Every time I think of the cold wind in the Han Sea, a group of white-haired soldiers guarding the border look at their hometown Chang 'an with desperate eyes. They are full of blood and can't help but sigh that heaven is unfair and cry alone.
Anxi Duhufu, a term that China people are proud of, has been a vast symbol of China's territorial sovereignty for many years, which must be publicized in middle school history textbooks. However, few people mentioned its story, changes and the process of its final disappearance. Even in the official history books, it seems that they are ashamed to talk about it, and only a few words have turned the page.
This institution was established during the reign of Emperor Taizong Zhenguan, managing the vast territory from Altai Mountain in the north, Kunlun Mountain in the south and Persian Empire in the west, and set up four military towns: Yanqi, Qiuci, Shule and Kunyu. This is the famous four towns in Anxi. Its last leader is Guo Xin, who led more than 20,000 soldiers to guard here.
Guo Xin is not only a rich second generation, but also an official second generation. His uncle is Guo Ziyi, who saved the day in the Anshi Rebellion and made great contributions to the reconstruction of the Tang Dynasty.
For a long time, Tubo, the biggest enemy of the Tang Dynasty in the west, is now a primitive tribe on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, while the northern part is Uighur, and now it is a hostile force in Xinjiang. When the empire was strong, these two forces dared not fight easily. Although there was war in the middle, the Tang empire still prevailed, and the border of the western regions was firmly controlled by the Tang Dynasty.
Unfortunately, the Anshi Rebellion broke out, and the Anxi Army with strong combat effectiveness mobilized most of its troops to rush to the Central Plains, leaving only a few thousand people to stay where they were. As a result, Tubo took the opportunity to capture a large area of Longyou and Hexi, cut off the contact between the governor of Anxi and the Tang Dynasty, and made the four towns of Anxi an island and an enclave of the Tang Dynasty.
The Anshi Rebellion not only plunged the Tang Dynasty into the quagmire of years of war, but also took eight years to quell the rebellion. This war greatly damaged the national strength of the Tang Dynasty, and the empire was devastated. Knowing that Tubo occupied a large territory of the empire, watching Tubo kill our soldiers and maim our people, there was nothing he could do.
After breaking diplomatic relations with the Tang Dynasty, Guo Xin refused the lure of the Tubo people and led the soldiers to persevere. After more than ten years of persistence, Fang resumed contact with the court. At this time, the Tang dynasty realized that they had long believed that the Anxi army was completely annihilated and the western regions were not completely lost. Guo Xin and his Anxi army are still fighting alone for the final survival of the empire in the western regions.
After learning the situation, the ruling and opposition parties shook and all cried for it. The ancestors' generation praised them. "China, don't work hard, across thousands of miles. There are auxiliary cars at the beginning and end. " Guo Xin was named the marquis of Wuwei, and the rest of the soldiers raised their names with unprecedented strength. However, they didn't send a single soldier to reinforce and let it die.
A few years later, Jin became the left assistant minister of Shangshu. This is a senior official at the rank of prime minister. Unfortunately, in dealing with the western regions, it is still the same. I want an official position, I give it, I want reinforcements. None of them.
The military door frequently accepts surrender books, and the sword crosses Wan Li;
Han Zu praised Lou Jingce, but married Princess Khan.
The Han family is full of levy, and Hu Erma will not be sent back.
If you want to serve your country, why should you be born in Yumenguan?
In this way, the abandoned defenders of Datang Anxi are still gritting their teeth. They are still defending this land of Datang until their death, because this land is permeated with the blood of their comrades-in-arms and buried the bodies of soldiers. They tore up the surrender book again and again and never surrendered. Dai Shulun's "The Next Song" describes their real situation.
One year, two years, ten years, twenty years, the years are passing, and the long-awaited reinforcements are still far away, but they are still persisting. Behind him is the flag of the Tang Dynasty flying in the cold wind, and my heart is still full of pride that "yellow sand wears golden armor and never returns to Loulan".
By this time, soldiers in fresh clothes and angry horses were already flying in the snow. They can't even play the homesick Qiangdi. They are only accompanied by sandstorms and the faint graves of their new companions.
"The boy in golden clothes is full of white hair, and there is a cold grave outside the Great Wall". They have persisted for a long time. They look forward to Chang 'an every day and pray for reinforcements from the imperial court. This is 42 years. Finally, in the cold wind, they ushered in the last tragic time.
It was a snowy winter day, and Tubo launched a final general attack on the last remnants of Anxi, who had already run out of ammunition and food and were fighting alone in the Qiuci military fortress, and their opponents were all faltering white-haired people.
Under the leadership of white-haired Guo Xin, these old people bravely pounced on the elite of the Tubo elite. They are too old, their hands with weapons are shaking, and they can't carry weapons anymore. Wan Li is a lonely city, full of white-haired soldiers. However, they are still fighting the enemy for the last time.
There is no suspense in the result. All the defenders died, and no one surrendered. They are the border guards of the Tang Dynasty and the guardians of the dynasty. They used their lives to tell future generations that the land we guarded for the Tang Dynasty fell, and we tried our best! The last glory of the Tang Dynasty ended in the blood of the Western Regions.
They fell, but the bodies of Anxi officers and soldiers fell, which will never fall, but it is the stubbornness and persistence of a nation and the last glory of Datang!
