In Tianfu Chengdu, there has always been such a saying, stone cattle to stone drums, silver is fifteen thousand, some people can see it, buy all the Chengdu Province. It is said that this is a riddle to crack the place where Zhang Xianzhong hid treasures, and for more than 300 years, people have fished out treasures in minjiang from time to time, which seems to show that Zhang Xianzhong's treasure is not empty, so where did Zhang Xianzhong's huge treasure come from. Is it really sunk into the Min River as the legend says? Let's take this question with us to find out.
Zhang Xianzhong was born in 1606 AD, a native of Dingbian County, Shaanxi Province, and in 1630 AD, that is, the third year of Ming Chongzhen, coinciding with the chaotic period at the end of the Ming Dynasty, when the eunuchs were in power and the people were not happy, Zhang Xianzhong followed Wang Jiayin in his hometown of Dingbian. After Wang Jiayin's death, Zhang Xianzhong switched to Wang Gao Yingxiang, and Li Zicheng was gao Yingxiang's right and left arm, but as the saying goes, a mountain does not allow two tigers, and soon after Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng fell out, Li Zicheng attacked the Yellow River Valley, and Zhang Xianzhong led his troops to attack the Yangtze River Valley. In 1643, after Zhang Xianzhong attacked Wuchang, the emperor established the Daxi regime, Zhang Xianzhong's first treasure may have come from Wuchang, the Qing Dynasty scholar Zhao Jishi said in the "Sending Garden To Send", he threw Zhu Huakui, the king of Chu, into a bamboo palanquin and drowned in the lake, while he took millions of gold and silver in the palace and drove hundreds of cars.
In 1644, Zhang Xianzhong led his troops into the Sichuan region, and it is said that after Zhang Xianzhong attacked Chengdu, he burned and looted in Chengdu, so that the gold and silver jewelry of the entire city of Chengdu went into Zhang Xianzhong's pocket. Liu Jingbo of the Qing Dynasty also recorded in the history book "Shu Gui Jian" that Zhang Xianzhong's money and wealth from rich merchants in various prefectures and counties ranged from thousands of taels of gold or tens of thousands of dollars after receiving the money. As for how he burned and looted in Chengdu, pay attention to me, we will talk about it when we have time. In order to swallow this money alone, Zhang Xianzhong can be said to have tried his best, and he set strict rules for the property obtained by looting, and if his subordinates secretly hide gold and silver, they will behead the whole family, and hide twelve people to peel off the whole family, so that the entire wealth of Sichuan will belong to Zhang Xianzhong alone. Coupled with the wealth he had obtained in Wuchang before, Zhang Xianzhong at this time was not exaggerated in describing it as rich and enemy of the country.
In order to publicize his financial resources, Zhang Xianzhong also held a treasure fighting conference in Chengdu, as if he was afraid that others would not know how rich he was, and the 24 rooms were filled with all kinds of rare treasures, gold and silver ingots, which were dazzling and jaw-dropping. Some historians speculate that Zhang Xianzhong owned at least 10 million taels of silver, and according to the calculation of one or two pieces of silver equivalent to 300 yuan at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Zhang Xianzhong's financial resources were equivalent to 3 billion yuan now. People often say that the saddest thing in life is that people die and the money is not spent, and this sad thing just happened to Zhang Xianzhong.
In 1646, Emperor Taiji's eldest son, Prince Su, Hauge, together with Wu Sangui, led the Qing army from southern Shaanxi into Sichuan to attack Zhang Xianzhong, and Zhang Xianzhong was shot by the Qing army in this war, and Zhang Xianzhong's huge treasure disappeared with his death, so where did Zhang Xianzhong's treasure go? According to the "History of Ming", before being forced to evacuate Chengdu, Zhang Xianzhong asked his subordinates to build a high embankment on the Minjiang River, and then ordered the water in the Minjiang River to be drained, dug a large pit several inches deep in the sediment downstream of the embankment, dumped all the looted treasures into it, and then broke the embankment and released water, flattening the pit and submerging the pit, covering people's eyes and ears, and the later history book "Ming Ji" also copied this historical material word for word.
