Shang Ying's change of law, with mixed reviews and uncertain pros and cons!

A soldier of the Qin army only needs to cut off the head of an enemy, and he can be promoted to a first-class knighthood, get a dump of land, nine acres of homestead, a slave, and hopefully be selected as an official.

The Qin Dynasty has twenty levels of military merit, so is it possible to be promoted to the highest title "Marquis of Che" by slashing twenty enemy soldiers in one battle?

However, in the era of the Shang Dynasty reform, there were only eighteen ranks of military meritorious, of which only seventeen were awarded to regular soldiers, and the highest title was the seventeenth rank of Daliangzao. According to the algorithm on the Internet, you only need to kill eighteen enemies to become the highest-ranking general under the command of Qin Xiaogong. It's a goal that's pretty handy.

However, Meng Yi can responsibly say that the Qin Jungong Law is by no means so simple and rude. Even Shang Ying, the formulator of the Military Merit Law, took many years to be promoted to the top. There are a lot of levels in this that affect your "dryness".

First of all, let's talk about the basic combat unit of the Qin army. The Qin army had five people as a "team", commanded by the commander of the army; Ten people are a "tithe", commanded by the chief; Fifty people are a tun, commanded by the tun chief; One hundred people are a "pawn", commanded by a "hundred generals"; 500 people have a "500 master"; One thousand people set up a "two or five hundred masters".

On top of this, there are also military positions such as military candidates, captains, and generals. The higher you go, the fewer positions there are, and the more fierce the competition, so there are very few people who can become captains and generals.

As an officer in the Qin State, military merit is indispensable. If you want to be a general, you must at least get the ninth-level knighthood - the fifth doctor. In the Battle of Handan, the first Qin general to come out of the battle, Wang Ling, was the five great masters. However, you must not think that just by cutting off the heads of nine enemies in battle, you can become a doctor in one step. Because Shang Ying set a threshold when designing the system.

Fighting a war requires teamwork and tactical coordination, and each level of combat unit has its own technical and tactical requirements. As an ordinary soldier without a lord, he must obey the command of the commander, and he cannot rush and fight on his own.

According to the military law of the Qin army, if one person in each army is killed, the four members of the same army are guilty, and if each person can kill one enemy soldier, they can be exonerated. To do this, you'll have to work closely with your companions to protect the other four members of your team from the death before you think about how to destroy your enemies.

And the commander must obey the command of the chief, who is controlled by the commander, and the commander obeys the orders of the hundred generals. If you put a defensive formation, you will put a defensive formation, and if you want to stab, you will stab, and you will not be allowed to fight the enemy alone like in the ring.

What ordinary soldiers actually come into contact with in battle is often only the enemy's Shiwu squad. Even if you destroy all the other party, you will only have ten heads. Therefore, many soldiers did not kill even a single enemy in battle, and those warriors who stood out from the Shiwu were able to decapitate one or two levels.

If you behead two levels and are promoted to two ranks, you are eligible to be a captain or even a captain. At this point, you'll find yourself compelled to start putting your mind to commanding the Shiwu squad and not just focusing on your personal performance. As you accumulate achievements, you become a commander and can command more people to behead enemy troops. But don't be happy yet, the award criteria for the Military Merit Law have also undergone a fundamental change.

According to Qin's law, Tun Chang and Bai General must get the head of the enemy soldier in battle, otherwise they will be beheaded. Want to move up to the next level? It is not enough to cut down one enemy, and the hundred generals must lead a team of 100 people to behead more than 33 enemy soldiers in order to "make a profit". Only the hundred generals and the tun chief can each be given a knighthood.

Theoretically, an average soldier can kill a third of the enemy, but this cannot be calculated in actual combat. The 100 generals have to command and dispatch their 100-man teams to fight in formation, not to be crushed by the enemy, and to defeat the enemy's 100-man team. Not only must you ensure victory, but you must also kill more than one-third of your own enemy troops.

Another hidden condition is that your own losses are less than the enemy's, otherwise you will not be able to win. This undoubtedly requires a high level of tactical literacy from 100 generals. If you can't pass this hurdle, no matter how brave you are, you can't do it.

