Preface
Qin Shi Huang was the first emperor of the feudal society in the mainland, but we all know that Qin Shi Huang reigned for less than 40 years, and he was not yet 50 years old when he died, and he was in the prime of life.
Liu Bang, who also overthrew the Qin Dynasty and competed with Xiang Yu for domination of the world, lived sixty-one years old, but compared to a person, the life span of him and Qin Shi Huang together is equivalent to this person.
The lifespan of ancient emperors was very short, but why did this person have the last laugh, and who was this person? He was Zhao Tuo, who was once a member of the Qin army's adjutant general.
Finally ascended the throne and established South Vietnam and became a generation of emperors, and Zhao Tuo's reign can be said to be quite long, in general more than eighty years, so how did Zhao Tuo do it?
1. The land of Baiyue
Zhao Tuo was born in about 240 B.C., and his birthplace is now Zhengding, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province.
When Zhao Tuo was young, he joined the army and became a member of the Qin army, coupled with his strong body and great strength, as Qin Shi Huang's Qin army, he followed Qin Shi Huang many times to patrol and fight.
When he was nineteen years old, he also obtained the sword given by Qin Shi Huang, which in the eyes of outsiders, Zhao Tuo is Qin Shi Huang's most trusted general, but he is such a highly valued and trusted general, why did he ascend the throne and become emperor himself?
When reading "A Fang Gong Fu", we know that "six kings are bi, four seas are one" means that the Qin Dynasty unified the six countries and the world was one, but in fact this was not the case, and the Qin State completed the unification after conquering Baiyue.
But the battle of Baiyue was very tragic and very difficult, so where is the land of Baiyue?
Before the Qin Dynasty, present-day Hong Kong, Macao, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou and southern Fujian were all part of the vast Baiyue land, where many Yue tribes lived.
However, transportation is inconvenient, productivity is low, and there are many fights between various tribes, almost a group of people living a primitive life vying for supplies and territory.
It was not until the unification of the Six Kingdoms that Qin Shi Huang began to pacify the land of Baiyue in the Lingnan region. In 219 BC, Qin Shi Huang sent Tu Sui and Zhao Tuo to lead an army of 500,000 to pacify the land of Lingnan, and Zhao Tuo, as a deputy general, played a very big role.
Tu Sui, as the main general, acted very brutally, causing the local people to resist, in order to quell the local resistance, he did not hesitate to kill the locals, Tu Sui's brutal behavior caused public anger.
For this reason, Qin Shi Huang could only replace Tu Sui, appoint Ren Huan as Zhujiang, and let him and Zhao Tuo lead the army to pacify the land of Baiyue. The two acted properly and measuredly, and it took four years to recover the land of Lingnan and incorporate it into the territory of Great Qin.
Subsequently, the Qin Dynasty set up the Nanhai County in Panyu, and let Ren Huan serve as the county lieutenant, in charge of the politics and military affairs of a county, while Zhao Tuo served as the commander of Longchuan County, which is also a military location.
After Zhao Tuo became the commander of Longchuan County, he dutifully did everything well, first building a city wall in Longchuan, opening up fields, and managing it.
Zhao Tuo paid great attention to whether the Yue people would rebel, and attached great importance to this, and in order to avoid such a thing, he adopted the method of "harmony with Han Yue" so that the people of South Vietnam could be appeased.
At the same time, in order to allow the Han and Vietnam to get along amicably, he also persuaded the soldiers to get married and have children in Yue and write to the emperor, asking him to send some Central Plains residents to Yue to spread the Central Plains culture and integrate the Chinese and Vietnamese cultures.
2. The martial king of South Vietnam
But with the death of Qin Shi Huang, everything went in an unknown direction, and perhaps Zhao Tuo did not expect that he would eventually become the emperor of Nanyue.
It's just that the current situation is like this, and Zhao Tuo has been pushed to the throne step by step. It's just that when Qin II succeeded to the throne, the political situation became more and more chaotic, and due to his tyranny, many rebel armies appeared.
First Chen Sheng and Wu Guang uprising, followed by the heroes who rose up, for a time the Central Plains fell into war, but the Baiyue region was very stable under the governance of Zhao Tuo and Ren Huan, and was not affected by the war at all.
Until Ren Huan's death, on his deathbed, he handed over Nanhai County to Zhao Tuo, and told Zhao Tuo that if the rebel army attacked, it could be stopped based on superior geographical advantages.
