In 1234, the Song Dynasty united with the Mongols to destroy the Jin Kingdom, and Song Lizong was very happy, and he brought the head of the Jin Aizong to the Taimiao Temple to comfort the spirits of Song Huizong and Song Qinzong in heaven. The people of the Southern Song Dynasty breathed a sigh of relief and sighed one after another: The great vengeance during the Jing Kang years had finally been repaid.
However, what everyone did not expect was that after the Mongol army destroyed the Jin Kingdom, it did not return to the north, but directly aimed its gun at the Song Dynasty, and Song Lizong woke up in a big dream: he left the Jin Kingdom, came to Mongolia, drove away the hungry wolves, and came the fierce tigers. Obviously, the weak defense of the Song Dynasty could not withstand the destruction of the Mongol army, and under the continuous attack of the Mongol army, the Southern Song Dynasty was in turmoil.
Two years later, in Luling, Jiangxi, a baby boy named Wen Yunsun was born. Wen Yunsun was clever and clever from an early age, and he admired his fellow countryman Ouyang Xiu very much. Later, on the day that Wen Yunsun was selected as a tribute, the heavens descended on Xiangrui, so he changed his name, and from then on he was called Wen Tianxiang!
At the age of 20, Wen Tianxiang passed the examination, and if in peacetime, Wen Tianxiang might become a generation of literary heroes like Ouyang Xiu. However, at that time, the Mongols had already captured Tongguan, and the Mongol Great Khan Möngke personally led an army to invade the south, and Wen Tianxiang repeatedly shouted loudly, calling on the imperial court to resist the Yuan, and belittling the prime minister Jia Xiangdao for blindly being weak and seeking peace.
In 1259, Möngke was killed in an attack on Sichuan, and his younger brother Kublai Khan succeeded to the Khanate and began a fierce attack on the Song Dynasty. During this period, Emperor Lizong of Song died and his nephew Emperor Duzong of Song ascended the throne. Emperor Duzong of Song was addicted to wine, and the road to resistance to the Yuan in the Southern Song Dynasty was even more bumpy.
In 1273 AD, Xiangyang, a major town in the Central Plains that insisted on the first line of resistance against the Yuan, fell, and the six-year defense of Xiangyang ended. The fall of Xiangyang meant that the Mongol army could go down the river, and the Southern Song Dynasty was in danger!
At this time, Wen Tianxiang was being appointed as the prefect of Ganzhou, and he received an urgent order from the Song court to let the soldiers and horses of the world come to qin the king, and Wen Tianxiang successively sent tens of thousands of soldiers to support the front. In 1275, the Yuan dynasty general Boyan led an army to capture Anqing and Chizhou, and the gateway to Jiankang (present-day Nanjing) was wide opened, if Jiankang died, Lin'an would be difficult to protect, and the government and the opposition were shocked. A year ago, Emperor Duzong of Song died, and his son Emperor Gong of Song, Zhao Xian, was only 5 years old, and Emperor Gong of Song was overwhelmed by the menacing mongol army. When Boyan's army attacked Changzhou, Empress Dowager Xie Daoqing was still trying to make peace.
At that time, the Boyan soldiers were approaching Lin'an City, the Southern Song Dynasty's courtiers Canghuang fled, and the empress dowager looked around and saw that only 6 of the Manchu Dynasty's civil and military officials were still insisting on the upper dynasty, and among these 6 people was Wen Tianxiang, the prefect of Lin'an. The empress dowager decided to make Wen Tianxiang an emissary and go to the Yuan army camp to negotiate with Boyan. Wen Tianxiang bid farewell to Emperor Gong of Song and came to the yuan army camp, and during the negotiations, Boyan felt that Wen Tianxiang was a hard bone, so he detained Wen Tianxiang. The empress dowager had no choice but to send emissaries to replace Wen Tianxiang, and in the end, the Yuan and Song reached an agreement: the Southern Song surrendered.
When Emperor Gong of Song and Empress Dowager Zhao Xian became prisoners of the Yuan army, Wen Tianxiang and others escaped from the Yuan army camp. Wen Tianxiang, together with Lu Xiufu, Zhang Shijie, and others, successively established Emperor Duanzong of Song (6 years old) and Emperor Of the Late Song Dynasty (4 years old) as emperors. But at that time, the Yuan Dynasty's unification of the whole country was unstoppable. Eventually, Wen Tianxiang was betrayed by his men at Haifeng, Guangzhou, and was captured by the Yuan army for the second time, while Lu Xiufu and others fled to Yashan with the late Song Emperor.
