northern Song Dynasty in 960 AD, reigned for seventeen years, successively used the three era names of Jianlong, Qiande, and Kaibao, the longest kaibao year number, a total of nine years, even if you count the first year of Kaibao, it is also 968 AD, it is eighty-four years since the defeat of the Huangchao soldiers in the Wolf tiger valley, even if the Huangchao is still alive, at least one hundred and eleven years old, how can it be that he is still an "eighty-year old monk" during the Kaibao years?
Wang Xianzhi (?) —878)
Let's talk about Li Shun. According to the "Song Shi Shi Jia II Western Shu Mengshi", before the fall of Later Shu, the shu lord Meng Chang sent his brother Meng Renzhen to Beijing to request Zhao Kuangyin to give him the treatment of surrendering to the shu Han lord Liu Chan and Chen Shubao, the lord of the Later Shu Han Dynasty, and Zhao Kuangyin not only agreed with one mouth, but also clearly stated: "If you do not break your word, you have no other worries." Therefore, the forty-seven-year-old Meng Chang and his old mother, who was nearly seventy years old, in addition to his dead son Xuan Bao, the other two sons Xuan Zhe and Xuan Jue, as well as his younger brothers Ren Zhen, Ren Yu, and Ren Cao were all gifted to Fenjing and received a relatively solemn reception. The eldest son, Meng Xuanzhe, entered the Song Dynasty's official residence to inspect the Taiwei and Taining military festivals, and followed Emperor Taizong of Song to destroy the Northern Han dynasty and conquest of Liao, and was repeatedly rewarded, and died of illness at the age of fifty-five, and four of his fifteen sons were jinshi and the first. The second son, Meng Xuanjue, also died of illness while serving as the prefect of Huazhou. Meng Chang was originally the emperor of the divided side, and had been granted the title of king, unlike rebellion and rebellion, there was no danger of extinction. When he entrusted the "more than two hundred Chinese and foreign flesh and blood" such as the old mother and children to the Northern Song Dynasty, was it necessary to let a young son in his infancy wander into the folk— if he had such a young son?
Why, then, did such legendary stories be included in the history of barnyard officials and scholars at that time or in later generations? The main reason is obviously that their righteous act of rising up against tyranny has won relatively widespread support and support, and their unfortunate failure has made people feel infinite sympathy. The darkness of the politics of the late Tang Dynasty, the arrogance and extravagance of the ruling class, the arbitrariness of the feudal towns, and the suffering of the people's lives have been discussed in many books, not to mention that this situation is also a relatively common phenomenon in the last dynasty. So, what was the situation in Sichuan in the early Song Dynasty? As soon as the Song army destroyed Hou Shu, its commander Wang Quanbin killed and surrendered soldiers, plundered women, collected goods, committed atrocities, and imported all the accumulation of the Shuzhong Fu Treasury into Beijing, which had already aroused the armed resistance of the Shu people. Later, the officials sent by the Song court to Shu land also "competed for utilitarian benefits, and in addition to Changfu, they placed more money and buying business, and forbade merchants to buy money in private markets" ("Song Chronicle", vol. 16), making it difficult for the Shu people to cultivate as much as they could, and the wind of annexation became more and more prevalent, and the gap between the rich and the poor became increasingly widespread. It was under these circumstances that Wang Xiaobo and Li Shun revolted under the slogan of "equalizing the rich and the poor," and the contingent quickly grew from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of thousands. In order to implement the proposition of "equalizing the rich and the poor," Li Shun also summoned the rich people in the townships to make their surnames and asked them to declare their respective grain and family wealth, leaving their families to be fully useful, and the rest were uniformly allocated and distributed to the poor masses. Huang Chao, who called himself the "Great General of the Skyrocketing Average", had his army "encounter poor people on the road and fight for the relics" (Old Book of Tang, Biography of Huang Chao). These actions of theirs will certainly be able to win the relatively broad support and support of the poor people. Although Huang Chao's army also fed on human flesh when there was a shortage of food, Li Shun also angrily beheaded the three hundred soldiers who had lost the battle, and if they finally succeeded, they were likely to respond to violence with violence. However, when people are overwhelmed by tyranny, those who rise up against it will always be seen as heroes and supported; if they fail, they will be deeply sympathetic and nostalgic. As for whether violence will be countered in the future, who will consider so much and so far? Aren't these the deep folk foundations that give rise to those legends?
