Age of Fierce Blood 48
Writer: Zhu Hui
There was a period of time in the last years of the Warring States Period, which was actually a good opportunity for the Six Kingdoms to turn the tables, when the Qin army was forced back to Hangu Pass by Xinling Jun, and there was a lot of chaos within the Qin State in the following years, but it was a pity that the Six Nations did not seize this opportunity.
In October of the fourth year of the reign of King Qin (243 B.C.), a locust plague occurred in Qin, and the locusts covered the sky and the sun, and the plague was epidemic throughout the country, and many people died in Qin.
In the sixth year of the reign of King Qin (241 B.C.), Pang Nuan, a veteran general of Zhao, led the alliance of the five countries to attack Qin, although he successfully entered the pass and attacked the heart of Qin, "Yu" (now north of Lintong, Shaanxi, the north gate of Xianyang), but still failed to break the city; At this point, Zhao Guo became the new leader of the alliance.
In the seventh year of the reign of King Qin (240 B.C.), there was a comet in the sky that came out of the east first, saw the north, saw the west in May, and the general died in the west. Sure enough, the famous general of Qin was killed, and the six countries celebrated.
In the eighth year of the reign of King Qin (239 BC), the younger brother of the king of Qin, Chang'an Junchengjiao, led an army to attack Shangdang County of Zhao State and rebelled in Tunliu (now Changzhi Tunliu District, Shanxi), and fled to Zhao State after defeat. King Zhao gave Rao (present-day northeast of Raoyang, Hebei) to Cheng Jiao. The rebellion of the younger brother of the Qin king, Cheng Jiao, was more serious than the surrender of the Qin army commander Zheng Anping, and was a major blow to the international prestige of the Qin state. All the military officials who followed the Qin king's brother Chengjiao were executed according to Qin law, and their families were banished to Lintao. After that, the Qin sent General Bi to continue to attack Zhao, but was defeated by Pang Nuan, and the two Qin armies of Tunliu and Pu Fei rebelled against Qin, killed Qin General Bi, and surrendered to Zhao. Zhao was so impressed by several successive victories in the Qin Wars that this year that Wei even gave Zhao the important Hanoi towns of Yecheng and Anyang, which were close to Handan and attacked by the Qin army many times, as hot potatoes to befriend the only military power that could compete with Qin at that time. After that, there were successive catastrophes in the Qin State, and a large number of people fled from Guanzhong to seek food.
In the ninth year of the reign of King Qin (238 B.C.), Qin actually had a cold disaster in April, and many people froze to death. In this year, King Yingzheng of Qin had reached the age of 21, so he held a coronation ceremony to indicate that he had reached adulthood, and wore a sword symbolizing the monarch's power. Soon, the leader of the Zhao family, Changxin Hou Changyu, who leaned towards the government and the opposition, rebelled ("no matter how big or small, everything depends on Chang"), and a large number of Qin local officials at the secretary level and the soldiers of the Xianyang Praetorian Guard participated in it. More than 20 important ministers, including Chang Yu's henchmen, Wei Wei, Nei Shiyi, Zuo Geji, and Zhongda Fu Lingqi, were all headed.
It is also strange to say that at the beginning of the succession of Qin Wangzheng, there were so many disasters and civil strife, and the Qin State was not seriously injured, which shows the strong agricultural foundation of the Qin State. All thanks to a South Korean spy. He is the famous hydraulic engineer Zheng Guo.
As early as 246 B.C., that is, the first year of the reign of King Yingzheng of Qin, Zheng Guo, a famous Korean water conservancy expert, suddenly came to Qin and proposed to help Qin do a big thing, to build a super water conservancy project with a length of 300 li and more than 3,000 large and small branch canals in the saline-alkali zone in the north of Guanzhong.
However, halfway through the construction of this magnificent water conservancy project, Qin's intelligence department suddenly discovered that Zheng Guo was a spy sent by South Korea in order to spend a lot of manpower and material resources of Qin State to repair canals, so that he could not spare his hands to advance eastward to destroy Han. As for how long it can be delayed, it's good to drag it out for a day.
After the incident, although King Yingzheng of Qin was very angry, he still asked Zheng Guo to insist on completing the canal and named it "Zheng Guo Canal". As a spy, Zheng Guo was not sentenced to death after his scheme was exposed, but was able to continue to be responsible for leading this great water conservancy project, and even "ordered Zheng Guoqu" to commemorate such a foreign conspirator who was originally going to endanger the Qin State after the project was completed! This phenomenon reveals that the Qin people attached great importance to the economy, water conservancy, and practical technology, as well as the Qin people's scientific spirit, open-mindedness, and broad-mindedness, are all things that we should pay attention to when examining Qin history and culture (Note 2).
