It is said that the general trend of the world will be united for a long time, and it will be divided for a long time. And every time there is a change of dynasties, there will be a genius in history who has met once in hundreds of years. Zhou has Jiang Ziya, Han has Zhang Liang, and the three kingdoms have Zhuge Liang, and they plan to win thousands of miles away; the divine plan is clever, saving the chaotic world from water and fire. For thousands of years, posterity has been impressed by their wisdom, and their admiration has not diminished with the passage of time.
Today's talk is Liu Bowen, a Ming Dynasty military expert with the same name as Zhuge Liang in Chinese history.
Liu Bowen, formerly known as Liu Ji (刘基), was a famous military, politician, and literary scholar of the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties. Chinese folklore has widely spread the saying that "Zhuge Liang of the three worlds unified the jiangshan Liu Bowen; zhuge liang, the former military division of the dynasty, and Liu Bowen of the later dynasty military division". He is known for his cleverness and strategic planning.
At the time of the great chaos in the world at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Liu Bowen assisted Zhu Yuanzhang and offered the "Eighteen Strategies". In the strategy, the overall situation was planned, the military situation at that time was correctly analyzed, and the correct proposal of destroying Chen Youyi first and then taking Zhang Shicheng played a decisive role in Zhu Yuanzhang's elimination of the masses and the unification of the world.
In the process of pacifying the world, Liu Bowen concentrated his lifelong wisdom and strategy, and combined with the great wars he personally experienced, he wrote his understanding of the art of war into a book of world-renowned wonders, "The Strange Strategy of Hundred Battles".
Birds are exhausted, good bows are hidden; cunning rabbits die, running dogs cook. It has always been the only rule that emperors have observed, and Zhu Yuanzhang is no exception. Zhu Yuanzhang was an uncompromising and diligent emperor who was always thinking about future generations during his lifetime. He was afraid that his descendants would not be able to suppress those founding fathers, so he killed many founding ministers with thunderous means. For the book of martial arts left by Liu Bowen, a military genius, he also did not want to get it all the time, and passed it on to his descendants to protect the peace of the country and the mountains.
Liu Bowen knew that Zhu Yuanzhang could not tolerate him, and chose to retire early. In the eighth year of Ming Hongwu, Liu Bowen was critically ill, and on his deathbed he said to his two sons: "It is not that your father did not pass on your secret skills, but it is really because you lack of intelligence and cannot bear this "Hundred Battles and Strange Strategies" military book, if you reluctantly want to learn, you can only increase the misfortune, but it is better to spend this life ordinary. Even if I offer the book of soldiers, it will inevitably cause the Liu family to suffer suspicion, thinking that I will keep a hand for my son, but it is better to burn it down, but it will save the peace of the Liu family. ”
Sure enough, after the news of Liu Bowen's death reached Yingtian (present-day Nanjing), Zhu Yuanzhang immediately sent the chancellor Hu Weiyong to mourn, the real purpose of which was to obtain Liu Bowen's lifelong work of "The Strange Plot of a Hundred Battles". Later, Liu Bowen's two sons confessed to The Minister that the Book of Soldiers had been burned by their father, and now only another work, "Yu Ion", and a handwritten letter to the saints were left.
After Zhu Yuanzhang saw Liu Bowen's relics, he did not see any soldier's book, so he casually threw "Yu Ion" aside, opened Liu Bowen's handwritten letter and read it, to the effect that "the purpose of the soldier's book is to help you fight in the country, such as today's unification, the peace of the country, there is no need for this book." The subject is also afraid that the military book will fall into the hands of the bad guys, so it is better to destroy it to avoid the trouble. ”
However, Zhu Yuanzhang was even more difficult to sleep after watching it, he knew that "The Strange Plot of a Hundred Battles" was the essence of Liu Bowen's life's work, how could he be willing to burn it easily? Now that I don't get it, is it because Liu Bowen secretly hid him in his home or passed it on to his two sons?
Therefore, Zhu Yuanzhang sent Hu Weiyong to carefully interrogate the descendants of the Liu family, and falsely claimed that Liu Bowen was a great hero, and ordered that his mansion be built into a cemetery "Sincere Bo Mansion" for a scenic burial, which was actually an earth-shaking search of the Liu family's mansion. But all was in vain, and in the end the book was not found.
Where did Liu Bowen's lifelong work of "The Strange Strategy of a Hundred Battles" go? This mystery was not finally revealed until more than two hundred years later, when the Ming Dynasty collapsed and Li Zicheng invaded the city of Beijing!
Li Zicheng attacked the city of Beijing and occupied the Ming Palace, and the rare treasures in the palace were naturally also collected. Among the countless treasures in the Ming Dynasty Palace, Li Zicheng found the copy of Liu Bowen's "Yu Ion", because he had admired Liu Bowen's deeds since he was a child, and Li Zicheng carefully looked at it. Because of the relationship between the ages, the pages of "Yu Ion" have been broken, who knows that after reading a few pages, Li Zicheng saw the wonderful enemies, arrays, and tricks described in the book, and there were more divine machines such as Qimen Dunjia and divination astrology, and deduced that this was the "Hundred Battles and Wonders" that had been lost for more than two hundred years.
Zhu Yuanzhang was wise, but unfortunately he was victimized by his own doubts, and the book in his hand had no chance to look at it. Although the change of dynasties is a historical law and cannot be reversed, if its descendants can find out early, perhaps the Ming Dynasty will not perish so quickly!