Ancient wars were different from today's wars, because science and technology had not yet been developed, and there were no guns, cannons and other thermal weapons in modern warfare. At that time, machetes and spears were used as the main combat tools, basically close-quarters hand-to-hand combat, and medium- and long-range weapons were only arrows and crossbows.
It is precisely because of this situation that in ancient times, soldiers fought a war, and the loss of personnel was far greater than today. In modern warfare, there may not be any casualties after indiscriminate bombardment, but in ancient times, the enemies of both sides have arrived in front of them, so the result is only that you die or I die. Therefore, in ancient wars, it was perfectly normal for soldiers to wear paint.
Not only the soldiers, but also many generals.
Take Qin Qiong, the founding general of the Tang Dynasty, who has been weak and sick since he was old, which is very rare among military generals. And his own explanation for this is that because he was too brave in fighting when he was young, he had fought more than two hundred battles before and after, and he was always a pioneer, so he was often seriously injured, and the blood flowing from his body could hold several axes, and his body was actually overwhelmed for a long time, so it would look like today.
Similarly, there was the Song Dynasty general Qin Han. Like Qin Qiong, he fought on the battlefield for decades in his lifetime, and the injuries he suffered in his body have been recorded in the history for forty-nine times.
Taking these two examples, we can find that on the ancient battlefield, the more brave and invincible the soldiers, the more wounds they suffered, and even many generals would go into battle shirtless and continue to charge the battlefield when the enemy was killed, and the more injuries they suffered, the more injuries they suffered.
And those who are bold and dare not charge into battle, those who kill the enemy on the field first to save their own lives, because they have not fought with the enemy much, they will naturally rarely be injured.
Therefore, the scars left by the wounds on the general's body can be used as a military merit badge to represent whether the general is brave enough and how capable he is.
Although this can be regarded as a law, there are exceptions to everything. China's history of more than two thousand years is nothing unusual, and there is really a great general who has made great achievements in battle, who has been a pioneer in killing the enemy for decades, but his body has not left a scar.
He was Yang Yuchun, a tiger general during the Qing Dynasty and the governor of shaanxi and Gansu.
When they see the word "Yu Chun", many people may first think of the founding general of the Ming Dynasty, who followed Zhu Yuanzhang to fight the world's old minister Chang Yu Chun. Indeed, chang Yuchun's prestige is still like thunder to this day, and Zhu Yuanzhang was able to win the world in those years, which was inseparable from the contribution made by Chang Yuchun.
However, although this Yang Yuchun is not as well-known as Chang Yuchun, his ability to lead troops in combat is not inferior to Chang Yuchun, and it can only be said that he was born at the wrong time and did not have the opportunity of Chang Yuchun's era.
Yang Yuchun was originally a member of an ordinary family in Sichuan, who learned martial arts since he was a child, and when he grew up, he embarked on the road of taking the martial arts examination. This martial art was founded when Wu Zetian unified the world, and because it gave more opportunities for folk talents, it was retained by future generations. Yang Yuchun, on the other hand, is a martial artist who has benefited from martial arts.
Yang Yuchun won the meritorious name in one fell swoop through martial arts, entered the central army, and began a military life of fifty-eight years, until he died of illness at the age of seventy-seven, and devoted his whole life to the army.
In these fifty-eight years of military life, Yang Yuchun fought hundreds of battles of all sizes, and each time he rushed into the enemy's ranks to kill the enemy, but he was not injured once.
Logically, this is simply impossible, because no matter how strong a person's martial arts are, when facing hundreds of enemies, he cannot achieve complete defense, and injuries on his body are inevitable. However, Yang Yuchun did just that.
Moreover, Yang Yuchun was not a person like Li Yuan who sat in the rear and let his soldiers go into battle to kill the enemy. He also did not have any backers, so many years, Yang Yuchun was relying on himself to charge the front, step by step from the low-level officials to the governor, it was spelled out by relying on his own swords and guns.
Yang Yuchun was able to bear a little injury in the era of cold weapons and swords, which really made people feel strange, even the emperor could not help but ask about this matter, and even praised him one after another.
There is no basis for oral arguments, and there are historical records as evidence, which can prove that Yang Yuchun was a general who never flinched behind his subordinates.
There are many records of Yang Yuchun's battles in the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty, taking one of the battles as an example.
Li Wencheng's rebellion was carried out by Yang Yuchun to Pingding. However, when Yang Yuchun led a squad to investigate the enemy situation, he was ambushed by Li Wencheng's thousand-man troops, and the scene was once very critical.
However, Yang Yuchun did not surrender, but led a squad of only eighty people to fight with the enemy, and the result was that Yang Yuchun's squad only killed and wounded two people, while Li Wencheng's thousand troops were killed by more than two hundred.
Yang Yuchun's troops, which had already retreated, continued to retreat because they were missing two people, and then turned back to snatch out their bodies.
Yang Yuchun's secret lies in this, he cherishes the soldiers very much, treats them like brothers and sisters, in exchange for the desperate protection of the soldiers, so he will experience hundreds of battles without being injured.
Summed up in one sentence: there is grace in the control, and its death force.