The soldier transport road was built in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. It was an underground military operation road specially built by Cao Cao, Emperor Wu of Wei, for his own military needs. Because it was originally used to transport troops, it was called "Cao Cao's road to transport troops". It was repaired many times in the Tang and Song Dynasties and still used as a military war. Because the troop transportation road is a military facility used for combat and has the nature of military secrets. In addition, for strategic and tactical needs, Cao Cao did not record the construction of the grain transportation channel, nor did future generations record it during maintenance. Only Cao Cao used tunnels to fight in history books.
The use of underground warfare has existed since ancient times. According to historical records, as early as 2500 years ago in the Spring and Autumn Period, there were authentic tactics. There is a record of "suddenly entering the city at night" in Zuo Zhuan. The so-called "sudden" means penetrating from underground, so the ancient "tunnel" is called "sudden". By the Eastern Han Dynasty, tunnel warfare had developed into a commonly used tactic. Cao Cao's flexible use of tunnel warfare not only made his military thoughts and strategies fully practiced and constantly improved, but also created many typical war cases in which the few defeated the many and the weak defeated the strong.
In the process of fighting heroes, Cao Cao used authentic tactics many times to turn passivity into initiative and finally won the war. There have been many records in this history book. For example, The History of the Three Kingdoms, Shu Wei, said: Jian 'an was three years old (198), "In the first month of spring, the public (Cao Cao) was still promising, so we first set up a strategist to offer wine. In March, it was surrounded by the public (now Dengxian County, Henan Province). In the summer of May, Liu Biao sent troops to save embroidery. After the defeat of the army, the generals led them back and embroidered soldiers came to chase them. The public army is not allowed to enter, even before the camp. Gong and Xun? The book says:' Thieves will chase you, although I will guard against it for a few days. When I get to Anzhong, I will break the embroidery!' When we arrived in Anzhong, Embroidery and Biao Bing were on the defensive together, and the army was flanked by troops. Gong was digging a dangerous tunnel at night. Knowing the situation of the trench, he set up an Indiana Jones. Obviously, the thief said that the public was fleeing and the army was chasing him. This is the attacker's attack, and they broke it. "For another example, in August of the fifth year of Jian 'an (200 years), Yuan Shaolin arrived in Guandu, and Cao Cao also responded, eventually defeating Yuan, the biggest powerful separatist force at that time, and winning the great victory in the battle of Guandu.
Bozhou is the hometown of Cao Cao, and it is also the rear military base for stationing troops, storing grain, making weapons and recuperating. Since ancient times, there has been a legend in Bozhou that Cao Cao built an underground tunnel for transporting soldiers. Until the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression period, people only found it occasionally when they were digging a bomb shelter to avoid the Japanese army. Because of the war, it didn't attract people's attention. 1969, in response to President Mao Zedong's call to "dig deep holes to accumulate grain", the people of the whole city mobilized extensively to dig underground air-raid shelters, and found ancient underground tunnels in four streets (formerly Simen Street) of Renmin East, Renmin West, Renmin South and Renmin North in the old city. Now it has been found that the length is nearly 6 kilometers. The discovery of the ancient underground tunnel in Bozhou not only confirmed the records of tunnel warfare in history books, but also provided valuable physical data for studying Cao Cao's construction of underground tunnels for transporting soldiers. Bozhou Ancient Tunnel was announced by Anhui Provincial People's Government as a key cultural relic protection unit in July 2006 1986+00, and by the State Council on June 25, 2006.
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, eunuchs and consorts took power alternately, politics was extremely corrupt, powerful landlords annexed a lot of land, farmers went bankrupt and went into exile, the contradiction between the landlord class and the peasant class became increasingly fierce, and peasant uprisings broke out one after another. From the beginning of Dong Zhuo's rebellion, a melee of powerful separatist forces was formed, which caused unprecedented catastrophe to the working people and caused great damage to social productive forces. In this chaotic situation, after the attempted assassination of Dong Zhuo, Cao Cao returned to his hometown in the east, holding the banner of "Xingyi soldiers, punishing violence", dispersing his family wealth and recruiting for Dong Zhuo.