Ordinary soldiers only need to behead one level to be promoted to the first rank, and the promotion of the commander is based on the record of the whole team, which is the rule that Shang Ying set for the Qin army. At the same time, countries also counted the "first merit" according to the head.

For example, the Qi ** method also takes the first level as the standard for recording merit, but no matter whether you win or lose the battle, you will pay money equally, as long as there is a head. This leaves a lot of room for the soldiers to cheat, only pick soft persimmons and pinch them, dare not win the battle, and when they face a strong enemy, they are easy to lose their fighting spirit first.

The Qin Law not only encouraged beheading, but also required grassroots commanders and fighters to be command-oriented. After a battle, the soldiers are beheaded and promoted, and the hundred generals may be stuck in place because they have not commanded the troops to complete the profit targets.

The Qin army was once known for "scattering and fighting on its own", and the soldiers were greedy for merit and rash, and there were often situations where they were out of touch with their commanders. The soldier Yasheng Wu Qi once used this to break the Qin army. Shang Ying used the above-mentioned military methods to train the Qin army into a tactically disciplined army, giving it a new look.

According to historical records such as the Book of Shang Jun, the generals of the Qin State had 4,000 "short-armed" guards, and the soldiers and horses under their command ranged from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. Although they are in a high position, the difficulty of being promoted to the first level is beyond the reach of the hundred generals and the tun chief.

The law of Shang Jun divided beheading into two assessment subjects: siege and siege warfare and field warfare. The general commanding the siege of the city must behead more than 8,000 enemy troops to make a profit, and the field battle only needs to behead 2,000 to make a profit. As long as the standard is met, everyone from the commander of the army to the logistics miscellaneous soldiers can be rewarded.

In other words, the generals of the Qin State not only had to win the battle, but also annihilate at least thousands of enemy troops to be eligible for the title of Jin Jue.

Did Shang Ying meet the standard himself?

So the question is, did Shang Ying meet this profit theory standard himself? Judging from the records in the history books, I'm afraid not.

The state of Qin mainly waged six wars after the Shang Dynasty entered the Qin Dynasty:

In the eighth year of Qin Xiaogong, the Qin army and the Wei army fought in Yuanli, beheaded 7,000 enemy soldiers, and captured Shaoliang City;

In the tenth year of Qin Xiaogong, Qin Xiaogong appointed Shang Ying as Daliangzao and sent him to attack Anyi, the old capital of Wei, and the Wei army in Anyi was finally forced to surrender;

In the eleventh year of Qin Xiaogong, Shang Ying besieged the newly built city of Guyang of Wei and forced the defenders to surrender;

In the twenty-second year of Qin Xiaogong, Shang Ying waved his army to the west of the Wei River, captured the Wei general Gongzi, broke the Wei army, and expanded the land to the bank of the Yellow River, so he was also named the king of Shang;

In the twenty-third year of Qin Xiaogong, the Qin army and the Sanjin coalition army fought fiercely at the shore gate and captured the enemy general Wei Cuo;

In the twenty-fourth year of Qin Xiaogong, Qin Dali besieged Heyang City and gave up halfway, because Qin Xiaogong died in this year, and Shang Ying was split by Qin Huiwen Wang.

In the above-mentioned wars, only the battle of Yuanli in the eighth year of Qin Xiaogong clearly recorded the beheading of 7,000, which was lower than the standard of "beheading more than 8,000 beheadings in siege and besieged cities", but far exceeded the standard of 2,000 beheadings in field battles. The goal of this battle was to capture Shaoliang City, a transportation hub in the land west of the river. The Qin army fought first in the field and then pulled out the city, which fully met the standard of the field battle profit theory, and the commander of the army could be promoted several levels of knighthood in a row.

The problem is that the names of the Qin generals who commanded the Battle of Yuanli and the Battle of Anmen are missing, and we can't directly count it as Shang Ying's own military exploits. Before the battle of Heyang was decided, Qin Xiaogong and Shang Ying died one after another.

