Beginning in 238 BC, with the planning and assistance of Li Si, Wei Ji and others, Qin Shi Huang began the war to unify the world, and it took 17 years to complete the unification of the world in 221 BC, and the main names used by Qin Shi Huang in the war to unify the Six Kingdoms were Wang Qi, Wang Ben father and son, Meng Wu, Meng Tian father and son, as well as Li Xin, Yang Duanhe, Qiang Bao, Tu Ju, Ren Hu, Zhao Tuo and other generals.
Qin Shi Huang's war to unify the world lasted for 17 years, plus after the Qin Dynasty unified the world until its demise, it took 15 years, that is to say, even if he participated in the war of Qin Shi Huang to unify the Six Kingdoms at the age of 20, by the time of the peasant uprising at the end of Qin, the youngest person was 52 years old, not to mention the general, if he was a general, the youngest person who could live to the end of Qin was more than 60 years old.
Of course, it is not excluded that the generals who can live to be more than 60 years old, but there are very few, at least the famous generals mentioned above, except for Meng Tian, all of them have died, either from illness or in battle, such as Wang Qi and Wang Ben father and son have died one after another, Wang Qi probably died around 221 BC, and Wang Ben died around 219 BC, and even the third generation of the Wang family, Wang Li, became the deputy general of the Great Wall Army of the Qin Army in the late Qin Shi Huang period, and their ancestors died long ago.
After the unification of the Six Kingdoms, Qin Shi Huang mainly used troops in two directions, one was the Xiongnu in the north, mainly defensive, led by Meng Tian to defend the Great Wall Army, the deputy general was Wang Li, the second was the Southern Baiyue, mainly to take the initiative to attack, the first attack on Baiyue Qin army would be Tu Ju, Tu Ju was later killed by the Baiyue resistance forces, the second attack on Baiyue was Ren Hu and Zhao Tuo, and finally succeeded in taking Baiyue.
Judging from the use of troops by Qin Shi Huang, he mainly put the elite military of the Qin Empire on the transit line or periphery of the empire to resist the invasion of foreign tribes, and for the territory inside the Qin Empire, that is, the land of the seven heroes of the warring states before, it was basically in a state of no heavy military defense, which was Qin Shi Huang's typical strategy of resisting enemies outside the country.
Qin Shi Huang never dreamed that a year after his death, there was a great peasant uprising led by Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, and Qin Shi Huang never thought that the fortress was often breached from the inside, and the demise of the Qin Empire was due to internal problems, not external invasions, and Qin Shi Huang did not expect that just five years after his death, the Qin Dynasty would perish.
The landmark event of the fall of the Qin Dynasty was that Liu Bang led an army into Guanzhong, and the Prince of Qin surrendered to Liu Bang
。
Liu Bang was only a partial army in the anti-Qin rebel army, why did he attack Guanzhong so easily and destroy the Qin Dynasty, where did those tiger and wolf divisions of the Great Qin Empire go 15 years ago? Will people like Liu Bang perish the Qin Dynasty?
In fact, Liu Bang's destruction of the Qin Dynasty had its subjective reasons as well as objective reasons.
First of all, the objective reasons, the first major objective reasons are:
Political struggles within the Qin ruling class led to the complete paralysis of the imperial center
From the beginning of the great peasant uprising of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, for more than a year, the imperial court of the Qin Empire paid no attention to the peasant uprising at all, but resigned itself to it, so that the rebel army Zhou Wenbu led the army into Hangu Pass, and then further attacked the capital of the Qin Empire, Xianyang, qin II felt the real crisis, but at this time, the entire east of Hangu Pass was full of rebel troops, and the spark of stars could not be extinguished.
After the death of Qin Shi Huang, Zhao Gao took power and plotted a dune coup with Hu Hai and Li Si, after success, Hu Hai and Zhao Gao began to kill people, the famous general Meng Tian was given death, Meng Yi was killed, the general Feng Hao and the right minister Feng Qifu were killed, almost all of Hu Hai's brothers and sisters were killed, and the cruel political purge washed away the famous generals left by the Qin state since Qin Shi Huang, so when Zhou Wen entered Hangu Pass, he asked a civilian official like Zhang Handan to lead an army to resist.
