Age of Fierce Blood 52
Writer: Zhu Hui
In the thirty-second year of Qin Shi Huang (215 BC), Qin Shi Huang sent the general Meng Tian to send 300,000 troops to the north to attack the Xiongnu.
Unlike Bai Qi and Li Mu, the two Wu Anjun, who started from scratch, Meng Tian was born in a family of famous generals of the Qin State. His grandfather, Meng Fu, was a veteran of the Qin army who served the four generations of Qin monarchs: King Zhaoxiang of Qin, King Xiaowen of Qin, King Xiang of Qin Zhuangxiang, and King Yingzheng of Qin. From the time of King Zhaoxiang from Qi to Qin, to 240 BC when he sacrificed his life for the country, Meng Fu laid more than 70 cities for Qin in his lifetime, which can be described as a great military achievement. His father, Meng Wu, was slightly inferior in military achievements, but he had fought many times as Wang Qian's deputy in the southern and northern wars, and was also a general of the Qin State. And Meng Tian and his younger brother Meng Yi are not only handsome, smart and studious, but also in and out of the palace since childhood, and learn the law of prison with Li Si together with Ying Zheng, so they are deeply favored and reused by Ying Zheng. It can be said that Montessori and Wang are the two famous general wholesale workshops of the Qin State, and they have produced many talents for decades, each one is better than the other.
The Montessori brothers were not only a Legalist giant, but also the grandfather of Chinese calligraphy and seal carving (Note 1). Legend has it that the brush and guzheng we use now were invented by this handsome guy.
However, according to the research of archaeologists, the brush and guzheng already existed before the Qin Dynasty (Note 2), and Meng Tian may have only improved their production process (Note 3), not their true originality, but this does not prevent the people from deifying Meng Tian , the husband and wife are enshrined in the Menggong Ancestral Hall, and every day on the 16th birthday of the ancestor in the third month of the lunar calendar and the birthday of the pen group on the 16th day of the lunar calendar, the villagers will hold a grand temple fair to worship the gods to commemorate them.
As for the guzheng, it is also known as Qin Zheng, Li Si's "Book of Exhortations to Guests" cloud: "The husband hits the urn and knocks, plays the kite and fights the hips, and the song is whining and whining, and the voice of the real Qin is also." It shows that in the pre-Qin era, the zheng was widely popular in Guanzhong and became a representative of the Qin music style. Liu Xi's "Interpretation of Names" cloud: "Zheng, Shi Xian is urgent, and Zheng is also." It can be seen that the sound of the Zheng is full of vigor and boredom, and it has both the spirit of a generous and upright strong man, and the style of a gentleman who is not slow and slow (Note 4), how similar is it to Meng Tian's style and bearing! And Meng Tian is rumored to have transformed Qin Zheng, which also shows that in addition to being an inventor and calligrapher, he is probably also a musician, which can be described as very literary and elegant! It is a pity that there are too few records in the history books in this regard, otherwise, how could Meng Tian not be another dashing Confucian general Zhou Gongjin?
However, such a noble son is now going to the frontier to fight the Huns. From then on, the world of flowers in Xianyang had nothing to do with him, and he was destined to spend the rest of his life in the northern frontier of the empire, where life was hard, monotonous, lonely and lonely, but magnificent, magnificent, and full of pride!
Speaking of the Xiongnu, I have already mentioned Li Mu. At the end of the Warring States period, after Li Mu defeated the Xiongnu, the Xiongnu suffered heavy losses and was forced to flee back to Yinshan, and after these twenty or thirty years of recuperation, the Xiongnu gradually recovered, but at this time the other two nomadic groups on the grassland - Donghu (Note 5) in the east and Yueshi (Note 6) in the west also gradually rose, and the Xiongnu head Manshan Yu could not fight with them, so he went south to the Hetao to herd horses, and plundered the Han people.
Now, it's time to double down.
So, in 215 BC, Meng Tian, the young marshal of the Great Qin, led the most elite troops of the 300,000 empire to the north, first attacking the Xiongnu vassal Lou Fu in the Hetao area, the Baiyang Henan King and other small tribes, and the Hu tribes were defeated and fled. The Qin army directly recovered parts of the area south of the Yellow River and central Yuzhong. The army continued to advance north, aiming directly at the Xiongnu royal court.
In the spring of 214 BC, Meng Tian's army approached the Yellow River and engaged in a head-to-head duel with the main Xiongnu force in the northern part of the Hetao, and a great war of the century between Huayi finally broke out.
Xiongnu Shan Yu Touman looked at the Qin army in the distance, his heart was surging, and he remembered that thirty years ago, he had a fierce confrontation with his father and the Zhao general Li Mu in the border counties of Zhao when he was a child, and the result was that the Xiongnu were defeated, the army of 100,000 was wiped out, and many of his relatives were killed on the battlefield (Note 7), and soon his father also died in depression. At that time, he made an oath that no matter how much humiliation he endured, he must revitalize the Huns, go south for revenge, and rob money, food, and women!
Now, as long as this Meng Tian is defeated, the vast Central Plains in the south will be our granary, brothers, go on!
In the First World War, the Xiongnu lost tens of thousands of soldiers.
In another battle, tens of thousands of soldiers were lost.
Touman's hundreds of thousands of fierce Hun iron cavalry ran into Meng Tian's crossbow troops, and they were not opponents at all.
