Volume Three: With a blow of destiny, the king appears. Chapter 42: Huainanzi, who has not disarmed his armor for three years and relaxed his crossbow.
Even if men farmed hard, they could not produce enough food for military service; women worked day and night to weave, but they could not meet the needs of the military tents. The people in the Literary Museum are exhausted, orphans, widows and the elderly, weak, sick and disabled are unable to live. It is not uncommon to see people lying dead on both sides of the road. Until Meng Tian's death, the labor force guarding the border south of the Hetao was unstable due to Chen Sheng's uprising and the chaos in Guandong. They quickly dispersed, thus forcing the Qin Empire to abandon the land south of the Hetao.
Existing historical materials mention the history of Qin¡¯s southern conquest of Baiyue, which can be said to be quite brief. Regarding the process of the Qin Army's southern expedition to Baiyue, the military deployment, combat environment, and the military difficulties faced by the Qin Army, the records in "Historical Records" can even be described in detail, but it is certain that the southern expedition to Baiyue took longer than the Northern Expedition. Huns should be early.
?According to Zhao Tuo, King of Nanyue in the first year of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty (179 BC), he had lived in the Lingnan area for 49 years. Since "Historical Records" records that Zhao Tuo's native place was Zhending and he was not a local in Lingnan, we can refer to the time he lived in Lingnan to calculate when Qin Shihuang began his southern expedition to Baiyue.
From the first year of Emperor Wen's reign to the 49th year of Shuo, it was the 20th year of the Qin Dynasty (227 BC), which coincided with the year after the destruction of the State of Zhao. It can be seen that shortly after the demise of the State of Zhao, Zhao Tuo immediately He was drafted into the army and became one of the soldiers in the conquest of Vietnam. Therefore, it is certain that while Qin Shihuang was annihilating the Six Kingdoms, he began to conduct military operations to conquer the south of the Five Ridges, which lasted for more than ten years.
Lingnan has been a miasma land since ancient times, also known as Baiyue, which means that there are many tribes living there.
Since Jia Yi, a writer in the early Han Dynasty, was demoted to the position of Prince Tutor of Changsha, he also heard that the climate in Changsha was humid and rainy, and thought that he would die early. The Han people were afraid of Changsha being like this. The environment in Lingnan, which is further south than Changsha, can be imagined to be harsh.
Even if you spend half your life on the battlefield. Fubo General Ma Yuan, who had never expressed his bitterness, was ordered to attack the Zheng sisters who launched a rebellion in the Jiaozhi area. After putting down the rebellion, he regretted that he had not listened to his brother Shaoyou's words and became a commoner, but instead joined the army to pacify Yue. .
At that time, the Han Dynasty had ruled the Lingnan area for more than a hundred years. The land was semi-cultivated, the roads were rough, the four-level political power of prefecture, county, township and li had been established, and many Yue people had been Hanized. Its natural environment and human environment have undergone tremendous changes.
When Ma Yuan mentioned the Battle of Yue, he still had lingering fears, fearing that he might die in a foreign land. He could imagine the natural and cultural environment in the Lingnan area during the Qin Dynasty. It was ten times worse than the Ma Yuan era two hundred years later. Existing historical data indicate that Qin Shihuang¡¯s biggest purpose in taking military action against Lingnan, known as a miasma land, was to take a fancy to the rhinoceros horns, ivory, jade and pearls produced there. , and become famous overseas.
About 227 BC (the 20th year of the Qin Dynasty), Qin Shihuang ordered his envoy Tu Sui to use Nanjun as a logistics center, and recruit local officials, new Guizhou soldiers, armored soldiers and various military supplies and other so-called building and boat people. Along the Xiangjiang River waterway as the main supply line, it penetrates into the land of Baiyue. The Qin army's southern expedition was unstoppable, and the Yue people fled into the deep mountains and dense forests to escape the rule of the Qin people.
Before Qin conquered Baiyue. Since the tribes in the Baiyue area are already full of conflicts, and most of them even attack each other, it is difficult to unite to resist the Qin army's offensive. But the problem is that there are many tribes in the Baiyue area. Although fighting on their own, the Yue people fled into the deep mountains and jungles. It was difficult for the Qin army to completely eliminate its effective forces. In addition, the Qin army was not accustomed to the acclimatization and the local miasma was rampant, resulting in a serious epidemic among the army. The non-combat attrition situation became increasingly serious, and the war fell into a protracted period. As recorded in "Huainanzi", the army did not disband for three years. Relax the crossbow.
In the middle of the war, the Qin army killed the leader of the largest tribe in the area. The leader of the Xiou Kingdom translated to the Song Dynasty, but the Yue people did not surrender. Instead, they elected Jie Jun as the new leader. This newly elected leader was defeated in a night attack. Qin people, and killed Tu Sui, the supreme commander of the Qin army conquering Yue.
