In 2 12 AD, Sun Quan of Soochow in the Three Kingdoms changed Moling into Jianye, and built a stone city in Liangqingshan, which was "seven miles and a hundred steps" around the city. Like the old city of Jinling, it is still surrounded by mountains and waters, with two doors in the south and one in the east. Facing the big river in the northwest, the cliff formed by the red river conglomerate is the natural wall, and there is no gate. In the fifth year of Yixi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (409), a brick city was built. It is this humble earth wharf that played a decisive role in that year. Stone Town is a commanding height that protrudes from the river bank, with the Yangtze River in the west and the tide of the river approaching the gate. Li Bai's Song of Farewell to Fan Xuan in Jinling says: "Stone? f？ Like a tiger, Lingbo wants to go to Cangjiang. Zhongshan Dragon Pan stands out from the crowd, delicate and beautiful. " Describe the geographical situation of this stone town, with great momentum and feelings. Shicheng south controls the Qinhuai River estuary, and the situation is extremely dangerous. There are garrisons in the city, and Wu Dong takes the water army as the main military force. Stone Town's superior geographical location has naturally become the base of Wudong Water Army, and it can even be called the headquarters of the Water Army. At that time, it was also one of the largest docks along the Yangtze River, with ships coming and going. There are thousands of Chinese and foreign ships moored along the Yangtze River, which is the traffic hub between the north and the south of the Yangtze River. The ancients said that "cars are better than Shicheng, and Gechuan is hidden in the rivers and lakes". There are warehouses in the city, called stone warehouses, which are used to store weapons and food for life and combat readiness. At the height of the city wall, there is also a Wu Dong warning beacon tower, which is used to convey the warning of enemy invasion. With Shitou Town as the center, beacon towers are spread all over the dangerous places on the riverbank along the upstream and downstream directions, and they are in contact with each other.
Sun Quan took Stone Town as a military fortress and competed with Cao Cao for Huainan several times. General Wang of the Western Jin Dynasty? F went down the river from Yizhou, wanted to cut Wu, cut off the iron chain, and reached the stone city. Sun Hao, the Lord of Wu, had to surrender. Liu Tang Yuxi's poem "Xibao Mountain Nostalgia" says: "Wang? F, disembarking in Yizhou, Yu Gui has languished in Nanjing. Chihiro's iron lock sank to the bottom of the river and a stone fell out. " That's what it means. In the subsequent civil war, all parties regarded Stone Town as a battleground for military strategists, and success or failure was often decided by winning Stone Town. In the early years of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Wang Dun rose up and preempted the stone town, which led to the death of the Jin and Yuan emperors. Liu, the northern Wei army invaded the south and personally deployed the plan in Shicheng. In Liang Wudi, Hou Jing colluded with the rebels, occupied Stone Town, and then occupied the capital, Jiankang.
Although the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the Southern Dynasties, the Sui Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty and other dynasties continued to build stone cities, due to the repeated destruction of wars and the westward movement of rivers, the stone mountains gradually moved away from the rivers, and the mountains were hidden in the city, and the importance of river defense of stone cities was decreasing. After eight years of Tang Wude (625), Stone Town began to be abandoned. Liu Yuxi, a poet in the middle Tang Dynasty, wrote the poem Shicheng in the second year of Bao Li (826): "The old country is surrounded by mountains, and the tide hits the empty city and returns to loneliness. In the old moon east of Huaishui, I also came to the female wall at night. " The stone city described by the poet is already a deserted and lonely "empty city". Although it is a "western stone city" to build Jinling City in Wu Yang, taking it as the northwest barrier, Jinling's defense has always relied mainly on the large-scale Jinling New City, and the stone city has been completely abandoned since then. Sadulla, a famous poet in Yuan Dynasty, once boarded the Stone Town. Thinking of the majestic posture and war of that year, he couldn't help feeling a lot: "On the Stone City, I looked down at the sky and saw nothing. It is pointed out that the six dynasties won, only the green hills are like walls. The flag covers the sun, even the clouds are shining, and the bones are as white as snow. How many heroes were killed in the north and south of the Yangtze River. "
After Zhu Yuanzhang made Nanjing his capital in the Ming Dynasty, the wall was built in the second year of Hongwu (1369), and Stone Town became a part of the famous Nanjing wall.
After 1700 years of vicissitudes, the Stone Town site is hard to find. Today, the grimace city at the foot of Liang Qingshan in Nanjing is said to be a stone city in the Six Dynasties, but it is actually a part of the Ming Dynasty wall.