There are many reasons for qin's death, in addition to the tyranny of Qin II and large-scale national defense projects such as the Great Wall, which wastes people's strength, there is another more important reason that we have not paid attention to, that is, Qin Shi Huang's use of troops against Baiyue.
In the thirty-third year of Qin Shi Huang (214 BC), the First Emperor ordered "Wei" Tu Ju to lead a large army of 500,000 troops to attack Lingnan in five ways, defeating the Xi'ou people (Baiyue in Zhejiang), the Minyue people (Fujian Baiyue) and the Nanyue people (Guangdong Baiyue), but when fighting with the Xi'ou people (Guangxi, Vietnam's Baiyue), according to Huainanzi. The "Human Training" records that this battle was fought very hard by the Qin army, and for three years it did not undo its armor and did not relax the crossbow. First, Xiao Sheng also killed the leader of the Xi'ou tribe, "Yi Wu Song", but then the Xi'ou people played a game of hide-and-seek with the Qin army, they hid in the deep mountains and old forests, and constantly harassed the Qin army with geographical advantages. Finally, one night, the Qin army was ambushed by the Xi'ou people, and was greatly defeated, the main general Tu Sui was killed, and the Qin soldiers ambushed the corpses and shed blood and sacrificed hundreds of thousands of people.
Now the question arises, Meng Tian defeated the mighty Xiongnu with 300,000 yuan, and Wei Tuju had an army of 500,000 people, why was it made this virtue by a small Xi'ou? Could it be that the commander-in-chief is too stupid? Not necessarily. We do not know in detail what tu ju is, but seeing that he can take over the position of a generation of famous generals Wang Qi to lead the southern expedition of half a country, I believe that even if he is not as good as Mengtian, he will never be an incompetent person. So why did the invincible Qin army come to Lingnan and become old and lose the battle? I think there are several main reasons:
First: The Mengtian Northern Expedition was the homeland of the Zhao State, and the local border people, who hated the plundering of the Xiongnu, would naturally stand on the side of the Qin army. For the Yue people there, the Qin army was an aggressor, so they had to resist stubbornly at all costs. Therefore, the same is to expand the territory, and the nature of the war launched by Meng Tian and Wei Tuju is different, and the results are naturally very different.
Second: local climates are different. The Northern Expedition was in the Hetao area, where the climatic conditions were not much different from Guanzhong' and the soldiers were more adaptable. The Baiyue region of Wei Tuju's southern expedition was a barbaric land in the south, where the climate was hot, the terrain was humid, the mountains were mixed, the miasma was extremely heavy, and there were many snakes and insects. As soon as the Qin army arrived at its land, it did not accept the water and soil. Either invaded by plague miasma, or infested by poisonous insects of beasts of prey, they often die. In addition, the local Yue people were familiar with the terrain and constantly sneaked up on the Qin army. Over time, the morale of the Qin army was getting lower and lower, and a major defeat could not be avoided.
Of course, the Qin army was many after all, and after killing enough people, Qin Shi Huang finally pacified the Baiyue region and placed it as the three counties of Guilin (about present-day Guangxi Province), Xiang County (about present-day north-central Vietnam), and Nanhai (about present-day Guangdong Province). At this point, the territory of the Qin Empire stretched from the sea in the east, to the quicksand in the west, to the Wuling Mountains in the south, and to the north through Bactria, with a total land area of more than 3.47 million square kilometers, which was larger than the Alexander Empire that spanned Europe, Asia and Africa in the last century (the first four). It was the country with the largest territorial area in the world at that time. Unfortunately, the national strength of the Western Han Dynasty in the early years of the Qin Dynasty was very weak, and the territory of the country was once sharply reduced to 2.14 million square kilometers, and later if it were not for the Han Wu Emperor's struggle to fight back the territory, the Wuhu Chaohua might have erupted in advance.
However, in order to conquer Baiyue, the empire paid an extremely painful price for this, and this price directly accelerated the pace of great Qin's collapse. If Pai Mengtian's construction of the Great Wall and the construction of straight roads were still necessary for the security and development of the empire, then the conquest of Baiyue was definitely the biggest mistake that Qin Shi Huang made in his life.