We know that, generally speaking, the cavalry is stronger than the crossbowmen, but once the crossbowmen occupy an absolute numerical advantage, then under the fire of thousands of arrows, the cavalry can only be killed in seconds. Meng Tian is not like Li Mu is a master of cavalry use, his trump card main force, is a large number of crossbow troops, every time with the Huns fighting, the Qin army is open the way with chariots, arrows such as locusts, the Hun cavalry of dense firepower can not raise their heads, when the overall situation has been decided, Meng Tian gave an order, the Chebu army then covered up, at this time the Hun iron cavalry only fled in embarrassment.
The heroes do not suffer the losses in front of them, and the customs of the Huns are not ashamed of running away. Since you can't beat it, it's better to go away, save your strength, and wait for a good opportunity. Bear the burden of humiliation and do not fight for a moment, this is what Touman thinks, and it is also the resilience given to him by the Xiongnu nation. Back then, he could endure Li Mu, but now he can endure Meng Tian, stay in Qingshan, not afraid of no firewood, and return to Daqingshan north of Hohhot, and save enough "firewood" to compete with you again!
Meng Tian rested for a while, and the army crossed the Yellow River from Jiuyuan (now Baotou, Inner Mongolia) and continued northward. Yangshan (Wolf Mountain at the western foot of Daqing Mountain) to Beijiao (Inner Mongolia Wusuhai), the southern foot of Daqing Mountain, was completely captured, and Touman was repeatedly defeated, so he had to flee more than 700 miles to the north, far away from the cold and barren land of water and grass in Mobei, and his prestige was lost (Note 8), and more than ten years later he was killed by his more ambitious and powerful son Mao Dun (Note 9).
But one day the Huns will still come back, the bitter cold land of Mobei is not their paradise, but the rich and fertile Hetao area is.
After two years of war against Hungary, Meng Tian finally reached a higher level, and Meng Tian then sat in the command of Shangjun (in present-day Yulin City, Shaanxi) and began to embark on a series of super national defense projects, which will shock the entire human world for the Chinese nation.
First: build a city and secure the people. In just two years, Meng Tian opened up hundreds of miles of territory for the empire. However, Henan is flatter than the Loess Plateau, and it is difficult for the farming people to gain a foothold in this vast plain, which lacks the protection of dangerous terrain, and to prevent nomads from moving south. Therefore, Meng Tian proposed to relocate a large number of immigrants to build the city and develop this rich area. The First Emperor then issued an order to set up forty-four counties on the Xinjiang territory of the empire, called "New Qinzhong"; and relocated a large number of criminals and tens of thousands of families to these areas year after year, opened up wasteland for planting, built cities, opened up roads, and guarded the fields, accumulating a large amount of military capital in a few years - this is the colonial tuntian system that later dynasties often imitate, which can be regarded as a major initiative of Qin Shi Huang, it plays a huge role in opening up and consolidating the frontier, and in the future, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Zhao Chongguo, Cao Cao, Sima Yi, Zhuge Liang will further carry it forward. We'll stop here first.
Second: build the border and build the Great Wall.
The Huns were all cavalry, coming and going like the wind, and at some point, they would suddenly gather into a fierce army, and in an instant, they would become herdsmen scattered all over the sky. Since the Imperial army could not pursue them into the desert and exterminate them, the best way was to strengthen their defenses in depth and keep the enemy out of the country.
As a result, a major historical task fell on Meng Tian, that is, to build the largest military defense project in the history of mankind to completely isolate the Hu people from the land of Great Qin, and its name is "The Great Wall"!
The word "Great Wall" has existed in ancient times, and there is no one who has not built the Great Wall of the Warring States Period, but these Great Walls are small in scale and scattered all over the place, and they are not systematic. Some of the Great Walls, such as the Great Wall of Zhaonan, the Great Wall of Qi, and the City of Chu Fang, no longer existed after the unification of the world, and Qin Shi Huang destroyed them all (which saved Liu Bang a lot of trouble for later breaking the division and unifying the world). Only the northern boundary of the three kingdoms of Qin, Zhao and Yan is used to defend the Great Wall of the Hu people, which can be used well, and Meng Tian's job is to connect them as a whole, and the east and west run through the world to achieve a legend.
Since 214 BC, Meng Tian, as the commander-in-chief of the project, has led an army of 300,000 and nearly a million border residents to start such a vast and long national defense project. From Didao in the northwest of the empire (now Lintao, Gansu) to Jieshi in Suicheng County in the northeast (Note 10), they crossed the steep mountains, passed through the cliffs, crossed the grasslands, crossed the desert, and stretched for more than 10,000 miles.
Besides, Meng Tian's construction of the Great Wall is not simply a simple repair of connections, he must consider the entire defense system, make precise arrangements, select the site, transport materials, mobilize, design, and construct, all of which require great architectural genius and grandeur.
Not to mention anything else, site selection is a big problem.
1. It is necessary to choose the best terrain, take the ridge as the city, reduce the labor, and use the river as the screen to cut off the enemy's water source.
2. It is necessary to select key commanding heights to build beacons and establish a well-developed military intelligence network to give early warning and organize counterattacks.
3. It is necessary to choose the main traffic routes and valley mouths to build fortresses, so as to house elite soldiers and hold dangerous points.
4. It is necessary to choose the most important area to build a border city to garrison a large army and hoard a large number of logistical materials.
It can be seen from this that the Great Wall is not just a wall, it is the most advanced military defense facilities and communication network in ancient China, it is the work of Meng Tian's painstaking efforts, it is the line of interests of the empire, it is the screen domain that has defended our homeland for thousands of years, it is the crystallization of the wisdom of the ancients, and it is a great miracle created by mankind.
