Anti-lost, accessible by elevator
Safety Island newspaperman Liu Yadong A
Source: Short History - Tencent News
Author: Liu Sanxie
The story of the Hongmen Feast is well known to people. Many people imagined it as the winner of the Chu-Han war, believing that it was precisely because Xiang Yu failed to kill Liu Bang with his heart and fierceness that it led to the future death of the country.
In fact, this understanding is biased.
First, Liu Bang's selfishness
The "History of Xiang Yu Benji" records that before the Hongmen Feast, Xiang Yu was "furious" twice. Once, before coming to Hangu Pass, he found that Liu Bang's army was guarding the pass and "was not allowed to enter." Once, after breaking through Hangu Pass, Liu Bang's Left Sima Cao sent someone to inform him that Liu Bang wanted to occupy Guanzhong and claim the title of king, and Xiang Yu was furious and prepared to "break the Pei Gong Army" the next day.
What is the reason for Xiang Yu's "anger"? There is an answer in the dialogue between Zhang Liang and Liu Bang:
Zhang Liangyue: "Who is the king's plan for this?" "The fisherman said that I knew that 'distance from the pass, there are no princes within the qin, and the qin land can be the king'. So listen. ”
Even when Zhang Liang was completely unaware, someone persuaded Liu Bang to quickly send troops to guard Hangu Pass, not to let the princes' armies in, and then to mobilize the soldiers and horses in Guanzhong to expand their strength, then the "Qin land" was all Liu Bang's.
Liu Bang knew very well that the retreat was pure selfishness and an act of reneging on the covenant. However, Liu Bang Group insisted on the outside world: "Therefore, send the generals to guard the customs and prepare him for stealing in and out of the very also." Obviously, there are "small nine nines" within the Liu Bang Group, but they are not declared outside. As an insider, Cao Wuxian raised an internal discussion, which led to Xiang Yu's "great anger".
Then, why did Xiang Yu stop the attack against Liu Bangjun and instead hold a Hongmen feast?
Xiang Bo's advice to Xiang Yu was: "If Pei Gong does not break through the barrier first, how dare Gong enter?" If people today have done great things and strike at them, it is better to deal with them unrighteously than to deal with them because of this. Xiang Bo had gone to see Zhang Liang without permission in his private capacity, and also took Xiang Yu's personal intentions to remind Liu Bang. He reported all of Liu Bang's words to Xiang Yu and advised him: Liu Bang laid down Guanzhong and is your precursor. He has done great things, and if you attack him unjustly, it is better to treat him well. Xiang Yu's feedback was "promise".
As a general of the princes, Xiang Yu faced two problems: externally, he had to negotiate an explanation for the "Covenant of the King of Huai" (the king of the generals who entered the fixed pass first). All the armies participated in the anti-Qin, but only the "generals" in Liu Bang's army were qualified to be "Wang Guanzhong"? Or can the "generals" in the army of 400,000 princes also be "Wang Guanzhong"? (Note: Chen Yu said in a letter to the Qin general Zhang Handan: "Why don't the generals return the army and follow the princes, attack Qin together, divide the king's land, and call it lonely in the south", which shows that splitting the land and sealing the territory is an important driving force for the generals to gather together against Qin) Internally, if Liu Bang is eliminated, the harm to the Xiang clique is "unjust". Xiang Yu commanded the "Princes and Generals", but destroyed the greatest heroes, would the "Princely Generals" and "Collateral Generals" be afraid that the Xiang Clan would also destroy them?
The focus of these two issues is that both Xiang Yu and Liu Bang must show respect for the "covenant of the king" to the outside world. It is precisely because of this posture that for the conflict at Hangu Pass, the positioning of both sides is "the present has the words of a villain, so that the general and the subject have a good time", it is rumors that Liu Bang and Xiang Yu have "suspicions" and "misunderstandings", and the Hongmen Banquet is held to dispel misunderstandings, rather than to carry out a large-scale political conflict.
♦ In the "Records of History", Chen Yu advised Qin to make a pact with the princes to attack Qin and "divide the king's land"
2. The true purpose of the Hongmen Feast
The result of the misunderstanding at the Hongmen Banquet was that Xiang Yu completed the positioning of the monarch and the high subordinate between Him and Liu Bang, that is, the "seat order":
King Xiang and Xiang Bodong sat facing east, and Father Ya sat south. Sub-father, Fan Zengye. Pei Gong sat north, and Zhang Liangxi sat in the west.
