After the Yue kingdom broke Wu and moved the capital to Langya, it gradually became the arbiter of the small countries around Huaisi. This is also an important foundation for Vietnam's hegemony. Before his death, Ju Jian also made an alliance with Qi, Jin, and various Huaisi princes in Xuzhou (present-day southern Tengzhou, Shandong). It is a great overweight of the addiction of a hegemon. Perhaps in this process, the Yue-Jin Alliance gradually came to fruition, gradually replacing the original Yue-Chu Alliance. However, what may have contributed to the alliance between the Yue and Jin Dynasties was not only the performance of the State of Chu in the Wu-Yue War that I mentioned in the previous article in recruiting Sanyi on the southern front, but also the factor that the State of Chu did not support the Northern Expedition of the State of Yue.
Probably before the Xuzhou Alliance, after the Yue State recruited the exiled monarch of the State of Yi, it learned about the situation in the Central Plains, and may also recruit a group of subordinates from the State of Wu. These losers who have made big moves are afraid of chaos in the world. It is possible that they may also go to the jurchen practice to further play the prestige and go on a crusade against the Jin state, especially the old ministers of the Wu state may also want to wash away the shame of having to let the Jin state dominate the alliance after the Huangchi Flaunting The might. Therefore, after the complete victory over the State of Wu, He really wanted to borrow troops from the State of Chu to attack the State of Jin.
At this time, an old minister of the Chu State, Zuo Shi, who was praised as a "good history" in the era of the Ling King, persuaded that now that the Yue kingdom had destroyed Wu, he was afraid that he would have lost a lot, but he also had to ask our country to attack Jin, just to show his prestige and there was no loss, it was better to start an army to attack Vietnam. At that time, after hearing the news, Wen Chuan advised him that our losses were not small, so it was better for our country to bribe the Chu state first. Gu Jian heeded the advice and ceded the land of "five hundred miles of the Yin of Lushan Mountain (that is, the land around Bengbu to Chaohu Lake, the hometown of the Yue Kingdom, and the Mawangdui book "Miao He" as "South Nest to Northern Qi, Seven Hundred Miles from North to South") to the State of Chu. The land also became a fiefdom. Perhaps later, Jurchen sent Fan Li to build a city by the Qinhuai River in order to prevent the Chu state from attacking the Yue state from this land. In any case, the Vietnamese people have realized that to be the hegemon, they have to fight on their own, and they can't always count on the old big brother Chu Guo. It may also be because of the distrust of the Chu state that the Yue state also reconciled with the Jin state.
However, in the era of Lu Yin and Bu Shou, there was no big move, and there may be any action, that is, to help the Ju state that was destroyed by the State of Qi to restore the country, to make the State of Ju the doorman of the western gate of the State of Yue, and possibly also recruited the descendants of the authentic Dayu (then in Chunyu, now Huangqi Fort, Fangzi District, Weifang, Shandong) to be the doorman of the northern gate of the Yue Kingdom. In any case, this small country in the east, in order to guard against the suppression of Qi and Chu, was the hardcore of the Jin state in the era of the Jin-Chu struggle for hegemony, and now it is completely normal to follow the Yue state that is in the same party as the Jin.
In the era of Lu Yin and Bu Shou Erjun, the Chu state was also relatively honest, probably settling in the newly acquired Huai River Valley land after the destruction of Wu. Perhaps King Hui of Chu also thought about the in-law relationship and did not want to attack the Yue Kingdom. But in the Jin Dynasty, a lot has changed. The three families of Han Zhao and Wei of the Jin Dynasty joined forces to destroy the ruling Zhengqing Zhi Boyao, and shortly thereafter, the Duke of Jin sent emissaries to request qi and Lu to send troops to attack the three secretaries. After Sanqing received the news, he jointly sent troops to attack Jin Chugong. Unable to resist, he was forced to flee the state of Qi, where he fell ill and died on the road (452 BC). Therefore, the three families set up a distant branch of the clan, and the cousin of the duke was proud to be the monarch, that is, the Duke of Jin (or the Duke of Jing and the Duke of Yi). Since then, the monarch of the Jin State, like the monarch of the State of Qi, has completely become the decoration of the powerful courtiers. This also meant that in the future, when dealing with the State of Jin, it was necessary to go through the way of Han Zhao and Wei Sanqing.
