Text/Kingdom Building
In Chinese history, there is no shortage of brutal man-eating demons, such as Zhu Cang and Huang Chao of the Tang Dynasty, Wang Jixun of the Northern Song Dynasty and others. These people lost their conscience and killed the people on a large scale, so there was no good end. However, there are always exceptions to everything, during the Anshi Rebellion, a Tang Dynasty general used the people of Suiyang City as food, and when the city was destroyed, there were less than 400 people left in more than 30,000 Suiyang. After the Anshi Rebellion subsided, Emperor Suzong of Tang commented on the reward for his merits, believing that his merits were greater than his excesses, and posthumously awarded him the title of Governor of Yangzhou and Duke of Deng, and conferred on him the official position of son. Later emperors remembered his exploits and made him the Third Prince of Tongzhen and the King of Sima Sheng, and was worshipped by the people at four o'clock. The man-eating general who was named a god was the famous Tang Dynasty general Zhang Tour.
Zhang Tour was a native of Hedong, Puzhou (present-day Yongji, Shanxi), born in 708, and was admitted to the imperial examination during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (741) and held the posts of Prince Tongshi Sheren, Qinghe, and Ling. After the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion (755), officials in anhui, Shanxi, and henan all surrendered to the rebels, and only Officials loyal to the imperial court, such as Yan Zhenqing, refused to yield and recruited their own troops to confront the rebels. It was under such circumstances that Zhang Tour, as the commander of Zhenyuan County, led a small number of troops to fight against dozens of rebels, and finally won the victory in the defense of Yongqiu (756). Zhang Zhu was promoted to deputy envoy of Jiedu in Henan, and Emperor Suzong of Tang ordered his troops to assist Taishou Xuyuan (太守徐遠) in defending the strategic city.
In 757, An Qingxu, the son of An Lushan, secretly plotted to assassinate his father An Lushan in order to compete for the position of Shizi and became the commander of the rebel army. An Qingxu concentrated the main force of the rebel army of 160,000 people and invaded The Tang Dynasty in a big way, the first to bear the brunt of the city defended by Xu Yuan and Zhang Tour. At that time, there were more than 10,000 troops and more than 30,000 people in the city, and the commander was Taishou Xuyuan, and Zhang Patrol was a deputy general. On the first day of the war, the rebels were so powerful and demoralized that they launched attacks on the city more than twenty times in a row, although under the command of Xu Yuan and Zhang Tour, they repelled their offensives one by one, but Xu Yuan, the commander of the Tang Army, was shocked by the cruel war scenes and took the initiative to give up the position of commander to Zhang Tour, who was only responsible for managing grain and grass and strategic materials. Under the command of Zhang Tour, the defenders not only repelled many attacks by the rebels, but also unexpectedly took the initiative to attack the rebels and captured a large number of strategic materials. The imperial court decreed that Zhang Zhu be made a royal historian (正二品官職, 俸禄1千石).
The city was besieged from April 757. With no reinforcements, the defenders were unable to break the siege despite repeated victories over the rebels. By July of the same year, the defenders had run out of food and grass, and the soldiers could each receive a spoonful of rice porridge per day, and the common people could only eat snakes, insects, rats, ants, and wild vegetable bark. Zhang ordered the general Nan Jiyun to break through to the nearby Tang army for help, but as a result, Helan Jinming of the garrison linhuai and Pengcheng, who were garrisoned in Linhuai, were afraid of the rebels' strength and refused to send troops to the rescue.
Helan Jinming said to Nan Jiyun, "The destruction of the city is already a predestined thing, and I can't play a role when I go!" "
Nan Jiyun cried, "When I rushed out of the city yesterday, the sergeant had not eaten a full meal for a whole month. You refused to send troops, and you set up a banquet for me, and I could not swallow this kind of wine. I didn't complete the task given to me by the manager, so I left a finger in your place as a proof, and I went back to explain it to Zhongcheng! "
After saying that, he cut off one of his fingers with a knife and got on his horse and left. When Nan Jiyun arrived at Pengcheng, the Pengcheng guards refused to send troops, but in order to cover up their ugly deeds of seeing death and not saving, they specially gave thousands of pieces of cloth for Nan Jiyun to bring back. Nan Jiyun was furious, scolding greed for fear of death and wanting to fight with him for life and death. Afraid of Nan Jiyun, he did not dare to meet him and drove him out of the city.
