Hangu Pass, as the eastern gate of the Qin State, has always been easy to defend and difficult to attack, and is a barrier for Qin to fight with the Six Kingdoms of the East, and many allied princes and elite generals want to have a panoramic view of the scenery in Guanzhong, but they all stop outside Hangu Pass.
However, just twelve years after the establishment of the Great Unification Qin Dynasty, the Hangu Pass was breached in one fell swoop, and the person who broke the pass was not the Chu and Han Shuangxiong who later became famous all over the world- Xiang Yu and Liu Bang.
I. The Great Uprising at the End of Qin
In July 209 BC, a contingent of 900 men sent to Yuyang Shushou marched to Daze Township in PuXian County (near daze township in present-day Suzhou, Anhui), but because of the continuous rain, fearing that they would be punished after the deadline, they directly raised the anti-flag. The leaders were Chen Sheng, a native of Yangcheng, Chen County, and Wu Guang, a Native yang of Chen County, and according to the current administrative divisions, their hometowns belonged to Henan and belonged to Chu at the end of the Warring States period, so they were also known as one of the main forces of "Chu who died in Qin".
Their slogan was "Prince general xiang, Ning has a kind of hu", and the frequency of later use of this slogan is probably very high in the historical high-frequency word list, and it is welcomed by many "rebels". However, What Chen Sheng had in mind was "Great Chu Xing, King Chen Sheng", and for this reason, he also deliberately pulled out two famous people to "support" him, namely Fu Su and Xiang Yan. The former was the eldest son of Qin Shi Huang, who had just been killed by the second Hu Hai a year ago; the latter was a famous general of the Chu state during the Warring States period and the last glory of the Chu state. Although the two people couldn't fight with eight rods, in order to expand their appeal, Chen Sheng didn't care much about these things.
He and Wu Guang killed the two Qin generals in charge of the guards, and after gathering the hearts and minds of the people, they rushed into the county town of Pu county not far away with these nine hundred people. The people of Puxian Had long been fed up with the rule of the violent Qin, and they welcomed the arrival of the rebel army with both hands and responded one after another, willing to join the ranks of the rebel army. The troops then grew rapidly in the midst of the siege, and only a month later, they already had 600 to 700 chariots, more than 1,000 cavalry, and tens of thousands of infantry, and reached the outskirts of Chen County, Chen County. The Great Qin, which was once a bamboo, was now allowed to run the rebel army, and Chen County soon became the pocket of the rebel army.
Subsequently, Chen Sheng established the Zhang Chu regime with Chen County as the capital, meaning Zhang Da Chu State, and the revival of the Chu State began with King Chen Sheng.
Second, the main force marched westward, and the division was partial
With the establishment of the Zhang-Chu regime, the six kingdoms of Kwantung also sounded anti-Qin trumpets, including the protagonists of the later Chu-Han rivalry, Xiang Yu and Liu Bang. At the same time, Chen Sheng, Wu Guang, and other important members also began to make further plans for the development of Zhang Chu's regime, and determined the strategic goal of "the main force marching westward and partially planning the division." Specific military deployments are as follows:
1. With Wu Guang as the false king, he led the main force of the rebel army to attack Xingyang in the west, waiting for the opportunity to enter Hangu Pass and attack Xianyang, the capital of the Qin state.
2. With Song Liu as the general, he led the army to pacify Nanyang, and then broke through the Wu Pass and attacked Guanzhong.
3. With Wuchen as the general, cross the Yellow River in the north and attack the land of Yan and Zhao.
4. With Deng Zong as the general, attack in the direction of Jiujiang.
5. With Zhou Wei [fú] as the general, he went north to attack the former places of the Wei state such as Yan Commandery and Dong Commandery.
6. With Zhao Ping as the general, he led the troops to attack the direction of Guangling.
Within a few months, the anti-Qin wave was higher and higher, and the Six Kingdoms of Kwantung seemed to have returned to the Warring States period, the era of land-dividing and kingship, and shortly thereafter, a general of the rebel army broke through the Hangu Pass and rushed to the hinterland of Guanzhong in the Qin Dynasty.
3. Enter Guanzhong in the west
Wu Guang, who was ordered to attack Xingyang from the west, initially proceeded very smoothly and soon surrounded Xingyang. However, what he did not expect was that Xingyang's defenders eventually made him suffer.
Xingyang Shou (荥陽守) was named Li You (李由), the son of Li Si (李思), the chancellor of the State of Qin, and at this time the official was under the jurisdiction of Sanchuan Commandery (三川郡守), and Xingyang was under his jurisdiction. On the one hand, he sent an emergency distress letter to the Jingshi, and on the other hand, he and the 25,000 soldiers in the city were ready to hold on to Xingyang City. In the face of Wu Guang's fierce attack, Li Youquan was not afraid and methodically commanded the defensive battle.
For several days, Wu Guangdu wanted to use his numerical superiority to break through the city, and the defenders led by Li You were far more tenacious than he could imagine, and the battle situation was soon stuck in a stalemate. At the same time, Chen Liujun, who had marched into Nanyang, was also stubbornly blocked by the Qin army, and the day of breaking the pass was far away. King Chen Sheng, who was sitting in the rear, soon received the news that his westward advance was blocked, and looking at the overall situation, he quickly gave instructions to arrange another team to bypass Xingyang and take Hangu Pass directly.
