It was late at night, and in the main account of the Chu army camp, Xiang Yu, the king of Western Chu, looked at Yu Ji who was snuggled up next to him, and his heart was infinitely sad. Taking a sip of the wine from his glass, he jerked up and drew his sword, and sang loudly in the wine:
Li Ba Shan is full of qi and the world, and the unfavorable times will not pass away. Yu Xi Yu Yu Nai Ruo!
In 202 BC, in October, the 100,000-strong army led by Xiang Yu, the king of Western Chu, was besieged by the Han army at Xiaxia, and Xiang Yu, who had a premonition that his great power was gone, sang this song that had been passed down through the ages. And Yu Ji also killed herself next to her beloved after Xiang Yu sang. After Yu Ji's death, the grief-stricken Xiang Yu personally buried her, and their story has been passed down ever since.
Defeated, Xiang Yu broke through with eight hundred of his own soldiers, and after being chased all the way to the Wu River by the Han army, he was cornered and killed himself on the Edge of the Wu River. The bravest warrior in the history of our country ended his tragic and magnificent life with full of reluctance.
Xiang Yu, the king of Western Chu, was known as Xiang Yu (襄名籍), and was therefore known as Xiang Yu (襄项羽). At the age of 24, he rebelled in Wuzhong with his uncle Xiang Liang.
Xiang Yu
In 208 BC, after the death of his uncle Xiang Liangzhan, Xiang Yu became the commander of the Chu army.
In 207 BC, Xiang Yu defeated the main force of the Qin army of 200,000 with 30,000 horses at Julu, and became famous in the First World War. After this battle, Xiang Yu marched all the way, growing his soldiers and horses to 400,000 people, and set the capital at Pengcheng. In the end, because of the mistake of decision-making, he was surrounded by the Han army led by Han Xin and broke through with only 800 relatives.
In 202 BC, there were only 20 people left around him, and Xiang Yu, who was cornered, killed himself by the Wu River!
''The time is not good, but it is not dead, but it is not dead''
A song of song sings the unwillingness in Xiang Yu's heart, and also sings the helplessness in Xiang Yu's heart: "The timing is unfavorable to me, the war is not smooth for me, all this is providence." Xiang Yu believed that all his failures were blamed on Heaven, who deliberately wanted to kill him. However, many people in later generations believed that Xiang Yu's failure was because of his character.
Beauty Yu Ji
Xiang Yu's failure was due to his character?
Sima Qian, a famous historian of the Western Han Dynasty, believed in the "History of Xiang Yu Benji" that Xiang Yu was self-absorbed, arrogant, unable to hear the opinions of others, and suspicious personality defects were the main reasons for his failure. And Xiang Yu's character flaws can be seen from the Hongmen Feast and the attitude towards his adviser Fan Zeng.
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Fan Zeng was a famous strategist at the end of the Qin Dynasty, and only at the age of 70 did he defect to Xiang Yu's account, and Xiang Yu called him Ya Father. In 206 AD, Liu Bang entered Xianyang first, and according to the agreement between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu at that time, whoever entered Guanzhong first would be crowned king first. Liu Bang took the lead in invading Xianyang and intended to claim the throne. When Xiang Yu found out, he was furious and wanted to fight Liu Bang to the death. Liu Bang, who had a huge disparity with Xiang Yu's troops, naturally did not want to immediately go to war with Xiang Yu, so he planned to ask Xiang Yu for his sins in the place of Hongmen, in order to get a chance to recuperate.
Fan Zeng saw Liu Bang's false flattery and suggested to Xiang Yu that he take this opportunity to kill Liu Bang. He set up a banquet at the hongmen gate and ordered Xiang Zhuang to kill Liu Bang in the name of dancing swords at the banquet, and never have any trouble. However, Xiang Yu did not take Fan Zeng's advice, allowing Liu Bang to escape. This is the famous "Hongmen Feast" in history.
After the Hongmen banquet, Liu Bang's team realized that Fan Zeng must be eliminated, otherwise although he had evaded a Hongmen banquet, Fan Zeng would definitely find a way to persuade Xiang Yu to kill Liu Bang.
Hongmen Feast
Therefore, Liu Bang, who knew Xiang Yu's suspiciousness, and his advisers set up a divisive plan to separate Fan Zeng and Xiang Yu. When Xiang Yu sent emissaries to Hanying, they led the emissaries to a very beautiful room and served them fine wine and delicacies. Liu Bang deliberately shouted loudly outside the door: ''Is the messenger of the Father coming?' Did the Father command anything? The emissary had to reply that he had not been sent by His father, but by Xiang Yu.
Therefore, when Liu Bang heard it, he said that he had made a mistake and thought that he was the messenger of His father. The Messenger was also deliberately transferred to a normal room and replaced with very rudimentary food. It was such a small plan that changed Xiang Yu's life. After the emissary returned to Xiang Yu's camp, he told Xiang Yu about it. The suspicious Xiang Yu determined that Fan Zeng was Liu Bang's traitor. Since then, he has often sneered at Fan Zeng. How could Fan Zeng bear Xiang Yu's suspicions, he made an excuse and left Xiang Yu.
When Fan Zeng left Xiang Yu, it was the time when Xiang Yu's strength was the strongest and the most powerful. Therefore, he did not take Fan Zeng's departure to heart at all. At this time, the disputes in the world seemed to have gradually become clear, and only Xiang Yu's strength was the strongest. He established himself as the overlord of Western Chu, set the capital pengcheng, and at the same time sealed the world.
Xiang Yu's decision directly led to his later failure. He ignored Guanzhong, a place of great strategic value, and did not establish the capital here. Instead, he chose to continue eastward and established the capital city as Pengcheng, whose political, military, and economic status was far inferior to that of Guanzhong.
