Historical events in Meridian Valley

Woods Valley is the steepest of the six roads connecting the southwest of Qinling Mountains. There have been many attempts to smuggle people in history, but no one has ever succeeded.

In ancient times, six roads crossed the Qinling Mountains and reached the southwest and surrounding areas. From west to east are Chencang Road, Xiexie Road, Luo Luo Lu Road, Woods Road, Ku Valley Road and Wuguan Road. The Qinling Mountains are high in mountains and deep in valleys. Although these six roads are all dangerous, they have been breached or smuggled many times in wars throughout the ages. Among them, the Meridian Road in Meridian Valley is the only dangerous fortress among the six ancient roads that has planned smuggling many times, but it has never been successful. Therefore, some historians have lamented that the Six Classics of Qinling Mountains are king.

The geographical route of Woods Valley probably starts from Ling Du (now southeast of Xi City), and then passes through Qinling Mountains to Hanzhong. It was founded in the Qin Dynasty. After a hundred years of obscurity, it first appeared on the war stage at the end of Qin Dynasty. At that time, when Liu Xiang contended with a hundred schools of thought, Liu Bang was forced to go to Hanzhong as Hanwang. It is through the meridian valley that the dangers of the road inspired the fighting spirit of the Han army soldiers against Xiang Yu. Finally, I returned to Guanzhong and seized the world. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Wang Sheng, the satrap of Hanzhong, wrote a monograph "Ode to Shimen", praising the Meridian Road to boost the morale of the Han soldiers: Gaozu was ordered, and Hanzhong Meridian Road promoted the road. ...

During the first Northern Expedition in the Three Kingdoms period, Zhuge Liang, the prime minister of Shu Han, put forward the plan of meridian valley in Wei Lue, and suggested to Zhuge Liang to lead 10 thousand troops out of Chang 'an from meridian valley. Zhuge Liang thought the risk was too great and refused. But Zhuge Liang denied it, and the reason should also be related to the unpredictable weather and sinister geography of the Meridian Valley. However, in the reflection, Wei Yan often said to Zhuge Liang that "all soldiers will meet Tongguan, like the story of Han Xin", without mentioning the meridian valley. When Cao Zhen, the general of Cao Wei, attacked Shu, he was still marching in Shu. However, when it rained heavily, the plank road was cut off. Cao Zhen walked for a month before he was halfway there and was forced to retreat. Wei Yan's schemes were tried later, but they all failed. For example, Huan Wen of the Eastern Jin Dynasty hacked the former Qin Dynasty, and just like Wei Yan, he was ambushed by Qin Jun before he left the valley.

Huan Wen, a famous Eastern Jin Dynasty soldier, attacked Chang 'an and ordered Sima Xun to leave the Meridian Valley from Hanzhong, but he was defeated by Qin Jun before leaving the Valley Road. Yang Guifei of the Tang Dynasty loved lychee, which was shipped from Fuzhou in southern Sichuan by Flying Horse in Meridian Valley within three days.

Although the Meridian Valley is famous for its difficulty in traveling, historically, this road was leveled in the Tang Dynasty and became a shocking expressway.

This history is related to the famous legend of a princess riding the world of mortals and laughing. Because in the Tang Dynasty, Meridian Road was given another name: Litchi Ancient Road.

According to historical records, in 742 AD, in order to satisfy Yang Yuhuan's hobby of eating fresh litchi, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty ordered to build a high-quality litchi garden in Fuzhou (now Fuling, Chongqing), build a highway from Fuzhou to Xi 'an, set up a post station from Fuzhou, change horses without changing things, and quickly relay, and built a post road with a total length of 1000 kilometers, which was specially used for litchi transportation. This ancient road starts from Fuzhou, passes through Xuanhan, Wanyuan, Tongjiang and other places, and finally enters the Meridian Road to Chang 'an.