First: The conquest of Baiyue is not a top priority. The Xiongnu had great potential and occupied the hetao region of the empire's life, so they had to be driven away and not allowed to grow calmly. But why did Baiyue rush to balance it? Since ancient times, Baiyue has never been a problem for the Chinese Dynasty, because it is called Baiyue, there are many natural tribes, and they are not subordinate to each other, and they are scattered and scattered, which cannot threaten the rule of the Central Plains regime, so when the Chu State was at its strongest, it only developed into the Hunan region of Zhejiang, and did not continue to fight south. The Han Dynasty also recuperated for nearly a hundred years, until emperor Wu of han was at his strongest, and he completely subdued Baiyue in 109 BC. Why did Qin Shi Huang have to be in such a hurry? Meals must be eaten in one bite, battles must be fought from generation to generation, and everything must be balanced. Building the Great Wall and building straight roads has already consumed a lot of national strength and financial resources, and the empire needs at least a few decades of recuperation and the reproduction of population and material resources to continue the next step of the expansion plan. Therefore, the most correct thing for Qin Shi Huang to do was to leave the conquest of Baiyue to future generations, but he had to do everything in his lifetime. Some things are not that they cannot be done, but that they are not done when the time comes, and they may not be able to afford to pay that price. Qin Shi Huang's biggest shortcoming is that he is so great and proud of his achievements, so lofty and far-reaching, that he must devote himself to one battle in everything, and that he is not afraid to support himself at all. Alas, sometimes people are too enterprising and it is not good, they must have self-knowledge, they must understand contentment and happiness, they must pursue but do not force, this is a really good attitude towards life. The so-called too much is too late, and the extremes of things must be reversed, which is such a truth.
Pictured: Map of the early years of the Western Han Dynasty
Second: Conquer baiyue self-destructive self-destructive strength. In order to rule and develop the newly conquered Baiyue region, the empire's 500,000 troops were all stationed in xiang county, guilin county, and nanhai county. However, the land in these areas was poor, the agricultural development was very backward, and the half a million southern army could not be as large-scale as the Mengtian Northern Army, so it could only rely on the construction of a spiritual canal to transfer grain from Bashu and Hanzhong, and as a result, in a few years, half a million people almost exhausted the granary of the Tianfu Kingdom, which directly led to a decline in the supply level of the army. The knighthood obtained by cutting off people's heads can no longer receive corresponding preferential treatment, and under the vicious circle, the military merit system that has kept the Qin army's high morale for a hundred years has almost collapsed. Once the world was in chaos, the Qin army fled in large numbers and even rebelled, and the result was that the empire fell apart in an instant.
Third, the conquest of Baiyue was the most expensive deal made by Qin Shi Huang in his life--500,000 troops were completely lost. Qin Shi Huang sent a total of 800,000 troops to the outside, 300,000 in the north and 500,000 in the south, which was almost the entire main force of the empire. The 300,000 troops in the north, traveling from the straight road, could rush to Xianyang to rescue them within five days. However, the 500,000 troops in the south are secluded in the southern wilderness, and the transportation is inconvenient, and once there is danger in Guanzhong, it will not be saved for several months. In fact, when the people's uprising broke out and the world was in chaos, the 500,000 troops in the south did not go to save Qin, and the commander of the Southern Army at that time, Zhao Tuo, the commander of the Southern Army, simply did his best to curse the Qin officials in various counties, and defended himself according to the danger, not only watching the empire perish, but supporting the army and respecting himself, and establishing himself as the king of Nanyue!
Pictured: The huge oil painting "Heji Baiyue" at the Guangdong Provincial Museum records the historical facts of Zhao Tuo's establishment of the State of South Vietnam in 204 BC.
We can think, if the Empire added these half a million elite troops, would it still perish so quickly? Infinite reverie space!
Perhaps, Qin's death was due to the fact that Qin Shi Huang and his courtiers were too eager to make quick gains, but after all, they had done many great things that had never been done in ancient times and were groundbreaking, and these major events were almost more than the sum of most of the emperors and generals in the next two thousand years. In Chinese history, Qin culture is unique. The Qin people are utilitarian and practical, full of pioneering and enterprising spirit, they worship rules and order, and believe that force can solve all problems. Perhaps, this cultural tradition has created a strong empire and sowed the seeds of destruction. But in any case, they created a great civilization, and they have left countless precious legacies for our descendants, tyranny is tyranny, at least better than some unscrupulous monarchs who have not done anything serious in their lives.