On December 16, 755, An Lushan summoned the generals, falsely claiming that they had a secret will to summon them, and demanded that he immediately lead an army to serve the king. All the generals were surprised when they heard this, and did not dare to say a word. Therefore, An Lushan raised an army of 150,000, marched from Fanyang, and quickly conquered the twenty-four counties of Hebei and occupied the eastern capital Luoyang. Emperor Xuanzong of Tang urgently ordered Li Sui to be the emissary of Henan Jiedu and Xu Yuan to be the Taishou of Suiyang, and ordered him to block the southeast side of the rebels, cut off the main road to Jianghuai, and ensure the smooth flow of water transportation in Jiangnan. At this time, Pingyuan Taishou Yan Zhenqing took the lead in suppressing the rebellion, and the counties of Hebei rushed to echo the official army a month after the fall. Only Yang Wanshi, the Taishou of Yu Commandery, wanted to defect to An Lushan, and he forced his subordinate Zhang Zhu to surrender to the rebels. Zhang Patrol refused to obey the order, and after fleeing to Zhenyuan, he led the officials to cry bitterly in the Laozi Temple, and then gathered more than 2,000 volunteer soldiers to defend Yongqiu City for the imperial court.
An Lushan was proclaimed emperor in the first month of the following year, and the rebels did not see progress for a long time. In May, Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi defeated Shi Siming and recaptured more than ten counties in Hebei. An Lushan was horrified and once wanted to return to Fan Yang. Who knew that a month later, under the orders of Tang Xuanzong, Ge Shuhan abandoned the danger and chose to take the initiative to attack, which led to the total annihilation of the army, Tongguan was captured by the rebels, and the situation took a sharp turn for the worse. When the news of the defeat came, Tang Xuanzong hurriedly abandoned the capital and fled for his life in the Sichuan-Shu region. Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi were forced to divide their troops and march south to reinforce, resulting in the failure of the attack on Fan Yang, the further expansion of the war, and the terrible day was coming...
An Lushan rebelled against Tang
After Emperor Xuanzong of Tang fled, most of Henan, Hebei, and Guanzhong were occupied by An Lushan. As long as the rebels continued to advance southeast, after conquering Yongqiu and Suiyang, they could control the rich Jianghuai region and cut off the main routes of Caoyun, so that the Tang Dynasty would be squeezed in two remote places, Ningxia and Sichuan, and emperor Xuanzong of Tang and Emperor Suzong of present-day Tang would no longer be able to fight back.
Therefore, the rebels ordered Fox Chao to attack Yongqiu, and he was friends with the defending general Zhang Tour, and before the battle, the two negotiated under the city. Ling Fox Chao said loudly, "The world is going to go, and the feet are firmly defending the dangerous city, who do you want to care?" ”
Zhang Patrol replied, "In his lifetime, he promised himself loyalty and righteousness, and what is loyalty and righteousness in today's actions!" With a look of shame on his face, he ordered his army to surround Yongqiu and cut off all contact between the city and the outside world. Forty days later, Ling Huchao told Zhang that Chang'an had fallen and the emperor himself had fled, so why didn't you surrender as soon as possible? At that time, six generals thought that they were invincible and that Xuanzong's survival was unknown, so it was better to surrender, so Zhang Zhu pretended to agree. The next day, he laid out a portrait of Xuanzong in the lobby, then led six generals to the front and beheaded them all in front of everyone.
Seeing that the grain and grass were about to run out, Zhang Patrol opened the south gate and pretended to call battle to the enemy, but secretly sent a warrior to cross the river and stole the rebels' Qianhu salt rice. He also asked the soldiers to form more than a thousand scarecrows and take advantage of the darkness to sink into the city and lure the enemy to shoot, so as to borrow hundreds of thousands of bows and arrows. After that, taking advantage of the enemy's slackening, he laid down five hundred daredevils and went to burn the enemy's tent, making the fox tide pay a heavy price. After four months of fighting, Zhang Patrol slaughtered tens of thousands of rebels with a force of 3,000 men.
However, as the Shandong region fell into enemy hands, Yongqiu's grain routes were cut off. Zhang Tour had to lead his people to ningling, and he received an urgent report from Suiyang Taishou Xu Yuan in the second year of Emperor Suzong of Tang's reign, saying that the rebel general Yin Ziqi was leading 130,000 troops to attack, and if Suiyang fell, Jianghuai would not be able to save it.
