The person who said this famous saying was Eastern Han Ma Yuan . Ma Yuan was not a subordinate of Liu Xiu at first. He served as the post of Xincheng Dayin (prefect) in the late Wang Mang .
Soon after, the world was in chaos and Wang Mang was defeated. He defected to his old friend Wei Xiang, who had already launched a military campaign in Tianshui , and was appointed General Suide.
Speaking of which, Ma Yuan was also a general. He was a descendant of Zhao She, a famous general in the Warring States Period, , and Zhao She was once named ", Ma Fujun ", so his clan changed Zhao to the surname Ma.
After Wei Xiang's demise, the Qiang people in the west began to rebel, and Jincheng County has been occupied by the Qiang people.
and Jincheng County is adjacent to Longxi . Ma Yuan is very familiar with that area.
Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu believed that Ma Yuan was the best candidate to quell the Qiang Rebellion, so he appointed him as the prefect of Longxi. Ma Yuan was 49 years old this year. In ancient times, this age was already in his twilight years. After taking office, Ma Yuan quickly selected three thousand elite cavalry and launched a surprise attack on Lintao 's Xianling Qiang .
Xianling Qiang was caught off guard, unable to withstand the attack of the elite cavalry of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and fled in scattered.
won the first battle, capturing more than 10,000 cattle, horses, sheep and other livestock, and forcing more than 10,000 Qiang people to surrender.
The fleeing Qiang people and other tribes gathered in Haoyao, with tens of thousands of people, often looting and harming the local people.
Ma Yuan and General Yangwei who came to reinforce him met to fight against Hao Ya.
The Qiang people suffered great losses from Ma Yuan. Knowing their experience, they did not dare to argue with him. They had to transfer their family Xiaohe's supplies to Yunwu Valley and hold the risk and guard it.
This did not make the Qiang people rest assured. Under the leadership of the local shepherds, Ma Yuan led his army to advance from a secret path when the moon was dark and the wind was high, and suddenly launched an attack at dawn.
The Qiang people were shocked, fled in a hurry, and retreated to Tangyi Valley.
Ma Yuan, who was good at plotting, took a feint attack on the front with a suspicion of his army, secretly sent more than a thousand cavalry to the back of the Qiang people, set fire everywhere, and shouted wildly, causing a large army to attack.
The Qiang people were in chaos and fled, and their supplies and livestock were completely lost.
After this battle, the Qiang people were expelled from Jincheng County, which took only half a year.
Jincheng County has just been pacified, and the Qiang people in Wudu have riots again.
Wudu is located in the upper reaches of Jialing River . It is a place where Han people and Diqiang live in a mixed place. The local Qiang people colluded with the Qiang tribe outside the border and robbed and killed Han people and officials.
Emperor Guangwu urgently ordered Ma Yuan to go to quell the rebellion.
Ma Yuan led 5,000 elite troops south, captured the Qiang strongholds and advanced to Didao County.
The Qiang people were defeated and retreated to the mountains. The terrain here is dangerous, easy to defend but difficult to attack.
But Ma Yuan had a plan to defeat the enemy. He ordered his troops to set up camps in the area of lush water and grass, guarding day and night, and not launching an offensive.
Only a few days later, the Qiang people were in chaos due to lack of drinking water and pasture, and the morale of the army was in chaos. The leaders of the Qiang tribes led the main force to flee Wudu, and the remaining elderly, weak, sick and disabled people surrendered to Ma Yuan.
Wudu County leveled.
In 40 AD, a large-scale uprising broke out in Jiaozhi (now north of Vietnam) in the south, and this place belongs to the territory of the Han Dynasty. The inducement of the uprising was that the daughter of Zhengfang, the daughter of the Tu tribe general in the local area, was killed by Su Ding, the prefect of Jiaozhi. So she and her sister Zheng Er gathered together to raise an army to avenge her husband.
Then, the surrounding three counties including Jiuzhen, Rinan, Hepu, and other Yue people responded. They were very powerful for a time, occupying sixty-five cities and were elected as kings.
Emperor Guangwu appointed Ma Yuan as General Fu Bo and led the southern expedition.
Two years later, Ma Yuan's southern conscription regiment arrived in Langbo (now near Hanoi, Vietnam) and led the rebels to fight, but they were all local natives. How could they compete with the well-trained regular army? The rebels were defeated and fled, with more than 10,000 surrenders and thousands of beheaded.
The sisters retreated to the Jinxi River. Ma Yuan chased them relentlessly and did not give them any chance to breathe. The rebel army fled in scattered and had no intention of fighting again.
The sisters in the side refused to surrender, and were desperate and committed suicide by jumping into the river.After pacifying Jiaozhi, Ma Yuan built water conservancy in the local area and improved the local legal system to ease the conflict between the Han and Yue people.
and a large copper pillar was erected on it, with six large characters engraved on it: "The copper pillar is folded, and the jungle is destroyed."
In 47 AD, a rebellion broke out in the southern barbarian tribe. The Han soldiers who went to suppress the rebellion were ambushed by barbarians in Wuxi and their entire army was wiped out.
Ma Yuan, who is sixty-two years old, asks him to go to war with Emperor Wu . Seeing that he is old, the emperor cannot bear to let him serve the battlefield.
Ma Yuan showed off his force on the spot. Seeing that he was still agile, the emperor appointed him as the commander of the Southern Expedition and sent the Central Army generals Ma Wu and Geng Shu as their deputy, leading a 40,000 army to the south to Wuling County .
After the Han army arrived at Wuling , they defeated the local barbarian armed forces in Linxiang, killed more than 2,000 people, and won the first battle.
The rest of the barbarians retreated into the mountains and forests. Ma Yuan commanded the Han army to take steady steps and not rush to achieve success. He gradually rushed into the barbarians' fortress Hutou Mountain. If he occupied this mountain, he could directly attack the center of the barbarians.
However, the barbarians have heavy troops in this mountain, and the terrain is dangerous, so the battle is very difficult. At this time, the humid and hot climate in the south spread the disease among the Han army, and Ma Yuan unfortunately contracted the disease.
But he still dragged his weak body to command the battle, and eventually died of illness in the army at the age of 63.
practiced his own belief in "carrying the body in the horse". After Ma Yuan passed away, the military supervisor jail stood up, imitating the previous dynasty Chen Tang , forgery of the imperial edict to appease the barbarian tribes, and those who surrendered were not blamed.
The exhausted barbarian tribes had differences, and the peace faction killed the leader of the war faction and surrendered to the Han army.
This massive southern barbarian rebellion was finally put to an end a few months after Ma Yuan's death, which could have put a perfect end to his military life.
