"Qin Shi Mingyue Han Shi Guan, the Long March people have not returned." But to make the Dragon City fly will be, not to teach Humadu Yin Mountain. This poem of Wang Changling's "Out of the Plug" should be very familiar to everyone, and the "Flying General of Longcheng" in the poem refers to a very famous general in the Western Han Dynasty of China - Li Guang.
Although Li Guang's fame is very great, it is generally believed that his achievements in history are much inferior to those of the generals Wei Qing and Huo Qi, who fought against foreign enemies in the same era, and Wei Qing Huo has not yet become a regular guest of poets in later generations, so why did Li Guang get so much praise?
Li Guang's ancestor was Li Xin, a very famous general in the pre-Qin period, and the Li family had been proficient in archery for generations, and it was even more important to wear Yang in a hundred steps. In the "Records of History", Li Guang's arm strength is amazing, he is good at riding and shooting, and when hunting, he mistakenly regards the stone as a tiger, and when an arrow is shot, the arrow enters the stone for three points, which shows his bravery.
In the fourteenth year of Emperor Wen of Han, the Xiongnu invaded the border of the Han Dynasty, and Li Guang joined the army to fight against the Xiongnu. Li Guang killed many enemies with his superb archery skills and was appointed as Hanzhong Lang. Later, Li Guang was ordered to guard the city in various places, and although he devoted his life to fighting against the Xiongnu and defending the country, he had always been in a state of hard work and fruitlessness, and had not been knighted, so there was also the idiom "Li Guang is difficult to seal".
However, Li Guang had one thing that had been criticized by posterity, that is, when he followed Wei Qing in his later years to attack the Xiongnu, Wei Qing ordered him to lead an army to advance in a roundabout way, encircle the main army at the designated location, and capture the Xiongnu Shan Yu alive, but because the detour road was difficult to move, and the army had no guide, Li Guang led the team to get lost, delaying the siege time, so that Wei Qing was isolated and helpless against the Xiongnu Shan Yu, although he defeated the Xiongnu, but let Shan Yu escape.
Afterwards, Wei Qing asked Li Guang about his way through in order to summarize after the war and report to Emperor Wu of Han, but Li Guang was silent, and Wei Qing had no choice but to take Li Guang's subordinates to question him, but Li Guang stopped him, and Li Guang promised to go to trial himself. Li Guang told his subordinates that he had fought against the Xiongnu more than seventy times since he was young, and it was difficult to fight with Shan Yu, but the great general Wei Qing deliberately sent me to take a detour and detour, and I was lost. Moreover, I am now in my sixties, and I can no longer be insulted by those swordsmen, so I draw my sword and kill myself.
It is true that Wei Qing deliberately let Li Guang go a long way, but this was not Wei Qing's proposition, but the emperor's intention, the emperor believed that Li Guang was old, and he had never been a lucky general, and he did not want him to go at all, but he could not help Li Guang's soft and hard bubbles and repeatedly asked for help, so before going out on the expedition, he specifically instructed Wei Qing not to let Li Guang fight with Shan Yu head-on. Wei Qing then issued an order, allowing Li Guang to detour and go around, and finally made Li Guang commit suicide in anger.
When Li Guang's son learned of this, he thought that Wei Qing was secretly obstructing him, so he beat Wei Qing up, and Wei Qing felt ashamed of Li Guang,so he suppressed the matter and did not want to mention it again. However, Wei Qing's nephew Huo Went ill but did not spare him, and in order to take revenge on Wei Qing, he shot Li Guang's son with an arrow.
Sima Qian recorded these stories one by one in the book "Records of History", and Li Guang was mostly admired between words, and he did not agree with the actions of Wei Qing and Huo Zhiyi. This is because Sima Qian's cult of Personality for Li Guang, sima Qian can be regarded as Li Guang's "iron fan", he not only speaks for the Li family everywhere, but also holds grievances for the Li family. Even he himself was sentenced to palace punishment because after Li Guang's grandson Li Ling surrendered to the Xiongnu, he spoke for Li Ling and offended Emperor Wu of Han.
Sima Qian admired Li Guang so much, but there was a reason why he showed disdain for Wei Qinghuo's words. Li Guang was a famous person, and his orthodox origin was exactly the person favored by historians such as Sima Qian, while Wei Qing was born as a slave, Huo Wentai was an illegitimate child, and his low status was not tolerated by the correct history. This is why Sima Qian's likes and dislikes are so evident in the Records of History.
Poets of all dynasties are more willing to remember Li Guang in their poems, one is admiration for him, and the other is sympathy. Admire Li Guang for many years to persist in fighting against the Xiongnu, defending the country, although he failed to be knighted, but also a very rare heroic general. The ancients had a great liking for the soldiers who fought bravely on the battlefield to kill the enemy.
At the same time, they also sympathize with Li Guang's efforts to bow down for the country, but they have ended up with such a tragic end, which makes those migrant rioters who are full of talent and full of enthusiasm but have nowhere to show their hearts inevitably have some taste of empathy, so Li Guang appears many times in their poems to express the resentment of their ambitions.
For generals like Wei Qing and Huo Fuyi, who had already been made marquises at a young age, although poets praised them, they believed that they all had a lot of relations in the dprk, belonged to the foreign relative class, and were not the kind of examples that the literati liked to work hard all the way from a commoner to finally succeeding, and they could not get the same sense of sadness in them, so compared to Li Guang, few poets missed them. In the final analysis, it is actually because tragic heroes are always easier to remember.