Liaodong was a strategic place for the nomadic people in the north of the Ming Dynasty, and the commanders who commanded the troops here can be said to be the generals and famous generals of the Ming government, including Li Chengliang, Yang Ho, Xiong Tingbi, Wang Huazhen, Yuan Yingtai, Wang Zaijin, Sun Chengzong, Yuan Chonghuan, Hong Chengzu, etc., of which Sun Chengzong and Yuan Chonghuan had the most outstanding achievements. However, nowadays, when people talk about the first heroes of the Liaodong Resistance against the Qing Dynasty at the end of the Ming Dynasty, most of them say Yuan Chonghuan, but they rarely know that there is a Sun Chengzong, which cannot help but make people sigh!
Sun Chengzong's life can be described as a big ups and downs, his family was originally a wealthy family, but because of his father's profligacy and the family was in decline; he was 17 years old with the first place in the examination, but he ranked 115th in the examination, and finally won the second place with excellent results in the palace examination; he was the teacher of the two emperors of Ming Guangzong and Ming Xizong, twice saved the Ming Dynasty from danger, but was dismissed and returned home because of the rumors of the traitors, and finally led the whole family to martyrdom when the Qing army entered the customs.
In 1622, Sun Chengzong went to Shanhaiguan to supervise the division, he worshiped Ma Shilong as the marshal, trained and reused Yuan Chonghuan, Man Gui and a number of loyal and talented wenwu generals, after 4 years of painstaking recruitment and training of more than 100,000 Liao troops, recovered more than 400 miles of lost land occupied by the rear army, built 9 big cities, more than 40 small castles, more than 5,000 hectares of Tuntian, resettled hundreds of thousands of war refugees, forced Nurhaci to retreat 700 miles, and created a Guanning defense line that made the Later Jin army fearful.
When Sun Chengzong was ambitious and wanted to show his skills, he was dismissed from his post because of Wei Zhongxian's chaotic government and rumors. When Nurhaci heard that Sun Chengzong had been dismissed from his post, he immediately led the Eight Banners Army to attack, Wei Zhongxian's cronies, Liaodong Jinggaodi, were frightened and led all the officers and soldiers outside the Guanguan to withdraw to Shanhaiguan, and the 12-vehicle battalion chariot that Sun Chengzong painstakingly created was thrown into the ditch. Fortunately, Yuan Chonghuan and Man Gui, who were stationed in Ningyuan, disobeyed and repelled the Houjin army with Hongyi cannons, and then used the Guanning Defense Line created by Sun Chengzong to defeat Emperor Taiji and achieve two great victories in Ningyuan and Ningjin.
In the autumn of chongzhen's second year, Emperor Taiji led the Qing army around the Guanning defense line into the Great Wall and directly approached Beijing, and at a critical moment, the Chongzhen Emperor reinstated Sun Chengzong to guard the capital division. When Yuan Chonghuan and Emperor Taiji launched a battlefield stalemate outside the Guangqu Gate, Sun Chengzong promptly sent 3,000 strong troops from Tongzhou to the rescue, which repelled the Qing army. Later, Yuan Chonghuan was killed, and Sun Chengzong dispatched reinforcements to defend the Beijing Division, while recalling Zu Dashou, who had fled outside Shanhaiguan, and at the same time sending warships to surprise the enemy to force Emperor Taiji to withdraw from Guanwai, which stabilized the situation.
Sun Chengzong then strategized and mobilized the armies of Ma Shilong and Zu Dashou to retake the four towns of Yongping, Luanzhou, Qian'an, and Zunhua that had been held firmly after Emperor Taiji's retreat, and liquidated the Qing forces in Guannei. Later Sun Chengzong arranged for Zu Dashou to build the Daling River, but due to the obstruction of the traitorous ministers, the construction period was delayed, and when Emperor Taiji learned the news, he once again led an army to surround the Daling River and launched the Battle of Changshan, causing Zu Dashou to fall on vacation, and He Kegang committed suicide and martyrdom. The 69-year-old Sun Chengzong was impeached and once again dismissed.
After Sun Chengzong unloaded his armor and returned to the field, the Ming Dynasty was no longer able to resist the Qing army, the Qing army broke through Gaoyang and captured Sun Chengzong, Dolgun personally came to persuade him to surrender but was refused, and finally Sun Chengzong sat on a chair and was strangled by two Qing soldiers with white aya, and his 6 sons, 2 nephews, 12 grandsons, and nephews and grandchildren were killed in the defense of Gaoyang. However, folklore has it that Sun Shangxi, the infant son of Sun Chengzong's fourth grandson, Sun Shangxi, was saved by Ya Gui and survived.
Sun Yao raised Sun Shangxi and told him about his origins, so that he remembered the hatred of the country and the family to avenge the Sun family, but as the unified Qing government in the country became more and more stable, Sun Shangxi never had the opportunity to oppose the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty in his lifetime, but he passed on his legacy from generation to generation until Sun Dianying. Sun Dianying once claimed to be a descendant of Sun Chengzong, his father who opened a casino when he was 8 years old had a dispute with a Manchu gambler and was killed, and after the new hatred and old hatred made him do a sensational theft of The Tanglin Incident, known as the "Tanglin Thief".
Later, Feng Yuxiang once joked at the welcome meeting of Sun Dianying's move to defend Jincheng: "I thought that the revolution was complete, and I drove the little emperor of Xuantong out of the Forbidden City, but compared to Captain Sun, I was too far behind, and he picked up all the ancestral graves of the Qing Dynasty, which was really the most thorough enough for the revolution." Sun Dianying retorted without shame: "The Manchu Qing killed three generations of my ancestors, and I had to avenge the revolution!" After stealing the tomb of the Qing Emperor, I am worthy of my ancestors and my compatriots of the Great Han Dynasty! ”