As the greatest "foreman" in Chinese history, Meng Tian is destined to be closely associated with the Great Wall Dragon, which will be remembered for eternity and blessed for all generations!
I believe the Huns must have been scared when they first saw the Great Wall. Attack, how to attack, even if there is not a single defender above, how can you get over? Okay, even if you can climb over, how can the horses climb? How can you climb the tents and equipment? Okay, then you don't climb at all? Then you can only organize a demolition team to tear down the side wall.
But the engineering skills of the ancients are good, and when the nomads have tried their best to tear down the side wall, the beacon fire has already spread throughout the border fortress, and all the cattle and sheep have been hiding in the city, the city gate is closed, and the wall is clear, giving you a fart to eat. If the border guards from other places along the Great Wall arrive in time at this time (the Great Wall can also increase the mobility and secrecy of the Han army's movements), block the way back, start a siege, and directly wrap these robbers into dumplings;
In short, in the era of cold weapons, the Great Wall was simply a nightmare for the northern nomads! The mobility of its powerful cavalry was completely lost in front of the Great Wall. What's worse is that with the Great Wall, the Central Plains regime can also carry out an economic blockade of the nomads, there is no salt, no iron, no cloth and silk, no tea and ceramics, and the quality of life of the nomads plummets, which later directly led to the division of the Xiongnu in the north and south. Similarly, the Romans also built the Great Wall in early AD to defend against barbarians, including Hadrian's Wall (about 120 km) and Antony's Wall (about 37 km) in England, and the Germanic Wall (about 500 km) in Germany, but it was much smaller than the Great Wall of China and was not much mentioned by Westerners.
However, generation after generation of Chinese descendants who relied on the Great Wall built by Meng Tian to repel Hu Lu did not seem to appreciate Meng Tian, and they blamed Qin Shi Huang and Meng Tian again and again for not caring for the people's power and trampling on human life.
The Western Han Dynasty was said: "Meng Tian built the Great Wall, thousands of miles from east to west, hundreds of thousands of violent soldiers, countless dead, thousands of zombies, bleeding acres, the people are exhausted, and they want to be five out of ten for the chaos." ”
Ban Gu of the Western Han Dynasty said in the Book of Han: "Meng Tian raised troops to attack from afar, greedy for the outside and the inside, and wanted to be widespread, not worried about the harm." ”
Yangxiong of the Western Han Dynasty said in the "Yangtze Fayan": "Mengtian moats the mountains and valleys, rises from Lintao, hits the Liaoshui, and dies due to lack of strength, and the loyalty is not enough." ”
Wang Chong of the Eastern Han Dynasty said in "On Balance": "Meng Tian built the Great Wall for Qin, and half of the world is extremely good, so it should be tens of thousands of disasters." ”
Wang Fu of the Eastern Han Dynasty said in "The Theory of Hidden Husbands": "Bai Qi and Meng Tian are considered meritorious, and Tian is regarded as a thief." ”
Lu Shen of the Tang Dynasty said in "The Great Wall Fu": "A thousand cities are extinct, the Great Wall is listed, the Qin people are exhausted, and the Qin monarch is destroyed." ”
Sima Guang of the Northern Song Dynasty said in "Zizhi Tongjian": "The first emperor poisoned the world and Meng Tian made it, and Tian was not benevolent. ”
Cai Dongfan of the Republic of China said in "Romance of the Former Han Dynasty": "The first emperor labored for all the people, and in vain ordered the resentful women to be absent from their husbands, filling the inside and outside, and the thousands of people pointed out, and died without illness, and there are countless people who complain about the desert!
This is exactly what the predecessors planted trees, and the later generations said that the wind was cool. Qin Shi Huang and Meng Tian built the Great Wall, not a waste of national strength and people's strength, but a long-term plan. In terms of cost, the Great Wall is ostensibly expensive, but in fact it saves money (Note 12). You must know that the northern frontier of the empire is long and long, and if there is no Great Wall, just using the army, the amount required is probably not affordable by any country. With the Great Wall, China only needs a small number of mobile troops to be able to cope with an ordinary invasion. Therefore, Sang Hongyang, the minister of finance of the Han Dynasty, said: "Since ancient times, the king of the Ming Dynasty could not submit to injustice without conquest, and he could not resist violence without a fortress." ...... If you are prepared, you will be controlled, and if you are unprepared, you will be controlled. Therefore, Zhongshan Fu made up for the lack of his duties, and Menggong built the Great Wall, so it was difficult to prepare for it, and it was thousands of miles away. (The Treatise on Salt and Iron · The great revolutionary pioneer Sun Yat-sen also had an objective evaluation of the Great Wall: "The most famous land engineer in China, the Great Wall." ...... The project is so big that it is unparalleled in ancient times, and it is a unique wonder in the world. ...... For a once-and-done plan, Mo is good at setting up the Great Wall. Although the first emperor has no way, and the Great Wall has contributed to later generations, it is really in the water control of Dayu. ("Sun Wenxue's Theory: Knowing the Difficult and the Easy to Do")
In short, there are many reasons for the death of the Qin Dynasty, perhaps the Great Wall is one of them, but the contribution of Qin Shi Huang and Meng Tian to the Chinese nation must not be erased. Didn't Sima Qian also say: "Scholars are concerned with what they hear, and when they see that Qin is on the throne of the emperor, they don't notice the beginning of it, and they laugh at it because of their actions, and they dare not say, this is no different from eating by ear?" ("Historical Records: Preface to the Chronology of the Six Kingdoms")
Third, build a large network of observatories.