Because Cao Cao was outnumbered when he set out, it was difficult to meet the strong enemy head-on In order not to expose his weakness in the serenade, but also to show the breadth of the army, so as to confuse the enemy and achieve the purpose of surprise, Cao Cao successfully applied the military strategic thought of "actually empty, but empty is real" to tunnel warfare. Cao Cao dug an underground tunnel along Simen Street in Bozhou city, and dug it all the way out of the city as a traffic passage for transporting soldiers. Before engaging the enemy, Cao Cao secretly sent a few soldiers from the city to leave the city through the tunnel, and then entered the city from outside the city in a mighty way, making several rounds to show his strength and "show his feelings", so that the enemy did not know Cao Cao's intentions and mistakenly thought that reinforcements had arrived from all directions and did not dare to attack rashly. Achieving the goal of "attacking the air, avoiding its defense and taking it by surprise" won valuable time for Cao Cao to quickly expand his team, save his effective strength, seize the opportunity of war and effectively attack the enemy.
Cao Cao has always attached great importance to the role of strategy, pointing out that "if you want to attack the enemy, you must plan first", that is to say, you must formulate a strategy before launching an attack on the enemy. He believes that "a soldier who defeats others without fighting" and "a soldier who defeats others without fighting" are better than a soldier who defeats others without fighting. That is to say, if the enemy can defeat others without fighting, especially the whole country's soldiers who defeat others without fighting, the military strength will not be damaged, and it is best to achieve the goal that hard attacks cannot achieve. Cao Cao also believes that "it is bound to decline, the appearance will decline, and it is possible to win because of the change of the enemy." He applied this idea flexibly to specific battles. When the enemy is strong and we are weak, he makes corresponding strategies at any time according to the changing situation, so as to achieve "unpredictable soldiers and bullying as the way", build and use underground transportation roads in time, confuse the enemy by various means, and create conditions that will not be defeated by the enemy.
Judging from the cleaned ancient tunnels, all the ancient tunnels are underground behind the houses facing the street. The existing ancient roads were not built and used in one dynasty, so they have different structures, different widths and different heights. The depth of the ancient tunnel from the surface is generally between 2 and 3 meters, and the deepest part is at the head of the bend, which is more than 6 meters.
There are four kinds of ancient tunnel structures:
The first is the civil structure, that is, the wooden roof of the dirt road. This kind of tunnel was built in the early days and reached the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The road is1.3m wide and 2m high, located at the northern end of Renmin South Street. First, the tunnel is dug, then the wooden sticks are arranged horizontally and densely at the upper end of the tunnel wall, and bricks are laid on the wooden sticks. Some also use two wooden columns with a diameter of 10 cm or more, which are symmetrically erected on both sides of the soil wall every 2-3 meters in the excavated tunnel. A horizontal wooden stick is placed on the column, and the wooden stick is covered with boards, and then covered with soil. Due to the age, all the wooden columns and boards of this structure have rotted, and only sawdust and column holes are seen.
The second is the brick-soil structure, that is, the brick roof of the dirt road, which is mainly distributed in Renmin West Road. This kind of tunnel uses the dirt road of the original civil structure, and after simple trimming, several layers are built with a single brick at the upper end of the dirt road wall, and then the roof is built with bricks. Pavement roofs are mostly arched roofs, and roofs are generally built with the same mouth.
The third type is brick-wood structure, which is the wooden roof of brick road. This kind of structure is often intertwined with brick-soil structure, and brick, soil and wood coexist irregularly. The masonry method of brick-wood structure is to build a wall with blue bricks, and the road is densely covered with horizontal sticks, and the sticks are paved with bricks. In some places, there are also slates. On the brick road wall, a wooden stick is placed horizontally every 1 m, and the wooden stick is paved with boards, and then the boards are paved with bricks. There is also an earth wall below, which is made of bricks and covered with sticks or boards. The brick tunnel wall of brick-wood structure inclines outward from bottom to top, forming a ladder shape with narrow bottom and wide top in the tunnel.
The fourth is brick structure, that is, all built with bricks. This structure is the most common in the existing ancient tunnels, which can be divided into three parts: brick coupons, brick walls and brick mounds. Brick coupons are tunnel roofs, usually arched coupons or herringbone coupons. The arch roof adopts straight masonry method and bite masonry method, and the net is repeated. Brick walls are tunnel walls, which are generally made of single bricks, some single bricks, some single bricks standing, some three floors standing, and some five floors standing. Most of them are paved on the whole wall. Brick stiles mostly adopt a single-layer brick cross pattern, and the ground stile of the command room at the first corner is paved with a brick handkerchief and a brick mat.
