Author: Fu Anping
First of all, there are words:
Bo Fengfu Yu (伯翳助禹), who has meritorious service in controlling water, and Shun has given the surname Officiation (嬴). For the princes of Yin, father and son assisted, and Zhou Wu came. Fei Zi raised horses, divided Qin Yi in Zhou, and became a vassal. Qin Zhong was killed, the fifth son was broken, and the Doctor of Xi Chui. Xianggong protected Zhou, gave Qixi, and founded the princes.
For a long time after the Zhou Dynasty, the Qin people have always been considered by the Central Plains countries to be a foreign race mixed with the Rong Di barbarians, but if you trace back to the roots, you will find that the ancestors of the Qin people have assisted Shun, Yu Ersheng and several generations of Yin kings, who were already princes at the time of Yin Shang, but only lost their power at the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty due to the change of dynasties, and were forced to move west to the secluded land of Xi Rong. Of course, whether those glorious histories came from the later Qin Dynasty using absolute power, it is not known.
At the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, the father and son of The Evil Lian and the Evil Lai died one after another for their sins, and the remaining yin clan members were immediately beaten into the class of labor slaves. The inspirational story of the ancestors of the Qin Kingdom began at this time from the plight of poverty and poverty. The Qin people can rise step by step from such a bottom and continue to grow bigger, until they later unify the Six Kingdoms, what is the superiority in them? Why is it that such a small and dilapidated family can unify the world, while many other princes and noble families have not been able to do so?
(1) At the beginning of the weak, take advantage of the situation to turn over
Because the father and son of Gong Lian and Evil Lai came up with bad ideas for helping king Shang, evil lai was killed by the king of Zhou, and Lian Lian fled to the mountains. If ordinary people's families were overthrown by the supreme royal power, it would be difficult to get rid of the crime and get back up again without a hundred years, but the incorruptible descendants were very angry, they were overthrown when they were king of Zhou Wu, and when king Zhou Cheng, the son of king wu of Zhou, began to turn over. Moreover, after King Wu of Zhou overthrew Yin Shang (that is, after the evil evil came), his reign was very short, only three years.
So how did the descendants of the humble people get back up from the identity of sin slaves? The most important trick is to "hold the thigh", and it is the thigh of King Zhou Cheng, the thigh of the son of their winning enemy, to be honest, this requires great endurance. They knew that everything in their winning family was originally deprived by the King of Zhou, so they could only rely on the reward of the King of Zhou to regain it, and they could not turn over by taking advantage of the situation, and others could not help them turn over.
Relying on the favor and reward of King Zhou Cheng, Meng Zeng, the grandson of Lian Lian, had the first house that could be legally inhabited, and the place name was Gao Wolf, which may have been "the slope where wild wolves live", which was a dangerous place, but the good villain's family had its own nest and became a free commoner. If you can't get rid of the identity of the sin slave first, then the Ying family may still be a slave in the Warring States era hundreds of years later, and there is no strong Qin in the world.
Meng Zeng had a grandson named Zuofu, who continued to relay and favor King Mu of Zhou, because he helped King Mu quell the rebellion, King Mu rewarded Zhao Cheng to His Father as a food, and Father Mu became a small slave owner and was no longer a commoner. The founding father also received the relatives of other Clans of the Yin clan that had been passed down from Shu Lian to Zhao Cheng, including the Da Luo and the Non-Son Father and Son Families, which were the ancestors of Ying Zheng. Zhao Cheng became the residence of the Ying family.
The Feizi family was also very contentious, and The Feizi was also rewarded with a fiefdom for the King of Zhou, which was Qin Yi. Fei Zi also became a small slave master, qin wei. This is the origin of the Qin Wei. When the descendants of the Qin State pushed the ancestors, they often referred to Fei Zi as the founding prince of Qin Yuan, in fact, at this time, Qin Yuan had not yet established a country, but was just a small landlord.
Qin Wei's great-grandson Qin Zhong, as a doctor, quelled the rebellion for King Xuan of Zhou and was killed by the Western Rong barbarians. Qin Zhong's five sons continued to lead the Zhou army to conquer Xirong and seize a large area of land. His eldest son inherited his father's title and became the Grand Master of the Western Dynasty, known as the Duke of Qinzhuang.