There is no record of this vast project in the history books. However, after nine years of investigation and research, mainland archaeologists have generally determined that General Meng Tian also built a large number of stargazing platforms along the Great Wall of Shangjun at that time, with a total number of 1,424, and the mainland had the world's leading astronomical calendar achievements during the Qin and Han dynasties, and it should rely on the observation network composed of more than 1,000 observatories, which can be said to be a blessing for a hundred years.
Third, build a straight road to connect the north and the south.
The construction of the Great Wall made the northern frontier of the empire as stable as Mount Tai, but another problem arose: the main force of the empire was stationed thousands of miles away, and the cost of grain transportation was too great (Note 13), which was a rather heavy burden on the empire. What to do? Build another military highway!
Therefore, in the 35th year of Qin Shi Huang (212 BC), the first emperor ordered Meng Tian to build a "straight road", from Jiuyuan County at the foot of Yin Mountain through the Ordos Plateau to Shangjun, and then along the south of the Meridian Mountains, to the north of Xianyang County (now Chunhua County, Shaanxi) Lin Guanggong (called Ganquan Palace in the Han Dynasty), all the way to the mountains and valleys, the total length of more than 1,800 miles, can be called the originator of the world's highways. If the Great Wall is a shield of the Qin Dynasty (and even the Central Plains Dynasty in later generations), then the "straight road" is undoubtedly a sharp sword, its construction standard is higher than the "Chi Road", from the relevant archaeological excavations, the average width of the road surface of the "Qin Straight Road" is about 30 meters, the widest point reaches 61 meters, the side of the river, the mountain and the ditch are all built with rammed earth slope protection, there are many beacon towers, passes, military stations, post station ruins on both sides of the road. The imperial army can go north and south in five days. Thinking about the spectacular scene of thousands of horses galloping on the straight road back then, it is really fascinating.
Meng Tian repaired the straight road, and the difficulty of the project will not be much worse than the Great Wall, because this is a "straight road", and it is necessary to take a straight line, take a shortcut, and be flat enough (inspect the Qin straight road over the mountain sections, its maximum slope is less than 10%), and the northwest area, mostly mountainous, complex mountains, deep valleys, want to be flat, how easy it is to say! Therefore, Meng Tian must transform into a "foolish man", digging mountains in the mountains, filling in the valleys, and even crossing the meridian ridge at an altitude of 1800 meters without avoiding, still digging through directly, which is called "trench mountain". ”。 After the "moat mountain" is finished, it will also be "smoke valley". Building a road is not an easy task, and the lower part of the ridge needs to be filled, which is the smoke valley. Its specific method is: fill a large number of earthwork at the valley bottom between the two mountain peaks, form a road surface after ramming, among them, the rammed earth cushion of the Huangling South Osmanthus Road section of the Meridian Ridge is the largest, after calculation, the earthwork volume of the section of the cushion roadbed is about 170,000 cubic meters, it is really amazing! Some boring people have calculated, the earthwork taken and moved by the entire Qinzhidao project, if it is piled up into an earth wall with a height of 1 meter and a width of 1 meter, it can go around the earth in half a circle!
It should be pointed out that these projects are not savage and can be done with a lot of people. First of all, the selection of the height and width of the moat is a very technical task, far from being as simple as it seems. Not only the height of the excavation needs to be accurately calculated, in order to ensure the efficiency and safety of the passage, the road must be connected with the road before and after construction, and there can be no too high height difference, and the small slope is conducive to the uphill passage of vehicles, and the safety can also be improved.
At the same time as the moat mountain, Qin Zhidao attaches great importance to the drainage of the road, not only building a complete drainage ditch on the inner side of the mountain road, but also the middle of the straight road surface is higher than the two sides. After research, Professor Wang Zijin of the mainland believes that the slope design of the slope and the bottom section of the Qinzhi Road fully meets the standards of today's secondary roads. It is remarkable that the roads built by the ancients 2,000 years ago can meet the standards of secondary roads for people 2,000 years later.
What's even more shocking is that this straight road built by the Qin people, after more than 2,000 years of ups and downs, the wind and wind have not been beaten away by the wind and rain, most of the road surface is still well preserved, and the trees on the hard roadbed in many places have not survived so far, and some places are still without grass, only a few places still have some tenacious weeds, but they are not as high as the knees. Experts speculate that in addition to conventional cooked soil and lime (which is used to remove organic matter from the soil), Qin Zhidao may have used some kind of secret recipe that has long been lost, so that it can achieve the effect of being difficult for weeds to invade and trees to grow for thousands of years. As for what the specific secret recipe is, with today's material analysis technology, it cannot be solved. Sometimes, modern technology is not necessarily better than the ancients.
In fact, until the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, Qin Zhidao was still one of the main traffic arteries of the Qing Dynasty, among which the Fengziliang section of the main ridge of the Meridian Ridge, until the era of the Anti-Japanese War, was the main road for the northern transportation of cotton in Guanzhong, and went straight to Shimen Pass, where the logistics department of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region was located, and continuously transfused blood for the anti-Japanese front. It is only because of the serious soil erosion in northern Shaanxi in the past 100 years that it has gradually become abandoned.
How are these thousand-year-old monuments compared to the Westerners' praise of "all roads lead to Rome"? How are they compared to the tofu scum projects that are all over the world today? Which company's project bids dare to write that "this section of the road has a service life of 2,000 years"?