There were few bricks used in ancient tunnels in Han Dynasty, mostly thin and thick rope bricks, with a length of 28-29 cm, a width of 14 cm and a thickness of 4 cm. There are also some large striped bricks, which are 36 cm long, 18 cm wide and 8 cm thick.
There are four forms of ancient tunnels: one-way street, parallel two-way street, upper and lower two-way street and interchange road.
One-way street is the main channel for transporting soldiers. The height of the road is generally between 1.7 m and 2. 1 m, and the width of the road is between 0.6 m and 0.9 m. The ancient tunnel meanders underground, seemingly endless, just like an underground Great Wall, which is very spectacular. At regular intervals, there are square or vertical rectangular niches at the upper end of the road wall for placing oil lamps. A niche is generally 25 cm high, 20 cm wide and 25 cm deep. There is a square vent right above the ticket top. The inner diameter of the ventilation hole is usually the same as that of the tunnel. The upper opening of the vent hole is slightly smaller, covered with slate and also has a brick dome. The distance between the vent holes is different, some are relatively concentrated, and some are scattered together. This vent can also be used as a temporary entrance in an emergency. The underground tunnel wall on one side of Dayou Command Room is not vertical, but a brick-wide step extends from the lower end of the tunnel wall to form a two-story platform, which is located on both sides of the tunnel wall and is used for people to rest and use.
Parallel two-lane refers to two one-way lanes that are about 3 meters apart and extend in the same direction, and both lanes can be used at the same time. In order to facilitate the communication between the two lanes and transmit information, a square message hole is left on the wall of the adjacent lane to facilitate the communication between the two lanes. The height of the message hole is just at the height of one person. It is square with bricks, each side is 37 cm long, which is convenient to use and has good sound transmission effect.
The upper and lower two-story tunnel refers to the tunnel divided into upper and lower two layers with brick coupons. Generally, the upper tunnel is short, ranging from 1.4- 1.6 m, and the lower tunnel is higher than the upper tunnel, but not higher than the one-way street height, ranging from 1.6- 1.8 m.
Some upper-level tunnels and lower-level tunnels are not mutually planar on the same section, but intersect, or the crosswalk is above, the longitudinal tunnel is below, or the longitudinal tunnel is above and the transverse tunnel is below, forming a three-dimensional intersection.
The above four types of tunnels are criss-crossed and interconnected, and the intersections between roads are all T-shaped, and some T-shaped forks are short, forming branches.
There are traces of fighting in the ancient tunnel, and there are many military facilities such as cat's ear hole, obstacle ticket, obstacle wall, trap, trip board and command room.
Cat's ear holes are mainly distributed in two one-way streets, big or small, and there is no unified planning. The big cat's ear hole can accommodate 5-6 people, and the cat's ear hole can only hide 1 person. Its main function is to hide in the cat's ear hole without being found when being chased by enemy soldiers, and effectively save itself. At the same time, we can also carry out defensive attacks on the pursued individual enemy soldiers according to the situation, so as to achieve the goal of destroying the enemy. Another function of the cat's ear hole is that when soldiers meet, they hide in the hole to make way, and the other side passes smoothly to avoid traffic jams.
Obstacle ticket is one of the common obstacles in ancient tunnels. They are mainly set on a one-way street, and the top of the ticket will suddenly drop. Obstacle tickets are 40-50 cm lower than one-way tickets, and people have to bend over to pass. People who are not familiar with the environment in the Tao are threatened by being hit on the head there. If they are not careful, they will be hit on the head.
The barrier is located at the T-shaped corner in the tunnel, and a brick wall with a wide bottom and a narrow top is built at one end of the tunnel. The height of the wall is about 1.6 meters, and the width of the lower part of the wall accounts for three quarters of the width of the tunnel, leaving only a gap of less than 20 cm, so that the activities of people who are not familiar with the layout of the tunnel are restricted here, thus creating an opportunity to attack the enemy.
The trap is located under the one-way ridge and adopts the method of suddenly falling to the ground. The drop is more than 50 cm. When a stranger walks here, if he is not careful, he will fall down, or break his flesh, or sprain his bone.
The trip board is located on the east-west one-way street at the corner. Vertical grooves with a width of 10cm, a depth of 15cm and a height of about 80 cm are symmetrically left at the lower end of the road wall. The wooden board is horizontally stuck in the groove, so that the wooden board can't be kicked, which plays a role in tripping. If people walk here, they will trip and chew the soil with their mouths.
The command room is located 20 meters north of the underground passage on the west side of Dagutou. It is made of brick and wood, and it is in a "string" shape on the plane, running north and south. Each end is an octagonal main chamber, about 1 m long. The doors on the north and south sides of the command room are connected to the underground passage, and brick fake doors are set on the east and west sides, with a height of 2.8 meters. Wooden columns are densely arranged in the east and west directions on the brick wall, with a diameter of 65438+. The middle of the command room is connected by a trapezoidal channel. The upper opening of the connecting channel is 2.4m wide, the lower opening is 1.6m wide and 7m long.
There are quite a few cultural relics unearthed from Cao Cao's Yunbing Road, mainly from the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Three Kingdoms and the Tang and Song Dynasties. There are military equipment such as iron knives, iron swords, projectiles, nails and street pieces directly used in combat, as well as bronze mirrors, iron lamps, porcelain lamps and ceramics used in life, as well as Go for entertainment and copper coins for shopping.
To sum up, Cao Cao's military transportation road has complex structure, mysterious layout, flexible setting and outstanding functions. Although it was reinforced and utilized in the Tang and Song Dynasties, it is still a valuable military and cultural heritage left by Cao Cao to future generations. From this, we can see Cao Cao's outstanding military talent of "seeking before attacking the enemy".
When Cao Cao set out to beg Dong Zhuo, the soldiers were weak and few, which was not enough to fight against the powerful Dong Zhuo. In this regard, Cao Cao made careful and in-depth observation and thinking. On the premise of mastering and analyzing the enemy's situation, he formulated and changed his own operational arrangements and methods according to the changes of the enemy's situation, set out from reality, built underground troop transport channels in time, used various means to confuse the enemy, successfully used tunnel tactics, created invincible conditions for the enemy, and waited for the enemy to expose his weaknesses, thus winning time and flexibility for defeating Dong Biao. This is the concrete embodiment of Cao Cao's military principle of emphasizing strategic application and achieving "know yourself and know yourself, and fight every battle".
Cao Cao spent most of his life in the army. In the long-term war practice, he has accumulated extremely rich practical experience. He is good at choosing enemies and directing battles. He "set a strange thing according to the situation, defeat the enemy, and become like a god", defeating the strong with the weak and killing the strong enemy. At the same time, he read widely, especially loved the art of war, and paid great attention to learning from the pre-Qin military strategists represented by Sun Wu. On the basis of carefully studying a large number of works by military strategists and combining his personal experience, he collated and annotated thirteen articles of Sun Tzu's Art of War and wrote a large number of military works, "writing a book of self-defense with more than 100,000 words" (unfortunately, most of them have died now), thus becoming a commander-in-chief with outstanding military talents. When Cao Cao annotated Sun Tzu, he first expounded his views on issues such as army building. He believes that there must be enough armed forces and the army must be just. If the army is just, the commander will be lucky and the war will be won. These thoughts of Cao Cao involve the relationship between military and political, economic, national and people's interests. He used troops for a clear political purpose. When he started his army, he played the banner of "Xingyi soldiers punishing violence", precisely to end the war, achieve unity, stabilize social order, restore social productive forces, and conform to the people's hearts and historical trends. Cao Cao used his military thoughts to guide the war and won the victory of unifying the North, leaving a rich military ideological legacy for future generations. In particular, the underground highway for transporting soldiers he built has become the material evidence in the history of our country that "the strength of both sides is different, and the weak will take the first step, and then strike first, so as to defeat" (Mao Zedong's "Strategic Issues in China Revolutionary War"), which has a far-reaching impact on later generations.
The existing transportation routes of Cao Cao are criss-crossed, with warp and weft interwoven; Various forms and complex structure; Flexible setting and profound changes; The layout is mysterious; Large scale and huge project; It has a long history and is rare in China. It is the oldest and best-preserved underground large-scale military facility in China. It is also the crystallization of the wisdom of ancient working people and the confluence of ancient tunnel tactics. "Far more than the value of a complete ancient city preserved on the ground", a well-deserved "underground Great Wall". It is called the Great Underground Wall.