Wen Tianxiang was detained by the Yuan army, and the Yuan army planned to escort Wen Tianxiang to Yashan to persuade Lu Xiufu to surrender, and when passing through the Pearl River estuary, Wen Tianxiang wrote "Crossing the Zero Ding Yang", a sentence that "no one has died since ancient times", which touched many descendants. Subsequently, at the Battle of Yashan, Lu Xiufu committed suicide by throwing himself into the sea behind the back of the late Song Emperor, and the Song Dynasty collapsed, and Wen Tianxiang became a prisoner of the fallen country.
The late Song Emperor died, and the Song Dynasty ended, but one of the song courtiers was still alive, and he was Wen Tianxiang. Because Wen Tianxiang would not surrender after his death, although the Song Dynasty died, he still insisted that he was a Song chen.
In 1279, after the Battle of Yashan, Wen Tianxiang was escorted to Dadu. Along the way, many Song Dynasty people heard that Wen Cheng was passing by, prostrated their heads and saluted, and some even sent clothes and food. In the hearts of the people, he was not a prisoner, he was a hero.
However, Wen Tianxiang did not dream that after he was escorted to the capital of the Yuan Dynasty (present-day Beijing), he also met the former emperor of the Song Dynasty, Emperor Gong of Song.
In the past, Wen Tianxiang was sent to the Yuan army as an emissary, and when Wen Tianxiang bid farewell to Emperor Gong of Song, he thought that he would never see the Great Song Tianzi again in this life. Unexpectedly, after the Yuan Dynasty unified China, Wen Tianxiang could still see Emperor Gong of Song.
Originally, in order to make Wen Tianxiang surrender, Kublai Khan could be described as both soft and hard, the high-ranking official Houlu could not induce him to surrender, the beautiful woman Xiangche could not make Wen Tianxiang bow his head, and severe torture could not make Wen Tianxiang defect, Kublai Khan finally decided to let Emperor Song Gong persuade Wen Tianxiang.
It's a more comical scene, asking an emperor who has already surrendered to persuade his former courtiers to surrender. If Wen Tianxiang surrenders, he is treason, and if Wen Tianxiang does not surrender, he is a traitor. In this way, Wen Tianxiang became a "traitor".
However, history seems to have made a joke to Kublai Khan, and Emperor Gong of Song failed to complete the task of persuading him to surrender. In the winter of that year, the 9-year-old Song Gong Emperor came to the prison on the orders of Kublai Khan, and when he saw the 43-year-old Wen Tianxiang, the Song Gong Emperor Zhao Xian suddenly became aggrieved, and he hugged Wen Tianxiang and cried, forgetting everything Kublai Khan had told him.
When Wen Tianxiang saw Emperor Gong of Song coming, he prostrated himself on the ground and prostrated his head, and before Emperor Gong of Song could speak, he kept saying, "Please come back!" Holy Car Please Return..."
Wen Tianxiang wet his towel with tears and kept repeating these 4 words, he hoped that Emperor Gong of Song would never open his mouth to persuade him to surrender, because once he opened his mouth, he and Emperor Gong of Song would become the laughing stock of history.
In the end, Emperor Gong of Song only cried, and the meeting between the monarchs and the courtiers ended in the cries of the two.
This was the last time in the history of the Southern Song Dynasty that kings and subjects met. Because after Wen Tianxiang's death, the "jun" of the Southern Song Dynasty may still exist, but no one is a courtier of the Southern Song Dynasty anymore.
Four years later, Wen Tianxiang was killed in Dadu, and after another 40 years, Emperor Gong of Song, Zhao Xian, was given death by Emperor Yuan Yingzong. All the history of the Song Dynasty was inherited by the Yuan Dynasty.
Five years after the death of Emperor Gong of Song, in Haozhou, Anhui, a peasant named Zhu Wusi gave birth to a son named Zhu Zhongba, and after another 40 years, Zhu Zhongba established the Ming Dynasty and drove the Yuan Dynasty completely to the north of the desert. From the death of Wen Tianxiang to the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, it was only 85 years. During these 85 years, the people of the Central Plains have always been obsessed with Wen Tianxiang.
Yang Shiqi, the head of the "Three Yangs" of the Ming Dynasty, once lamented:
There were many people who killed their subjects in the Song Dynasty. The commentators shall take Wen Chengxiang as the first duke.
We miss Wen Tianxiang, not because we do not advocate national unity, but because we want to praise this national integrity, which has been our backbone for thousands of years.