Zhang Patrol insisted on Yongqiu and turned to Suiyang
After Zhang patrolled the city, Xu Yuan knew that his talent was inferior, so he gave him the position of commander and himself was responsible for the logistics support.
Under the command of Zhang Tour, the officers and rebels clashed for twenty rounds in one day, fighting day and night. In sixteen days, the symbiosis captured more than sixty rebels and killed more than 20,000 soldiers, and after paying huge casualties, the rebels had to retreat overnight.
In order to prevent the officers and troops from taking advantage of the victory to retake Chen Liu, the reluctant Yin Ziqi led the army to attack a month later. Zhang Patrol then said to the soldiers, "I have received grace, and if the thief returns, he will have a dead ear." Although the kings sacrificed their bodies, they did not reward them directly, so that their ears were painful! So he slaughtered cattle to reward the sergeant, and everyone wept. The general Nan Jiyun waited out of the city to meet the enemy, directly attacked Yin Ziqi's camp, cut down the general flag and returned. In this engagement, Yin Ziqi was shot blind in the left eye, and the rebels had to break the siege.
However, by July, the rebels attacked for the third time. At this time, the grain and grass in Suiyang City had been exhausted, and the soldiers could only receive a small amount of rice every day, mixed with tea paper and bark before they could swallow. After the first two clashes, the number of soldiers was depleted to 1,600, and all of them were sick and unable to fight. Seeing that the city was becoming increasingly dangerous, Zhang Tour ordered Nan Jiyun to break through and ask Xu Shuji of Pengcheng for help, but the latter closed the door and disappeared. Nan Jiyun had to go to Linhuai to find Helan Jinming, who thought that Suiyang was about to fall, and now there was no point in sending troops. So he set up a feast to entertain Nan Jiyun, wanting to take it for his own use. Nan Jiyun cried and said, "When Suiyang came out yesterday, the soldiers did not eat grains and were already in the moon. Now the doctor does not come out, but sets up a wide range of vocal music, and the righteousness cannot bear to enjoy it exclusively, although it eats, it swallows." After saying that, he drew his sword and cut off one of his fingers, and then went back to Suiyang to die.
Lonely cities are starving
After the rebels knew that reinforcements would not come, they surrounded Suiyang more tightly. Zhang Tour consulted with Xu Yuan, believing that Suiyang was a barrier to Jianghuai, and if the city was abandoned, the rebels would inevitably take advantage of the victory to pursue, not only would they be captured, but also the Jianghuai region would fall into the hands of the enemy, so it was better to stick to it. After the tea paper was finished, they began to eat the horses; when there were no horses to eat, they dug up the nests of birds and dug up gophers; and finally, when all the food was exhausted, a terrifying scene occurred—
The Old Book of Tang records that on the eighth day of the tenth lunar month of the second lunar month of Emperor Suzong of Tang (757 AD), looking at the increasingly hungry and weakened soldiers, Zhang Tour was afraid that people's hearts would be dangerous and fearful, and he was worried that there would be changes, so he took out his concubine and said loudly in front of the generals of the three armies:
The princes defended the city for the sake of the country, single-mindedly, and after years of starvation, loyalty and righteousness declined. The patrol cannot cut his own skin, in order to scold the soldiers, is it a pity that this woman sits and watches the danger?
So he killed, dismembered and cooked the woman next to him to reward the three armies, and the soldiers all shed tears when they saw it, and they couldn't bear to eat human flesh, but Zhang Patrol still forced them to eat it. Inspired by this, Xu Yuan also pushed out his slaves to kill them as rations for defending the city. But the tragedy doesn't stop there, as the chronicle says:
It is the woman in the city, and it is exhausted, followed by the husband and the old, and the population is 20,000 or 30,000!
In order to defend an isolated city and adhere to his belief in loyalty and patriotism, Zhang Tour actually took the lead in eating people and eating all the vulnerable groups in the city that needed protection! Do you have to eat some of them first in order to save more people?
