China has been up and down for five thousand years, from ancient times to modern times, from the Great Qin Empire to our current strong and prosperous China. There are countless dynastic changes in the middle, and the rise of a dynasty must have the demise of a dynasty, and there must be wars in the change of dynasties.
Since ancient times, people have fought wars large and small in order to compete for territory and power, and in these wars, some people will lose their lives.
Disputes over the interests of those in power are resolved by war, and only innocent soldiers can be victimized. They may have elderly parents waiting to come home, or they may have wives who miss their husbands all day, or they may have babies waiting to be fed.
Every war is a large harvester, which mercilessly harvests the lives of soldiers and common people, and the living life in front of it is like a lamb to be slaughtered.
The cruelty of war
So many people die in every war, so some people may wonder, so many dead soldiers, where did their bodies go?
First of all, let's look back at history, in ancient times, there were no weapons as developed as we have now, such as guns, cannons and other things. In ancient times, when fighting, it was really drawing swords to meet each other, and both sides really took the sword and went up to cut people until one side lost. It can be described as a real river of blood.
In ancient times, fighting a war is to see which side has more people, thousands of soldiers on both sides are mixed together, fighting each other, which side has more people, then the winning rate will be relatively large, but whether it is the losing side or the victorious side, there will be heavy casualties.
It is in response to the famous saying that "wounds a thousand enemies and damages oneself eight hundred."
But if a person dies, if his body is not treated, then the body will soon decay, emit a foul odor, and even possibly, there will be infectious diseases on the body, which will threaten the safety of human society.
Most of the way we dispose of corpses now is earth burial or cremation, so in ancient times,
For those soldiers who died on the battlefield, what should be done with their bodies?
The corpses of senior generals
First of all, let's talk about the corpses of high-ranking generals or emperors, if they die in battle, then the soldiers will certainly properly dispose of their corpses, seal their bodies, and then bury them when the war is over.
Senior generals and emperors have their own cemeteries,
Burying them in their cemetery was the highest manner of etiquette for burying people in ancient times.
For example, Qin Xiangong, who was born in the Warring States period and reigned from 384 BC to 362 BC, was the father of Qin Xiaogong and the son of Qin Linggong, and the greatest good thing he did in his life was to abolish the cruel human martyrdom system set up by Qin Wugong, and was uniformly loved by the Qin people.
In 366 BC, Han and Wei threatened Zhou Tianzi, and when Qin Xiangong learned of this, he thought it was a good opportunity to curry favor with Zhou Tianzi by attacking Han and Wei, so he led an army to attack Han Wei, and was indeed praised by Zhou Tianzi.
However, in 362 BC, Qin Xiangong died in the Battle of Shaoliang, which can also be regarded as a battlefield of battle. The soldiers under his command certainly should not be neglected in dealing with the corpse of a monarch like Qin Xiangong, so they sealed and preserved the body of Qin Xiangong, and then waited until the end of the war to talk about his body, transported it back to the country, and then buried it.
Five generations later, Emperor Taizong of Liao led his army to march south, but due to his own lack of troops and the strong resistance of the people of the Central Plains, he had to retreat, but at the time of retreat, Emperor Taizong of Liao contracted a disease.
But at this time, it was still far from reaching our own country,
When everyone was helpless, the imperial chef came up with an idea, took out the internal organs of Emperor Taizong of Liao, and salted it,
In the end, Liao Taizong was successfully brought back to the north, otherwise, it is estimated that by the time the army returned to the north, Liao Taizong's body would have already decayed.
The corpses of ordinary soldiers
Compared with the corpses of high-ranking generals and emperors, the corpses of ordinary soldiers naturally could not be buried so well. For ordinary soldiers, they are used by those in power of the country to kill the enemy, and on the battlefield, it may be a moment, they will lose their lives.
For ordinary soldiers, dying on the battlefield,
The most direct burial method for them is to bury them directly on the battlefield, or cremation.
After each battle, thousands of soldiers will die on either side, and if they are properly buried, this is simply impossible to complete, so most of the soldiers will be buried directly on the spot.
I believe that everyone must have heard the idiom "Ma Ge Shroud", which he used to describe the determination of the soldiers to kill the enemy and the will to sacrifice their lives for the country.
In reality, this level of treatment cannot be enjoyed by ordinary soldiers, and only generals with higher status can use it.
Therefore, most of the soldiers died in the battlefield for the country, and in order to warn them, they could only be buried on the spot.
If, when cleaning up the battlefield, we encounter the corpses of our own soldiers, then we can also bury them on the spot and treat their corpses well. If the body of the enemy is encountered, then it will not even be buried properly, and it may be humiliated by the enemy.
In our Chinese history, there has been a situation in which they cut off the heads of the enemy's corpses and piled them together to form a hill to insult the enemy and break the enemy's psychological defenses.
Cremation, in history, there have also been cremation situations, that is, after the end of the war, directly pile up the people who died in battle, and then put a fire to burn them, according to relevant historical records, in the second year of the Sui Kai Emperor, the Turk khan once led more than 100,000 people to fight with the 2,000 people led by the Sui Dynasty.
Although the Sui Dynasty army was eventually defeated, the Turks also suffered countless casualties, and in order to mourn these Turkic soldiers, the Khan led the remaining soldiers to perform cremation for them.
In ancient times, cremation was considered an insult to the dead in the Central Plains, but in the eyes of the Turks, cremation represented respect for the dead.
All in all, war is very terrible in both modern times and in ancient times, and he is like a god of death, mercilessly harvesting the lives of soldiers on the battlefield, and wherever he goes, there is no grass.
We should rejoice that we live in an era of peace, free from the intrusion of war and from the danger of death. At the same time, we should also thank the ancients, who paved the way for us, and they used their own vivid lives to illuminate the road ahead for us.
Therefore, we should cherish the life we have now and live well.