On this day 120 years ago, on April 3, 1905 (February 29, 1905 lunar calendar), Zou Rong, a pawn in the revolutionary army, died. Zou Rong, author of "Revolutionary Army", at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the democratic revolutionary movement carried out by the Chinese people was surging. Bourgeois revolutionary ideas spread rapidly in China and gradually became the mainstream of social thought. At that time, there was a fierce debate around the future of the Chinese revolution: whether to maintain the monarchy and establish a constitutional monarchy? Or overthrow the monarchy and establish a democratic republic? In order to survive, many patriots explored in practice. Zou Rong was an outstanding thinker and propagandist who stood at the forefront of history during this period and dedicated his 21-year-old blood to the cause of China's bourgeois democratic revolution with "Revolutionary Army" as the horn of the march. Zou Rong, formerly known as Shaotao, was born in 1885 in Baxian County, Sichuan Province. He was born into a wealthy merchant family. He was influenced by reform books and periodicals since childhood and germinated revolutionary ideas. Tan Sitong sacrificed his life for the reform, which made the young Zou Rong admired. He wrote a poem with clear aspirations, and regarded himself as Tan's "successor", saying that he would "follow up and not lose hope". In 1902, in order to explore the truth of saving the country and the people, Zou Rong went to Japan to study at his own expense. During his studies at the Tongwen Academy in Tokyo, he paid attention to the fate of the motherland while avidly reading the works of bourgeois pioneers Rousseau and Montesquieu and the history of bourgeois revolutions in the United States and France. He accepted the theories of "natural rights" and "freedom and equality" in the era of bourgeois revolution in the West, and turned them into ideological weapons to wipe out the feudal autocratic rule of the Qing Dynasty and oppose imperialist aggression. In May 1903, a book signed "Zou Rong, a pawn in the Revolutionary Army" - "Revolutionary Army" was officially published by Shanghai Datong Bookstore. In this book, Zou Rong proposed to overthrow the imperial power of the Qing Dynasty by revolutionary means, establish a bourgeois democratic country, and named this country "the Republic of China". " The Revolutionary Army sounded the death knell for more than 2,000 years of feudal autocracy, sounded the horn for the bourgeois democratic revolution, and became a veritable anti-imperialist and anti-feudal battle call. At the end of the book, Zou Rong shouted: "Long live the Republic of China!" "Long live the freedom of the 40,000 of compatriots in the Republic of China!" The book was hailed as the "Declaration of Human Rights" of modern China. Sun Yat-sen praised it as "a work filled with the most fierce remarks", "if it can greatly move people's hearts, it will surely reap good results in the future." At that time, Zhang Shizhao, the chief writer of the "Su Bao", wrote: "The Revolutionary Army" is "sincerely one of the textbooks of national education today." It can be seen that its propaganda and agitation power is huge. This book played a great role in fueling the rising tide of bourgeois revolutionary thought at that time. The Manchu government was panicked. They colluded with the imperialists to carry out cruel persecution of the revolutionaries, shut down the Patriotic Society and the "Su Bao", and arrested Zhang Taiyan and Zou Rong and others. This is the "Su Report" that shocked China and foreign countries in 1903. Zou Rong was tortured in prison. On April 3, 1905, at the age of 21, Zou Rong sacrificed his young life. But the book "Revolutionary Army" became popular all over the country, and many young people were inspired by this book and embarked on the revolutionary road. After the victory of the 1911 Revolution, the Nanjing Provisional Government of the Republic of China led by Sun Yat-sen, in recognition of Zou Rong's revolutionary achievements, posthumously awarded him the rank of "Great General". The "pawn" during his lifetime and the "great general" after his death vividly recorded the short life of this young revolutionary and his special achievements in the history of modern bourgeois revolution.