Zhu Chao accompanied me to watch short videos

Jiangnan was the money bag for the Tang Dynasty's state machinery. It was thanks to the endless wealth in Jiangnan that the Tang Dynasty had enough strength to continue fighting the rebels. As Suiyang was the only way for the rebels to go south, the rebels were eager to take it and cut off the connection between Jiangnan and the Tang Dynasty.

Therefore, An Lushan's son An Qingxu sent General Yin Ziqi to lead 13 troops to attack Suiyang City. In the entire Suiyang City, Zhang Xun's troops added up to less than 7000 people. The outcome of such a war with such a huge disparity in strength seemed to have been predetermined.

With the fierce attack of the rebels, Zhang Xun held Suiyang for 10 months in isolation and food shortage. In the end, the city was captured and Zhang Xun would rather die than surrender, showing his integrity and fearlessness of life and death.

Under the command of Zhang Xun, hundreds of battles of varying sizes were fought before and after the Battle of Suiyang, with a total of 12 people preventing the rebels from moving south to the Yangtze and Huaihe Rivers, thus preserving the southeastern half of the Tang Dynasty and making great contributions to quelling the Anshi Rebellion.

Zhang Xun's battle to defend the city was undoubtedly a miracle in the era of cold weapons. With such a miraculous record, Zhang Xun was also hailed as one of the most outstanding generals defending the city in ancient China.

However, the battle was extremely brutal. The defenders ran out of food and had to eat humans, and almost all the civilians in the city were killed or wounded. Therefore, the controversy over Zhang Xun's merits and demerits has continued from that time to later generations.

At that time, the Tang army had been out of food for a long time, and had eaten up all the tree bark and paper. So Zhang Xun set up a trap to catch birds and mice to satisfy his hunger, and later even ate the leather armor.

When there was nothing left to eat, the people in the city resorted to cannibalism. Zhang Xun first killed his concubine and forced the officers and soldiers to eat her. Then Xu Yuan killed his wife and used her as military rations. After eating the commander's family, the old, weak, women and children in the city were eaten. There were 4 households in Suiyang before the war, but only 400 households remained when the city was captured.

There is no shortage of such controversy in Chinese history about eating so many civilians in order to win. For thousands of years, the debate about Zhang Xun has never stopped. Although Zhang Xun was defending the city, he should not have killed the civilians, which is an important reason why most people criticize him.

But people seem to have forgotten one thing: it is unfair for future generations to judge their predecessors from a God’s perspective with hindsight.

This is not to advocate so-called sacrifice, but to look at it from an objective perspective. The tragedy of cannibalism in the Battle of Suiyang was also an extreme phenomenon under unavoidable circumstances.

For Zhang Xun, he did everything he could based on the so-called values ​​at that time.

On the contrary, it is precisely Tang Xuanzong's stupidity that should be criticized, which caused tens of thousands of people to fall into dire straits.

[Read all the three most criticized generals in the early Tang Dynasty in one go - historical knowledge of the Tang Dynasty]

They are the famous generals of the Tang Dynasty who were most vilified in novels. They were all famous and made great contributions to the Tang Dynasty, but they were blackened by novels and were reviled for thousands of years. In this video, let us get to know the three famous generals of the early Tang Dynasty again.

The first one is the war god of the Tang Dynasty, Su Dingfang. I believe everyone is familiar with Su Dingfang. He is the most slandered general in the early Tang Dynasty. Speaking of Su Dingfang, many people's first impression of him is vicious, sinister and cunning.

However, most people's impression of Su Dingfang comes from historical novels. In "The Romance of Sui and Tang Dynasties" and "The Story of Tang", Su Dingfang is a complete villain who is the enemy of Wagangzhai. Luo Yi and Luo Cheng, father and son, all died at his hands. After that, he appeared as a treacherous minister and was finally killed by Luo Tong.

However, the real Su Dingfang in history was actually a rare general, and his attacking ability was even not inferior to Li Jing.

Su Dingfang fought throughout his life, pacified the Turks, conquered Tubo, opened up Goguryeo, defeated the Three Kingdoms, and captured their chief generals alive. He made great contributions to the expansion of the Tang Dynasty's territory: west to Central Asia, north to Russia, and east to the Joseon Peninsula.

Su Dingfang was highly appreciated and trusted by Emperor Gaozong of Tang for his extraordinary military achievements. People at that time regarded him as the best general of Emperor Gaozong of Tang.

In addition to his military talent, Su Dingfang was also good at discovering and cultivating talents. In his early years, he met Pei Xingjian, a young man with both talent and virtue. He lamented that "there are no soldiers who can use troops, and no one can teach them", so he taught Pei Xingjian all his knowledge and the essence of his military operations.