It's a pity that the Qin Straight Road built by Meng Tian was not completed until the Qin Dynasty was about to fall, resulting in the 300,000 Great Wall Corps of Qin being stationed in the frontier for a long time, which not only consumed grain and grass for transportation, but also made it difficult to return to Xianyang in time at a critical moment. However, this straight road still benefited future generations, and in the Han Dynasty, the imperial army could be directly deployed near Chang'an, with the help of the straight road to maneuver, and this alone did not know how much labor was saved to transport grain and grass.
Suddenly, everyone in the world complained that Meng Tian did not advise the first emperor, and he was anti-flattering, working for the people, relying on power to make power, and being driven by will, and he was innocent of death. But I don't know that Meng Tian has good intentions, and his merits are in the future. After Meng Tian, the iron hooves of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty galloped from here, Zhaojun and Dayan went out of the fortress from here, Sima Qian went south from here, and Tang Taizong toured north from here...... However, after all, countless winds were still blown away by the rain and wind, and only a pipa by Han Zhaojun, accompanied by a sigh from Meng Tian, floated faintly on the ancient road of the Qin State that could not see the end at a glance......
In fact, there are many reasons for the death of the Qin Dynasty, the Great Wall and the straight road account for a small proportion of it, and there is a more important reason that we have not paid attention to, that is, Qin Shi Huang's use of troops against Baiyue.
According to the record of "Huainanzi", in the 33rd year of Qin Shi Huang (214 BC), the first emperor ordered Wei Tu Ju to lead 500,000 troops to attack Lingnan in five ways, and successively defeated the Xiou people (Baiyue in Zhejiang), Minyue people (Baiyue in Fujian) and Nanyue people (Baiyue in Guangdong), but when fighting with the Xiou people (Baiyue in Guangxi and Vietnam), there was a problem, and the Qin army fought very hard in this battle, and did not disarm or relax the crossbow for three years. First of all, he won a small victory, and also killed the leader of the Xiou tribe, "Yihu Song", but then the Xiou people played a game of hide and seek with the Qin army, they hid in the deep mountains and old forests, and constantly attacked the Qin army by virtue of their geographical advantages. Finally, one night, the Qin army was ambushed by the Xiou people and was defeated, the main general Tu Sui was killed in battle, and the Qin soldiers died in ambush and shed blood and sacrificed hundreds of thousands of people.
Now the question is, Meng Tian defeated the powerful Xiongnu with 300,000 troops, and Tu Ju had an army of 500,000 people, why was he made such a virtuous character by a small Xiou? Could it be that the commander was too stupid? Not necessarily. What is the origin of Tu Ju, the history books do not go into detail, we don't know, but seeing that he can take over the position of a generation of famous generals Wang Jian and lead half of the country's troops to the south, I believe that even if he can't compare to Meng Tian, he will never be an incompetent person. So why did the invincible Qin army become old and lose the battle when they came to Lingnan? I think there are several main reasons:
First: Meng Tian's Northern Expedition is to recover the homeland of Zhao, and the local border people hate the plundering of the Xiongnu, so they will naturally stand on the side of the Qin army. For the Yue people there, the Qin army was the invader, so they had to resist stubbornly at all costs. Therefore, it is also an expansion of 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: the local climate is different. Meng Tian's northern expedition was in the Hetao area, where the climatic conditions were not much different from those in Guanzhong, and the soldiers were more adaptable. The Baiyue area of Yu Tuju's southern expedition is a wild land in the south, where the climate is hot, the terrain is humble and humid, the mountains are mixed, the miasma is extremely heavy, and there are many snakes and insects. As soon as the Qin army arrived at its place, it refused to accept the water and soil. or by the plague miasma, or by the beasts and poisonous insects, often die. In addition, the local Yue people relied on their familiarity with the terrain and constantly attacked the Qin army. Over time, the morale of the Qin army became lower and lower, and a major defeat was inevitable.
Third, and most importantly, in fact, the record of Huainanzi itself is problematic, Tu Ju was only a "lieutenant", and I don't know how much worse than Meng Tian, how could he command an army of 500,000? Moreover, the "Historical Records" never mentions the situation of this 500,000 army, only in the "Qin Shi Huang Benji" that the Qin government had sent some officials, exiles, merchants, and sons-in-law (Note 14), who were equivalent to semi-slaves at the time, to "take the land of Luliang to suit the army". The so-called Lu Liang, that is, the meaning of flat land in the valley, in other words, the Qin army only occupied the flat land, and the mountains and forests were still the world of the Yue people. In addition, in the "Biography of the Father of the Marquis of Pingjin", he borrowed the note of the master and the father, mentioning that "the envoy Tu Sui sent the soldiers of the building ship south to attack Baiyue", and then "the Qin army was defeated", and never said anything about the 500,000 army and the hundreds of thousands killed in the battle (Note 15). In short, Qin Shi Huang should have just sent some criminals to develop Lingnan, which was also the immigration method often used by the Qin State in the expansion war. One scholar has pointed out: "As the Qin expanded its territory, it continued to absorb or forcibly move in populations from other countries, and at the same time moved large numbers of its own population into newly occupied areas in order to consolidate its dominance." "At that time, the policy of rewarding and recruiting immigrants and the system of criminals being able to move to the border areas to fight for crimes had already begun to be implemented, which is a noteworthy new thing in the history of Chinese immigration. (Note 16)
In addition, according to the Legalists, most of these prisoners were unstable elements of the empire, and it was better to send them to Lingnan as cannon fodder, and to develop backward areas, such as building a spiritual canal to connect the Pearl River and the Yangtze River (Note 17). This criminal colonial system of Qin Shi Huang was later carried forward by Emperor Wu of Han and became a common policy of the Chinese to expand their territory. In addition, according to the subordinate Wu of Liu An, the king of Huainan, in the "Historical Records: Huainan Hengshan Biography", the original Qin's "southbound cadre" Nanhai County Longchuan ordered Zhao Tuo to find daughters-in-law for these prisoners and soldiers who settled in other places, and specially asked Emperor Qin for 30,000 mainland women "to make up for the soldiers' clothes", and the Qin Emperor gave a five-fold discount of 15,000. It is said that during the European colonial period, about 24,000 British female prisoners were exiled to Australia to give birth to men who were colonized in the early stage.