Zhao Tuo listened to this sentence in his heart, and after he took charge of the land of Baiyue, he used Nanyue as a base, constantly expanding his power, and containing fortresses such as Sanjiang and Wuling, and defending Nanyue.
Until the fall of the Qin Dynasty, in 203 BC, Zhao Tuo immediately led his troops to attack and annexed the surrounding Guilin County and Xiang County to unify the Lingnan region.
With Panyu as the capital, the Nanyue Kingdom was established, and Zhao Tuo also established himself as the king and became the martial king of Nanyue. From this point of view, it is indeed a wise move for Ren Huan to hand over the power of Baiyue Land to Zhao Tuo.
It can also be seen that Ren Huan's vision is very good, he can recognize people and be good at his duties, and Zhao Tuo is also a very talented person, and he has not lived up to Ren Huan's trust.
Similarly, the land of Baiyue, under the management of Zhao Tuo, developed in an orderly manner, until the rebel army finally left only Liu Bang and Xiang Yu, and the two competed for hegemony in the world, and finally Liu Bang established the Western Han Dynasty and ended the chaos.
And pacified other military forces, including Xiang Yu, unified the Central Plains, and ended the war.
Liu Bang no longer wanted to use military methods to exterminate the Nanyue Kingdom until 196 BC, when Liu Bang, the ancestor of the Han Dynasty, sent a doctor Lu Jia to Nanyue to persuade Zhao Tuo to accept the title of king of the Han Dynasty and stipulate the central power.
In 165 BC, under the persuasion of Lu Jia, Zhao Tuo accepted the seal ribbon given by Han Gaozu to the king of Nanyue, and Nanyue also officially declared itself a vassal state of the Western Han Dynasty, and indicated that it would pay tribute to the imperial court every year.
3. Returned to Han twice
Since then, the Western Han Dynasty and South Vietnam have sent envoys to each other, and opened up trade between the two countries, so that South Vietnam has been submitted, and has not made South Vietnam a hostile force in the Western Han Dynasty.
Therefore, the mineral resources and technology of the Central Plains have also been introduced to South Vietnam, which has greatly promoted the production and progress of society, promoted the development of the Lingnan region, and improved the economy.
This is undoubtedly a good thing for the people of Lingnan, so Zhao Tuo has also become a great man, and since then the Lingnan region has also appeared signs of civilization, iconic house buildings and writing, as well as the emergence of the iron smelting industry, which has pushed the development of society to a new era.
It was not until after Liu Bang's death that the Han Dynasty power fell into the hands of Empress Lü, who changed his previous friendly attitude towards Vietnam, not only severed the connection between the Central Plains and South Vietnam, but even imposed a blockade on South Vietnam, and detained South Vietnamese envoys many times.
This made Zhao Tuo very dissatisfied, so he broke away from the Han Dynasty and restored the identity of Emperor Wu of Nanyue, and Empress Lu sent troops to attack Zhao Tuo many times, but the soldiers of the Central Plains were not suitable for the subtropical climate of the Lingnan region, which led to the soldiers being unadaptable, and even the Nanling could not be crossed.
Zhao Tuo went in turn to send troops to attack the princes of Changsha, thwarting the spirit of the Han army to the south, which made Zhao Tuo's reputation more and more prominent for a while, and many countries submitted to Nanyue, which made Nanyue's territory expand a lot.
This was very advantageous for South Vietnam, and it was able to oppose the Han Dynasty until the succession of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty, Liu Heng, which ended the confrontation between South Vietnam and the Western Han Dynasty.
Not only because he sent someone to help Zhao Tuo build the cemetery of his ancestors in Hebei, but because he was moved by the sincerity of Emperor Wen of Han, he returned to the Western Han Dynasty again.
In order to show his sincerity, although he removed the title of emperor, he still retained the title of "King of Nanyue", but in Nanyue, he was still the emperor.
In the end, Zhao Tuo died in 137 BC at the age of more than 100, and he reigned for 81 years, his son did not survive him, and after Zhao Tuo's death, his grandson Zhao Hu succeeded him on the throne, and it was not until the time of Emperor Wu of Han that Nanyue was destroyed.
epilogue
Although the presence of the Nanyue Dynasty in history is not as good as that of the Han Dynasty and the Qin Dynasty, it has to be said that Zhao Tuo's contribution to the Nanyue Dynasty, in order to show praise and respect for Zhao Tuo, is therefore called the "ancestor of Lingnan", because he laid the foundation for the development of Lingnan.