Speaking of the Han Wei Zhao Three Families, in fact, the lord of the alliance at this time was still the Zhao clan, and Zhao Xiangzi wuzi was also holding Zhi Bo's skull as a wine bowl to drink wine, while becoming the Zhengqing of the Zhao Kingdom. In fact, Zhao Xiangzi and his people also had a deep relationship with Wu Yue. As early as December 475 BC, during the protracted war against Wu in the Yue Kingdom, Zhao Xiangzi heard that the State of Wu was in a difficult situation, and he lowered his dietary standards to a lower level than the three-year mourning period. Then again, in fact, Zhao Xiangzi is not a strict and polite person. The year before this year, Zhao Xiangzi's father, Zhao Jianzi, died, and it was supposed that Zhao Xiangzi should fast and observe the funeral, but he did a major event of disobedience in the following summer, he opened a picnic party at Xiawu Mountain (present-day Caoduo Mountain, Dai County, Shanxi), and invited his brother-in-law Dai Wang to come to dinner, and as a result, the head of the Dai Wang at the banquet was beaten into a broken scoop by the chef with a copper spoon, and Zhao Xiangzi destroyed the Dai Guo (both in present-day Wei County, Hebei), and afterwards Zhao Xiangzi's sister could not stand it and committed suicide with a hairpin.
However, in order to show his friendship with the State of Wu, Zhao Xiangzi also sent an emissary Chu Long to the State of Wu to comfort The King of Wu, and Chu Long said that when the Huangchi Would be allied earlier, we in Wu and Jin said that we in Wu and Jin would "like and dislike each other", but now that we in the State of Jin could not rescue, we could only send me a message. Fu Cha said, I can't serve the Yue Kingdom, and let the Jin State worry. After saying this, Fu Cha also gave Chu Long a small tube of pearls, saying: "Shu Jian does not want to make the widow feel better, it seems that the widow is not good to die." It was an official answer to Jinguo's condolences. When Chu Long was about to leave, Fu Cha also asked a question: "Those who are about to drown must still have a smile on their faces, and I also want to ask you a question, why is Shi Yan of your country called a gentleman?" In the summer of 510 BC, when the State of Wu was crusading against the State of Yue, Shi Dark night watched the heavens and predicted that in less than forty years, the State of Wu would be wiped out by the State of Yue. Fu Cha was a bit self-deprecating at this time. Chu Long replied very euphemistically: "Shi Mo, when he was an official, no one hated him, and after he retired, he did not slander him, it is because of this that he was called a gentleman!" After hearing this, he replied, "You are really right. ”
Although this dialogue is very clever, it also reflects the fact that the super hegemony faded in the late Spring and Autumn and the emergence of regional powers, yes, when the State of Wu once beat the State of Chu to the point of almost destroying the country, and now it is also caught in the scene of the State of Chu. In this scene, of course, we can only expect the "gentleman" to save a country. However, the problem of the State of Wu, according to the analysis of Li Ke of the Wei state after that, was to die in "several battles and several victories", so that the monarch arrogantly indulged the fatigue of the people, so he eventually died of warlike soldiers. In a sense, Yue Guo actually embarked on this road later, but there are still some differences in the return of Yue Guo, which I will put in a later chapter.
Looking back at the Yue Kingdom, in 449 BC (the twenty-eighth year of qin li gonggong), Yue Wang Bushou sent an emissary to the Qin state to take a concubine back for his son (I think it is unlikely to be for himself, Yue Wang Bushou should have been in his fifties at that time), which may also be to improve the friendship within the allies of the Chu state, indicating that the yue kingdom in this era probably had a more harmonious relationship with the Jin and Chu. However, in the following year, King Yue was killed by his son Zhu Ju (Jin Wen as "Zhou Sentence"), which is also the first of the "Yue Ren III Emperor Killing The King" incident posthumously described by later generations.