In short, Qin Shi Huang finally took the Baiyue region and placed it as Guilin (about present-day Guangxi Province), Xiang County (about present-day north-central Vietnam), and Nanhai (about present-day Guangdong Province). So far, the territory of the Qin Empire extends to the sea in the east, wades through quicksand in the west, reaches Wuling in the south, and passes through Bactria in the north, with a total land area of more than 3.47 million square kilometers, which is larger than Alexander's empire across Europe, Asia and Africa in the last century (the first four). It was the largest country in the world in terms of territorial area at that time. It is a pity that the national strength of the Western Han Dynasty in the early years of the Qin Dynasty was very weak, and the land was once sharply reduced to 2.14 million square kilometers.
Of course, in order to conquer Baiyue, the empire paid an extremely painful price after all, and this price directly accelerated the pace of the fall of Great Qin. If Paimon Tian's construction of the Great Wall and the construction of a straight road was still necessary for the safety and development of the empire, then the conquest of Baiyue was definitely the biggest mistake made by Qin Shi Huang in his lifetime.
First: conquering Baiyue is self-harming self-destructive strength. In order to rule and develop the newly conquered Baiyue region, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the empire were stationed in the three counties of Xiangjun, Guilin and Nanhai. However, these areas are crisscrossed by mountains, barren land, overflowing swamps, dense jungles, and the agricultural level is still in the primitive era of slash-and-burn farming, the development cost is too high, and the hinterland needs blood transfusion to maintain, which directly leads to the decline in the supply level of the Qin army and the doubling of the pressure on the hinterland.
In short, the Lingnan War is like gluttony, constantly devouring all kinds of resources, population, and even the empire itself. As a militaristic beast, Qin's basic survival method was to nourish the inside, that is, to absorb the resources of others to nourish itself, and at the same time to use it to drain any energy in the country that might cause a rebellion against the imperial court. "Shang Junshu Says the People" said: "The country is strong without fighting, the poison is lost inside, and the lily lice officials and students must be cut." He also said, "If you can live, you can't kill, and if you say that you attack yourself, you will cut it." Legalists believe that if the country wants to maintain order, it must continue to invest its people in war, and it can live (accumulate) but also kill (consume), so as to "lose poison to the outside", transform internal contradictions into external contradictions, and then annex the world, which is the basic development logic of the Qin Empire.
But after the unification of the world, there is no other person to draw, or in other words, the cost of absorption is too great, not only is there no profit, but it has to be transfused to the Great Wall Lingnan, so the empire can only absorb inward, and the people of Li will be fattened to enrich the court. And in this way, the people will no longer be able to get the title of military merit, and they will have to suffer from conscription, not to mention the people of the Six Kingdoms, even the old Qin people can't bear it. Therefore, once the world was in turmoil, the Qin officials and the Qin army fled in large numbers and even rebelled, and the empire fell apart in an instant. After Chen Sheng and Wu Guang rebelled, his subordinates crossed the Yellow River north, and mobilized tens of thousands of heroes to rebel in one sentence. There is the battle of the Great Wall in the north, the battle of the five mountains in the south, the commotion inside and outside, and the people are resigned. The financial resources are exhausted, and the people are struggling to make a living. The county kills its commander, and the county kills its captain. In one sentence. In other words, after the unification of the world, under the inertia of the militaristic system, Qin not only failed to stop its wartime economy, which lasted for more than 100 years, but intensified its huge war machine to obtain land that had no profit in the short term, which eventually made it a real "self-attacking country", which overconsumed and exploded.
Second, the conquest of Baiyue was the most loss-making deal made by Qin Shi Huang in his life - the immigrant army wasted a lot of money and grain in the empire, but did not get back any capital. After the chaos in the world, the 300,000 troops in the north had straight transportation, and later they could kill the land of Yanzhao to share the pressure on Xianyang. However, because most of the 500,000 southern migrant troops were not Qin, and the basic officers and soldiers were criminals and merchants, they had no feelings for the Qin Empire, and the mountains were high and the emperor was far away, so they simply used the excuse of inconvenient transportation and did not save Qin.
Third, the conquest of Baiyue is not a top priority. The Xiongnu had great potential and occupied the Hetao region, the lifeblood of the empire, so they had to be driven away and not allowed to grow calmly. Since ancient times, Baiyue has never been a threat to the Huaxia Dynasty, because since it is called Baiyue, there are many natural tribes, and they do not belong to each other, and they are scattered, so they cannot threaten the rule of the Central Plains regime at all, and they will never take the initiative to invade the Central Plains, so when the Chu State was at its strongest, it only developed into the Hunan region of Zhejiang, and did not continue to fight southward. The Han Dynasty also recuperated for nearly a hundred years, and it was not until Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty was the most powerful that he completely subdued Baiyue in 109 BC. After all, at that time, the land in the Central Plains had not yet been fully developed, and there was no population pressure, so there was no need for Qin Shi Huang to be in such a hurry to engage in expansion. It has cost a lot of national and civil resources to build a straight road on the Great Wall, and the empire needs at least a few decades of recuperation and reproduction of population and material resources before it can 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 finish everything in his life, so could there be no chaos? Some things are not impossible to do, but they will not be 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 happy, so ambitious, he has to finish everything in one battle, and he is not afraid of supporting himself to death. Of course, the militaristic system of the Qin Empire has been running rapidly for more than a hundred years, has great historical inertia, and has created a huge rentier class, with a big tail and overcapacity, which is not something that Qin Shi Huang said can be braked.
In short, Qin Shi Huang had to bear considerable responsibility for the death of Qin, but after all, he did many unprecedented and groundbreaking things for China, which were almost more than the sum of most emperors and generals in the next two thousand years. Of course, these great achievements are all based on countless blood, tears, and bones and the profound disasters of the broad masses of the people. But in any case, the Qin people, full of pioneering and enterprising spirit, created a unique and great civilization, and they left countless precious legacies for our descendants, which will always be remembered by history. Therefore, Sima Qian said: "Qin took the world and was violent, but the world changed and the success was great!" ("Historical Records: Preface to the Chronology of the Six Kingdoms")
Note 1: The unification of the Qin Dynasty is mainly based on the "big seal" of the Zhou Dynasty and the "small seal" created by Li Si on the basis of the "big seal" of the Qilu tadpole script and the simple province. From the stone carvings left by Qin Shi Huang on his tour of the world, we can still get a glimpse of Li Si's calligraphy. Li Si's small seal, the word is rectangular, the penmanship is round, the center uses a pen, hides the head and protects the tail, and there is a broad and solemn momentum, just like Daqin's style. Therefore, although there are more simple and easy-to-use fonts in later generations, the small seal is still the preferred font for serious occasions, and because of its delicate and beautiful font, uniform and symmetrical, it is especially suitable for symbolization as a seal, so on the basis of the seal script, the art of seal carving has been developed for gold and stone inscriptions.
Note 2: In 1979, the first two pieces of guzheng in China were unearthed from the Xianshui Rock Cliff Tomb in Guixi, Jiangxi Province, from the late Spring and Autumn Period to the early Warring States Period. The earliest brush found by archaeology is in the tomb of Marquis Yi of Suizhou, Hubei, and the era is also in the early Warring States period. Even the colorful decorative patterns on the painted pottery unearthed from the Yangshao cultural site five or six thousand years ago can fully see the traces of the brush. In 1980, some pestles, small bowls and black-red iron ore were unearthed from the tombs of Yangshao culture in Jiangzhai Village, Lintong, Shaanxi Province, which should be the oldest ink and ink grinding tools.
Note 3: (Qing) Zhu Junsheng's "Shuo Wen Tong Xun Dingsheng": "The five strings of the guzheng are like bamboo. Qin Mengtian changed to 12 strings, deformed like a seer, easy bamboo in wood, and thirteen strings after the Tang Dynasty. "As for the brush, archaeological findings have found that the pen of the Warring States period did not insert the bristles in the barrel, but surrounded the barrel and then tied with velvet, and then painted on the outside. And the brush after Qin, but the end of the pen is hollowed out, the pen is inserted in it, such a brush, its advantages are obvious, one is to absorb more ink, the other is easy to keep the pen hair round and neat, easy to write. These improvements may have been made by Meng Tian.
Note 4: Su Hongyue, The Beauty of Ancient Music, People's Music Publishing House, 2016, p. 221.
Note 5: It is a nomadic tribe originating from the grassland corridor at the western foot of the Great Xing'an Mountains (including the famous Hulunbuir grassland, Xilin Gol grassland and Horqin grassland), which had long invaded the land of Yan and Zhao during the Warring States period, and was defeated by the famous Yan general Qin Kai and began to focus on competing with the Xiongnu in the grassland. After the Qin Dynasty was defeated and annexed by the Xiongnu in the last years, its remnants retreated into the Daxing'an Mountains, which were high in mountains and dense forests, and developed into the later Wuhuan and Xianbei.
Note 6: Refers to a powerful nomadic tribe living in the Hexi Corridor at that time, which belonged to the Indo-European Tocharian tribe with the people of the Western Regions.
Note 7: The word "Touman", which is believed to be the Altaic word for "10,000" (the same word is also borrowed from the names "Tumenjiang" and "Tumut"), originally referred to a military rank rather than a personal name, meaning "Tongwan", "a general who led an army of 10,000". It can be seen that the Xiongnu were quite weak for a period of time after being defeated by Li Mu, and their total strength was only about 10,000.
Note 8: According to Lin Meicun's article "The Primitive Hometown of the Dayue Clan: Also on the Formation of the Thirty-six Kingdoms in the Western Regions", "Touman" is a transliteration of the Tocharian word "tumane", which means the head of ten thousand households, or the title of the king of the Yue clan as the overlord of the northern nomadic tribe at that time, and the prince of Touman Danyu, Mao Dun, was later sent to the court of the Yue clan as a hostage, which shows that the power of the Xiongnu was greatly reduced after being expelled, and they were reduced to the position of a vassal state of the Yue clan.