Of course, the reason why the Qin people did not kill Zheng Guocheng and let him achieve great things is that this Zheng engineer is really powerful, according to experts in the history of water conservancy according to modern field investigations, the main canal line of Zheng Guoqu is arranged on the highest line of the secondary terraces of the Weibei Plain, which ensures the natural water diversion of the branch canals and other subordinate channels, so as to obtain the largest possible irrigation area. In addition, the Zhengguo Canal also uses a simple aqueduct similar to the "flying canal" to realize the "interchange" with the Yeshui, Qingshui, Fushui, Qishui and other rivers (Note 2), and its water conservancy survey technology and construction level are amazing. Yang Kuan also argued that Zhengguo Canal adopted a "stone wall" technology based on the "Rebuilding Jingyang County Chronicles and Water Conservancy Chronicles" and "Chang'an Tuzhi Hongyan System", that is, using the characteristics of high sediment content and fertilizer efficiency of Jingshui (Note 3), in the downstream of a flat riverbed, using wood to build a round and filling in boulders to become "stone walls", and using a large number of "stone walls" to arrange into a weir bone, so that Jingshui can reduce the flow rate, precipitate part of the coarse sand, and introduce fine sand with fertilizer effect into the canal, which can not only be used for irrigation, but also can continuously supply manganese to crops. Potassium and other inorganic substances can improve the soil, increase fertility, and also wash away the salt on the surface (Note 4), and finally turn the 40,000 hectares of fields irrigated by Zheng Guoqu into the most fertile fertile land in the world, and the yield per mu (equivalent to 0.74 mu today) reached "one minute", that is, six stones and four buckets (Note 5), which should have been the highest yield per mu during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period (the general yield was only about 1.5 to 3 stone at that time)! The total of six stones and four buckets is about 768 catties, and it is calculated that the four million mu of Weibei fertile land in the east of Xianyang irrigated by the Zhengguo Canal alone can produce about 1.5 billion kilograms of grain every year, or 1.5 million tons, which is enough to support the hundreds of thousands of troops of the Qin State to fight abroad for a year.
Koreans are really talented, in order to confuse Wu Wangfu, Yue sent treasures and beauties, and induced them to build a large number of buildings and build a treasure palace. But this time, South Korea actually managed to induce the Qin State to build a water conservancy project that would benefit forever to quench its thirst, and its strategic thinking was really breathtaking.
I think Koreans still underestimated the construction level and social mobilization capacity of the Qin State, but I did not expect that it only took ten years for the Qin State to repair the Zhengguo Canal. In 237 BCE, the Qin superproject came to an end at the same time as the civil strife, and in this year, Yingzheng deposed the Qin Prime Minister Lü Buwei (Note 6) and pardoned the Chang Yumen Ke who had been relocated to Shu because of the rebellion, temporarily quelling the internal strife between the Qin native nobles and the Haqing faction. At this point, Qin's civil strife finally ended, and the forces of Korea, China, Korea, and Zhao were all eliminated (Wang Di Chengjiao was born to a Han woman and belonged to the Han forces), and the centralized county system was basically cultivated (Note 7). In the past ten years, due to the effective diplomacy of the Qin people, the six countries did not seize this last opportunity to attack the Qin together, and as a result, the Qin people calmly tide over the difficulties, regroup, and become more and more united and stronger. It can be seen from this that the key to the so-called "strategy of delaying the army" is not in "delaying the army", but in "planning".
What's even more ridiculous is that in this year, King Zhao Mourning Xiang didn't know that his end was coming, and he went to Xianyang to buy wine to congratulate, making his old man seem to have a strong relationship with King Qin.
King Yingzheng of Qin was a proton in Handan when he was young, and he may have had some dealings with King Zhao Mourning Xiang, but at that time, Qin and Zhao had a bad relationship, and Yingzheng's mother and son were repeatedly bullied by the Zhao people, which would never be a pleasant memory; Yan has no way, Qin will help Zhao Fazhi.
This kind of nonsense that a three-year-old child would not believe King Zhao Mourning Xiang was actually very useful, and when he went back, he said to Li Mu: "King Qin, a good person!"
Li Mu was stunned, King Qin is a good person, I am a saint, you loser!