For the ceremonial relationship embodied in the seat, the Japanese scholar Yasuhiko Satake has analyzed in the book "Liu Bang" (Editor's Note: Satake Yasuhiko believes that the Hongmen banquet is a ceremony for Liu Bang to surrender to Xiang Yu, for two reasons: 1. The seating arrangement of the Hongmen banquet is "Xiang Wang, Xiang Bodong sits in the east, Ya Father sits in the south direction, and Pei Gong sits in the north". According to the etiquette of the time, in the relationship between the monarch and the subject, the seat facing north belongs to the last seat; in the host-guest relationship, the person sitting to the east is the Lord, and the person sitting to the west is the guest. No matter from which point of view, Liu Bang's willingness to sit north is to express his position as a concubine. 2. After Liu Bang feasted, he ordered Zhang Liang to "offer a pair of white bi" to Xiang Yu, which also had the meaning of submission). In short, Xiang Yu won the submission of "big brother" Liu Bang at the banquet.
♦ The scene of "Hongmen Feast" in the film and television drama
The reason why Xiang Yu wanted to use the Hongmen Banquet to gain Liu Bang's submission was because Xiang Yu was not a "king" at this time, and he did not have the world, and he needed to control the interpretation and execution of the "Covenant of the King of Huai" and make himself a king. So, after the Feast of the Hongmen Gate, something like this happened:
A few days later, Xiang Yu led troops to slaughter Xianyang in the west, killed the prince and baby of Qin, burned the Qin palace, and the fire was not extinguished in March; he received his goods and treasures from women and went east. ...... King Xiang makes people fatally pregnant with the king. King Huai: "As promised." "He honored the king as the righteous emperor." King Xiang wants to be a king, and the kings of the first kings will be the same. ...... Divide the world, and establish the princes.
There is a sequence here, that is, Xiang Yu first slaughtered Xianyang, killed Qin Zibao, burned the Qin Dynasty palace, and plundered the Jinbao women to go east. During this period, someone advised him to be king in Guanzhong, but Xiang Yu refused, saying, "Rich and noble do not return to their hometown, such as clothes embroidered at night, who knows!" Commentators often only see the "stupidity" of Xiang Yu's words, but they do not see that Xiang Yu has already revealed his attitude of "returning the east to the king" at this time--Xiang Yu sent someone to report to the king of Chu Huai that Qin had been destroyed, and the reply of the king of Huai was "as promised". As a result, the result became that the princes with Xiang Yu as the commander of the Qin generals, including Liu Bang, collectively obtained the qualification to be king. Xiang Yu's approach, and King Huai's original idea, were two political approaches. If Xiang Yu's policy was to be recognized, he must first make Liu Bang, who had entered the pass first, submit. This should be the main purpose of holding the Hongmen Feast.
As for Xiang Yu's slaughter of Xianyang and the burning of the palace, it can also be seen as destroying the attraction of the Chu Huai King's version of the "Covenant of the King of Huai". In a broken guanzhong, the Women of Jinbao have been plundered to the east, what attraction does the "King of The Divided Land" have? It is precisely because of this series of preparations that when Xiang Yu dominates the slaughter of the world, there is "all the generals are good".
♦ It is suspected that the Han tomb mural depicting the scene of the Hongmen Feast
3. Why did Xiang Yu abandon Guanzhong?
So, why didn't Xiang Yu "Wang Guanzhong" himself, instead of slaughtering the world?
The reason is simple. Xiang Yu's 400,000 troops and Liu Bang's 100,000 people were actually "allied forces" gathering princes, and what brought them together and gathered them together was the "power of destroying Qin" and the "covenant of the king of Huai". Instead of saying that the power of these two families can already slaughter the world.
The reality is that Xiang Yu went south after the Battle of Julu, and the places he passed included Qin Julu County, Handan County, Sanchuan County, and NeishiDi. However, Julu and Handan were "Zhao Territory", and after the victory of "Saving Zhao", they naturally had to give up, and the territory brought by the vassal princes and generals, including Hanoi County occupied by Sima Wei, Henan County (Sanchuan County) occupied by ShenYang, Dong County occupied by Wei Wangbao, Lujiang County and Hengshan County occupied by Fan Jun, and Jibei County, which Tian An brought, were not under Xiang Yu's control. The only territory that Xiang Yu could really grasp was the Neishi Land from Hangu Pass to Xianyang at the foot of the army.
The Liu Bang Group directly occupied the "Fengpei" in the northern part of Yan County, Nanyang County, and Sichuan County. The vassal Han Wangcheng occupied Yingchuan Commandery (颍川郡), as well as the Neishi Prefecture (内史地) from Wuguan to Xianyang at the foot of the army. At the same time, the "bei generals" sent by Liu Bang were gradually occupying Hanzhong County, Shu County, and Ba County.
The remaining areas controlled by King Huai of Chu included Xue County, Dongyang County, Donghai County, Yan County, Huijian County, and Jiujiang County, and the Southern Counties attacked by the lieutenants, of which Donghai County and Dongyang County were Chen Bao's sphere of influence, Jiujiang County and Chen County were unknown, and Huijian County and Yan County were located in Jiangdong and should be the control areas of the Xiang clique, and Xue County was shared by many vassal forces and the Xiang clan.
