Hello everyone, I am a reader. Follow me and I will take you into a different world of culture and history. In the thirty-eighth year of King Nan of Zhou Dynasty (277 BC), Bai Qi conquered Wu County and Qianzhong County of Chu State. What happens next?

Hello everyone, I am a reader. Follow me and I will take you into a different world of culture and history.

In the thirty-eighth year of King Nan of Zhou Dynasty (277 BC), Baiqi conquered Wu County and Qianzhong County of Chu State. What happens next? Our reasonable speculation is that Bai Qi will continue to expand his achievements in Chu Kingdom, and bite King Chu Qingxiang all the way, without giving King Chu Qingxiang any chance to breathe. In this way, maybe it will be like Like Le Yi's attack on Qi , he took the entire territory of Chu into his own.

However, things did not develop in this direction.

In the second year, which was the thirty-ninth year of King Nan of Zhou (276 BC), "Zizhi Tongjian" recorded a total of the following three things:

(1) Bai Qi attacked Wei and captured two cities.

(2) King Qingxiang of Chu tidied up the remaining troops in the eastern part of Chu State, gathered an army of more than 100,000 people, launched a counterattack westward, and recaptured fifteen cities south of the Yangtze River.

(3) The newly appointed King Wei Anli named his younger brother Wei Wuji as Lord Xinling. The third of the " Four Young Masters of the Warring States Period " thus entered the stage of history.

Then the question arises: Why did Bai Qi suddenly leave Chu State and go to fight Wei State ?

Ordinarily, the Wei State is undergoing a change of power, and it is reasonable for the Qin State to take advantage of the chaos to send troops. However, on the Chu State's side, it swallowed a Nan ​​County the year before last, and a Qianzhong County last year. These two consecutive swallows were too much. Big, either digest it well first, or take advantage of the situation to expand the results of the victory. You should not take advantage of the situation and attack the Wei State. In the end, it gave the Chu State a chance to breathe, and was bitten by the Chu State.

Bai Qi is certainly not stupid. Why did he let things develop like this?

Bai Qi does have his reasons. Let’s look at the line of King Chu Qingxiang first.

After the fall of Yingdu , King Qingxiang of Chu ran all the way to the northeast, settled briefly in Chengyang, and then settled in Chencheng.

The location of Chencheng is approximately in today's Huaiyang District, Zhoukou City, Henan Province, and already belongs to the Yellow River basin. At that time, Chencheng had convenient transportation, both water and land routes were accessible, and it was a prosperous place. Since King Qingxiang of Chu moved his capital to Chencheng, according to the rules of Chu State, Chencheng was called Chen Ying from then on.

" Warring States Policy " records say that when King Chu Qingxiang settled in Chengyang and was about to arrive in Chencheng, he was in such a panic that he couldn't help but think of a man named Zhuang Xin. At first, Zhuang Xin criticized King Qingxiang of Chu for being arrogant and extravagant, saying that if things continued like this, Chu would be close to being destroyed. After Zhuang Xin said these words, he went to the Kingdom of Zhao and adopted a wise attitude of watching the fire from the other side. As a result, only five months later, Bai Qi came to the Kingdom of Chu to destroy everything.

King Chu Qingxiang thought of the past five months ago and quickly sent someone to ask Zhuang Xin to come back and ask for his advice.

Zhuang Xin's first sentence is: "I have heard of such a proverb: 'It is not too late to look after the dog when you see the rabbit; it is not too late to mend the sheep after it has died.'" Idioms we still use today This is how " makes up for ". The first half of the sentence "see the rabbit and look after the dog" has the same meaning as "mend the lost sheep". It means to summon the hunting dog only after seeing the rabbit appear. Although it is a bit late, it is better than not doing it at all.

Zhuang Xin also made a long discussion, explaining the principle of being prepared for danger in times of peace. The words made King Chu Qingxiang change his face and tremble all over, so he named Zhuang Xin Lord Yangling, and then he cheered up and regained the lost land in Huaibei.

Then here comes the question: From the time when King Chu Qingxiang made introspection to when he sent people to the State of Zhao to welcome Mr. Zhuang Xin back, once the envoy left and Zhuang Xin came back, even if he immediately taught King Chu Qingxiang to change his mind and mend his ways after he came back, But cleaning up the mess and reorganizing the army always takes time. Can Bai Qi really give them so much time?

This shows Chu's territorial advantage: the territory is large enough, and it has the conditions to expand strategic depth and trade space for time.

Chencheng is not only far away from Yanying, the old capital that was just captured by Bai Qi, but also close to Han and Wei.If the Qin army wants to attack Chencheng, there are only two routes to choose from: either borrow the road from Han and Wei. As long as Han and Wei fall out and cut off the Feng army's retreat, the Qin army will never return; The mountains, forests and valleys on the west bank of Suishui are difficult to walk and there is no food. In fact, just three years later, when Qin was planning to destroy Chu in one fell swoop, Chu's envoy Huang Xie used this reason to persuade King Qin Zhaoxiang to retreat.

