Zhang Tour, a native of Hedong, Puzhou (present-day Yongji, Shanxi), is known in history as having "read a wide range of books and was well versed in the formation methods".
This is a controversial man, and those who approve of him think that he has done a great job and can make a name for himself; those who oppose him think that his sins are unforgivable, and the reason is simple, there are only two words: cannibalism.
To this day, there are still many opinions and inconclusive opinions about the merits and demerits of this character, and the focus of the debate is still the word "cannibalism".
In February of the fifteenth year of Tianbao (756 AD), Zhang Patrol entered Yongcheng and began to build fortifications. In early March, Ling Huchao, together with the Yan generals Li Huaixian and Yang Chaozong, led an army of 40,000 Yan (An Lushan called the Emperor Dingguo "Yan") into Yongcheng City. The defenders were greatly frightened and their hearts were shaken. Taking advantage of the enemy's mentality of being a light enemy, Zhang Patrol sent a thousand people to launch a surprise attack, which greatly destroyed the enemy army and frustrated the enemy army's troops.
The next day, the Yan army attacked the city again, dispatched more than a hundred large trebuchets, and destroyed countless city towers and houses in a matter of moments. Immediately afterwards, the enemy began to attack the city like ants. Inspector Zhang ordered the soldiers to remove the bundles of hay prepared in advance, sprinkle them with grease, ignite them, and throw them into the enemy army, burning the siege soldiers who were climbing the wall to the ground. The large army behind saw the situation and did not dare to take a step forward. Zhang Patrol seized the fighter and led the crowd to kill, and finally repelled the menacing Yan army.
In the following days, although the Yan army besieged Yongcheng, it was still unable to attack it. On the contrary, whenever the Yan army relaxed slightly, Zhang Patrol ordered the Tang army to launch an attack, which made the Yan army overwhelmed.
The two sides faced each other for more than sixty days, and there were more than three hundred battles. Zhang Patrol, with thousands of people, stubbornly blocked Ling Fox Chao's army of forty thousands. Like the soldiers, he did not remove his armor when he ate or slept, and even if he was wounded, he only bandaged it slightly before he threw himself into battle again, and his tenacious fighting spirit made the Yan army frightened.
In the end, the Yan army had no morale, so that Fox Tide had to order the withdrawal of the army. Just as the Yan army was withdrawing, Zhang Tour once again led the crowd to kill, killing the Yan army and abandoning its armor and capturing more than 2,000 people.
In May, Ling Fox Tide once again drew troops to attack. After several days of strong attack, Yongcheng remained motionless. Ling Fox Chao was helpless, so he came up with a way that was not a solution--summoning Zhang Patrol. After that, Ling Hu Chong sent someone to Zhang Tour and said, "Li Tang's qi number has been exhausted, the unification of Kyushu by the Yan Kingdom is the Heavenly Dao, and the foot is holding on to the dangerous city, what is the map?" Zhang Patrol responded domineeringly, "Jun wei knows the theory of people, and he knows the Heavenly Dao?" ”
Subsequently, Ling Fox Chao besieged Yongcheng for more than forty days, still without any land. Just when fox tide was at a loss, news came from Guanzhong that Chang'an had been conquered by the Yan army and that Emperor Xuanzong had gone into exile in Bashu. Fox Chao was overjoyed, and then he wrote a letter to Zhang Tour, again persuading him to surrender.
The officers and men of Yongcheng, who had been besieged for several months, lost their fighting spirit in an instant after receiving this news, and the people in the city were suddenly panicked. Six more senior generals found Zhang Tour and said to him: "The strength of the Yongcheng defenders is weak, and now the emperor does not know whether he is dead or alive, so it is better to surrender and stop making senseless sacrifices." ”
Inspector Zhang looked at them and agreed.
The next day, Zhang Zhu hung the portrait of Xuanzong above the lobby, and then led the civil and military officials to worship together, everyone thought that this was the last pilgrimage to the Tang Dynasty Tianzi, and their hearts were full of mixed feelings, and they all wept. But at this moment, Zhang Patrol shouted loudly and ordered the six generals who had been persuaded to surrender to be taken down and all beheaded. After this operation by Zhang Tour, everyone's determination to resist the rebels was even stronger.
Since Zhang Zhu had decided not to surrender, he had to accept the consequences of not surrendering.
Soon, he found a very important thing - Tang Jun had no arrows. The Tang army had no arrows, so the Yan army could easily climb the city wall, and the consequences were unimaginable. Everyone was worried about this, but only Zhang Was calm, and everyone didn't know what medicine was sold in his gourd.
One night a few days later, the Soldiers of the Yan Army patrolling the night noticed that a dense crowd of black-clad people had appeared on the head of Yongcheng City, apparently to sneak attack. So the patrolling soldiers quickly reported that the fox was tide.
Ling Fox Tide immediately gathered all the archers and fired ten thousand arrows at Yongcheng Head. I don't know how long it took, nor how many arrows the Yan army shot, but anyway, the black-clad people at the head of the city were pierced like hedgehogs. One by one, they do not move, neither advance nor escape, like scarecrows.
scarecrow......
When these three words came into his mind, Ling Fox Chao realized that he had made a plan. Furious, the fox tide hurriedly ordered the soldiers to stop shooting.
But it was all over, and Zhang Tour had already got what he wanted. When the Tang army defending the city counted the "battle results", there were hundreds of thousands of arrows.
Reading this, some readers may feel that Zhang Tour has read the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", but it should be noted that Zhang Tour is a Tang Dynasty person, and the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" was written by Mr. Luo Guanzhong in the Ming Dynasty. And the story of the straw boat borrowing arrows is Mr. Luo Guanzhong's fiction, which does not exist at all, and the source of inspiration for Mr. Luo Guanzhong's fictional story of borrowing arrows from grass boats is likely to be Zhang Tour.
Causing fox tide toss all night, instead of killing half of the Tang army, he gave them hundreds of thousands of arrows, and his heart was really depressed. He vowed that he would polish his eyes in the future and never be deceived again.
A few days later, the patrols reported to Ling Fox that there was a man in black at the head of the city. Ling Fox Chao sneered and said to the left and right, "This time it is 80% of the scarecrows again, don't worry." ”
However, Ling Huchao never thought that this time it was not a scarecrow, but a death squad of the Tang Army.
More than five hundred Tang troops rushed to the Yan army like a group of hungry wolves, cutting down the unsuspecting Yan army on horseback, causing fox tide to abandon the camp and flee in a hurry.
After the defeat of the fox tide, his morale was extremely low, and he had to order the retreat to ChenLiu (陈留村, in present-day Kaifeng, Henan Province), and did not dare to return for several months.
During these months, Zhang Tour enjoyed the last time of his life. Because after a few months, Ling Fox Tide will make a comeback and start the Battle of Suiyang with Zhang Tour. It also made Zhang Tour fall into the controversy of thousands of years - whether to eat people or not.