Zhang Shoucheng's wisdom and scheming were comparable to Zhuge Ge, but he was criticized by historians for eating people after the grain ran out

Shou Sui Yang Zuo

Tang, Zhang

The battle is bitter in the spring, and the isolated city is becoming more and more dangerous.

Close the moon halo, and keep the fish beautiful.

Repeatedly tired of yellow dust, when the white feathers are waved.

The sores are still out of the line, and the blood is even more ascendant.

Faithfulness should be hard to defeat, and perseverance and forgiveness will not be moved.

No one repays the Son of Heaven, and his heart is full of tricks.

Zhang Tour, born in 709, during the Tang Dynasty's Anshi Rebellion, was the county commander of Zhenyuan (present-day bozhou, anhui).

Portrait of Zhang, in "The Biography of Bamboo Village Painting in The Laughing Hall"

In the winter of the fourteenth year of Tianbao (755), the Anshi Rebellion broke out. In the fifteenth year of Tianbao, Zhang Patrol raised troops against the Yan army, and there were more than a thousand responders. Together with Shan Father (shan county, shandong) Wei Jia Ben and others led an army into Yongqiu. And here repeatedly broke through the siege of the Yan army, to hold the dangerous city without loss.

At this time, there were about 2,000 defenders in the city, and 40,000 troops outside the city were besieging the city. Zhang Patrol left a thousand people to defend the city, led a thousand people by himself, divided into several squads, and suddenly killed from the city. Although the Yan army was crowded, the incident was sudden and chaotic. Zhang patrolled as a soldier, took armor and ate, wrapped wounds in battle, and held Yongqiu for more than sixty days.

Yongqiu Zhang Tour realized the real "straw man borrowing arrows" in history. After a long battle, there were no arrows in the army against the enemy. At night, Inspector Zhang ordered the soldiers to dress the straw man in black and slowly lower them from the city. Yan Jun released the arrows, and only in the morning did he find out that it was a straw man. On the one hand, Zhang Patrol obtained hundreds of thousands of arrows in total. Later, when the Yan army saw the straw man going down to the city at night, he stopped firing arrows. Zhang Tour then selected five hundred warriors, and then put down the city at night, taking advantage of the enemy's defenselessness, and suddenly killed, and the enemy army was defeated.

Later, when the wood in the city was exhausted, Zhang Patrol made the appearance of abandoning the city and said to the enemy general: "If you want to lead the people away, please retire to the second house and let me escape." "The enemy general did not know what the plan was, and led the army back sixty miles. Zhang patrolled to see that the enemy army had retreated, and led all the troops in the city to completely demolish the Yan army camp within thirty miles outside the city and bring the wood back to the city.

One day, Zhang Zhu had another plan, and sent a message to the enemy general: "The king must take this city, return thirty horses, and I will get the horse and run, please take the city as an excuse." Therefore, the enemy general sent thirty horses to Zhang Patrol and prepared to enter the city the next day. Zhang Tour distributed thirty horses to thirty warriors, and agreed: "When the enemy arrives, the man will take one general." The next day, the enemy general came to the city, saw that Zhang Tour had not abandoned the city, and began to rebuke Zhang Tour. Zhang Patrol said, "I want to go, but the generals don't obey, so why not?" At this time, thirty horsemen in the city came out, captured fourteen enemy leaders, and beheaded more than a hundred heads. The enemy retreated to Chenliu (present-day Kaifeng, Henan) and did not dare to attack again for a while.

In December, the enemy general abandoned Yongqiu and led 20,000 infantry and cavalry to attack Ningling and cut off the rear road. Therefore, Zhang Tour took the initiative to abandon Yongqiu and led 300 horses and more than 3,000 soldiers to move east and hold Ningling.

In the first month of the second year of De (757), Suiyang was in a hurry. Zhang Zhu decided to abandon Ningling and joinEdin with Suiyang Taishou Xuyuan to defend Suiyang. After the combined forces, there were 6,800 men. Xu Yuan was responsible for transferring logistics work, and Zhang Patrol was responsible for operational command. The initial battle was successful, and for sixteen consecutive days, more than 60 generals of the Yan army were captured and more than 20,000 enemy were killed.

The enemy general knew that Suiyang would be difficult to capture in the short term, and sent troops to cut off all the wheat on the outskirts of Suiyang. Zhang Patrol often beat drums in the city at night to form a team, the Yan army was on guard all night, but there was no movement, during the day they disarmed and rested, but Zhang Patrol led more than ten generals, each leading 50 horses to kill. More than fifty people were beheaded and more than 5,000 enemy were annihilated.