After Su Dingfang's death, Pei Xingjian also became a famous general in the later period of Emperor Gaozong of Tang. He quelled the rebellions of the Eastern and Western Turks many times and re-established the Four Anxi Towns for the Tang Dynasty. He was known in history as "a great Confucian general."

The second is the loyal and good general Zhang Shigui. As a loyal and famous general of the founding of the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Shigui's reputation was buried, mainly because of the historical novels.

In the widely circulated folk storytelling "Xue Rengui's Expedition to the East", Zhang Shigui was inexplicably portrayed as a dark-minded, extremely sinister villain who tried his best to suppress and rob Xue Rengui of his credit.

, always obstructing the positive character Xue Rengui. All kinds of shameful tricks emerge one after another, and he is written as a complete villain.

Due to the great influence of this storytelling, it was adapted into operas, TV dramas, etc. As a result, the image of Zhang Shigui was seriously distorted and misunderstood by later generations for thousands of years, which is very regrettable.

In history, Zhang Shigui learned martial arts since childhood, was good at riding and shooting, and had extraordinary arm strength. As a famous general of the founding of the Tang Dynasty, regardless of his personal qualifications and military exploits,

Zhang Shigui served the Tang Dynasty for a long time and participated in many battles. No one in the founding military generals of the Tang Dynasty could match him. Zhang Shigui fought many battles in his life and made many military achievements.

Zhang Shigui participated in all four major battles in the founding war of the Tang Dynasty - pacifying powerful enemies such as Liu Wuzhou, Dou Jiande, and Wang Shichong.

During the foreign wars in the early Tang Dynasty, he also participated in the fight against Tuyuhun, the pacification of Xueyantuo, and the expedition to Liaodong.

As a veteran, Zhang Shigui's service time is astonishingly long. He served successively for Emperor Gaozu of Tang Li Yuan, Emperor Taizong of Tang Li Shimin, and Emperor Gaozong of Tang Li Zhi, from the first year of Wude to the first year of Xianqing of Emperor Gaozong of Tang, a period of nearly forty years.

It is worth mentioning that it was with the help of Zhang Shigui that Xue Rengui grew from an ordinary soldier to a military general of the Tang Dynasty, realizing a turning point in his life. He was appreciated by Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin, on the Liaodong battlefield, and thus rose to fame overnight. Zhang Shigui was Xue Rengui's great benefactor.

The third is the famous general Li Dao Zong. In the novel, Li Dao Zong is described as an ambitious prince who deliberately framed Xue Rengui and was a complete treacherous villain.

However, in history, Li Daozon, as a royal relative of the Tang Dynasty, was like Wei Qing and Huo Qubing of the Han Dynasty. He fought in all directions, made outstanding achievements, and was deeply respected.

Li Daozon made outstanding contributions throughout his life. He participated in many battles against Liu Wuzhou, Wang Shichong, DTZ, Tuyuhun, Goguryeo, etc., and made great contributions to the unification and expansion of the Tang Dynasty.

In addition, Li Daozong was quite studious in his later years, a quiet and virtuous man, and never regarded himself as a meritorious official. Among the royal family members in the early Tang Dynasty, only he and Li Xiaogong were most praised by the world, and the two were called "virtuous kings".

In his later years, Emperor Taizong of Tang even commented that the only generals at that time were Li Daozon and Xue Wanche.

[Read all the historical knowledge and philosophy of Wang Chong, the atheist master who fought in the Eastern Han Dynasty]

He was the first anti-superstitious thinker in the history of Chinese middle schools. In the ancient feudal society where people believed in ghosts and gods, he vigorously advocated atheism.

He was called a "heretic" rebel, but he spent 30 years to complete a work against superstition, which was called "a rare book through the ages". He was extremely talented and was considered to have surpassed Xunzi and Mencius, but he was buried and suppressed by later generations. He was the militant atheist - Wang Chong.

As a great thinker in the Eastern Han Dynasty, Wang Chong's materialistic philosophy was called "militant atheism."

The famous German philosopher Hegel once said that "China has no philosophy", which is undoubtedly the biggest fallacy. The modern Chinese philosopher Feng Youlan called Wang Chong "the biggest atheist and materialist philosopher in the Han Dynasty", which is an evaluation that cannot be ignored.

Zhang Taiyan, a modern Chinese scholar, once said: "The Han Dynasty had a man who was able to stand tall among the people. Is there anyone who can replace him today?"

What this means is that there was a person like Wang Chong in the Han Dynasty who was enough to inspire people, and even now few people can reach the level of his thoughts.

Although Wang Chong's name may be unfamiliar to many people, in the early Eastern Han Dynasty, when everyone from the emperor to the common people had great reverence for ghosts and gods, Wang Chong proposed atheism from a materialistic perspective.