After the State of Yue entered the era of Zhu Ju, it cooperated more closely with the State of Jin (and the successor of the Jin State's hegemony, the State of Wei), and gradually became estranged from the State of Chu. In the second year after the death of the Emperor, the State of Chu began to increase its management of the Huai River valley in the east, eliminating the State of Cai (then in 447 BC, the forty-second year of King Hui of Chu), and the Warring States Policy states that "Cai Gong died in Jin". Cai Guo himself was the younger brother of the Chu State during the Jin-Chu struggle for hegemony, but in the "Four Strong Era" (that is, Jin, Chu, Qi, and Yue) after the rise of Wu Yue, he chose to attach himself to the Jin State. After the destruction of the State of Cai, according to the records of the "Qinghua Jian ChuJu", King Hui of Chu himself simply sat in cai Guo's hometown prefecture (present-day Fengtai County, Anhui), and let the prince sit in the old nest of Yingdu, which showed that the Chu state attached great importance to the East, and this importance also meant that the chu and Yue countries had a kind of disillusionment in the consensus on dividing up the heritage of the State of Wu, and the Jianghuai region was not peaceful again.
King Hui of Chu did indeed begin further eastern operations, first in the forty-fourth year of King Hui of Chu (445 BC), a long-distance raid, and the northern gate guard of the State of Yue and the eastern gate of the State of Qi, which was a lesson for both the State of Qi and the State of Yue. Later, an engineering talent was introduced, from the Lu state of Gonglu (that is, Luban), who invented a water warfare weapon "hook-mounted", that is, a metal hook similar to the anchor shape of a ship to fall on the rope, this weapon is very useful, it can be hooked to the defeated enemy ship, and the attacking enemy ship can resist pushing forward. Because the State of Chu is in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and the Huai River, and the State of Vietnam is in the lower reaches, once the water battle is unfavorable, the Vietnamese water army can quickly retreat by means of the water current, if the Vietnamese army has the upper hand, the Chu army ships down the water flow, naturally the Vietnamese water army can cooperate with the army to surround and annihilate the Chu water army. However, since the Chu State had a secret weapon invented like a public loser, it was no longer afraid of the heavy losses of the water army.
Pictured: Hook-set object, stored in Xuzhou Museum
However, although there may be slight losses on the water, the Yue State stepped up its cooperation with the Jin State on land. In fact, after the Jin dynasty destroyed the Zhi clan, although the Zhao clan also suffered huge losses from the siege of Jinyang for three years, it was still the strongest member of the Han Wei Zhao. In addition, in fact, Zhao Xiangzi himself is also a figure with the ideological tendency of the Great Jin State, and Sun Wu also believed that the six secretaries of the Jin State would eventually return to the Zhao clan, so the Zhao clan did not want to see the collapse of the Jin state, in order to unite the hearts and minds of the people, they must continue to step up foreign conquests and transfer internal contradictions with external contradictions. There is a record in the "Year of the Qinghua Jian Dynasty": In the eleventh year of the Jin JingGong (Aigong) (441 BC), Zhao Huanzi of the Jin State (Zhao Xiangzi's unsympathetic son) met with the princes in Gong (present-day Gongyi, Henan, then part of the Zhou royal family), and also met with Yin Song, the ling of the Yue State, and agreed that the two countries would fight the State of Qi together, and as a result, the State of Qi suffered a great loss. The Qi people had to build the Great Wall along Jishui, from the western foothills of Mount Tai to the seashore. Although this battle caused great deterrence to the State of Qi, I think the background story of this conquest may be more.