On the way back, Nan Jiyun passed through Zhenyuan County, and the defender Li Ben sent his three thousand troops and hundreds of warhorses to Nan Jiyun to command, which was the only assistance received by the defenders in the entire defense war. However, when these three thousand people broke into the city, they were besieged by the rebels, and only more than a thousand people actually reached the city.
There are no reinforcements outside, no grain and grass inside, how to defend the city?
Zhang Zhuyi was fierce, killed his own concubine, and made food for the soldiers to fill their hunger. Xu Yuan also followed Zhang's example and killed his family's book boy as military food. But at this time, there were still thousands of defenders in the city, and killing one or two people was not enough to eat. Zhang Patrol ordered that the old, weak and sick in the city be brutally killed as military food. In this way, hundreds of people were killed every day until October of the same year.
On the ninth day of October 757, after defending for more than half a year, the city was finally breached. At this time, only 36 soldiers and more than 400 civilians were left in the city who could not even lift their knives. Both the guards Zhang Zhu and Xu Yuan were captured by the rebels and brought before the rebel general Yin Ziqi.
Yin Ziqi said to Inspector Zhang: "I heard that when you were supervising the battle, you shouted loudly, and often your eye sockets were broken and blood flowed all over your face, and your teeth were also broken. "
Zhang Patrol replied, "I want to use righteous qi to eliminate the rebel thief, but I just can't do it." "
Yin Ziqi was furious and pried open his mouth with a knife, finding only three or four teeth left. Zhang Patrol scolded and said, "I died for the King's Father, and you have turned to the traitor, but you are a pig and a dog, how can you last long!" "
Yin Ziqi admired his integrity and wanted to release him. Someone said, "He is a man of righteousness, how can he be used by me?" And he has the heart of the army and cannot stay. Yin Ziqi then used a knife to coerce Zhang Tour to surrender, and Zhang Tour did not yield. Yin Ziqi forced Nan Jiyun to surrender, but Nan Jiyun did not respond. Zhang Patrol shouted: "NanBa, once the boy dies, he can't surrender to the unrighteous!" Nan Jiyun smiled and said, "I want to make a difference, you know me, how dare you not die!" On the same day, Zhang Zhu was killed along with Yao Menyan and 36 other people, at the age of 49.
After the Anshi Rebellion was quelled in 763, Emperor Suzong of Tang commented on the reward for his merits and planned to posthumously present it to Zhang Zhu and others who had martyred themselves in the defensive war. Some ministers raised objections, saying that during the period of defending the city, Zhang Tour used the people to fill the hunger, resulting in the tragic killing of more than 30,000 people, which was contrary to heavenly reason. Zhang Tour's old friend Li Han personally wrote a biography for Zhang Tour, and reported the causes and consequences of the incident to Tang Suzong in its original form. Emperor Suzong of Tang summoned his ministers to a court meeting, believing that Zhang Tour's merits were greater than his faults, and decided to give Him a posthumous gift, giving Zhang Tour the title of Governor of Yangzhou and Duke of Deng, and conferring on his son the official position.
Later emperors posthumously honored Zhang Zhu as the third prince of Tongzhen and the prince of Sima Sheng, and posthumously honored Xu Yuan as the protector of the country, Jing Wei, and jingwei, and built temples for him in various places to accept the people's worship at four o'clock. To this day, there are hundreds of temples and halls dedicated to Zhang Tour and Xu Yuan at home and abroad, which shows the great influence of the two loyal and righteous soldiers.
Zhang Tour's generals Lei Wanchun and Nan Jiyun were also made gods by later emperors. Nan Jiyun was revered as the Second Dragon God King of Zhaoyou Jiaze of Huiyin Mountain in Qinzhou, and Lei Wanchun was revered as the Great General of Thunder Exorcism, enjoying the four-hour worship of the people in later generations. In "The Complete Biography of Yue Yue", the author even more imaginatively describes the martial arts of Yue Fei's son Yue Yun as taught by the apparitions of the two generals Nan Jiyun and Lei Wanchun, which makes the reader add a touch of mystery to the life deeds of Zhang Zhuan and others.