Although Zhang Handan was still one of the most famous generals in the Qin Dynasty, because the spark of the stars had already become a burning force, although Zhang Handan defeated all the anti-Qin forces south of the Yellow River, he did not completely eliminate them, such as Xiang Yu, Liu Bang, Peng Yue, Yingbu and others were still alive, and at the same time, Zhang Handan made the wrong decision to lead the army north to attack the Zhao State, and at the same time wanted to attract all the anti-Qin military generals in the world to the Zhao State and annihilate them.
Therefore, the second objective reason for Liu Bang's destruction of the Qin Dynasty was:
The main force of the Qin army was not guarding the capital City of Xianyang
The main force of the Qin army was divided into three parts, one was the Great Wall Army in the north, after Meng Tian was killed, Wang Qi's grandson, Wang Ben's son Wang Li served as the commander, this part of the population had 300,000 people, its main duty was to guard the Northern Great Wall, after the outbreak of the peasant uprising, the Great Wall Army was partially transferred to the Central Plains to suppress the rebel army, Wang Li also fought a battle with Liu Bang in Chengwu, Wang Li was defeated by Liu Bang. The second was the Baiyue Army in the south, which had at least 300,000 men and never participated in any war in the Central Plains, but instead divided Lingnan. The third is the Central Army of the Qin Dynasty, which also has at least 200,000 people, and when Zhou Wen entered Xianyang, one member of the Central Army followed Zhang Handan out of the pass to fight, and the other nanny continued to guard Xianyang.
When Liu Bang attacked Xianyang all the way to the west, not much attention was paid to Liu Bang's purpose, nor did he think that Liu Bang would succeed, more importantly, the main force of the Qin army was not stopping Liu Bang on Liu Bang's westward advance, but was besieging the State of Zhao, the 200,000 Great Wall Army led by Wang Li was besieging the Giant Deer City of the State of Zhao during Liu Bang's westward advance, and the 200,000 prisoner army led by Zhang Handan was also near the Giant Deer, one was to provide food for Wang's army, and the other was to encircle the reinforcements, preparing to use the Giant Deer as a point to besiege all the anti-Qin rebels who came to rescue the Giant Deer.
Therefore, Liu Bang did not encounter any main force of the Qin army on his way west to Xianyang, and the Qin army he faced was all county soldiers of the Qin Dynasty, with poor combat effectiveness and low loyalty, and they were either defeated by Liu Bang or bypassed by Liu Bang.
The subjective reasons for Liu Bang's demise of the Qin Dynasty were:
Liu Bang's outstanding employment ability and command ability
Although Liu Bang's military talent is not very strong, but Liu Bang's employment talent is super high, no one in the late Qin generation can match Liu Bang's ability to employ people, Liu Bang appointed a large number of military generals, such as Cao San, Fan Duo, Zhou Bo, Dou Bao, etc., as well as Zhang Liang, such a super strategist, and it was Zhang Liang who provided Liu Bang with a strategy to attack Guanzhong from Wuguan, Liu Bang adopted, and finally used a strategy to attack Guanzhong, and the soldiers were under Xianyang City, at that time, Xianyang City had no soldiers to use, naturally the Qin prince infant surrendered to Liu Bang, so the Qin Dynasty perished.
In addition, in the process of Liu Bang's westward march to destroy Qin, all the battles were fought very flexibly, and for the cities and pools that were loyal to the Qin Dynasty, they first attacked the heart to persuade them to surrender, and if they could not persuade them to surrender, they fought, and they fought if they could not fight, they bypassed it, and they still marched all the way west, unimpeded, gave up the heavily guarded Hangu Pass, first accepted bribes from the Qin generals with money, and then suddenly attacked and attacked Wuguan, took Wuguan in one fell swoop, and attacked Guanzhong, which was Liu Bang's command ability.
Therefore, although the Qin Dynasty looks very powerful, in fact, the soldiers and generals who can recruit the habitual battles are either dead or killed, and the Qin soldiers at the end of qin are not the elite divisions that unified the six kingdoms, and the time of several decades has passed two or three generations, and the combat effectiveness has also seriously declined, coupled with the infighting of the ruling class of the Qin Dynasty, a combination of various reasons, so that Liu Bang easily broke into Xianyang and destroyed the Qin Dynasty.