That is to say, in the case of Chudi, it has long been divided by many, and the Xiang Group has only obtained a small part of it, and it is even in an absolutely weak position due to demographic and economic factors. This still refers to the interests of the Xiang Group as a whole. For Xiang Yu personally, apart from a large army and the false name of "General of the Princes", he gained nothing in the anti-Qin war.
♦ Xiang Yu statue
Generally speaking, people always feel that "Xiang is strong and Liu is weak", but in fact, it is the conclusion reached by the comparison of "four hundred thousand" and "one hundred thousand" troops. In terms of controlling the area and directly administering the power, Liu Bang at this time had far surpassed Xiang Yu. Therefore, for Xiang Yu personally, the choice of maximizing interests is by no means a small "Wang Guanzhong". Even if he used the identity of the "main alliance" to cut this cake in Guanzhong for the most, when the princes dispersed, he was still not Liu Bang's opponent personally, let alone the Xiang clique against the King of Chuhuai. Moreover, conflicts between the "Qin" and the "princes" had broken out within the coalition forces, which would also make him worry that it would be difficult to establish rule in Guanzhong. The growing food shortage in the Guanzhong area is also an imminent threat – the large-scale relocation that began in the qin shi huang era has left the Guanzhong region with a large number of out-of-production people. The agricultural production in the area around Xianyang is simply not enough to feed these off-the-job populations. Just "dividing the land and the king" in Guanzhong, the final result can only be that the grain is exhausted and the troops are scattered.
Therefore, Xiang Yu's act of slaughtering the princes of the world is essentially "empty glove white wolf". He used his "prestige" to scare the princes who did not accompany the conquest (mainly the descendants of the Six Kingdoms), used the generous profits of the king to tempt the generals of the army and the former subjects of the Six Kingdoms, and used these foreign troops, which far exceeded the number of the Chu army, to intimidate and contain the "Chu Chen" and the "Xiang clan", forming a delicate balance, and he himself was on top of it.
This whole process, to use a word in the history of Japan's Warring States, is "Shimokami". Xiang Yu successfully pulled more people together and worked with him to collectively complete this collective "lower keshang".
Fourth, the mystery of the nine counties of Western Chu
When he completed the division of the old vassals of the Six Kingdoms, the kings who were originally served by the descendants of the Six Kingdoms became empty shelves. Xiang Yu's own fiefdoms of nine counties were also taken from the hands of these kings. Specifically, it includes a large part of the old Chu land and a large part of the old Wei land. thereupon:
In the first month, Xiang Yu established himself as the king of Western Chu, Wang Liang, the nine counties of Chudi, and the capital Pengcheng.
There is no record of the specific nine counties in the history books. According to Yan Anqing's article "Explanation of Doubts in the Nine Counties of Western Chu and the Examination of the Territorial Changes of the Western Chu State of Xiangyu", it should be Yan County, Dong County, Xue County, Huiji, Surabaya, Donghai, Yan County, Chen County, and Dongyang County. The later expansion of the Western Chu State increased Jiujiang County and Lang Evil County, a total of eleven counties. The biggest feature of the nine counties and the later eleven counties that were connected together was that it was completely run through by "inland water transport". The yellow river, Jishui, Huaihe, Yangtze River and other natural main waterways are connected together through artificial canals such as chasms and hangous, forming a dense transportation water network.
♦ Map of the territory of the Western Chu State of Xiangyu
The Nine Counties of Western Chu followed a "knife handle-shaped" layout, with the northeast bordered by Jishui and Taishan in the old Qi state, and the yellow river in the north and the old Zhao state. The Yin Kings of Hanoi County in the old Qin State, the Henan And Han Kings in the Old Zhou and Han Homelands, and the Jiujiang And Hengshan Kings in the Old Chu Lands were buffers and puppet states, and were the barriers of Western Chu. Qi, Zhao, Qin, and Yan were all great powers in the Warring States period, and Xiang Yu adopted the method of division: Qi was divided into three (Jibei, Qi, and Jiaodong), Zhao was divided into two (Changshan, Dai), Qin was divided into six (Yong, Sai, Zhai, Han, Western Wei, Linjiang), and Yan was divided into two (Yan, Liaodong).
Judging from the above territorial divisions, Xiang Yu's geopolitical considerations are extremely sufficient. The land of Qi and Zhao in the north was actually the place he reserved for his "new regime", and once he completed the conquest of Qi and Zhao, the entire Kanto region was included in the territory of "Western Chu". In short, Xiang Yu was unable to eat the whole country at once, so he took the nine counties that were most suitable for "offensive and enterprising" as the foundation for his future implementation of the "unification war".
From the beginning of the Hongmen Feast all the way to this, Xiang Yu really became the biggest winner after entering the Customs and destroying Qin.
Source: Tencent News
Editor: Wu Youren