Zhang Patrol prepared to capture the enemy first, and shot the enemy general with an arrow. But the generals did not know the enemy general. Zhang Patrol ordered the artemisia grass to be cut into arrows and shot at the Yan army. The Yan soldiers who were shot thought that the arrows of the defenders had been shot out, and went to report to the enemy general. Zhang Zhu therefore recognized the enemy general and ordered Nan Jiyun to shoot him with a bow. Unexpectedly, Nan Jiyun's arrow hit the enemy general's left eye. The main general was seriously injured, and the Yan army fell into chaos. Zhang Patrol led his generals out of the city to cover up and kill, and greatly destroyed the enemy army, and the enemy general fled with wounds.

On the sixth day of the first month of July, Suiyang was besieged again. The Yan army built a tall ladder and pushed it to the bottom of the city, Zhang Tour chiseled three holes in the city wall in advance, one hole hooked the cloud ladder, one hole held the cloud ladder, one hole ignited and burned, and all 200 elite soldiers on the cloud ladder were burned to death; the Yan army built a hook car to besiege the city, and Zhang Tour prepared a large wooden and installed an iron ring at the end. Using it to trap the hook cart and pull it into the city; the Yan army rebuilt the wooden donkey cart to attack the city, Zhang Patrol used molten iron to pour into the wooden donkey and burn it; the Yan army piled up sandbags and wood, built into steps, and tried to climb the city, Zhang Patrol sent people to secretly throw pine, hay and other flammable materials on the steps every night, and when the wind was blowing, they set fire to it, and the fire burned for more than twenty days.

The enemy will use various methods to attack the city, but they are all defused by Zhang Patrol one by one. In desperation, three trenches were dug outside the city and besieged for a long time.

By this time, the grain and grass in the city had dried up. Zhang Sent the general Nan Jiyun out of the city to ask for reinforcements, but all localities refused to send troops. When Nan Jiyun returned to the city, he only had to rush the hundreds of cattle he had stolen from the Yan army.

The city ran out of ammunition and food, but Suiyang was also a choke point, and it was impossible to give up militarily. The city was besieged for a long time, and the defenders were left without food and forced to eat people.

Regarding cannibalism in the city, the Zizhi Tongjian contains:

When the tea paper is exhausted, the horse is eaten; the horse is exhausted, and the sparrow digs the rat; the sparrow is exhausted, and the concubine is patrolled, and the eater is killed, and the slave is killed far away; then the woman in the city eats it, followed by the man's old and weak.

The Old Book of Tang is more detailed:

The inspector sent out his concubines and killed them in the three armies to feed the sergeants. He said: "The princes defended the city for the nation, and they had no two hearts, and they lacked food for many years, and their loyalty and righteousness never faded. The patrol cannot cut his own skin, in order to scold the soldiers, it is a pity that this woman, sitting and watching the danger. 'The generals wept, and they could not bear to eat, and the patrol ordered them to eat. It is the woman in the city, and when it is exhausted, it is followed by a man, a man, an old man, an adult, and a population of twenty or thirty thousand, and the hearts of the people will never change.

There are only two differences between the New Book of Tang and the Old Book of Tang: "The woman who is old and weak eats 30,000 mouthfuls" and "the city is broken, and the remnants are only 400."

On the ninth day of October, the defenders of the city were no longer able to fight, and the Yan army ascended to the head of the city, and Zhang Touring Xibai said: "Exhausted, can not be the whole city, life can not repay Your Majesty, death should be a powerful ghost to kill the enemy!" "Suiyang broke. Zhang Zhu and Nan Jiyun and thirty-six others were killed. Zhang was forty-nine years old. Xu Yuan was killed while being escorted to Luoyang.

Seven days later, the Tang army rescued the soldiers, and Suiyang was recaptured.

After Zhang Tour's death, Emperor Suzong of Tang issued an edict posthumously making Zhang Tour the Governor of Yangzhou and placing his portrait on the Ling Yan Pavilion. In the folk, temples and shrines have been built in various places, and the Taoists respect Zhang Tour as "Baoyi Doctor", and Anxi, Fujian Province, regard Zhang Tour as the tea protection god, called "Gong Of 尪".

Zhang toured Yongqiu, Ningling, and Suiyang for twenty-one months, experiencing more than 400 battles, killing more than 300 people and annihilating more than 100,000 enemies. The rich Jianghuai region was preserved, and a large number of enemy troops were also contained. "Patrolling and covering the river, frustrated by the enemy' situation, the world is not dead, and its merits are also."

Reading the history so far, I can't help but sigh. Zhang Tour's wisdom is no less than Zhuge Ge's, and in real history, Zhuge Zhimou is not praised by historians, and most of his stories are spoken by novelists, but Zhang Tour's wisdom in defending the city is full of wisdom, but it is real history. If there were no records of 30,000 civilians who ran out of food and ate civilians, their reputation in history would certainly be much greater than it is now.