It is indeed the three battles of the Shang Dynasty commanders, and there is no record of beheading. We don't know if he met the field surplus theory of 2,000 beheadings when he defeated Gongzi's Wei army. The battle of the forced landing on Anyi and the battle of the forced landing on Guyang undoubtedly belonged to the situation of "besieging the city", but these two battles were bloodless, and maybe not a single head was cut.

It can be seen from this that Shang Ying himself did not reach the standard of "Ying" in the siege of the city, and even if the battle of Yuanli, which had the most beheadings, was counted as his record, he was still short of a thousand heads.

However, attentive friends have noticed that Shang Ying was already the highest-ranking Daliang in the military when he commanded the army to attack Wei. At that time, the Qin State was still in the stage of not separating titles, and many titles were also official positions. For example, when Shang Ying first changed the law, he served as the chief of Zuo, and he was the tenth rank of the military meritorious.

Daliangzao was a traditional official position of the Qin State, and Qin Xiaogong appointed the chief ruling minister Shang Ying as Daliangzao, which was conducive to coordinating the military and government and winning the war against Wei. The fact that the chief designer of the change directly served as the commander of the army, which has actually skipped the conventional track of the step-by-step promotion of ordinary soldiers, has a special character.

As for the title of Shang Jun later obtained by Shang Ying for his military exploits, it was actually not in the sequence of early military merits, it was the princely treatment given by Qin Xiaogong. It was not until around the time of the unification of Qin that the Qin State added the Marquis of Che and the Marquis of Guannei to the system of military merit, and developed the eighteenth-level military merit knighthood into the twentieth-level military merit lord. That's for another time.

A new question arises, why did Shang Ying set the standard of siege and siege so much higher than that of field warfare? Since the new military law is centered on beheading and knighthood, why does he himself choose more of a forced landing method without fighting?

Everything is the needs of the war situation. The main combat mission of the Qin Xiaogong era was to recover the land west of Hexi, which was occupied by the Wei state. To do this, the Qin army had to conquer all the border cities set up by the Wei state on the west bank of the Yellow River.

In this context, the military contests between Qin and Wei often revolved around the attack and defense of the city. The Wei army was able to defeat ten with strong city defenses, but in field battles, the side with the superior strength or combat effectiveness had a better chance of winning. For the Qin army, a field battle was much easier than a siege.

The standard of profit theory of siege warfare cannot be achieved even by Shang Ying himself, but the standard of profit theory of field warfare is relatively easy to achieve. Therefore, in order to be rewarded for their meritorious service, the generals of the Qin army would choose to fight with the Wei army as much as possible to lead the enemy out of the city to fight.

For example, in the aforementioned Battle of Yuanli, the Qin army first annihilated 7,000 Wei troops in the field battle, and then went north to attack Shaoliang City. Shang Ying's attack on Hexi was also the first to destroy the captured Wei army in the field, and then take advantage of the victory to annex a large area of territory.

If it was necessary to besiege the city, such as the two battles of attacking Anyi and besieging Guyang, Shang Ying would not consider attacking and fighting hard. That may increase the number of beheadings to the standard, but it will inevitably increase your own casualties.

In the era of Qin Xiaogong, the territory of the Qin State was relatively small, and the population was not as large as later, so it was necessary to win the tug-of-war with the border cities of the Wei State at the lowest cost to ensure that the results of the reform would not be aborted due to war damage. For this reason, Shang Ying chose a bloodless forced landing tactic when besieging the city, rather than attacking hard in order to achieve the target of 8,000 beheadings.

Shang Ying designed a whole military method to encourage beheading, but he himself adopted the tactic with the least bloodshed in actual combat, which is really a stark contrast. As it turned out, he did the right thing. There are not many records of war beheadings in the Qin Xiaogong era, but the victory rate is very high and the benefits are great, which has laid a solid foundation for the hegemony of the Qin state.

Under the guidance of Shang Jun's law, the Qin army paid more and more attention to strengthening its field combat capabilities, and a group of famous generals who were good at fighting annihilation wars emerged, known all over the world as "the army of tigers and wolves".

Share if you like