The Sichuan area has always been a place where soldiers and families must fight, and the terrain within its basin is flat and vast, the grain and grass are fertile, and the surrounding steep mountains separate this land from the disturbances outside, making Sichuan easy to defend and difficult to attack.
However, Sichuan's wealth and dangers have also caused it to suffer since ancient times. Whenever the world is in turmoil, this land bears the brunt of the coveting of many armies. For example, during the strong period of the Mongol Empire, Möngke could not attack the Southern Song Dynasty for a long time, so he wanted to borrow Sichuan. Since ancient times, the sichuan and Shu soldiers and civilians have been indomitable and vowed to defend their homeland to the death, so in the battle with the Mongols, the population has plummeted from nearly ten million to only a few hundred thousand. Later, due to the death of Meng Ge in Sichuan, Sichuan was not welcomed in the Yuan Dynasty.
And whenever the dynasty changed, the warlords always relied on the terrain of Sichuan to establish a divided regime, such as the Bactrian regime in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties and the Daxi regime in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the establishment of these regimes made Sichuan suffer from war, but this undoubtedly tempered the sichuan people's tenacity and fearlessness and the feelings of defending the country.
Therefore, during the arduous Period of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in this land of thousands of years, the most bloody people were the sons and soldiers of Sichuan. It was also the wealth of Sichuan that enabled the Nationalist government to rely on Shu land and persist until the victory of the War of Resistance after Nanjing was captured.
However, in fact, the vast majority of the Sichuan army in the War of Resistance Against Japan was not really "Sichuanese", why is this? This also needs to start from the end of the Ming Dynasty.
▲The Sichuan Army resisted the War
In fact, after a hundred years of rule by the Yuan Dynasty, Sichuan has only had hundreds of thousands of people settled. After the establishment of the Ming government, Sichuan was taken care of by a strong development policy, and its population recovery was not as good as the nearly 10 million people of the Song Dynasty, but it also grew to 4 million.
However, with the great chaos in the world at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the war once again swept across the land of Sichuan. At that time, Zhang Xianzhong's peasant rebel army established the Daxi regime in Sichuan, and according to historical records, Zhang Xianzhong's Daxi regime was later boycotted by the Sichuan people in Sichuan, so that the Sichuan people were slaughtered on a large scale, so that the population of Sichuan once again did not exist. However, this is most likely nonsense.
Sometimes, the history is not fully believed! In ancient times, the wealth of kings and governments needed to be created through the people with a small peasant economy, and if the ruler slaughtered the people, he would have no source of taxes or army, which would undoubtedly lead to his own annexation by a stronger army in the era of rising strength. Moreover, if there are no people, then who can the ruler rule? Therefore, regarding zhang Xianzhong's tuchuan incident, although it may have happened, it is more like planting stolen goods!
So, who is the culprit who caused Sichuan's population to plummet from 4 million to only 90,000?
In fact, according to the analysis of modern historians, since Zhang Xianzhong entered Sichuan and founded the country, he basically fought abroad for many years and often appeased the people of Sichuan. At that time, coupled with the rugged geographical environment of Sichuan, the Sichuan people were actually not disturbed much. However, the good times did not last long, Zhang Xianzhong faced the pressure of the Qing court and the Southern Ming regime, and it was not long before he was defeated and killed, and the Qing army took the opportunity to enter Sichuan.
After the Qing army entered Sichuan, it was only after the stubborn resistance of the Sichuan people that they actually committed the massacre of the city such as the "Ten Days of Yangzhou", either killing the whole city, or killing all the men, leaving only women. Later, when the Qing army began to retreat, Sichuan revolted again, resisting the "invasion" of the Qing army, so Kangxi sent a large army to encircle and suppress it. This time, the Qing army still held the mentality of preferring to kill by mistake and could not let go, and killed them all. "Tens of thousands of giants,...... "Nothing Slips through the Net" is the truest portrayal!