Note 9: Shiratori Kuji believes that mò dú should be the Mongolian word bogdo, meaning sacred, and cites the example of the Mongols in Mobei in the Qing Dynasty who revered the Qing emperor as Bogedo Khan. See Shiratori Kuji, "New Studies in the History of the Western Regions", Studies in the History of the Western Regions, vol. 1, p. 224. It can be seen that the list of successive Shan Yu recorded in the "Historical Records" from Touman to Hehou Hou, except for the article that Lao Shangshan Yu was originally named Ji Congee, there are only Shan Yu numbers and no names, and these Shan Yu numbers have always been regarded as human names, which is actually due to the misunderstanding caused by the lack of understanding of the Shan Yu number system among the Han people in the Sima Qian era. See Luo Xin, "The Origin of Inner Asia: A Study on the Names of the Middle and Northern Tribes", Social Sciences Academic Press, 2023, p. 34.
Note 10: It is located at the port of the Daneong River and Cheongcheon River in North Pyongan Province, North Korea, and is also known as "Yansai Stone", and the so-called Yansai is the Great Wall of the Warring States Period. The Great Wall of the Qin Dynasty is the old Yan Great Wall, and the starting point of the eastern end of the Qin Great Wall is also the beginning of the Great Wall of Yanbei. See Jing Ai, History of the Great Wall of China (Expanded Edition), People's Publishing House, 2023, p. 149.
Note 11: For example, in the Hetao area, in addition to using the Great Wall of King Wuling of Zhao to the south of Yinshan, Meng Tian also built a new Great Wall north of Yinshan, the remains of which have been discovered by locals. According to the field investigation, the beginning and end of the new construction of the Great Wall in the Qin Dynasty are generally clear. See Li Yiyou, "An Examination of the Great Wall of Northern China", Inner Mongolia Cultural Relics and Archaeology, No. 1, 2001.
Note 12: Recently, archaeologists have calculated the length of the Great Wall of Qin Shi Huang to be 7,860 kilometers, of which 6,650 kilometers follow the old city of Yan Zhao and Qin, and 1,210 kilometers were newly built (Jing Ai, History of the Great Wall of China). In terms of earthwork, it is about 3.43 times that of Chang'an City in the Han Dynasty, and its engineering volume is not too large. The main reason is that the Great Wall is too far from the center of the empire, and the cost of transferring logistics is high.
Note 13: The Book of Han and the Biography of the Lord Father Yan Lie said that Qin Shi Huang attacked the Xiongnu in the north, "making the world fly and save the corn, starting from the counties of Huang, Xuan, and Lang and the sea, and transferring to the Beihe, with a rate of 30 minutes and a stone." In the pre-Qin period, six stones and four buckets were one clock, that is to say, 192 stones of grain were transported on the road, and only one stone could be transported to the northern Hetao area.
Note 14: This method is called "Shen Shu", and the initiators include "Jia people, prison officials who are not straight, people who have tasted the dead, sons-in-law, people who have city registration, eldest parents (grandparents) or parents who have city registration", so it is also called "Seven Branches" in the Han Dynasty. Among them are officials who have broken the law, there are people who have fled the household register, and there are also those who have become rich in business and their descendants. The Qin rulers believed that these people had jeopardized the country's taxation and ruling order, undermined the monopoly of land and wealth by the nobles, and that their movement (without the restraint of land) was not conducive to control. And the son-in-law was also severely cracked down on for hindering the country's taxation and the atomization of society. There is also a law recorded in the "Sleeping Tiger Land Qin Jian", which does not allow the granting of titles to sons-in-law, and prohibits children and grandchildren from entering the office within three generations, and must be marked as a son-in-law in the household registration within seven generations, and priority is given to conscription. In addition, after joining the army, not only did the treatment shrink (only one-third of the food, and there was no meat to eat), but also gave priority to being cannon fodder, and filled the trenches at the front during the siege.
Note 15: The reason why "Huainanzi" is exaggerated is because its editor-in-chief, Liu An, the king of Huainan, advocated the way of Huang Lao, advocated rest and inaction, and also wrote a letter opposing Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to send troops to attack Minyue.
Note 16: Ge Jianxiong, Cao Shuji, Wu Songdi, A Concise History of Chinese Immigration, Fujian People's Publishing House, 1993, p. 48.
Note 17: The Qin army's deep penetration of grain through the Lingqu played an immeasurable role in ensuring the victory of the Qin army in the Lingnan War. Some scholars speculate that the width of the Ling Canal was 5-7 meters, and the water depth was 1-2 meters, and at that time it could sail ships with a width of 5 meters and a load of 500-600 tons of grain. See the Editorial Board of Guangxi Shipping History, People's Communications Publishing House, 1991, pp. 4-7, and Cai Wanjin, Research on Grain Economy of Qin, Inner Mongolia People's Publishing House, 1996, p. 89.
Note 18: Zhao Tuo was a native of Zhao Dizhending, also surnamed Zhao, and may have been a descendant of the Zhao royal family, and his loyalty to Qin should be quite limited. In addition, Longchuan County is located at the beginning of the east water of the Pearl River, is the capital of Baiyue, the first fortress in Lingnan, its name comes from "there is a dragon through the ground, that is, the cave flow spring" ("Hanshu Geographical Chronicles"), that is, it has rich groundwater resources, can be dug wells and canals, agriculture is very developed, so the most powerful and ambitious person in the Nanhai County governors, Qin Shi was in charge of the three counties of the South China Sea, so the three counties of the three counties of the South China Sea Lieutenant Ren Huan entrusted the three counties of independence to Zhao Tuo.