In modern TV dramas, people often see that after the ancient wars, the battlefield is full of corpses, which is always a tragic scene. But is that really the case? Our answer is: not necessarily. Even, sometimes the battlefield is very "clean".
When the battle was fought, he received a bowl of wine from the general, and he "screamed" and rushed forward with the strength of the wine, and when the wine was almost volatilized, the war was almost over. At that time, the Huns would do one thing, that is, to find the bodies of their comrades-in-arms, which was of great benefit to them.
The "Chronicle of the Xiongnu" says: When preparing for war, we must first observe the stars and moon, and if the moon is perfect, we will attack, and if the moon is in deficit, we will retreat. When the Huns attacked and conquered, whoever killed or captured the enemy was rewarded with a pot of wine, and the spoils of war were distributed to them, and those who were captured were also given to them as slaves. So in the war, everyone automatically seeks their own interests, and is good at ambushing the army to suddenly meet the enemy. So when they see the enemy soldiers, they go after the interests, like birds flying together. If a crisis fails, the team will disintegrate, like a cloud dissipating. Whoever can bring back the bodies of his comrades who died in battle in the war can get the entire family wealth of the dead.
This not only paints a vivid picture of the huns' war for people today, but also tells people that the battlefield at that time should be "clean" and there are basically no corpses to be found. The corresponding Central Plains Dynasty was actually like this, according to the "Warring States Policy Han Ce" record: "The Qin people donated armor and disciples to the enemy, left people's heads, right to take prisoners." It vividly describes the appearance of the Qin army bare-chested, carrying a human head in its left hand, and holding a prisoner in its right hand, and fighting bravely to kill the enemy. Why is it working so hard? This is because the head of a person means military merit, and more military merit can change the fate of an individual.
"The third tyrannical head, the school, the third day, the general is undoubtedly to the scholar Doctor Lord." This means that after the war, the soldiers handed over their own decapitated heads, and the relevant leaders gathered them together for "publicity" to see if there was any cheating, and if there was no problem, after three days they could discuss the merits and rewards.
This is the head of the person being taken back, but cutting off the head of a dead person in the war or after the war is really a laborious thing, not very convenient, is there a substitute for it? The answer is: Definitely! There are records of replacing human heads with other parts in various historical periods. For example, in the "Explanation of Words and Characters", it is said: "馘 (pronounced guó), the military battle broke the ear also." "The left ear was chosen because in ancient times, the left was respected. This practice flourished during the Yuan Dynasty. In addition, the Western Xia also has a record of replacing the head with a nose.
Only the nose and ears? Of course not. During the Battle of Xiaxia, the familiar Xiang Yu fled all the way to Wujiang and met the chief of Wujiang Pavilion, who persuaded Xiang Yu to return to Jiangdong to try to make a comeback, but Xiang Yu refused on the grounds that he had no face to see Jiangdong's father and elder, and sat down on his horse and gave it to the chief of the pavilion. Therefore, Xiang Yu dismounted and fought, killing hundreds of Han soldiers in one go, and he himself suffered more than a dozen wounds. Then he wielded his knife and killed himself.
In the face of Xiang Yu's body, the historical scene is like this: the Han army rushed up, killing each other, and dozens of people died. In the end, Langzhong rode Yang Xi, sima Lü Matong, Langzhong Lü Sheng, Yang Wu and other four people each got one, that is to say, a certain part of the body, such as thighs, arms and so on. They brought these back, and Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao, gave the four people rewards for the title of Marquis and The Food Yi respectively. Among them, Yang Xi opened the prelude to one of the four major families in China, "Hongnong Yang Family", and it can be said that the military merit of a "body" changed the fate of a family.
It is not difficult to see that for some important people, it may not be the nose and ears, and every part of their body clearly represents money and status. Drunkenly lying on the battlefield Jun Mo smiled, how many people did Gu Lai fight back? For those heavyweights, even the corpses are difficult to come back, so there is no such thing as "poor and uncertain river bones", but they are still "like people in the dream of spring"!
The battlefield is "clean" a lot here. In addition, what we want to say is that most of the time, war is not at all like the TV show, one side is very powerful, always beat the other side to the ground. Some battles are often fought by both sides, which are very stalemate, not a moment and a half of work, and the commander in charge of the battle will also leave a period of time for the other side to deal with the body. Between battles, personnel from both sides would enter the area where they had fought and carry back the remains of those killed on their own. At that time, when neither side could fight or planned how to fight the next battle, the commanders of both sides knew this.
After the war, the right and obligation to clean up the battlefield certainly belonged to the victorious side, and the ancients were very scientific in dealing with this aspect, they would not let the remains rot, because it would spread the plague, which ruled out the phenomenon that the corpses scattered in the mountains and movies were not collected. The ancients generally collected corpses on the battlefield and buried them on the spot or burned them, but this situation is rare, that is, most of the corpses have been taken away in the war, and there are not so many to bury and burn. This is also one of the important reasons why we see tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people die in such and such a battle today, but we can't find the bones of these people. In short, in a word: the remains on the battlefield in ancient times are really not like those played on TV today, and people can think of those shots that are "acted" as "art".
Well, now we can go back to the account of the Chronicle of the Huns and the handling of the remains by the Huns. The account of the "Chronicle of History" allows us to have a quiet discovery in the Huns. As we all know, the Xiongnu practiced succession marriage, and most of them took their widowed wives as wives after the death of their brothers, including brothers and sisters-in-law and brothers and sisters-in-law. In some cases, there are also sons who take their mothers (father's concubines) as wives. In the past, some people imagined this too badly, thinking that most women were "adopted" after the death of their husbands, and the way they handled the remains of "comrades-in-arms" allowed us to see another "way out" for those women.
Although the Huns were all soldiers, women still did some "logistical" work. Today's scholars analyze that their population should be between 1 million and 1.5 million, we calculate according to the proportion of men and women, there should be 500,000-750,000 women, young and middle-aged if each accounted for one-third, Xiongnu adult or wife women should be between 150,000 and 250,000. Will these people be adopted after the death of their husbands? The Chronicle of the Huns tells people that of course it is not.
We conservatively estimate that it is not a problem for the Xiongnu, a belligerent people, to die at least 10,000 men every year in the war with the Central Plains Dynasty, and most of the 10,000 women who have lost their husbands are probably remarried to soldiers who have carried their husbands' bodies from the battlefield. And this number must be higher than the normal death, that is to say, the Xiongnu women's adoption is not even half accounted for, he will marry the husband's comrades after the husband's death, although this is also a kind of inheritance, but it is obviously more civilized than the husband's brother. In an era when women were regarded as wealth by the Huns' men, there was no reason not to believe that the Huns' men would take away the remains of their "comrades-in-arms" as bravely as they killed their enemies on the battlefield! (Text/Lu Sheng)