King Zhao Mianxiang still disagreed, he felt that King Yingzheng of Qin was young after all, and should always be better than the treacherous and cunning Lü Buwei, so without thinking, in the second year (236 BC), he sent Pang Xuan and Li Mu as generals to lead an army to attack Yan State. However, as soon as the Zhao army took Chongyi and Yangcheng (the area north of present-day Renqiu City, Hebei), the Qin army rebelled and attacked.
This is the first battle since King Yingzheng of Qin, and it is also the first battle of Qin's unification of the world, which can be described as of extraordinary significance. Prior to this, Ying Zheng, a super precocious political genius, successfully quelled the wave of Qin State's native sect ministers demanding the expulsion of all the guest ministers of Qin State, and completed the internal integration of the empire.
Based on this, King Yingzheng of Qin sent all the heavyweights in the Qin army, the main general Wang Qian, the second general Huan Qi, the last general Yang Duanhe, and the three-way army, a total of 300,000, to attack the largest fortress of Zhao on the south bank of Zhangshui - Yecheng.
When the soldiers approached the city, King Zhao Mourning Xiang was completely panicked, and hurriedly transferred Pang Xuan and Li Mu back from the north, but it was too late. Wang Jian deserves to be the strongest god of war after Qin's confession, and in just 18 days, Yecheng, Anyang and other nine Zhangshui towns all changed hands, and the South Great Wall of Handan was completely exposed in front of the Qin army. More importantly, the Ximen Leopard Twelve Canal in Yecheng is a famous water conservancy project on the same level as the Zhengguo Canal and Dujiangyan of the Qin State, and with this Hanoi agricultural base, the Qin army has sufficient logistical resources to launch a large-scale war in the Central Plains that will take several years; the tactics used to drain the Qin army by strengthening the defense during the battles of Changping and Handan will no longer work in the future. And then, Wang Jian sent troops to take down the Taihang Mountains such as Yanhe and Luyang, which were coveted by the Qin State, and formed a semi-encirclement of Handan in one fell swoop, and the world was shocked!
One carelessly, he lost so much military and economic land, King Zhao Mourning Xiang was full of remorse, and even scolded King Qin for not being trustworthy, and finally didn't come up in one breath, he was so angry that he went to report to King Zhao Xiaocheng!
King Zhao Xiaocheng and King Zhao Mourning Xiang's father and son, who have been bullied by the Qin people all their lives and bullied to death, also makes people feel a little sympathetic, but the next King Zhao Youmiao is so bad that people have nothing to say, in a word, BZ raised.
I don't mean to curse here, he was indeed raised by BZ.
King Zhao Mourning Xiang originally had a good prince, his name was Zhao Jia, this prince, the character and insight are all speechless, if he can successfully ascend the throne, Zhao may be able to hold out for a while, but unfortunately King Mourning Xiang fell in love with a daughter, and this girl gave birth to a loser named Zhao Qian (that is, King Zhao Youmiao), so everything was messed up.
Behind a successful man, there must be a great woman; behind a failed man, there must be a woman without virtue; Zhao Qian's mother is an advocate woman, this is not class discrimination, but in that era, this kind of woman is really not suitable for politics, and this one also has a criminal record, she was originally a famous prostitute in Handan City, known for her singing and dancing to the powerful, and then Congliang married a nobleman of the Zhao clan, but the whole clan was restless, and finally her husband was killed, so she became a lonely little widow。
Later, I don't know how to do it, the little widow actually hooked up with King Zhao Mourning, and made him fascinated, so he had to marry this scourge and enter the palace.
Li Mu was in Handan at the time, and when he heard this, he immediately objected: "No." If the woman is not right, the country will be uneasy. This woman is in turmoil, and the king is not afraid?"
- A good woman can build a family, but a bad woman can mess with the family, if the king marries a bad woman, then he will mess up the country!
King Zhao Mianxiang didn't listen, okay you Li Mu, you also take care of the widow's family affairs, are you too much to manage, is this king going to marry a woman, but with your consent!
He said to Li Mu: "Chaos or not, in the rule of the widow." Do you have a lot to say?"
Li Mu was helpless, sighed and retreated, seeing that the future of Zhao Guo may be buried in the hands of this woman, but I can't do anything, sad husband!