Since then, Sichuan has fallen into dead silence again, and everywhere it goes, there is no one living in Liao. However, the tree wanted to be quiet and the wind did not stop, and then Wu Sangui rebelled in Yunnan, and the Qing army entered Sichuan for the third time, this time the Qing army was still killing on a large scale, and the people of Sichuan Province made funerary items for Wu Sangui. The Qing army's long-term evil deeds in Chuandi made the original corpses not cold, and many corpses were added. These corpses have caused the plague to run rampant, and many of the Sichuan people who have already been few have suffered from the plague, and finally more than 4 million people are only 90,000 left, which is a shocking number.
With the sharp decline in population, Sichuan's situation is even more staggering. According to historical records, in the seventh year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Zhang De, the new governor of Sichuan, with a longing mood, rushed to the land of Bashu, which was rumored to be rich in water and grass and fertile land, to take up his post. But after he came to Sichuan, he found that the country of Tianfu was desolate and desolate, and there were few people. At this time, the feudal governor and the important minister of the imperial court actually became a commander of the light pole! To this end, he wrote to Kangxi and asked the displaced people of the surrounding provinces to fill the river.
At this time, although Kangxi was also anxious about the filling of the river by the displaced people in the land of Sichuan and Shu, it was Wu Sangui in Yunnan who bothered him even more, so the early Kangxi did not do anything about the filling of the river by the displaced people. On the contrary, because of Wu Sangui's rebellion, he slaughtered Sichuan again.
Years of slaughter have made the population of many places in Sichuan once infinitely tend to "zero". Among the most serious in northern Sichuan and southern Sichuan, the loss of population has also changed the ecology of Sichuan. In the 21st year of the Kangxi Dynasty, a new Zhixian named Zhang Maochang went to Rongchang, Sichuan, with 7 retinues with him. But wanwan did not expect that when they came to Rongchang City, the whole city was dead silent and empty. When he was losing his mind about this scene, a group of tigers appeared. Later, five of his men were killed, and he was able to survive.
In this regard, the Sichuan Guang'an literati in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, in his book "Shu Chaos", once recorded: "The tigers and leopards in southern Sichuan are greatly harmed to the people, and there is no waste of time. Naiwen Chuan is especially true in the east and south. Since the fifth year of Shunzhi (Shunzhi) has been, dozens of people have gathered in high-rise buildings, and the outer columns of large wooden fences are extremely thick, and tigers have also entered it, or from the roof through the heavy buildings, and they have not eaten... Sichuan is full of tigers, or seven or eight, or one or twenty, rising upstairs and buildings, floating water to board the ship. I have never heard of it, nor have I heard of it. "
From the description in his book, we can see how serious the tiger plague in Sichuan is. If the tiger is a nationally protected animal today, then the Sichuan people at that time should also belong to the "protected animal". The desolate scene of Sichuan is really difficult to describe in detail.
Later, when the San Francisco Rebellion was settled, Kangxi completely and firmly controlled the power of the imperial court, so he began to work on the matter of filling the lake and the river, encouraging the residents of the two places to go to Sichuan to reclaim the fertile land. So that later, when the first immigrants arrived, they took advantage of the "big advantage", but those who first went, as far as the eye could see, a finger comparison, they could be classified as their own farmland, and they were also recognized by the government, so many peasants suddenly became "big landlords" with thousands of acres of land.
But is this really a big advantage? At that time, people who came here even needed to draw water in groups, and the root cause was because the tiger infestation was too serious. Early immigrants from other provinces, an entire township was eaten by tigers. It was not until later, with the encouragement of the three emperors of Kang Yongqian, that the number of people going to Sichuan continued to increase.
In the Jiaqing period, Sichuan once again became a rich land in the hearts of farmers, and many people still thought of the past land enclosure, but at that time, even the land in the mountains had been divided by the forerunners, and they could only go far and wide to continue to be farmers. This huge century of migration did not end until the Tongzhi period, when Sichuan had developed into a large province with a population of 40 million, laying the foundation for the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan.