In Jin Yong's martial arts, there will always be such a gang organization in the Central Plains martial arts, they are ragged and hungry, but they have the chivalrous courage to help the poor and care about the world. If it is said that Mr. Jin Yong's deliberate portrayal of Guo Jing is a chivalrous man for the country and the people. Then, this organization that takes the rise and fall of the world as its own responsibility is enough to call it this, and it is more than enough! This gang organization is the "beggar gang" known as the first gang in the world!

Here we want to introduce the predecessor of the beggar gang, the beggar army!

Just like the beggar gang has legendary figures such as Qiao Feng, Hong Qigong, and Huang Rong, the beggar army is also a force that continues to create miracles, establishing the Han Empire, and giving birth to famous generals such as Ran Min and Li Nong, which is really vigorous and extraordinary.

However, the origin and formation of the beggar army is a particularly heavy topic, but it cannot be avoided and must be mentioned in that period of history. We need to use it to get a glimpse of the struggles and rebellions of the people who were in despair at that time in order to survive.

Begging for life, begging for life, no one wants to die, so when you can't live, you can only "beg for life". There are many people who beg, and after the purposeful organization and training of others, they become an army - a beggar army. During the period of the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms, in the northern battlefield of China, the beggar army was very special and active, and it did not fall down after several ups and downs, which belonged to the special products of a specific historical period.

The beggar army is a group of displaced people organized by the government to beg for themselves and be used by others. It is both an official and a non-governmental organization. The common goal (begging) made the beggar army the most united, the most extensive and the most enduring among the displaced people, and of course, this was also related to the fact that the vast number of people at that time did not have enough to eat for a long time. In order to have the most basic problems of food and survival, the beggar army moved around to fight, and its footprints spread all over the north and south of the Great River, on both sides of the Yellow River, throughout the entire Eight Kings Rebellion, throughout the entire Wuhu Rebellion, and even until the confrontation between the North and the South.

There are natural disasters, there are human disasters, and there are begging armies.

Let's put it another way: the problem of food is the root cause of the existence of the beggar army.

During the period of the Wuhu Rebellion, there were years of war in northern China, the emergence and collapse of various forces, and the frequent plagues and natural disasters, so that the vast number of working people could not guarantee even the most basic problems of survival.

In the second year of Yongxing of Emperor Hui of Jin (306), "Ningzhou was plagued by frequent hunger and plague, and the number of dead was 100,000", so that "the grain in the city was exhausted, and the rats pulled out the grass and ate it" ("Tongjian"); In the fourth year of Yongjia (310 years), "the locusts of You, Bing, Si, Hebei, Qin, and Yongliu Prefectures were all herbivorous and wood, cattle and horses" ("Tongjian"); It can be said that after the locust plague, the only thing that can be left to human beings is the bare land and bones everywhere; In the sixth year of Yongjia (312), "Youzhou is a big water, and people don't eat" ("Book of Jin"). The meaning of not eating a grain is that a person does not have a grain to eat. Hunger is enough to make people mentally break down and do anything unthinkable, and in many areas there are human tragedies of "eating by changing children" and "cannibalism" ("Book of Jin").

Natural disasters are unavoidable, and man-made disasters are frequent. Taking Bingzhou (present-day northwestern Shanxi) as an example, "bandits are rampant and the roads are blocked" ("Tongjian"), and there are bandits and soldiers everywhere, and there is no safety at all. "The temple was burned down, and the countryside was depressed" ("Tongjian"), the market that should be lively, the countryside that is quite vibrant, is ruined everywhere like hell on earth.

Survival was threatened, and people had to wander and move in search of shelter that would bring a bite to eat and a moment of peace. However, in the chaotic times, tranquility can only be relative, there is no "paradise" in the world, and even if there is, it is not enough to accommodate the people of the world, and most people are living a precarious life in exile.

Those people who run around to "beg" are homeless, and the formation of the beggar army stems from the flood of such homeless people. Displaced people have existed to varying degrees in all dynasties of China. Because of war or famine, people could not live, so they moved in droves. Displaced people are different from immigrants in that they settle down and have a final destination after migration; It is also different from migrants, who are officially organized migrants, and when they arrive in the area, they may still have settling-in allowances. The homeless people are more loose in form, they have no fixed place, they wander around, where there is food, there is their home, and when they are finished, they go to the next family. In the history of China, the largest movement of displaced people was the peasant uprising of Li Zicheng and others, which was actually an armed begging movement carried out by the displaced people, passing through villages and counties, like locusts, sweeping away everything that could be taken away. Including those who are not displaced in the first place, they also become displaced because of the arrival of displaced people.

Things always grow in complementarity, even if it's a cancer. In troubled times, people are outcast, because there is no food to eat; The homeless people disturb the troubled world, and the even more chaotic troubled times make everyone have nothing to eat, and then they all go to be homeless. In those days of the Eight Kings Rebellion and the Five Chaos Rebellion, the overlords of all parties were chasing each other one after another, and the local government was in a state of panic and seeking to live all day long, and there was no time to take care of the displaced people who rose up in the flood, and the so-called repatriation and resettlement were impossible to talk about. At that time, the number and spread of displaced people reached an unprecedented situation (although the population base is small, the proportion of displaced people is high).

Who wants to take in the thousands of displaced people? No one, on the contrary, the displaced people are ostracized wherever they go, they lack food wherever they go, and they are not willing to give them food if they have it. But the homeless people naturally did not want to starve to death because of their civility and politeness, so conflicts were inevitable. "The number of Si, Hebei, and Yanzhou is in western Liaoning, and the number of people in the country is uneasy ("Book of Jin"), and there are tens of thousands of displaced people in Yingchuan, Xiangcheng, Runan, Nanyang, and Henan, who have been suffering from the residents, and they have all burned the city. ("Tongjian")", this is a true portrayal of the situation at that time. In order to prevent the displaced people from looting, various localities have organized armed defenses, and when the displaced people are attacked, they have to defend themselves, and they have gradually and spontaneously formed their own armed forces. For example, "Yongzhou exiles Wang Ru, Hou Tuo, Yan Wei and others raised troops between the Jianghuai and Huai", "the exiles Zhang Ping and Fan Yacob gathered thousands of people to be the masters of the dock" ("Book of Jin"), "Qinzhou exiles Deng Ding, Jian Yi and others were based on Chenggu, and Kou plundered Hanzhong" ("Tongjian"). These displaced armed forces have objectively exacerbated social unrest.

In this case, the beggar army came into being. Among them, the most active and longest-lasting was the army of Sima Teng, the king of Yan (Sima Teng, who was ready to sell Shile for military salaries). In the last years of the Western Jin Dynasty, "there was a famine in Bingzhou (now northwestern Shanxi), and several of them were plundered by Hu Kou", and the famine and military rebellion led to the fact that "the counties could not protect themselves" ("Tongjian"). In desperation, the state generals Tian Zhen, Li Yun, Bo Sheng and others organized the displaced people, "Xi Sui Teng went to Jizhou, called 'begging'", and followed Sima Teng to Jizhou (now southwest of Shanxi, southwest of Hebei, northeast of Henan, and west of Shandong) to seek food, and this team was called the begging army.

This has two advantages: first, it will co-opt the displaced people so that they can rely on them; Second, a powerful armed force has been formed, which is convenient for food. With no property and shelter, just begging for food, such a unit had no worries about fighting, was very brave and strong, and became an important military force under Sima Teng.

The battles fought by the beggars were mainly fought against Shile. During the Rebellion of the Eight Kings, Sima Teng guarded Yecheng and attacked each other with Sima Ying, the king of Chengdu. After Sima Ying's death, Ji Sang and Shi Le (who had served under Sima Ying's old Gongshi Fan, and Shi Le had not yet made a career at that time) avenged Sima Ying, captured Yecheng, killed Sima Teng, and burned the city. Under the leadership of Tian Zhen, Tian Lan and others, the beggar army avenged Sima Teng and killed Ji Sang in Leling.

Later, due to political disagreements, the beggar army split internally: some of them, under the leadership of Li Yun and Bo Sheng, took refuge in Sima Yue, the king of the East China Sea. After Sima Yue's death, the troops were scattered, and Li Yun led the beggar army to flee to Weicang (Xuchangdong, Henan), and fought many battles with Shile's army (Shile was already a general of Former Zhao at this time), which made Shile suffer a lot. For example, "Shi Jilong (Shi Hu) attacked Wang Ping in Liangcheng (in present-day Chengxian County, Henan), and returned defeated" ("Book of Jin"). But in the end, it was still destroyed by Shile. Another beggar army led by Tian Zhen to the party (now Changzhi, Shanxi), Shi Le paid a great price to defeat it, of which Chen Wu surrendered to Shi Le, and then rebelled against Shi Le south to Jianghuai and took refuge in the Eastern Jin Dynasty.

This special unit, which was active on the battlefield in ancient China, survived for more than 100 years, and its footprints spread all over the north and south of the river, becoming a special case of the displaced people's armed forces during the Wuhu Rebellion in China. For the sake of food, for life, and for self-preservation, they had to be involved in the war, which also reflected the hardship and helplessness of the displaced people. A "beggar" character, a "living" character, from which we can read the misery and misfortune of all the displaced people in that era. The emergence and existence of the beggar army fully witnessed the tragedy and desolation of that period of great historical turmoil.

The army led by Ran Min and Li Nong is actually part of the beggar army. Those Han people who can't survive are the foundation on which they can start a business. During Chu Pei's Northern Expedition, Li Nong's troops encountered were actually the beggar army that surrendered to Later Zhao, an army composed purely of Han Chinese, but at that time, it was a lackey of the Qian people.