What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
After Zhu Yuanzhang captured Jiqing (present-day Nanjing), it was renamed Ying Tianfu as the center of his rule. However, at this time, Ying Tianfu was not safe, because its southwest was not far from Anqing, known as the throat of the Yangtze River, and Anqing at this time was in the hands of the Yuan army. According to common sense, Zhu Yuanzhang must have sent troops to take this place as a bridgehead for his own forces to advance westward, but Zhu Yuanzhang ignored Anqing unconventionally. In fact, it is not that Lao Zhu does not want to fight Anqing, but that he does not dare to fight.
Yu Que
At this time, stationed in Anqing was the famous Yuan Dynasty general Yu Que, Yu Que was originally a civilian official, in 1333 jinshi and the first, granted the same Zhisi Prefecture affairs, in 1352 acting Huaixi Xuanwei deputy envoy, the capital marshal's office, stationed in Anqing. Before Zhu Yuanzhang took Jiqing, Xu Shouhui, the boss of Chen Youyi, led a large army to attack the key area of Anqing, and as a result, Yu Que entered Anqing from a small road, opened a warehouse to help the victims, and personally led the army to fight, and the Red Turban Army was defeated and fled.
Yu Que then strengthened the city walls and dug a moat to prepare for the Red Turban Army. And recruiting townsmen, reclaiming wasteland, often taking out their own salaries to help the people, every time a rebel army came to attack the city, Yu Que could defeat them with only a few thousand people. Therefore, when Lao Zhu occupied Jiqing, he did not dare to attack Anqing, because he had no bottom in his heart, and the family foundation could not be all thrown under that city wall, but he was embarrassed to say it explicitly, so he had to say that this person was a loyal and capable minister, if the ministers were like Yu Que, the Yuan Dynasty would not be in chaos, and he could not bear to persecute loyal people, and as a result, the people who attacked Anqing were shelved.
However, Chen Youyu did not believe in this evil, and his Chen Youyu was not as useless as Xu Shouhui (chen Youyi killed Xu Shouhui in 1360 and established himself as emperor). However, Chen Youyu miscalculated, not because his puppet boss was useless, but because Yu Que's bone was really difficult to gnaw. In 1357, Chen Youyu gathered a large army and besieged Anqing day and night, but was killed and retreated. However, Chen Youyu was unmoved and vowed to take Anqing, and he ordered Zhao Pusheng to attack the South Gate and lead his army to attack the West Gate. Yu Que guarded the trenches outside the city and killed several people in a row, and Chen Youyu also had to sigh: "The courage of the Confucians is so great that all the world is Yu Gong, and the city is not solid." So he ordered a temporary retreat.
The following year, Chen Youyu gathered heavy troops to attack Anqing again, Yu Que personally went into battle, killing many people, and later saw that Chen Youyu's army had already invaded the city, and then killed himself and fell into the clear water pond, and the whole family threw himself into the well and died. After Yu Que's death, Chen You, feeling sorry for his loyalty, ordered the recovery of Yu Que's body and buried him in a coffin outside the west gate of Anqing City.
Yu Que, along with the Northern Song Dynasty Bao Zheng and the Ming Dynasty Zhou Xi, was revered by posterity as the "Three Sages of Luyang".