However, the "Pengshan County Chronicle" has another account of the whereabouts of Zhang Xianzhong's treasure, when the Qing army came, Zhang Xianzhong was ready to lead his troops to evacuate Chengdu, but at this time the Qing army had already blocked all the land transportation, so Zhang Xianzhong could only evacuate Chengdu by water, he loaded all the gold and silver jewelry in the boat and prepared to transport it out of Chengdu, but the fleet just traveled along the Min River to the territory of Pengshan County, and was attacked by the local landlord's armed Forces of Yang Zhan, Zhang Xianzhong's army was defeated, and finally had to return to Chengdu, but many wooden boats full of gold and silver were attacked. The ship with gold and silver jewelry all sank into the Min River.
There is also a folk saying that Zhang Xianzhong knew that he was invincible to the Qing army, and before the army withdrew from Chengdu, he let his men make many wooden barrels in advance, hid the silver ingots in them, and then threw them into the Min River, so that they drifted down the water and prepared to be salvaged in the lower reaches of the Min River, but on the way zhang Jianzhong left Chengdu, he encountered an ambush by Yang Zhan's army, and fierce fighting broke out between the two sides, but in the end Zhang Xianzhong's army was defeated by Yang Zhan's army, and the wooden barrels thrown into the river were all sunk into the river because there was no one to salvage them. Through the above three statements, it is not difficult to find that Zhang Xianzhong's treasures are all related to one place, that is, the Minjiang River, so is Zhang Xianzhong's treasure hidden under the Minjiang River?
The earliest theory about Zhang Xianzhong's treasure is that it was obtained by Yang Zhan, and the war between Zhang Xianzhong and Yang Zhan did have its own thing in history, but Yang Zhan at that time did not know that Zhang Xianzhong hid all the treasure in the boat, and it is said that after some fishermen salvaged silver in the river, Yang Zhan sent soldiers to salvage Zhang Xianzhong's shipwreck in the river, and as a result, Zhang Xianzhong's huge gold and silver treasures belonged to Yang Zhan. According to relevant historical records, Yang Zhan was a native of Leshan, Sichuan, and in the wars of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the people in the Leshan area were devastated, and the people did not have a good life, only Yang Zhan lived a prosperous life in the Leshan area and lived a carefree life. According to this, it can be seen that Zhang Xianzhong's treasure was very likely to be obtained by Yang Zhan.
It is not known whether Yang Zhan did not clean up the treasure at that time, so that some people in the later Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China also found similar things, such as Sun Shiyi also fished a large amount of gold in the MinJiang River during the Qianlong Period, but when the Xianfeng Emperor ordered the search for the treasure, he found nothing. It is said that in 1938, Yang Bailu and his friend Ma Kunshan during the Republic of China sent a large number of soldiers to search for Zhang Xianzhong's treasure in the Minjiang River, and eventually they found a large number of stone drums and stone cattle, which coincided with the local folk songs, so everyone thought that Zhang Xianzhong's treasure must be in the Minjiang River, but when they continued to fight, they only found a large number of copper coins, and those legendary gold and silver jewelry never appeared.
Although there are not a large number of treasures flowing out of the Min River for so many years, but some people can occasionally fish out some gold and silver utensils from the river, in 1990 the local people in Pengshan County had salvaged out two silver ingots, in 1998 the local villagers also fished out a silver ding in the process of fighting, in 2005 the local water diversion engineering team also dug out a log with seven silver dollars in it three meters underground, and the silver ingots were also impressively engraved with the words Chongzhen Eighteen Years. According to the appraisal of relevant experts, it was learned that these silver ingots did come from the taxes paid by various places in that year, and the time was the same as the time when Zhang Xianzhong attacked the Yangtze River Basin, and these sporadic discoveries seem to show once again that all of Zhang Xianzhong's treasures were in this Minjiang River.
Therefore, the relevant departments of our country also specially organized an expedition to survey the geology of the Minjiang River Basin, but due to the long age and the final lack of results, Zhang Xianzhong's treasures have attracted people to explore for more than three hundred years, but do these treasures exist? At present, there is still no definite conclusion, but I believe that with the development of modern science and technology and the support of historical materials, the secret about Zhang Xianzhong's treasure will eventually be solved by us.