King Chu Qingxiang learned from the painful experience and immediately organized a resistance with every effort to make up for the situation, and indeed achieved good results. However, the records of different historical materials are inconsistent about what the results were and how big they were.

Just now, "Warring States Policy" talked about recovering the lost territory in Huaibei, but "Zizhi Tongjian" talked about recovering fifteen cities in the south of the Yangtze River. The statement of "Zizhi Tongjian" comes from "Historical Records ". Although the concept of "Jiangnan" has different meanings in different eras, it ultimately refers to the south of the Yangtze River, which is far different from the north of the Huai River referred to by "Huaibei".

"Huayang Guozhi" also records that the Chu people in the occupied areas did not submit to the rule of the country and secretly contacted King Qingxiang of Chu. After the main force of the Qin army withdrew, they gathered 100,000 troops to expel the Qin defenders and restore their homeland. , not only welcomed King Qingxiang back to the old capital of Yanying, but also restored Wu County and Qianzhong County in one fell swoop.

"Huayang Guozhi", because of the Chu people's position, is likely to exaggerate and put gold on the faces of the Chu people. Even if the old capital of Yanying is really recovered, it will definitely not be able to keep it for long. However, based on various historical data, King Qingxiang of Chu did perk up a little and more or less regained some of his lost territory. However, the move of the capital to Chencheng marked the decline of the Chu State in any case. Every day is getting worse.

Chencheng is located in the middle reaches of Yingshui . Later, in the era of King Kaolie of Chu, the capital moved to Shouchun in the southeast along the Yingshui. Today's Shouxian County, Huainan City, Anhui Province. In short, every time Chu State took a step back, This means that Qin has taken another step forward.

Judging from Qin's tactics, it is probably because King Qingxiang of Chu moved his capital to Chencheng that the Qin army had to borrow a road from Han and Wei to plan the next step of attacking Chu. Therefore, it might as well let Chu go and attack Chu first. Han and Wei were defeated. For the new king of Wei, King Wei Anli, Qin's move was nothing more than a disincentive to himself.

The new king of Wei Anli came to the throne and took over the power for the first time. He probably has a bit of the spirit of "Who else can I give up now?" At least he can't give in to Qin before he is on the throne, right? The result of the head-on confrontation was the loss of two cities. But this is not over yet. In the next year, in the fortieth year of King Nan of Zhou (275 BC), Ranghou Wei Ran personally took action and attacked Wei twice in one year.

"Zi Zhi Tong Jian" records: When Wei Ran first attacked Wei, Korea sent Bao Yuan to aid Wei. As a result, Wei Ran defeated Bao Yuan and beheaded 40,000 people. Bao Yuan fled into Kaifeng , and Wei Ran The country ceded 8 cities to the Qin State and sued for peace, but in exchange for Wei Ran's second attack on Wei, he defeated the Wei army commander Mang Mao and captured Beizhai (also called Zhaiyang, located approximately in today's Xingyang, Henan Province). The Wei State They also ceded Wen County (now southwest of Wen County, Jiaozuo City, Henan Province), which resulted in an armistice.

It should be noted that the Kaifeng where Baoyuan was defeated was not Kaifeng today, but Kaifeng County in Wei State, which was called Kaifeng at the time. Kaifeng today was called Daliang at that time and was the capital of the Wei state. Today we can still see the weapons produced by Qifeng in the Wei state at that time. The inscriptions say "Qifeng", and the Qin bamboo slips "Chronicles" unearthed in Shuihudi also record that King Zhaoxiang of Qin "thirty" Attack Kaifeng in the second year."

Kaifeng County at that time was near Gucheng Village, Zhuxian Town, southwest of Kaifeng City today, and the ruins of the ancient city are still there. It can be seen that although the area of ​​​​Qifeng City is not large, less than 1 square kilometer, the city wall is high and wide, guarding the Wei capital Daliang, which is only more than 20 kilometers away to the north.

"Kaifeng Mansion Annals" records that the city of Kaifeng was built by Zheng Zhuanggong in the early Spring and Autumn Period of the 20th century. The meaning of the name is "opening up the territory", which is equivalent to "opening up the territory and expanding the territory".After entering the Han Dynasty, the name of Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty was Liu Qi. Therefore, out of taboo considerations, the "Qi" in "Kaifeng" was changed to the synonym "Kaifeng", and Kaifeng became Kaifeng. The word "Qituo" has also become "opening up".

In the Tang Dynasty, Kaifeng County Government moved from Kaifeng City to the neighboring Bianzhou City, which was the original Daliang. During the Five Dynasties , Houliang directly renamed Bianzhou Kaifeng, and the original Kaifeng city was gradually destroyed. Our today's Kaifeng City is named after this small town.

So here comes the question: King Wei Anli encountered a series of critical attacks from Bai Qi and Wei Ran just after he came to the throne, and he lost both dignity and face. Should he change his stance and become Qin's younger brother with peace of mind?

Where King Wei Anli goes, we will talk about it in the next lecture.

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