In the movie "Letter of Submission", the Qing army led by Jet Li, Andy Lau and Jin Chengwu besieged Suzhou, and finally abducted and killed, triggering a brotherly conflict, that is, the assassination of the governor. Why is It so hard to fight suzhou?
"There is heaven on the top and Suzhou and Hangzhou on the bottom." The graceful beauty of Suzhou's Jiangnan has long been famous all over the world, and strolling through the quiet and beautiful gardens of Suzhou can keep people away from the troubles of red dust. Because of this, it is easy to overlook that Suzhou is also a strategic town related to the rise and fall of the world.
In terms of geographical location, ancient Suzhou was relatively southeast-oriented, similar to Fujian, which is a "place where soldiers and families are indisputable". However, although Suzhou is biased, but it is extremely rich, Fujian does not have this advantage. Suzhou is located in the fertile middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Plain, with the benefits of the great river in the north, the benefit of Taihu Lake in the west, the waves of the sea in the east, and rice, fishing and salt are all rich in the world.
What did the ancient imperial court rely on to survive? Of course, it depends on money and grain, and this is the advantage of Suzhou. The ancients said that Suzhou is equivalent to the family's treasury and people's chests and abdomen. Even if many of the important gateways of the imperial court were lost, as long as Suzhou was held, it could not be said to be poor.
During the Qin and Han Dynasties, Suzhou was placed on a national scale, and its geographical location was indeed relatively remote, and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River gradually replaced the Yellow River Basin as the national economic center after the Southern and Northern Dynasties. During the Tang and Song dynasties, the location of Suzhou was not only not biased, but could be called the world. Han Yu of the Tang Dynasty said: "The gift of the world is out of the world, and Jiangnan is nine of the ten." "It is inconceivable that the Middle Tang Dynasty could carry through the chaotic Division of Hebei Fan Town, and there was no Jiangnan money and grain represented by Suzhou.
If your family had such a thick treasury, what would you do first? Thicken the wall, of course, for an impregnable iron gate. The ancients also considered that in order to defend Suzhou, it is necessary to build a strong city in Suzhou.
In the Spring and Autumn Period, Wu Zixu, in order to avenge his father and brother, came to Wuxia and threw himself under the prince's light tent, which was the later King of Wu. In the sixth year of King Jing of Zhou (514 BC), Wu Zixu oversaw the construction of Ayutthaya, known in history as the Great City of Lu. The length of the city is about 2100 meters in the east and west, about 1400 meters in the north and south, and covers an area of about 2.94 square kilometers. Outside the big city, there is also a moat ditch, which is very convenient to defend. Ayutthaya has a total of eight land gates and eight water gates, with loumen in the east being the most famous. There are two gates in the east called Lou Gate and Craftsman Gate, two gates in the west called Zhangmen and Xumen, two gates in the south called Panmen and Snake Gate, and two gates in the north called Qimen and Pingmen.
Chun Shenjun of the Chu State, one of the four princes of the Warring States, once regarded this city as his capital, except for a period of time when the Sui Dynasty moved to The New City, and the Tang Dynasty still used this city as the main city of Suzhou after the Tang Dynasty. After Kublai Khan, the ancestor of the Yuan Dynasty, destroyed the southern Song Dynasty, in order to prevent someone from occupying the city against the Yuan, he destroyed the city. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhang Shicheng rebelled against the Yuan and rebuilt the city, thinking that it was the capital of the country. Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, was well aware of the great strategic significance of Suzhou to the capital of the country, Nanjing, one is from the money and grain, and the other is that it can be used as the gateway to the eastern route of Nanjing. Zhu Yuanzhang built the city of Suzhou on the basis of Zhang Shicheng, "about nine miles in the east and west, twelve miles in the south and north, and thirty-four miles in circumference." "Because the rivers in the Suzhou area are longitudinal, the city has very regional characteristics, there are many rivers in the city, there are three horizontal channels, and four straight rivers, and there are trenches inside and outside the city, which are easy to defend and difficult to attack."
Hundreds of years later, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was sent from Jintian, Guangxi, and the capital was set in Nanjing, and it was named Tianjing. As an important town of money and grain, Suzhou is very clear about the gateway to Tianjing, whether it is the monarch of the kingdom of heaven or the monarch of the Qing court. With Suzhou as its capital, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom established Sufu Province, which basically included Wuxi, Suzhou and Shanghai, and was garrisoned by Li Xiucheng, a famous general in the late Heavenly Kingdom. If the Qing court wants to destroy the Kingdom of Heaven, Suzhou must be conquered. As we all know, tianjing, the capital of heaven, was captured by the Qing army in 1864, and Suzhou was captured in December 1863.
The city of Suzhou was conquered by the Taiping Army in 1860, and the people who had been suffering for a long time rejoiced and built a archway in Zhangmen, with four big characters written on it, "The people must not forget." However, the Qing army besieged Tianjing, and Hong Xiuquan had to mobilize the main force of Suzhou to relieve the siege of Tianjing in order to protect himself, and the strength of Suzhou City was said to be small, more than 70,000.
Even so, the Taiping Army relied on the city of Suzhou, and Tan Shaoguang and others still used Suzhou as a point to attract a large number of Qing troops, thus reducing the pressure on Tianjing. Unfortunately, seven of the eight generals who guarded the city betrayed the Kingdom of Heaven and killed The Mu King Tan Shaoguang and qing, such as Gao Yongkuan and Wang Anjun. The Qing army was not polite to the rebels, and 70,000 Taiping troops were killed. As for the seven heavenly traitors who had surrendered, they were also killed. The fall of Suzhou was not a matter of the city, but of discord, and many generals of the Kingdom of Heaven could not see hope in a difficult situation. When Tan Shaoguang was guarding Suzhou, he built dozens of fortifications at all gates in Suzhou, and also built a Great Wall with stones outside the Loumen Gate, if it were not for civil unrest, the Taiping Army could hold out in Suzhou.
In 2007, the movie "Letter of Submission" was launched, adapted from the famous horse stabbing case, which is one of the four strange cases of the Qing Dynasty, Zhang Wenxiang's assassination of Ma Xinyi, the governor of Liangjiang. The main actors are all big names in the entertainment industry, Jet Li plays Pang Qingyun, Andy Lau plays Zhao Erhu, and Jin Chengwu plays Jiang Wuyang. The film is about a thorn horse, but it also tells about the tragic battle of Suzhou. Many people believe that the prototype of the protagonist Pang Qingyun is Li Hongzhang, a famous general of the Qing Army, who took advantage of the contradictions between the generals of the Taiping Army to successfully lure him.