In fact, before Wang Chong, people in both the East and the West had already put forward the idea of ​​atheism.

But it was Wang Chong who truly established a systematic system of atheistic thought and elaborated in detail what the atheistic world was like.

Therefore, he is also known as the "first atheist." Compared with the West under the religious theocracy in the Middle Ages, Wang Chong explored atheism more than 1000 years earlier.

He was out of tune with that era, as if he was a person who traveled through time, just like the child in "The Emperor's New Clothes", everyone in the world was drunk, but he was the only one sober.

Wang Chong spent more than 30 years writing Lun Heng, an immortal work in Chinese history.

His thoughts are all in it, and the book is called "a theory of the times that is urgent for all ages, and a book about the common people."

The title of the book is taken from the two words "Lun Heng". The original meaning of "Heng" is a balance. "Lun Heng" means that the author wants to measure all the thoughts and theories from ancient times to the present, determine their right and wrong, and criticize the so-called false theories.

In the pre-Qin period and earlier, the mainstream view at the time did not deny the existence of God.

For example, Confucius once said, "I do not speak of strange things, supernatural powers, or gods." Combined with the sacrificial and burial cultures that had been passed down from before, people in this period recognized the existence of gods, but there was no complete theological system like that of later generations.

It was not until the reign of Emperor Wu of Han that he adopted Dong Zhongshu's suggestion to "reject all schools of thought and respect Confucianism alone", which led to a major change. Emperor Wu of Han's choice to respect Confucianism alone also had a profound impact on the fields of religion and theology.

Because the "Confucianism" proposed by Dong Zhongshu is not the original Confucianism, but the product of Confucianism as the foundation and the integration of the thoughts of other schools of thought. Among them, the most special thought integrated by Dong Zhongshu is the Five Elements Thought of Yin-Yang School.

Although this idea explained the legitimacy of the emperor's rule, it also gave the imperial power a cloak of mysticism. When Dong Zhongshu proposed this plan, he probably did not think of the subsequent consequences.

But obviously, after this plan was implemented, a result occurred that no one expected: from this time on, subsequent emperors and ruling classes discovered that they could further strengthen imperial power and feudal rule by strengthening theology.

Because in this theory, "imperial power is granted by God", the emperor is not an ordinary person, but more like God's spokesperson in the secular world.

With this theory, the emperor could control the country more easily.

Therefore, from the time of Emperor Wu of Han until the establishment of the Eastern Han Dynasty by Liu Xiu, although the Han Dynasty experienced Wang Mang's usurpation of the Han Dynasty and the chaos in the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, overall, the idea of ​​"divine right of kings" and the so-called "study of prophecies and divinations" have been constantly developing.

Even when Liu Xiu became emperor, he had to claim that he was the emperor recognized by Liu Bang in heaven before he could become emperor legitimately.

Therefore, after the founding of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the study of prophecies and divinations became popular, and the theological system began to develop rapidly and gradually improve.

It was in this context that Wang Chong appeared. At that time, Wang Chong was highly regarded.

For example, Xie Yiwu of the Eastern Han Dynasty praised Wang Chong's talent, saying that although he was not as good as Mencius, Sun Qing, Yang Xiong, and Sima Qian, he was comparable to them. Although this statement was a bit too high, it was enough to prove his talent.

In Lun Heng, Wang Chong first denied the mystery of "heaven". He believed that the whole world was composed of "qi", which was divided into yin and yang. All things composed of qi were naturally a law with inevitability and spontaneity.

God has no sensory consciousness, so how can he know if we pray to him? His theory was later called "theory of dependent origination".

Through this theory, Wang Chong systematically explained the existence of all things, including the birth of man and the birth of the world. In his theory, man is just a kind of intelligent thing.

Wang Chong's understanding of the world is shocking even today. It is hard to believe that he lived 2000 years ago. For example, Wang Chong said in Lun Heng that humans are essentially no different from all other things in the world. Since nothing is immortal, how can humans cultivate to become immortals and live forever?

Moreover, pigs, dogs, cows and sheep will not become ghosts after they die, so why can humans become ghosts after they die? In his book, Wang Chong also strongly refuted the fallacy that "people become ghosts after they die and have spirits that can harm people", which is why the ancients were full of fear of ghosts - because they believed that ghosts could harm people.

Wang Chong said that when a person is asleep, although his body and spirit are still there, he cannot harm others because he has no consciousness. So when a person dies, his spirit and body are gone, so how can he harm others? Wang Chong's atheism reflects his materialistic thinking. Do these views sound familiar to you?

Yes, in modern times, many of Wang Chong's ideas overlap with modern scientific theories. Although Wang Chong's theory has certain historical limitations, many modern scientific theories, such as the composition of matter and the material properties of human beings, are indeed similar to Wang Chong's theory.