Although the quality of litchi in Sichuan is not as good as that in Lingnan, compared with paying tribute from Lingnan, the journey can save one or two thousand miles, so the ancient litchi road became the most prosperous post road in Tang Dynasty. So, how long did it take from Chongqing to Xi? This ancient road gives a shocking answer: it only takes 7 days. According to Tang Changjing, the Tang Dynasty used tens of thousands of manpower, and the post road was set up every twenty miles 1 post station. Then, the picked lychees are preserved by indigenous methods, put into cages and mounted on horses (for example, litchi leaves are sealed in bamboo tubes), and a person is changed every 20 miles, and a horse is changed every 60 miles, thus ensuring that fresh lychees are delivered to Chang 'an day and night.

The speed of the ancient road is amazing, but in fact, the efficiency of this road is piled up with people's flesh and blood and even life. In order to transport litchi, transporters are often killed by passers-by. In Qing Dynasty, scholar Tong wrote a poem "Meridian Valley? Yao Muguan wrote the sadness of the postal people in those days: Wuhou refused to March, and the Tang Dynasty turned to Gong Li. Today, the road is long, but it is still Yuhuan.

Nowadays, in the Meridian Valley, we can still see many relics of the ancient litchi road, such as the horse-blocking wall, horse-drinking trough, closed wall, camp plate and so on. , still exist in the Qinling Mountains. The road paved with long stone stairs and slabs has been mottled by years. Walking among them, I feel the massiness and coolness of history. Perhaps influenced by the lofty spirit of the Great Qinling Mountains, people living in the valley seem to have inherited a tough character in their bones from birth, just like the folk song here says: When the folk songs reach the top of the mountain, the prince is also worried when he sees me. Confucius saw me dismount, and the emperor saw me bow.

In the Ming Dynasty, the mountain people once formed a team, which was called Qin Jun by later generations because of its bravery and good fighting (the other two were Ning Guan Tieqi and Tianxiong Army).

Among the three armies, Qin Jun's fighters are second only to Guan Ning's. Historians say that our soldiers are strong because of their strong mobility and good fighting skills of heroic troops, because of unity, and the source of pool fighting capacity is precisely because of the personality given to soldiers by the great Qinling Mountains.

This powerful army once made unsuspecting military strategists suffer a lot. The most prominent example is King Gao Yingxiang, who even died in Meridian Valley because of ignorance.

In July of the ninth year of Chongzhen (A.D. 1636), King Chuang led all his main forces into the Meridian Valley in an attempt to sneak into it, then raided An and occupied Shaanxi. But first of all, he ignored the weather and steep roads in the Meridian Valley: due to the narrow roads and heavy rain, tens of thousands of troops in Gao Yingxiang walked for a few days, only halfway there, and they were exhausted and suffered serious material losses. When he finally reached Heishui Valley in Woods Valley after a hard March, he found that there were already 20,000 Ming troops lurking here.

The reason why the Ming army waited patiently in Heishui Valley of the Meridian Valley was because Sun Chuanting, the commander in chief, knew that Gao Yingxiang and his troops were very fragile after trekking through the Meridian Valley. When the two armies met, they went to war, and Gao Yingxiang led the army to launch several attacks. However, because the Ming army in the Meridian Valley was too fierce, and there were many locals who were familiar with the topography, Gao Yingxiang's attack was completely useless-the men, women and children of the Ming army went into battle together and shouted to mobilize a group of relatives. Even if the defense line is washed away every time, it won't be long before they gather again ... Finally, the two sides fought fiercely for four days, and the king Gao Yingxiang, who had been in power for seven years, was captured, which ended.

1936 12 February 12, Xi 'an, Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng detained Chiang Kai-shek who had urged him to suppress * * * and a dozen military and political dignitaries who accompanied him to Xi 'an, thus, the An Incident broke out. A new army stationed in Shaanxi, under the leadership of its new division commander, was ordered to leave the Meridian Valley to attack the "diligent king" in Hanzhong. Due to the peaceful settlement of the midway incident, the division immediately entered Hanzhong. The nickname of this division is: the 51st Division of the National Revolutionary Army, and the teacher's name is Wang.