Qin destroyed the six kingdoms and won every battle, but the battle in the Baiyue area actually caused the Qin army to lay down hundreds of thousands of corpses and bleed ("Huainanzi Renjing"), and even the commander was killed.
Qin Shihuang was furious. In order to end the war quickly, he ordered more troops to attack Baiyue. The death of Chu released the Qin army's strength and gave Qin Shihuang the confidence to increase his troops. He then sent out 500,000 soldiers and divided them into five armies: One army defended the ridge of Dancheng (now Jingxian County, Hunan), one army guarded the fortress of Jiuyi (now south of Ningyuan, Hunan), one army guarded the capital of Panyu (now Guangzhou, Guangdong), and one army guarded Nanye (now Nankang, Jiangxi). ), an army collected water from Yugan (now the territory of Yugan, Jiangxi). Five routes advanced in an attempt to capture the entire territory of Baiyue in one fell swoop.
However, the increase in troop strength, coupled with the resistance of the Yue people, who took advantage of their familiarity with the terrain, constantly harassed the Qin army's barely maintained supply lines, causing the Qin army to almost collapse. Therefore, Qin Shihuang ordered Jian Lu (also known as Shi Lu) to be responsible for transferring food and wages.
In order to support the material consumption of the long-term war, Shi Lu decided to send soldiers to dig a canal connecting the Xiangjiang River and the Lijiang River, which was later called the Ling Canal, so that soldiers and grain from the Central Plains and areas north of Wuling could enter the Baiyue area by water transportation.
Since the excavation of the Ling Canal was a huge project, it would have taken at least three to five years to complete based on the technical conditions at the time, so the war came to a stalemate.
The completion of Lingqu Canal only provided better logistical support for the war, but did not guarantee final victory. After the death of Lieutenant Tu Sui, the commander-in-chief of the Qin Dynasty in South Vietnam, he succeeded the commander-in-chief Renxiao. At first, he had no good strategy to deal with the jungle warfare of the Yue people. Finally, he came up with the strategy of army colonization and relocation of people, a protracted war with Yue Zachu and the assimilation of immigrants. .
Reclamation and immigration tactics are the most effective methods to control the Baiyue area, but they are slow to produce results. It will take at least five or six years to achieve initial results. Since Qin Shihuang had already eliminated the six kingdoms at that time, he had sufficient conditions to move the new Guizhou heads (the so-called Zhongxian people) from the six Kanto kingdoms to immigrate to the Baiyue area to guard the border.
Regarding these new Guizhou leaders, Qin Shihuang and the officials of the Qin State did not regard them as human beings at all. Leaving them in the Baiyue area and living together with the Yue people had two benefits for Qin Shihuang: First, they eliminated the rebellious or lazy people of the Six Kingdoms; The second is to stabilize the Baiyue region.
In 214 BC (the 33rd year of the First Emperor of Qin), after he issued an edict to send the dead people, their husband-in-laws, and Jia people to the Baiyue area, the First Emperor of Qin believed that Lingnan was roughly settled, so he established Guilin, Nanhai, and Xiangjun in the area. Three counties. The following year, the First Emperor ordered the demotion of jailers who had unfairly enforced the law to guard the Baiyue area.
From the 20th year of the Qin Dynasty when Tu Sui was ordered to attack Baiyue, to the 33rd year of Qin Shihuang's rough rule of Lingnan, the war against the Baiyue area lasted for a total of thirteen years.
Although the Baiyue area was roughly determined and the Lingnan area was included in the territory of China, the Qin State paid an extremely heavy price for this. The long-term conquest of Vietnam led to the devastation of the people and the people's livelihood. Ren Xiao, who was the captain of Nanhai at the time, learned that the imperial court Due to the war in Vietnam, the Central Plains was extremely exhausted, so he stayed in South Vietnam, proclaimed himself king and refused to return. He sent a letter asking the court to recruit 30,000 women without husbands to sew clothes for the soldiers. Qin Shihuang only agreed to give him fifteen thousand people. As a result, the people's hearts were scattered and disintegrated, and seven out of ten families conspired to rebel.
On the other hand, most of the immigrants from Guizhou who immigrated to Vietnam were from the Six Kingdoms. In order to escape the invasion, they fled into the mountains and forests one after another and became thieves. This became the trigger for successive rebellions in the Six Kingdoms' hometown after the death of the First Emperor.
In order to find the elixir of immortality, the alchemist Xu Fu led thousands of boys and girls across the East China Sea to seek immortality, which cost a lot of money. ("Chu Yi Liu Tie" refers to Xu Fu and the boys and girls never returned after arriving at their destination (i.e. present-day Japan), and the Japanese important minister Qin was their descendant. However, referring to "Historical Records" and "Three Kingdoms" we can see that this The theory did not appear before the Eastern Han Dynasty. As for the theory that Xu Fu was Emperor Jimmu, there is no documentation except that the date is inconsistent.)