At the same time, when he divided the princes, he also distributed the powerful rear area of Guanzhong to Liu Bang. Xiang Yu's original intention was to restrain Liu Bang, but he did not realize the importance of Guanzhong, and distributed this good rear area to Liu Bang, which instead laid the foundation for Liu Bang to win the final victory in the Chu-Han War.
After Liu Bang had the big rear of Guanzhong, he quickly increased his own power, and in the end Liu Bang won, while Xiang Yu failed.
In fact, Xiang Yu's failure was not so much because of his personality as it was because after Fan Zeng left, there were no more trustworthy strategists under his command, and he lacked the talent to strategize and control the overall situation.
Perhaps those who are familiar with this history will say, how is it possible? Not to mention that Xiang Yu himself is very brave and can block a hundred, and his generals are all heroic figures. How could Xiang Yu lack talent?
However, if we take a closer look, it is not difficult to find that Xiang Yu's generals all have a common feature with Xiang Yu, that is, they are brave and fierce, and their wisdom is insufficient, such as Long Ji, Ying Bu, Zhong Limei, and Yu Zi Period.
Long Ji grew up with Xiang Yu from a young age, and was like a brother, and was the first fierce general under Xiang Yu. On the battlefield, there is also a momentum of a husband and wife, and there is no way to open it. But in the end, he died at the hands of Han Xin, who was murdered by Han Xinji.
Inbe
Looking at Yingbu again, Yingbu itself was a commoner and had little education since childhood. Later, he became a prisoner because of his crime. While serving his sentence, he became acquainted with a large number of prisoners and embarked on the anti-Qin road before throwing himself into Xiang Yu's tent.
Zhong Limei and Yu Ziqi are also similar to these two, both are brave and unscrupulous figures. That is to say, after Fan Zeng left, the rest of Xiang Yu's team were all military generals, rather than the literati strategists who strategized and won the battle against thousands of miles.
In a team that wants to compete for the world, no one can strategize and control the overall situation, just like a sailboat lost in the sea. Therefore, after Xiang Yu destroyed the Qin state, there was such a major decision-making mistake as ignoring Guanzhong.
This mistake in decision-making determined the fate of Xiang Yu's final defeat. Imagine if Xiang Yu's men had strategists like Zhang Liang and Chen Ping, would this situation still occur? The answer must be no. So, why did Xiang Yu's men have such a serious imbalance between culture and martial arts?
In fact, it was because of a deep-rooted ideological concept in Xiang Yu's heart, that is, anti-culture, contempt for Confucianism. It is said in the "History of Xiang Yu Benji" that when Xiang Yu was very young, his uncle Xiang Liang began to teach him to read, but Xiang Yu was reluctant to learn. He said: 'Reading and literacy can only remember the names of people, and it is of no use. ''
Therefore, Xiang Yu did not have much good feelings for the literati Confucianism. The literati Confucians were not reused in Xiang Yu. For example, Chen Ping, whom we just mentioned, was initially under Xiang Yu's account, but he suffered from not being reused, and finally defected to Liu Bang.
Xiang Yu's disdain for culture was the cause of the serious imbalance between the civilians and military generals in his ranks. So why does Xiang Yu's heart despise Confucianism and anti-culture so much? In fact, this is inseparable from the background of the times at that time, Xiang Yu lived in the era of the late Qin Dynasty, at that time in China, there was a kind of anti-cultural atmosphere of the whole people, and the formation of this atmosphere made people at that time unwilling to learn literature, but frantically advocated martial arts. Why is this happening? There are two reasons for this.
The first is because of the chaos of the world
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In times of turmoil, everything is based on force. Fighting the country and grabbing territory mostly rely on force, not Confucian eloquence. The people who fought the world during that period did not realize at all that fighting the country and mountains required not only force, but also wisdom and scheming.
The second is Qin Shi Huang's burning of books.
Book burning pits
The Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period before Qin Shi Huang unified China was the most culturally rich and prosperous era in China's history. Various schools of scholarship, such as Confucianism, Taoism, and Dharma, are all competing for the present world, each with its own ideas. Almost every country has its own academic genre.
In the later period of Qin Shi Huang's reign, Legalist thought triumphed over other schools of thought. Li Si, a representative figure of Legalist thought, and Qin Shi Huang jointly did a big thing, that is, "Burning books and pit Confucianism". It was precisely this incident that made the status of Confucianism decline sharply, and everyone was reluctant to learn the cultural knowledge that was considered useless, which made the China of that era appear a national anti-cultural atmosphere.
In addition to Xiang Yu, we can see this kind of contempt for the literati Confucianism and anti-cultural atmosphere in other forces that rose up at the end of the Qin Dynasty, such as Liu Bang and Chen Sheng, Wu Guang. According to historical records, when Liu Bang insulted Confucianism, his favorite thing to do was to take off Confucian's hat and pee inside.
But later, Liu Bang, reminded by a man named Oriole Eater, realized the importance of culture, changed his attitude toward the literati, and gradually gathered a lot of wise strategists around him, and finally won the victory. But Xiang Yu did not understand the importance of culture throughout his life, so he lost to Liu Bang, who had turned upside down.
The chaotic world produces a hero, and Xiang Yu is the hero who is created. His success has a very big relationship with his time, just imagine if Qin Shi Huang and Qin II were both Ming Jun, Xiang Yu would not have rebelled with his uncle, nor would he have become a hero.
Statue of Xiang Yu
But Xiang Yu is also a tragic figure created by that era, if the era he is in is an era of national learning literature, then he will not have such a heavy anti-cultural complex in his heart, and perhaps his life will be a completely different ending.
References: "Shi Ji Xiang Yu Benji", "Book of Han", "Two Han Dynasties"