This woman really did not "disappoint" Li Mu, as soon as she entered the palace, she began to slander Empress Zhao and Prince Jia, and sent people to collide with the prince and lead the prince to commit crimes. Finally, the king of mourning Xiang was poisoned by the fragrant pillow wind, his head was dizzy, and he abolished Zhao Hou, set up a prostitute as the queen (that is, Zhao Mourning advocated the queen), abolished the prince Jia, established Zhao Qian as the prince, and made Guo Kai the prince and taught the prince Zhao Qian to study.
Haha, Guo Kai is a teacher, a big joke, what good students can this guy teach, his four most powerful knowledge, I'm afraid it's a dog and a horse!
With such a tutor, the result can be imagined, after Zhao Qian grew up, he became a well-known loser in the country, compared with his dead ghost father, it was even better. Zhao Guojun actually lowered the quality of each generation in the middle and late Warring States period, without exception, which is really a strange thing in history. If King Zhao Wuling is 80 points, then King Zhao Huiwen has 60 points, King Zhao Xiaocheng has 40 points, King Zhao Mourning Xiang has 20 points, and King Zhao Youmiao's "lost family" is estimated to be only a negative score.
On the other side, King Yingzheng of Qin heard that King Zhao Mourning Xiang was dead, and the "defeated family moved" to the throne, and Li Mu was driven back to the border county to eat the northwest wind after Zhao Mourning, so he couldn't help but be overjoyed, and immediately ordered the general Huan Qi stationed on the south bank of Zhangshui to call me!
Therefore, in the second year of King Zhao Youmiao (234 B.C.), Huan Qi led the main force of the Qin army, detoured 100 kilometers to the east, smuggled across the river from the lower reaches of Zhangshui, and captured the poorly defended Pingyang (now southeast of Cixian County, Hebei) in one fell swoop, and then the army continued to advance and marched directly to the city of Wucheng (now west of Wucheng County, Shandong). Once Wucheng is also conquered, it means that the Southern Great Wall of Zhao State has been broken through on all fronts, and Handan is in danger!
As soon as he heard that the wolf was coming, his feet were so frightened that his feet went soft: "Who, who can be a widow but Qin Hu?"
At this time, Pang Nuan, a famous general of Zhao State, had passed away, so someone proposed: "The veteran Lian is quite in Chu, and he often thinks about using Zhao people, so it is better to recall him back to Zhao." ”
The loser shook his head, the old guy Lian Po is over eighty years old, and since Wei Benchu has won a battle in the past few years, this useless grass is turned back, a good horse and don't eat, how can a widow eat?
Someone said again: "It's better to recall Li Mu, this good general is also." ”
The loser shook his head again, Li Mu has a vendetta with the widow's mother, and the widow is very evil, so let him continue to eat the northwest wind!
The ministers recommended a few more people, and the losers vetoed them one by one. In the end, Guo Kai spoke: "There is a person in the minister, who is famous, this person has an extraordinary appearance, and has the courage of ten thousand people, and the king can use it!"
The loser is overjoyed, or the Taifu or even my heart, the widow just likes handsome guys and macho men, Lian Po Li Mu, these old guys, all get out of the way for me!
The ministers are all dumbfounded, the loser moves really deserves its reputation, and the use of people is "eclectic", and the shot is extraordinary, admire and admire!
So Hu led an army of 100,000 and rushed to Wucheng to relieve the siege, and the Qin army was in ambush. The exhaustion of the Zhao army, where was the opponent of the Qin Tiger and Wolf Division, and as a result, Qin defeated the Zhao army in Wucheng, killed the enemy, and beheaded 100,000. Huan Qi became famous in this battle, becoming another genius master of annihilation warfare since the Qin army succeeded Bai Qi, and a great general star is rising.
When the news reached Handan, the city was greatly grieved, and the defeated family was greatly frightened, and the 100,000 main forces of the Southern Military Region of Zhao State were wiped out in one day, and if the Qin army attacked again, what could they do?
The ministers are speechless, you are a loser, you will be defeated more than your father, as soon as you come to power, you will defeat the 100,000 army of my Zhao State, what can I do now, Zhao Guo is going to be finished!
Let's casually calculate the accounts to understand the despair of the ministers, the Battle of Changping Zhao lost 450,000 soldiers, the Battle of Handan lost tens of thousands of soldiers, and then the general of Qin attacked Zhao and beheaded 90,000, and now the 100,000 Zhao army has also been wiped out, the front and back add up, the Zhao army has lost 700,000 soldiers, the prime of life in the country, almost exhausted, how to fight this battle in the future?