Duke Xiang of Qin, the son of Duke Zhuang of Qin, was made a prince for helping King Ping of Zhou take refuge, and Xiang Duke initially established Qin Yuan. The King of Zhou gave Xianggong the land of Xiqi, which he could not control, and it took Xianggong 12 years to fight Xiqi. It was originally the birthplace of the Zhou people.
This is the process of Qin Yuan's initial establishment of the state from scratch. It can be seen that every time the Yin family becomes bigger, it is inseparable from the rewards and help of the Royal Family of the Zhou Dynasty. This in turn shows that the Zhou Family also needs the help of the Ying Family, which is inseparable from the efforts of the Ying Family, which can be seen from the fact that they used the blood and lives of several generations to open up the land of Xi Rong and expand the living territory a little bit.
If you talk about why the Great Qin Empire is strong, and only think of the exploits of those prominent kings such as Qin Mugong, Qin Xiaogong, Qin Huiwang, Qin Zhaowang and Qin Shi Huang, but do not know how the Qin ancestors before those kings first got up from the quagmire and established the basic prototype of a country, then the understanding is really very shallow. The generations of founders who built the foundation of Qin Wei have not even been able to leave their names in history.
As the saying goes, "the dragon gives birth to the dragon, the phoenix gives birth to the phoenix, and the son of the mouse will punch holes", if the ancestors of Qin Yuan just want to raise good horses, or just want to drive a good car, then their descendants may also be horsemen, or coachmen, but they have established a princely state, although it is too small to be small.
(2) Born of distress and advocating offense
The ancestors of Qin Yuan not only established a small country, but more valuablely, they injected sacred spiritual power into this small country of Xirong from the very beginning.
If a nation or a country wants to have lasting vitality, it cannot always praise how brilliant the achievements it has made, but it is even more important to remember how difficult the setbacks it has experienced in the past and how dangerous the difficulties it is facing now. Reality was even more so for Qin Yuan's living situation.
Unlike those feudal states in the Central Plains, those princely states had a strong cultural affinity among themselves, and they felt superior to the surrounding foreign races, and even countries such as Chu, Wu, and Yue were a bit despised and regarded as barbarians. And the Qin people were not only a family of sin slaves at the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, but they were fortunate to have descendants to survive, they migrated from east to west in order to survive, and through the efforts of several generations, it was difficult to lay a piece of projectile land in Xirong.
At that time, Xirong had harsh geographical conditions and backward culture, and many ethnic tribes often fought with each other, and it was very difficult to survive there, and Qin Zhong, who was a doctor of the Zhou Dynasty, was killed by the Rong people. Qin Zhong's five sons brought more than 7,000 Zhou soldiers to avenge their father, which shows that the ethnic and tribal battles at that time were very fierce and not small.
It is precisely because on the one hand, it is necessary to please the royal family of the Zhou Dynasty with actions and even pay sacrifices, and on the other hand, to fight against the harsh living environment and survive in the cracks, which has created the character of the Qin people who are tenacious and fearless and dare to attack.
Born in the midst of trouble, if they do not make progress, they will be wiped out by other tribes at any time, and there is no way back, which is why they must go all out. The Qin people did not have the capital that could be in the circle of cultural co-kinship and enjoy comfort like the Chinese princes, "Therefore, the heavens will descend on people, and they will first suffer their hearts and minds, and work their bones and bones... Therefore, the heart of forbearance, once benefited what it could not do", it is said that the Qin people.
The history of the Qin state, from the very beginning, was full of bloody, and predatory characteristics, either others conquered him, or they had to conquer others, and there was no chance to live in peace and steal life. Such a Qin Yuan is destined to become a bloody country, which is a good thing for it to grow into a big country, and one of the necessary conditions for becoming a big country is that the heart must be full of blood, have the courage to prepare for a decisive battle at any time, and never yield, and the later Battle of Kun and the Battle of Changping have proved this.
If there was a lack of blood, It would be impossible for Qin Yuan to always maintain the fighting spirit of entanglement and progress in countless battles of several hundred years. Why did Qin Wei later prefer to choose Fan Ju, who was sure to repay the favor and make the Central Plains cultural circles look down on him, instead of the Gentle and Erudite Xunzi? Because Jing Wei must repay is the character cultivated in Qin Yuan's bones.
From the very beginning, the Qin people were an offensive people, and their way of thinking was offensive, with the brand of barbarism in the Rong region, attacking everywhere like beasts. Wherever their territory expanded, their capital moved there with it, just as the beast sprinkled the smell of urine there, without the intention of clinging to the old base camp in the rear to seek stability and peace. Even if the capital Xianyang was later built, according to the ruins, Xianyang never built the Waiguo City Wall, and did not consider the problem of defending against foreign invasion. This was also an objective reason why it was easier for Liu and Xiang to attack Xianyang City later.
Qin was born with a troubled personality, and even after Qin Shi Huang unified the Six Kingdoms, he was still worried about the survival of the Great Qin Empire, so the Qin Dynasty did not have time to let the people rest well, and was busy constantly legislating and reforming, repairing the Great Wall, repairing straight roads, selling weapons, moving the Hao clan, suppressing Confucianism, and destroying the city defense... The result is that Qin Yuan was born in distress, became angry, and finally died of excessive distress in a hurry.
(3) Seek truth from facts and be keen on reform
However, it is not enough to have a cavity of hot blood, and hot blood is easy to cause wild and chaotic work, and the powerful State of Qi and Chu were once like this. The Qin people's spirit of seeking truth from facts is an outlier among the princely states, which should have a lot to do with the fact that they are in the secluded area of Xirong, far away from the political and cultural circles of the Central Plains, and have not been deeply eroded by the system of virtual and shallow etiquette.
The Qin people came from the Yin Shang dynasty, Yin Shang is a dynasty that attaches great importance to ghosts and gods, the Qin people originally attached great importance to ghost gods, and the consciousness of ghosts and gods once dominated their decision-making methods, such as when Wen Gong conquered the junction of Wang and Wei, and when DeGong moved the capital Yongcheng, they all decided to move to the new capital by divination.
According to archaeological findings at the site, when the Qin people moved to build Yongcheng, the early Qin Dynasty's sleeping temple integration architectural model was changed to a separate and parallel model of temple and sleeping, which shows that the Qin people have transitioned from emulating the zongmiao central system of the Shang zhou patriarchal society to the new palace central system, and the Qin people no longer regard the theocracy of the zongmiao temple as so supreme, and the status of the monarch is rising. Later, when the capital was moved to Xianyang, it was further improved, and the imperial residence was placed in the center of the national capital, and the Zongmiao temple was placed in the suburbs to a secondary position, which was to highlight the power of the Son of Heaven and the supremacy of the monarchy. It can be seen that Qin Yuan's highest power model is advancing with the times.
Qin Yuan's pragmatism, in addition to the progress of the supreme power model, the supreme decision-making is more fact-seeking, at least in two other very important aspects:
The choice of heir to the throne often shows a fine tradition of attaching great importance to "brotherly unity" in the early days, and it is not uncommon for the elder brother to take the initiative to let the younger brother succeed to the throne, or the younger brother will inherit the throne after the death of the elder brother, rather than the concubine. Brothers with one heart, the performance of the Ying family is more united, the will of the ancestor monarch is more likely to become the collective will of the family passed down from generation to generation, and on the whole, it can maintain the relatively steady rise and development of Qin Yuan's strength, and will not completely fester in the middle. This fraternal family tradition began as early as the creation of the Father's clan to protect the Non-Sub-clan;
Selecting talents, regardless of background, is the only thing to use, which Qin Yuan has done extremely well, and the world knows it. Qin Mugong had spent a lot of energy and time to get rid of the three sages of Baili, Uncle Jian, and Yu Yu, and created the era of Mugong.
More than 200 years later, Duke Xiao of Qin, because of his admiration for the great achievements of Duke Mu of Qin, issued a summoning order and attracted Shang Martingale. The qin huiwang, qin zhaowang, and qin shi huang were still like this, and they used all kinds of talents in an eclectic manner. The spirit of the Qin Emperor's thirst for talents has touched many top talents to defect to Qin Yuan, even if they did not defect to Qin Yuan, but as long as Qin Jun heard about it, he would also try his best to get it, such as Han Fei.
There is another special example, that is, the story of Zheng Guoqu, who knew that Zheng Guoqu was a Korean-designed conspiracy to deplete Qin Guoqu's national strength, but Qin Continued to build Zheng Guoqu and reused spy engineers. The courage and boldness of the Qin state to use people to do things is difficult to do in a modern country.