First, the initiator of the huimeng was Zhao Huanzi, who, after zhao xiangzi's death, violated the will of Xiangzi to return to the patriarchal old system and his brother Zhao Bolu's grandson Zhao Xianzi (or his father Chengjun), expelled the descendants of Zhao Bolu, who was originally the heir, and established himself as the suzerainty of the Zhao clan. However, if it is still said that Zhao Xiangzi had not yet died when the Huimeng occurred, it may be that the Chu people who recorded the "Lineage Year" have misremembered, second, zhao Huanzijia had reached a tacit understanding with the Han and Wei families as early as when Zhao Xiangzi was alive, or Zhao Xiangzi was ill and could not see things, thus gradually taking the power of the Jin state from his father, and third, perhaps zhao Xiangzi really died at this time, and the "Zhao Shijia" Xiangzi reigned for thirty-three years, then his death year was in 442 BC, when Zhao Huanzi was established, and he died in the eighteenth year of his reign (424 BC). The mistake of the Zhao Shijia is to move the reign of Xiangzi forward by 17 years, from 475 BC to 442 BC to 458 BC to 425 BC. Why is this error? It may be because the xianzi was established in a coup d'état and killed the son of Huanzi, and his position was not correct, whether Huanzi was the brother or uncle of the xianzi, and ultimately the successor enjoyed the Zhao state after the xianzi, so the later Zhao state historical materials deliberately reduced huanzi's reign time, and was mistakenly adopted by Sima Qian, and the result was that the 17 years of Huanzi's actual reign were mistakenly added to the reign of Jianzi. Second, the place of the alliance was in gong of the Zhou Chamber, and in the same year, after the death of King Zhending of Zhou, there were two consecutive incidents of killing the king, and it is possible that the Zhao clan presided over the alliance in Gongdi, also because the arrangement for the disturbance in the Zhou chamber had just ended. Third, the State of Yue itself was in the east of the State of Qi, and this time the use of troops was mainly in the western border of the State of Qi, and at this time, the State of Qi was destroyed by the State of Chu, and it may be that the State of Yue did not dare to send troops from the east out of fear of Chu, so it had to use the land of Lu and Wei to send troops to join the Jin Dynasty. It can be seen that although the Yue Kingdom at this time is still one of the top four in the world, it still has to hug the thigh of the Jin State and act as a thug for the Jin State.
After the Joint Battle of Jin-Yue, perhaps King Hui of Chu once again felt the pressure brought by the Jin-Yue Alliance in the north and east, so he once again returned to the Capital of the Chu State of Yanyin, so as not to suffer trouble in the east, and let the prince sit in the northwest direction of "Jiangying" (around the present-day Laohekou in Hubei), probably afraid that the Han clan of the Jin State would launch an attack from the western front. However, the western front was threatening, but he was moved by the eastern front and thoughts about the Old Friend of the Jin Dynasty since the Wengong Era, Song Guo. This led to the story of Mozi playing a simulated siege battle at the court of the Chu State and losing like a public loser. It seems that the Vietnamese people also want to thank Mozi for his pacifist activities, which also reduces the threat from the Chu state a little.
After the collapse of King Hui of Chu, King Zhongzhong of Chu jian took the throne, and as soon as the new king came up, he killed an old friend of the Yue kingdom and guarded the state of Ju at the western gate (then in the first year of the reign of King Chu Jian (431 BC)), and regarding the demise of the state of Ju, Su Dai said that it was "Ju Jian yue and perished", and the corpse zi said that "Ju Jun was good at ghosts and witches and the country died". Probably because of the care of the big brother of the Yue kingdom, the Juguo people also did not attach importance to the garrison, and concentrated on engaging in ghost god and witch blessing activities, but they did not want to think that this big brother would mainly accompany the Jin state to knock on the qi country, and temporarily put the chu state on hold.
In the second year after the fall of the State of Ju, the State of Yue did not cross the Five Lotus Mountains to avenge the State of Ju, but followed the State of Jin to continue to attack the State of Qi, and wanted to lose to the west and make up for it in the north, so he followed the Zhao Dog sent by the State of Jin (this person was the "New Zhi Muzi" who defeated the Di people in the zhao Xiangzi era, and it may be that his descendants did not establish the New ZhiYi Clan), together to attack the State of Qi, the Jin army crossed the newly built Great Wall of the State of Qi in the east, and the Song and Yue joined forces to defeat the Qi army at Xiangping (this place is unknown, but it should be south of the Yimeng Mountains). It can be seen that the Vietnamese people seem to be a great threat to the State of Qi.
In short, from the perspective of this history, the Jin people, especially the Zhao clan among them, are really quite shrewd. They first befriended the State of Wu and then the State of Yue, and supported them in their chaotic struggle with Qi Chu, and the diplomatic means were used to cross the slip. Without such means, if the situation in the south is stable, Chu and Wu will take advantage of the decline of jin hegemony and the chaotic struggle of the Six Qings to rise up and annex the Central Plains. In this way, perhaps the Warring States culture, which is the basis of Chinese culture, will change drastically. Fortunately, when the political situation of the Central Plains countries changed, the Jin people in the south attacked from afar and attacked the weak and resisted the strong, which was able to preserve the culture of the Central Plains and have the situation of the Seven Heroes of the Warring States in the future.
This article is written by the special author of "The Heroic Dream of famous generals through the ages", "Pingsha Boundless", and it is forbidden to reprint it without the author's authorization