The story of "Water Margin" is familiar to us today, in addition to the novel itself is very exciting, the opportunity to spread is also very important. Due to the continuous natural disasters in ancient China, there were basically 1.5 recorded famines every year, and the peasant uprisings of large and small in China continued, which laid a solid mass foundation for the spread of the Water Margin story. However, in addition to many circulating Water Margin stories, such as "The Great Song Xuanhe and testament", "Water Margin Later Biography", "Later Water Margin" and other novels, there is also a novel that is seriously underestimated by the world, that is, the theme of this article: "Dangkou Zhi".
The story line of "Dang Kou Zhi" is based on real history, that is, the story of the Song Jiang Uprising was finally suppressed by Zhang Shuye, but how to suppress it, the author Yu Wanchun wrote a whole book in a down-to-earth manner. As one of the most important sequels to Water Margin, Yu Wanchun's depth of thought may not be as deep as other authors, but it may be more interesting to understand his process of creating novels itself than novels:
Yu Wanchun, born in the 59th year of Qianlong and died in the 29th year of Daoguang, lived through the Jiaqing and Daoguang dynasties. Born in the area of present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang, Yu Wanchun and his father participated in the suppression of peasant uprisings in Guangdong as a young man. During this period, he found that the leaders of the rebel army especially liked to use the story of "Water Margin" to "charm" the common people, so that many ordinary people were coerced, some were deceived, and participated in the peasant uprising. Coincidentally, "Water Margin" is also Yu Wanchun's favorite book. Under the condition that he does not have the ability to influence the political situation of the country, it may become a very good way to continue to write water margins.
Since it is a continuation of the Water Margin, the first question to be answered is:
If the good men of Liangshan continued to develop in accordance with the armament and combat effectiveness of "Water Margin", what would it look like?
On this issue, Yu Wanchun was very familiar with the road because he had participated in the suppression of peasant rebels many times:
In the first thirty episodes of the "Dangkou Zhi", the good men of Liangshan attacked the city everywhere and robbed the state capital. However, due to the fact that Liangshan's basic program was "for the Heavenly Path", after becoming a rebel, the contradictions within the rebel army were gradually revealed. At the same time, as the territory of the good han of Liangshan continued to expand, it also gave the imperial court the opportunity to break through from the side, at this point, although Yu Wanchun was very "vicious" in designing the good han of Liangshan, such as the well-known hero Wu Song who fought the tiger would be killed by shedding strength; and Zhang Qing, who was good at using flying stones, was directly knocked over by a musket. Basically, the good men of Liangshan died under the martial arts they were good at.
In addition to playing "in the other way, but also to the other body", there are some good men in Liangshan who directly die of infighting. This is actually a common way for peasant rebels in ancient China, such as the first peasant uprising in ancient China, Chen Sheng and Wu Guang's uprising, Wu Guang eventually died at the hands of Chen Sheng; after that, peasant rebels were also very rare without infighting. Even two years after Yu Wanchun's death, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, which marked the peak of the Chinese peasant revolt, began to split directly from within after the capital was set in Nanjing, and the wing king Shi Da drove away. In "Dang Kou Zhi", such an identity is given to Lu Junyi, who designs to frame Qin Ming for the thunderbolt fire, which eventually leads to Qin Ming's death in battle.
Of course, in addition to this, the book "Lang Kouzhi" is also full of the author's imagination of new weapons. For example, a random gun:
The name of the hammer is "Falling Box and Beaded Hammer". Above it was a copper rod that allowed forty shots of gunpowder and forty shots of lead. However, the gunpowder and lead in the copper pipe were added enough, and the gunpowder and gunpowder in the bottom door were lit, and the gunpowder and lead in the copper gate could fall into the box by themselves, sneak into the pipe, and bombard it outwards, so that it would not bother people to fill it, and the sound of the gunpowder would be endless, until the forty hammers were finished. If forty hammers are not enough, just add gunpowder and lead to the copper shaft, even if there are thousands of sounds, one after another. More anti-reaming pipe hot frying, each with a large kettle under the reaming, frequent watering. That hammer could send more than a thousand steps away, all of which emanated from the eye sockets of the giant beast. There were four more rollers behind the car, and the stones flew out. Stones vary in size, the small ones fly far, the big ones fly close, and there are hundreds of steps to make.
This thing was called "water-cooled machine gun" in later generations, but it was not yet invented in Yu Wanchun's era. What is even more interesting is that the person who gave Song Jiang this weapon, named "Bai Valhan", was a Westerner who later surrendered to the officers and soldiers.
Coincidentally, after the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom army invaded the city of Suzhou, it also directly destroyed the book edition of "Dang Kou Zhi", at that time, the Taiping Army called the foreigners "Fan Brothers", and later had to fall into defeat under the joint attack of the Qing Dynasty and foreign invading forces."
Whenever yu wanchun is mentioned here, it will always be judged by his works with a certain position, but in all fairness, Yu Wanchun's understanding of the peasant rebel army is indeed not comparable to that of ordinary literati and scholars. If we let go of the bridge sections that made the good man of Liangshan die, the theme of "Dang KouZhi" will also come out:
Even the famous Song Jiang Uprising could not avoid these fates, let alone other peasant uprisings?
This may be what we often say in textbooks: the limitations of the peasant class?