After more than 600 years of historical running, the land of Xirong Projectiles was finally able to unify the world, and other Wei, Qi, Wu, Chu, Zhao and other countries also used talents to carry out vigorous reforms, but often only the blood of one or two generations could not be implemented consistently, and then self-harmed and self-destroyed, there are profound reasons behind this.
(4) Geographical and military, defensive and offensive
The above is the internal cause, the reason why Qin Yuan can continue to strengthen and expand the soft power. Qin Yuan's ability to sweep away the powers in the chaotic world ultimately depended on its two main external factors: geographical and military superiority.
When Qin Yuan originated in the secluded land of Xi rong, it seemed to be hiding behind the shadow of the Zhou Dynasty, and had been fighting with the Rong tribes and not being noticed by outsiders, which also became an innate advantage of it, that is, when it was still very weak, it could not only get the protection and help of the Zhou Chamber, but also avoid the annexation of the Central Plains countries.
After Qin Yuan grew stronger, he was able to rely on natural geographical barriers to block the invasion of foreign enemies many times, and he could attack and retreat, and although he was repeatedly violated, it was difficult to shake the foundation of Qin Yuan. The process of Qin Wei from establishment to growth and unification is very much like the next Go, according to the importance order of "golden horn and silver edge grass belly", starting from the seizure of revolutionary base areas such as Inuqiu, Xirong, and Xiqi, then South Bashu, Northern Yiqu, Eastern Three Jin, then Six Kingdoms, Southern Man... Until the end of the Qin Dynasty.
The geographical advantages of Qin Yuan, in the eyes of the princes of the Central Plains, had an illusion, they believed that the Qin state was in a barbaric and remote land, far away from the political economy of the Central Plains, and naturally had no guard, reducing the desire to travel long distances to attack and occupy.
Especially in the more than 250 years after Qin Mugong, several major princely states in the Central Plains were reforming and striving to be strong, but they were holding each other back and fighting, which became the mainstream of history at that time, but in this period, due to the lack of talent and cultural isolation, most of the time it could only be a Spectator of Xirong, and the aristocratic power rose to empty the power of Qin Yuan, and there were many infighting, "Qin's predecessors were easy to change, and the monarchs were obedient, so Jin restored strength and seized the western land of the Qin River", if there was no geographical natural barrier, the Jin state itself did not fight, Qin Was most likely to be usurped by other countries during this period.
This low period of more than 200 years is actually a period of dormancy, which provides an opportunity for Qin Yuan to wait and watch the general trend of the world burst out, and only later did the Shang martingale reform come out, and the last few generations of Qin kings accumulated a lot of momentum.
Militarily, the Qin people, who lived in the Xirong tribe, had always been good at raising horses and being good at royal vehicles, plus it was an era of great development of iron tools, and Qin's military vehicle combat compared to other agricultural-oriented countries had formed a military hardware advantage. Without a strong military, Qin Yuan could not be truly strong. Qin's Western Expedition to the East to unify the Six Kingdoms relied not only on the struggle of more than 30 generations of kings, but also on hundreds of years of real blood struggle.
Although Qin Wei came from the Barbarians of Xirong, there are places where it is barbaric and backward, such as the human martyrdom system, and some histories attribute the decline of Qin Mugong for more than 200 years to the fact that many talents of Qin Mugong were martyred when Qin Mugong died, but in fact, the social atmosphere of Qin Wei was still relatively good later, and the system of human martyrdom was abolished when Qin Xiangong was presented, "dedicate the first year of the Common Era, stop from death".
The Qin Benji only recorded two sexual acts in the Qin Palace, namely Empress Xuan and Zhao Ji, while other princely states were often filled with all kinds of court fornication and killing, which were not uncommon and more bloody and cruel. Xun Zi praised Qin Wei for his clean and upright way, not picking up the night and not closing his household, and Qin Shi Huang personally reformed the social atmosphere and specially legislated to prohibit sexual immorality and prohibition of bullying women, which are the really powerful social manifestations of Qin Yuan.
At first, the Zhou Dynasty killed the ancestors of Qin Yuan;
Later, the Qin overthrew the Zhou Dynasty.
At first, Qin Killed the King of Chu and destroyed the State of Chu;
Later, the Chu people killed the King of Qin and destroyed the State of Qin.
Everything is like destiny, a cycle of cause and effect.
【About the author】Fu Anping, born in 1974, a native of Huanggang, Hubei Province, bachelor of engineering. Now freelance, amateur writing.
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