The leading general of this group was named Zhou Wen (周文), also known as Zhou Zhang (Zhou Zhang, written in the Benji of qin shi huang shi jia, zhou wen in the Chen ShiJia), a local Haojie of Chen County, who had been a disciple of Chun Shenjun Huang Xie, claimed to know the art of war very well, and had served in Xiang Yan's army. After Chen Sheng broke Chen, he became a member of Zhang Chu's regime and won Chen Sheng's trust, so this time Chen Sheng gave him such an important task of breaking the pass.
With Wu Guang and Song Liu containing the main force of the Qin army, Zhou Wen's troops were like a bamboo all the way, and everywhere they passed, the people responded one after another, and the team continued to grow, and by the time they reached Hangu Pass, Zhou Wen's men already had thousands of chariots and hundreds of thousands of soldiers. The resistance at Hangu Pass was also far less than that of Li You at Xingyang, and the barrier of the Qin Dynasty for many years was completely unable to resist Zhou Wen's army, and the Qin Dynasty regime was threatened for the first time.
Fourth, the water turning machine
Entering Hangu Pass, Zhou Wen was greeted by Pingchuan, which was hundreds of miles away from Guanzhong. Along the avenue on the south bank of the Weishui River, Zhou Wen's army marched westward, almost without any hindrance, and had already come to the edge of the water, next to the Qin Emperor's Mausoleum in Lishan Mountain on the eastern outskirts of Xianyang. However, right here, a Qin army blocked their way on the other side of the water.
The leader of the army was Zhang Handan, the last "famous general" of the Qin Dynasty, who called him a "famous general" because in the last years of the Great Qin Dynasty, he was the only one who still had the strength to fight a war, although in the years when Qin destroyed the Six Kingdoms, he rarely appeared in his figure, and in his body, there was some tragic grandeur of "there was no general in Shu, Liao Hua was the vanguard". At this time, as a shaofu, his job was to supervise the apprentices to step up the completion of the finishing work of the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin. However, the news of Zhou Wen's breaking of the pass soon alerted Zhang Handan, and he quickly requested Qin II to pardon Lishan's apprentices to resist the strong enemy. The panicked Qin II naturally agreed immediately, so Zhang Handan was able to wait for Zhou Wen's attack on the other side of the water at this time.
Collect the troops to the pass, the car is thousands, the pawns are hundreds of thousands, to the drama, the army. Qin Ling Shaofu Zhang Handan spared li shan disciples, and the human slaves gave birth to children, and they were defeated by attacking the Chu army. - "Historia. Chen Shijia
Fifth, the achievement is a failure
In the end, the "ragtag crowd" led by Zhang Handan, composed of Lishan disciples, defeated the "miscellaneous army" that Zhou Wen had gathered along the way. However, the details of the war are not recorded in the main history, and it is difficult for us to know. Zhang Handan may rely on the convenience of geography, or the survival of the apprentices, of course, it may also be the help of the defense force of the Beijing Division, in short, he won.
Subsequently, Zhang Handan's Qin army was pressing forward step by step, Zhou Wen's Chu army fought and retreated, Zhou Wen tried to gain a firm foothold several times, but failed, all the way out of Hangu Pass, and later, he was completely defeated by Zhang Handan at Yanchi (present-day Shixi, Henan), forced to commit suicide, and a "big card" caught by "accidental" was ultimately unable to win.
With Zhang Handan's exit, the siege of Xingyang was quickly resolved, but contradictions began to arise within the Zhang Chu clique.
First, Wu Guang was killed by his subordinate general Tian Zang on the orders of King Chen Sheng, and then Tian Zang was defeated and killed in the war with Zhang Handan.
Soon after, The capital of Zhang Chu's regime, Chen County, was attacked by Zhang Handan, and Chen Sheng was killed by the coachman Zhuang Jia while fleeing to Chengfu.
Zhang Chu's regime thus declared its demise. At this time, it was only half a year before Chen Sheng became king and established the Zhang Chu regime.
Water talk
Many people in later generations analyzed the reasons for Chen Sheng's failure from the aspects of Chen Sheng's personality and means of acting, however, it has to be said that it was precisely because of the uprising of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang in Dazexiang that the demise of the Qin Dynasty was really accelerated, and even it was only one step away from personally destroying Qin. If Zhou Wen wins in the "mysterious" water battle, perhaps history will change into a different way.
However, history has no if, Zhou Wen's move to break the pass this time can only be an episode of history after all, but it really pulled Hangu Pass off the "altar" and made people realize that Hangu Pass is no longer indestructible.
In fact, as the gateway of the Qin Dynasty, Hangu Pass was the border defense of the Qin State during the Warring States period, and naturally did not allow others to touch it; in the unified Great Qin Dynasty, the border defense line had been expanded to northern Xinjiang and South Vietnam, and the heavy army accumulation also lay in this, and the strategic position of Hangu Pass could not be compared with that year, and its defensive force was also worlds apart from that year.