When the mountains and rivers were exhausted, the defeated family moved and remembered that Li Mu was coming, yes, what are you panicking about, the widow hasn't lost it all! Isn't there still 100,000 border soldiers in the north? Use this last old bottom to fight the Qin army for the last time!
So the defeated family moved to send a messenger urgently, holding the general's seal, five hundred miles to expedite, and quickly summoned Li Mu back to the capital.
This is Zhao Guo's last bit of bargaining chip, either turn over the book or lose all his pants, everything depends on Li Mu's ability.
Li Mu took over the seal of the general, his heart was as heavy as lead, such as the general trend today, Qin has become a situation of annexation: after the death of Xinlingjun, Han Wei has completely given up resistance, every year towards Qin, the spine of Shandong has been broken; Qi pursues isolationism and is insensitive; Chu is caught in internal strife after the death of Chun Shenjun, and he is too busy to take care of himself; looking at the world, the talents of the six countries are withering, and only his own border army can fight with Qin, if he is defeated, Qin will no longer be able to stop it, and the death of the six countries will be a foregone conclusion.
This is the survival of the world, tied to Li Mu, the last god of war of the Six Kingdoms in the Warring States Period, whether he can use a mere 100,000 border county border guards to block the overwhelming trend of Mount Tai of the Great Qin Empire and annex the world, and turn the tide, it is in one fell swoop!
The matter was critical, Li Mu did not dare to delay, he immediately selected 1,500 cars, 13,000 horses, and more than 50,000 elite soldiers, and went south to Qinwang with him;
For a while, over the Southern Great Wall of Zhao State, the mountains and rain were about to come, and the two strongest iron armies in the history of the Warring States were about to face each other head-on!
Note 1: Some scholars believe that the ancient character 呪嫪 is universal, and 嫪毐 is the general who succeeded Qin Guowei after the Battle of Handan;
Note 2: Li Jianchao, "Qin Shi Huang's Agricultural War Policy and the Repair of Zheng Guoqu", Journal of Northwest University, No. 1, 1975.
Note 3: Jingshui is a tributary of Weishui, famous for its large sand content since ancient times, the so-called "Jingshui is a stone, its mud is several buckets, and irrigation and dung, long I grass" ("Hanshu Gou Xun Zhi Zheng Baiqu Song"). Because in ancient times, the Wei water was often clear and the water was turbid, so the confluence of the two rivers often had the landscape of "Jing Wei distinct".
Note 4: This is the "salt damage" in agricultural planting, which refers to the phenomenon that calcium and sodium salts in the soil surface surface due to the evaporation of water from dry soil, forming crystals. If left unchecked, crops will die. The "stasis filling water" with fine sand can not only play the role of stamping and reducing the salinity content in the cultivated soil, but also make the soil accumulate and prevent the evaporation of soil moisture.
Note 5: See Yang Kuan, History of the Warring States Period, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2016, pp. 69-70.
Note 6: The fact that Lü Buwei is the father of Yingzheng and the fact that Chun Shenjun of Chu is the father of King You of Chu in the same period is so similar that it should be just rumors and legends in the last years of the Warring States Period, and it is not credible. After all, denying the enemy's source of power by blood is the most direct and effective.
Note 7: Prior to this, Qin's foreign relatives and ministers occupied a large number of fiefdoms, and it was not a complete county system. For example, Wei Ran has a county of Tao County, Gongzi City has Wan, Gongzi Kui has Deng, and Mi Rong has a new city, all of which are large cities with extremely developed industry and commerce, so the "four nobles" are known as "private wealth is more important than the royal family". After the Zhaoxiang Dynasty, Lü Buwei sealed 100,000 households in Henan and Luoyang, as well as the twelve counties of Lantian ("Warring States Policy, Qin Ce V"), and later received the ten cities of Hejian of Yan State as fiefs ("Warring States Zonghengjiashu" 25);
Note 8: For example, Liu Bang later said to Sui He after being defeated by Xiang Yu in Pengcheng: "Who can make Huainan for me, order him to send troops to double Chu, and leave the king of Xiang in Qi for a few months, and I can take the world perfectly." As a result, He Chenggong rebelled against Yingbu behind Western Chu, causing Xiang Yu to stay in the army to quell the rebellion for several months, and let Liu Bang successfully kill Xiang Yu after being fully prepared. It can be done in a few months, not to mention ten years? It shows that Han Zhao and other kings of the Six Kingdoms are all mediocre and cowardly, and they only know how to steal their lives to survive, so it is not appropriate for them to be destroyed?