In the last years of the Sui Dynasty, wars were raging, the Tang Dynasty was established at the beginning, the Li family father and son were very "busy", Li Yuan after overthrowing the rule of the Sui Emperor, established the grandson of the Sui Emperor as the emperor, and then established himself as the King of Tang, after having a momentum, let Yang You give up the throne, and the Tang Dynasty was thus established. At this time, the Tang Dynasty regime was not very stable, and Li Yuan's son Li Shimin was still fighting everywhere to calm the chaos in the capital and recover the land. Li Shimin often led his troops to personally conscript, and paid a lot for the unification of the Tang Dynasty, and after the abdication of Li Yuan, the emperor of Tang Gaozu, Li Shimin succeeded to the throne. Later, Li Shimin often remembered the days of the conquest, and in order to commemorate the warhorse he rode during the conquest for many years, he asked the craftsmen to carve the war horse on the stone.
The famous "Zhaoling Liujun" was born in this way, the Zhaoling Liujun was almost carved according to the real horse size, the height of the six horses is about 1.7 meters, the length is about 2 meters, which is a "big project". Li Shimin is a very horse lover, in ancient times, having a good horse is no different from a modern luxury car, with these war horses, Li Shimin can gallop on the battlefield, so after he became emperor, he never forgot his horse. At the same time, he also wanted to let others know his exploits, and to know that most of the Rivers and Mountains of the Tang Dynasty were fought down by his imperial horses, and these six batches of horses had extraordinary significance, both then and now.
The six horses were: White-hoofed Crow, Green Horse, Teller, Salu Purple, Shivachi, and Weak Fist Hair. Originally, these six horses had been sleeping underground with Tang Taizong, but during the Republic of China period, around 1914, Zhaoling was discovered. Tomb robbers in the Republic of China period were very rampant, and they were not afraid of the shackles of the law, because even many government officials joined the ranks of tomb robbers. Zhaoling is the mausoleum of Tang Taizong, the Tang Dynasty is a very prosperous dynasty, how many treasures are there in the imperial tombs of this period? The tomb robber excitedly entered the Zhaoling Tomb, and soon he saw the Zhaoling Liujun. In order to bring the Six Horses of Zhaoling out of the mausoleum, they did not hesitate to smash the Six Horses of Zhaoling and turn these huge stones into fragments.
Later, tomb robbers brought Zhaoling Liujun to the market law for sale, and Zhaoling Liujun was thus acquired by foreigners. Now that 4 horses have been recovered, and two horses have been recovered in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, the domestic Zhaoling Six Horses have been banned from overseas exhibitions, and the preciousness of the Zhaoling Six Horses is unimaginable. In many literary works and historical events of the Tang Dynasty, the Zhaoling Liujun has always appeared as the beloved horse of Tang Taizong, and they have very high cultural and historical value. The reliefs of the Six Horses of Zhaoling are very exquisite, and looking at the shocking cracks above, it is difficult for people to imagine what kind of wind and rain they have experienced in the hands of tomb robbers.
These 6 horses were sold for 120,000 US dollars when they were lost in 1914, and today, archaeologists point out that the loss of the six horses in Zhaoling overseas, the loss of our country exceeded 1 billion, and its value cannot be underestimated. How much did Tang Taizong love these horses? Tang Taizong even wrote a poem for each horse. What is unexpected is that such a precious cultural relic as Zhaoling Liujun will actually be smashed for reasons such as "inconvenient to sell", which makes people heartbroken. This is not the first time that there have been incidents of tomb robbers destroying cultural relics in China, and the six good villains of Zhaoling can still be pieced together, and some cultural relics cannot even be retrieved.
For example, the cultural relics pirate Mike Hatcher destroyed more than 600,000 pieces of Chinese ceramics, these precious Southern Song Dynasty ceramics are all "stone sinking into the sea" and can never be recovered, this is only because mike Hatcher salvaged the Nanjing, the number of remaining ceramics is too much, Mike Hatcher is afraid that the excessive number of these ceramics will reduce the price of Chinese ceramics, so he broke the other more than 600,000 ceramics. It should be known that even the largest shipwreck Nanjing, which china has salvaged so far, has only produced 190,000 cultural relics. The road to the protection of cultural relics is long and distant, and people still need to continue to work hard.