The Republic of China was an era of warlords and warlords, and it was not completely unified at the beginning. From the old warlords of the Anhui and direct lines in Beiyang to the new warlords of the Gui and Jin clans, they have all had a very important impact on Chinese history.
As for the many small warlords who only have tens of thousands of trumpets, or even a few thousand soldiers, there are countless more. In sichuan province alone, more than four hundred warlord wars have been fought in twenty years. As long as someone has a gun, anyone can pull up the team and call themselves the marshal.
Among the many small warlords, there is a guy who is more special, and his name will always be recorded in the prominent position of the history books. The reason was not that he was particularly capable of fighting, but that he had excavated the tombs of Qianlong and Cixi. The world gave him a nickname "Tanglin Thief" Sun Dianying.
Judging from Sun Dianying's experience when he was young, he can also be regarded as a model of a poor boy's counterattack. He was born in Yongcheng, Henan Province, and grew up in the streets and alleys. After growing up, he walked the rivers and lakes, joined the temple taoist meeting, and got to know many black and white Taoist characters.
The most beautiful people in those years were the leaders of the various armies, who were local emperors and could do whatever they wanted. As long as you have soldiers and guns in your hands, you are not afraid of losing a battle, you can change the court at any time, and you can still eat and drink spicy.
Sun Dianying saw this and in 1922 led a group of people to vote under the henan warlord Ding Xiangling. Relying on the skills he had trained when he was mixing rivers and lakes, Sun Dianying quickly climbed to the position of brigade commander, and his men recruited rebels, and there were several thousand people.
In the following years, Sun Dianying defected to Zhang Zongchang of the Feng clan and fought with Xu Yongchang, Feng Yuxiang and others. Finally, he was absorbed by Chiang Kai-shek and served as the commander of the 12th Army, stationed in the eastern Hebei region.
The person who first thought of the tomb robbery was not Sun Dianying, but Ma Futian, another bandit collected by the Feng family. Tomb robbery is an act that the world despises, and Chinese with a little conscience will not do it. The desperate Ma Futian was already poor and crazy and could not take care of these things. Unfortunately, the barrel of his gun was not hard enough, and before he could start digging, he was driven away by Sun Dianying's army.
Sun Dianying also knew that robbing the tomb was an unseemly thing, but the countless treasures in the two imperial tombs made him decide to take the risk. The two imperial tombs are the Yuling Tomb of Qianlong and the Dingling Tomb of Cixi, and according to the records of the Qing Dynasty's Ministry of Internal Affairs, both imperial tombs have buried a large number of treasures, and any one of them is a rare treasure and a valuable one.
In July 1928, in the name of exercises, Sun Dianying blocked all thirty miles around Malanyu, where the two imperial tombs were located, and asked the local county government to prepare 30 large trucks, falsely claiming that they were going to transport grain from other places.
This tomb robbery can be said to be the most unskilled in history, no need for feng shui experts, no need for compass and Luoyang shovel, there is a universal artifact that can easily open the mausoleum, that is, explosives. Thousands of people dug all over the mountains, dug up suspected targets and then installed explosives, rumbling, nothing is a bundle of explosives can not be solved, if there is, then install another bundle.
Sun Dianying first stole Cixi's Dingling Tomb, and after opening the main coffin, he found that Cixi's body had not decayed for twenty years, and contained a huge night pearl in his mouth. Poor Cixi, a strong woman who had ruled China for half a century, was insulted by tomb robbers after her death. The treasures and clothes on Cixi's body were robbed, and the treasures in the tomb naturally could not escape Sun Dianying's looting.
After grabbing the Dingling Tomb, he exploded the Qianlong Yuling Tomb. According to Sun Dianying's later recollection, Qianlong's body had decayed, and the most precious thing was a string of chao beads and a nine-dragon sword. How many treasures were stolen from the two imperial tombs, I am afraid it will never be clear, only that all 30 large cars were filled.
These were only treasures that Sun Dianying kept in a unified manner, and although he stipulated that his subordinates were not allowed to hide them privately, the military discipline of this warlord force could be imagined. Every soldier of the Sun Army who participated in the tomb robbery took treasures from the tomb. Many people were therefore anxious to sell their dirt, became deserters, and were captured in various places, which led to the discovery of tomb robbery.
When the Tanglin Tomb was stolen and the world was in an uproar, Puyi found Chiang Kai-shek and demanded that Sun Dianying be severely punished and the treasure recovered. The whole country also set off a cry to denounce Sun Dianying and the tomb robbery, and for a while, it seemed that Sun Dianying could not escape the law and would soon be punished.
However, in fact, Sun Dianying had already launched a comprehensive operation, sending the stolen treasures to the various military dignitaries at that time according to their rank, and buying them to raise their hands on this matter. He gave away the best treasures, such as Qianlong's Nine Dragon Sword, as gifts, and his handwriting was not small.
As a result, at the military tribunal in December of that year, Sun Dianying insisted that he did not know it, that his subordinates had acted without authorization, and finally failed to do so. According to the later investigation, Shang Zhen, the presiding judge of the military court, has accepted an emerald watermelon sent by Sun Dianying.
Sun Dianying's troops were downsized and became the newly formed Independent Second Brigade, which continued to attack Zhang Zongchang. After the Beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Sun Dianying first fought several battles with the Japanese before defecting to the Japanese. When the War of Resistance was won, it was absorbed by the Kuomintang. Until the Battle of Tangyin, he was captured by the People's Liberation Army. He eventually fell ill and died in the War Criminals Management Center in 1947.
Some of the treasures stolen by Sun Dianying were scattered abroad, some were privately stored by military and political leaders of that year, and some were preserved by the state in museums. The loss of these treasures is a huge loss to the Chinese nation, and it is not known what year and month it will be before they can return home.
[References: "The Greatest Share of Stolen Goods in the Republic of China: Sun Dianying's Tomb", "Qing Dongling"]