A general who eats people for the sake of defending the city
After eating people, it is not the city that is preserved, but the integrity. On the eve of the fall of Suiyang, Zhang Zhu bowed down to Chang'an and cried bitterly: "The ministers are full of wisdom and courage, and they cannot suppress the strong and guard the isolated city." Although the subject is a ghost, he swears to be strong with the thief, in order to answer the favor." After speaking, he was killed by Yin Ziqi along with Nan Jiyun and thirty-six others.
On the tenth day after the fall of Suiyang, the Tang army recaptured Luoyang, so Zhang Tour was believed to have pinned down the rebel forces and bought time for the officers. However, some people feel that the practice of eating people is still difficult to forgive, and in this regard, Zhang Tour's good friend Li Han and others actively help him speak. They believed that Zhang Zhu's firm adherence to Suiyang, blocking the rebel invasion of Jianghuai, and preserving the Tang Dynasty's social welfare were really a great achievement. Therefore, Emperor Suzong of Tang posthumously made Zhang Tour the Governor of Yangzhou and built a temple for him. The New Book of Tang also commented that Zhang Tour said that he "although he is exhausted, he will die, but Tang Quan will be used for the use of wealth in Jiang and Huai, in order to help Zhongxing, to attract profits and compensate for harm, and to use everything to be easy." Affirming his practice of eating people in order to protect the country, he believes that eating a small number of the old, weak, sick and disabled and preserving most of the people of Jianghuai is a feat greater than a feat.
It was not until the late Ming Dynasty that a group of Enlightenment thinkers who reflected on Chinese culture emerged, who examined history with new concepts and expressed many different views. Wang Fuzhi believed that Zhang Zhu's behavior was difficult to calculate by addition and subtraction, and that his merits were great, but his sins were not small, and Li Han's view of "losing hundreds of people to the whole world" in the New Book of Tang was despicable. In their view, the innocent people who are eaten are only a price, not worth mentioning at all. Wang Fuzhi was extremely indignant about this indifferent attitude, saying: "Man cannot bear to eat people, does not wait for reason to know that he cannot do it, and has palpitations when he hears things, and thinks far away and is shocked." If you endure in this way, you will not be human. If Li Han still had a little bit of humanity, after hearing that Zhang Tour had eaten people, he should have been "palpitated and shocked" and could not bear to mention it again. As a result, he also has to be ignorant of his conscience, to reduce the death of innocent people to an inevitable loss, and to make it an integral part of the merits of others.
Wang Fuzhi and Gu Yanwu were both representatives of the enlightenment thinkers of the late Ming Dynasty
If the reinforcements arrive and Zhang Patrol is lucky not to die, can he still ascend to the throne of merit with the identity of a man-eater? Wouldn't he have committed suicide with shame on him? Wang Fuzhi said: "Regardless of the survival of the city, no matter the life or death of the body, what must be indispensable, cannibalism." "Zhang Tour's duty is to stick to the city and complete the mission, if he can't survive because of the exhaustion of grain and grass, then go to the battlefield or commit suicide to make his own mind clear, should not decide the life and death of others without authorization, and should not share others as sacrifices." He fought with the dragon for too long, and even made himself a dragon first, falling into the abyss of sin. If the Anshi Rebellion destroyed the Legal System of the Tang Dynasty, then Zhang Tour undermined the Moral and Ethical Bottom Line of the Tang Dynasty, which is more difficult to repair than the former. During the Song and Ming dynasties, whenever the city gate was about to be breached, there were always some "loyal and righteous soldiers" who came out to decide the life and death of women and children, and even the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself after cutting and killing his children, which was a disregard for life.
Gu Yanwu said: "Changing the name of Yi is called the destruction of the country; benevolence and righteousness are full of congestion, and as for leading the beast to eat people, people will eat each other, which is called the death of the world." Gu Yanwu wanted to liquidate this, he said: "Know to protect the world, and then know to protect its country." The protector of the country, the king and his subjects, the flesh eaters, and the protectors of the world, the lowly and the responsible. "The world is more important than the country, because the world is an eternal human order, and the country is just a change of surname and name that changes over the centuries." It is the duty of the Piff to defend the human order and oppose the sin of leading the beast to eat man or cannibalism. As for the matter of changing the name of Yi, since he was not in his position, he had to leave it to the meat eaters to plan.
Zhang Patrol took the lead in eating people and destroying the order of human morality, so he died in the world; he established his deeds and saved the country by eating people, so those who were praised by meat eaters, but who remembers those who were eaten?