When the former soldiers stepped into this place again, it was already the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty. Qianlong named this place Xinjiang, which means his newly developed territory. This is his act of flattering himself. Maybe he forgot that the Western Region was the inherent territory of China thousands of years ago, and then it had its own name: Anxi and Beiting!
However, foreign hostile forces have always coveted this magical land. In the end, Zuo entered the DPRK after Empress Dowager Cixi's Western Expedition, and Xinjiang established a province, before he officially declared his sovereignty to the world. It is precisely because "the western regions have gone to Islam for a thousand years."
I was moved by Anxi Army's insistence, but I always wondered why the imperial court didn't send reinforcements to take these veterans back and stood by and watched their imaginable destinations. How can I stand it? I understand that although the road is blocked, it is still possible to send troops back, because the court can still hear the news of Anxi four towns from time to time.
At that time, foreign forces such as Tubo, Uighur and Shatuo were not invading the border, but going deep into the mainland. In order to quell the Anshi rebellion, the court even promised them to help Tang Ting recover the town. But it is easier to ask God than to send him, and these foreign troops became a very difficult thing to solve in the later Tang Dynasty.
The Tang Dynasty was also characterized by constant civil strife, the most typical of which was the Jingyuan mutiny. Juba led the mutinous soldiers to occupy Chang 'an, and the court had to ask for Tubo support again. Such a fight for the skin with the tiger aggravated the disaster of the dynasty and dared not offend Tubo easily. Therefore, it hopes to hold reconciliation talks on the plight of four towns in Anxi.
According to Sima Guang's History as a Mirror, "At the beginning, I sent Tubo to beg Zhu. Xu Chenggong is in Yixi and the northern court. And Bazhu and Tubo came to ask for land, and he asked our two towns, Guo Xin and Li Yuanzhong, to return to Korea with their land. Let the soldiers of the four towns and the North Yard help each other and comfort each other. Ye Li will unite and meet each other, take a shortcut quickly, go home well, and then see the villagers. "
It means giving Tubo the place where Guo Xin and others have been holding on for decades. Just come back by yourself. As for how to come back, it's up to you. I won't send troops to meet you anyway.
As for how the emperor's meaning was finally handled, whether it was conveyed to the soldiers in the western regions or not, the history books are vague. However, the actual situation is that after the Tubo captured the capital of Beiting, the contact between the four towns of Anxi and the central government was completely blocked. They don't even know that the emperor has changed six times and the year number has changed many times.
For the Tang court, it has always been a hope for peace, and our envoy in Longyou at that time, Zhang Yi, once made an alliance with Tubo in Qingshui, and made the following provisions on the ownership of enclaves that still have a large number of Tang Jun.
"The federal something, charger also have something. Han has military forces to defend Han. And if you look after it, you will not be handsome. Without military power, it is not allowed to build castles and cultivate in new villages. "
However, when the situation changes, how can the life and death of Anxi soldiers and civilians be guaranteed by this paper? Moreover, this does not fundamentally define who Anxi belongs to. I don't think Tubo took this paper seriously. In the end, with the Tubo breaking the contract, it was all over.
"The bright moon in the Qin Dynasty, the retreat in the Han Dynasty, and the Long March did not return. But make Longcheng fly, and don't teach Huma to cross Yinshan. " The sonorous battle song has since become a unique voice in the western regions.
"White-haired Qiuci", a term that few people can know now, embodies the sad figure of thousands of white-haired veterans in Anxi Qian Qian under the leadership of Guo Xin. Wan Li's loneliness and blood and tears bear witness to his sincere heart towards China. Unfortunately, there are still a few people who can know the "King of Iron Blood County".
Datang, once a glorious dynasty, people talked about the poems of the prosperous Tang Dynasty, and countries came to the DPRK one after another, keen on the face of Wu Zetian and the derailment of Tang Xuanzong; As for the filth in the later period, it seems that it was summed up by a "separatist regime."
In the late Tang dynasty, it was really a bit lacking. Thanks to the Anshi Rebellion and the endless turmoil in the buffer region, Li Tang, once an empire full of ethnic groups, is long gone, and now it is like a candle in the wind, but I think it should not be a problem to send reinforcements to take back the Anxi army trapped in the gu city.
I really don't understand why the later rulers were so cold-blooded to this iron warrior who stuck to Anxi! Is it really as Wang Zhihuan said in his poem, "Why should the Qiangdi blame Liu? Spring breeze is not enough. "
There is one thing I don't understand, that is, Guo Ziyi, who came back from North Korea with a bed full of water, how can he watch his nephew being trapped in the western regions for decades without making any efforts? This is not a temporary thing, but it has been nearly half a century. Just to be consistent with the central government?
Few people know the name of the king of the blood county in the Tang Dynasty, and historians at that time deliberately ignored it, which is understandable, because this is, after all, the shame of the imperial court in "Self-destruction", and it is also the reason why later history books are reluctant to mention it, so that this tragic song almost disappears in people's memory.
The reason is that Tubo and Uighur in those days, that is, Tibet and Xinjiang today, have scruples in propaganda? So now people only know the beauty of Princess * * getting married in Tibet, and even the tragedy of China and Han people who were near genocide in the five riots was covered up by the phrase "promoting national harmony".
Every time I read this famous saying by Wang Wei, I never think of the intoxicating magnificence of the desert. What emerges is the expression of Guo Xin standing in Chengtou with a long sword and looking east with silver hair in the cold wind. He was accompanied by the sad figure of white-haired veterans who fought for defending the country, and behind him was a blood-red sunset. ...