Wang Quanbin (908–976)
In addition, we should also see that it is not easy to resist tyranny, but the cost is often alarmingly high. From Chen Sheng and Wu Guang to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, there were hundreds of peasant uprisings in Chinese history, let alone hundreds, and only Liu Bang and Zhu Yuanzhang were the only ones who really succeeded. At the end of the Tang Dynasty and the beginning of the Song Dynasty, people only saw the only precedent of Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao. However, as for the unfortunate failure, its leader, as the "chief evil element," not only will he be sentenced to an extremely cruel "punishment," that is, zero slashing and cutting, but his family members and families will also be be beheaded by the door, exterminating the three ethnic groups, and exterminating the nine ethnic groups, up to eighty or ninety concubines, down to the infants in the swaddling. No wonder Chen Sheng and Wu Guang had already risen up, PeiZhong's father and elder wanted to rise up and respond, wanted to push a person to be the leader, and the main officials Xiao He and Cao Shan, who had a relatively high social status, did not dare to accept it and gave it to a small pavilion chief Liu Bang. Why? Isn't it "fear that things will not be accomplished, and the Later Qin race will be its family" ("History of Gao Zu Benji"). Even if the uprising fails, you can also surrender to the old dynasty, you can also switch to the new master, in case of misfortune to be caught, the disposal will not be so severe, not to mention that because the target is small, it is relatively easy to hide the people? Therefore, whether the legends of Huang Chao and Li Shun are also alluding to people: You bravely resist tyranny, even if you fail, it is not a dead end, I Am a Buddha with compassion, I will leave a glimmer of life for you, and bless you to escape into the empty door. As for the legend of the baby in the box, it is likely that Li Shun made it up himself. Because in the scattered small-scale peasant economy and society, people often worship the royal power, and the royal power often has a certain cohesion, "the orphan of the king of Meng", far greater than the appeal of ordinary people Li Shun. If you look at chen sheng and wu guang when they revolted, they wanted to "deceive themselves as gongzi Fusu and Xiang Yan and sing for the world" ("History of Chen Shijia") Is this truth, as for the Qin gongzi Fusu and the Chu general Xiang Yan, even if they are alive, they should be the enemies of the wrongdoers, and this point, whether Chen Sheng or Wu Guang, do not think about it so much.
Meng 9, 919 -July 12, 965
Finally, after the failure of the HuangChao and Li Shun uprisings, the ruling class was still ferocious and tyrannical, and the ordinary people were still miserable, which was also an important reason for those legends. We know that after the Yellow Nest, it was decades of warlords dividing up and fighting, the productive forces being destroyed on a large scale, the people being displaced, the killing of people and the replenishment of military food has become a relatively common phenomenon, and it was the violent dynasties of later Liang, Later Tang, Later Jin, and Later Han that spiraled up and down like a marquee. After Li Shun, it was the Song army's "wanton plundering" that caused "the people to suffer hardships and did not settle their jobs" ("Song Shi Niu Guan Biography")," and it was the officials sent by the Song court to Sichuan who were "good at killing and thinking that they were powerful, although they were minor crimes, they also migrated their wives out of Shu, and there were those who were displaced from the road of death" ("Song Shi Tian Guan Biography"). Therefore, people miss Huang Chao and Li Shun, miss the heroes like Huang Chao and Li Shun who dared to lead everyone to resist tyranny, hope that they have a better ending, and hope that they will stand up again and shout.
As for who is closer to the truth and who is more credible in the classic historical records and the barnyard official ye history; whether Huang Chao and Li Shun escaped the great difficulties in the first place, and whether they became monks. That would be to the House of Genesis.