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Compared with the other three of the four princes of the Warring States,-Meng Yujun, Chunshen Jun, and Pingyuan Jun—Xin Lingjun could not match them in terms of national strength or power. Not only was the State of Wei weaker than that of the three kingdoms of Qi, Chu, and Zhao, xin lingjun personally had never obtained the status of prime minister like the other three princes.
But the weakest Of all, Xin Lingjun, has become a classic figure in the historical narrative. Is the legend of Xin Lingjun real or is it deliberately preached? If it is the latter, then who will be the person who deliberately preaches the belief in Lingjun?
There were too many disciples of the Plain King, but the xinling jun's disciples were all capable officials. However, the political conditions possessed by the Pingyuan Jun were obviously far superior to those of the Xin Ling Jun, so why would it be the Pingyuan Jun who lacked access to anyone? We must seriously examine this issue, because there are too many errors and omissions in the relevant records of the "Records of History".
The Biography of The Prince of Wei contains:
King Xue of Zhao, King an of An, ascended the throne and created his son the Prince of Xinling. It was when Fan Ju killed Wei Xiangqin, to resent Wei Qi, and Qin soldiers surrounded Da liang. Breaking Wei Huayang's army, he walked away. The King of Wei and his sons suffered.
- "History of the Duke of Wei"
The Chronology of the Six Kingdoms shows that Prince Wu of Wei was enthroned as the Prince of Xinling in the year when King An of Wei ascended the throne. The first year of the reign of King Wei An was 276 BC, when King Zhao of Qin was thirty-one years old. At this time, the chancellor of the State of Qin was still Marquis Wei Ran of Yong instead of Marquis Fan Sui. Fan Sui's replacement of Wei Ran did not occur until 266 BC, 10 years after the xinling emperor was enthroned.
However, taking the relevant records of the Qin Benji as a reference, the following fact can be confirmed, that is, from the year when King Wei Anli ascended the throne, the Qin state did continuously launch an offensive against the Wei state:
(King Zhao of Qin) Thirty-one years (276 BC), Bai qi cut down Wei and took two cities. The Chu people are anti-I Jiangnan.
(King Zhao of Qin) Thirty-second year (275 BC), Xiang Ranghou attacked Wei, to Da Liang, broke the tyrannical kite, beheaded 40,000, the iris left, Wei into the three counties please peace.
In the thirty-third year (274 BC) of king Zhao of Qin, Keqing Hu attacked Wei Chuan, Cai Yang, and Changshe and took them. Strike Mang, Huayang, break it, and behead 150,000 people. Wei entered Nanyang to make peace.
- "History of Qin Benji"
In the second year of The reign of King Anli of Wei, Qin Xiang Wei Ran led an army to attack Wei, and the soldiers pointed directly at Da Liang. Two years later, the general Bai Qi broke the combined forces of Wei and Zhao under Huayang (the "Chronicle of History" mistakenly attributed the Battle of Huayang to 274 BC, in fact the Battle of Huayang took place in 273 BC, see Yang Kuan's "Chronicle of the Warring States Chronicle"), causing battlefield losses of up to 150,000 people to the two countries.
The State of Wei fell deeper and deeper in the crisis of defeat, prompting Xin Lingjun to think about it: How can we revive the momentum of the State of Wei and resist the encroachment of the State of Qin day by day? And the answer he gave was corporal Li Xian, asking for help. The Chronicle of History reads:
The prince is a man, a benevolent corporal. No soldier is virtuous, all are humble and courteous, and do not dare to be proud of their wealth. Soldiers have traveled thousands of miles in this direction, and they are racing to return to it. To three thousand diners. When it was, the princes were virtuous and multi-guest, and did not dare to increase their troops to wei for more than ten years.
The State of Wei had reached the brink of life and death, and Xin Lingjun had to lay down his body and recruit talents. However, to say that three thousand guests gathered under his command was enough to deter the Qin state from daring to use troops against the Wei state for more than ten years after that, which was reduced to the exaggeration of the novelist. Because Hou Wei, the mastermind of Xin Lingjun, once confessed that using these disciples to deal with the Tiger and Wolf Division of the Qin State was really a mantis arm as a car:
"Gongzi Xishi, famous all over the world." Now there are difficulties, there is no other end, and I want to go to the Qin army. For example, if a tiger is thrown with meat, what is the merit? ”
The State of Qin gradually weakened its offensive against the State of Wei after 274 BC, not due to the shock of the three thousand disciples of The Emperor of Xinling, but due to the mistake of Wei Ran, the Minister of Qin. Wei Ran's selfish desires had become more and more intense at this time, and in order to expand his fiefdom, he mistakenly planned the Qin army to cross the territory of Han and Wei and expedition to the State of Qi to capture Gang and Shou.
Although this military adventure was a fluke of success, the fruits of the victory were all put into Wei Ran's private pocket. As for the State of Qin, it did not reap any war dividends from it:
In the thirty-sixth year (271 BC) of king Qin Zhao, Keqing attacked Qi, took Gang and Shou, and gave it to Hou Hou.
It was precisely for this reason that Fan Sui, a Wei strategist who had already arrived in Qin at this time, violently attacked Wei Ran in front of King Qin Zhao:
"Fu Rang Hou Yue Han and Wei attacked Qi Gang and Shou, not Ji Ye. A fewer divisions are not enough to hurt Qi, and more divisions are harmful to Qin. The king's plan to go out of his way to get rid of the division less and to learn about han and Wei's soldiers was unjust. Imami is not related to the country, and the country of the people is attacked, can it be? It is not a matter of calculation. ”
- "The Biography of Fan Sui Cai Zelie"
Unfortunately, Fan Sui's criticism failed to immediately fix Wei Ran's mistakes. In 270 BC, the year after Vaqi, the Qin army launched an attack on fuhe, a military stronghold of the Zhao state, for two consecutive years. Only this time, luck no longer favored the Qin people. The lucky Qin army was attacked by zhao hao, a famous general of the Zhao state, at Fuhe:
In the twenty-ninth year (270 BC), Qin and Han attacked each other, while the siege was fought. Zhao made Zhao Hao a general, attacked Qin, and greatly broke the Qin army and gave him the title of Ma Fujun.
- "History of the Zhao Family"
The Yue people's country, the expedition to Qi and Zhao, was obviously not as good as taking the battalion step by step, encroaching on Han and Wei to be solid and steady, and it was precisely at the end of his reign that Wei Ran mistakenly shifted the focus of attack to Qi and Zhao, which gave the State of Wei a chance to breathe after successive fiascoes. As a result, Shinryō gained 10 years of cultivating wings, which was also the period when his shogunate expanded most rapidly.
But realistically speaking, even if Xin Lingjun was willing to lower his stature and corporal Li Xian, he could not rely on this humble political gesture alone to attract the rapid joining of Haojie from all sides. Because at this time, compared with several other Warring States princes, the conditions for attracting talents were really not superior.
Let's compare pingyuan junlai of the Zhao state with the Xin Lingjun: in these 10 years, the wei state has been dying and can no longer compete because of the years of aggression and encroachment accumulated by the qin state. However, the State of Zhao won a lot of praise for its victory in the War against Qin such as the Battle of Fuhe, and was even regarded by the world as the only eastern country capable of balancing the State of Qin, so that in history, there was a record of the Zhao State as strong, making "Qin unable to get what it wanted for more than forty years" ("Warring States Policy Zhao Ce III").
Not only was the state of Zhao far superior to that of the State of Wei, but the power of the Pingyuan Jun was also unmatched by the Xin Ling Jun. Because the "Biography of the Princes of Wei" says that king Wei Anli was afraid and did not dare to grant the credit to the Lingjun to govern the country, and the "Biography of the Pingyuan Junlie" clearly records that during the reign of King Huiwen of Zhao, the Pingyuan Jun had already ascended to the throne of the Zhao state. One is the prince and grandson of the idle, and the other is the prime minister of the first power in the East, which is lighter and heavier, and it is clear at a glance.
The reason why I want to make such a comparison is not to speculate on the ancients, to make up a fictitious competitive relationship between the Plain King and the Xin Ling Jun. Shi Youmingwen said that during this period, not only between the plains, the Xinling, and even the four princes of the Warring States were engaged in a fierce battle for talents.
It was when Qi had Meng Taste, Wei had Xin ling, and Chu had Chun Shen, so they rushed to wait for the soldiers.
- "History of the Plains Junyu Qing Lie"
Since ancient times, non-monarchs have chosen their subjects, but their subjects have also chosen their subjects. The fierce competition for the sons of the Four Kingdoms led to the growing pickiness of the lord. The "Chronicle of History" said that only because Pingyuan Jun's favorite concubine rudely ridiculed a disabled person who was waddling and drawing water, and this behavior was connived by Pingyuan Jun, it triggered collective dissatisfaction under Pingyuan Jun's disciples, causing more than half of the disciples to resign and leave.
Under such circumstances, if Xin Lingjun, whose national strength and seniority were inferior to those of the princes of the three kingdoms of Qi, Zhao, and Chu, wanted to attract a group of talents of literature and martial arts, he was bound to find another way and make certain adjustments to the criteria for talent selection and the strategy of talent selection.
In fact, it is not difficult to understand this kind of power change of Xin Lingjun. To illustrate this question, we might as well use the formation of the shogunates of cao cao and yuan shao at the end of the Han Dynasty to make a simulation. Yuan Shao was born into a famous family, the fourth and third dukes, while Cao Cao's castration was ugly, dwarfed by Yuan's self. To compete with Yuan Shao, Cao Cao Could only lower the threshold, and over time, he embarked on the road of "meritocracy".
Since the conditions of Xin Lingjun were inferior to those of the princes of the three kingdoms of Qi, Zhao, and Chu, he wanted to recruit talents, and the expansion of the shogunate could not be too "picky". In addition to those nobles and scholars with heads and faces, Xin Lingjun also had to turn his eyes on the search for talents to the civilian cloth.
Coupled with the fact that the crisis in the State of Wei at this time was far deeper than that of the State of Zhao, the situation forced Xin Lingjun to have to examine talents pragmatically, and it was best to have a role in one person. Like Pingyuan Jun, he spent a lot of money, but only recruited a bunch of food companions to fill the façade, such a "heroic move" was only afraid that Xin Lingjun could not afford it.
Therefore, we will see that when Xin Lingjun lived in the Zhao Kingdom, in order to win the joining of mao gong and xue gong, two hermits, he did not hesitate to mix in the gambling house. Although this kind of behavior was despised by the well-respected Pingyuan Jun at that time, it mistakenly achieved the name of Xin Lingjun's posthumous name:
When Gao Zu was a little young, he counted Gongzi Xian. And that is, the son of heaven, every girder, always worship the prince. In the twelfth year of Gaozu's reign, he set up a shrine for his sons and worshipped them at four o'clock in the world.
40 years after the death of Xin Lingjun, Liu Bang, who was born in cloth, ascended to the emperor's throne by chance, and an era of popular politicians arrived. And the Xin Lingjun who deliberately recruited talents from the cloth of the commoners happened to be Liu Bang's idol before his departure.
So a dramatic scene occurred in the "Records of History" written by the Han Dynasty historian Sima Qian: Xin Lingjun, the original weakest of the four princes of the Warring States, received the most praise from Sima Qian, and after whitewashing, he was shaped as an idol of the new era, while the hardships and ups and downs of Xin Lingjun's recruitment of talents were forgotten in the memory of history.
bibliography:
Takikawa Ziyan "Notes on the History of the Society"
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