Sound the horn of Qin's attack on the East

Background of the times

In the late Warring States period, in the vast land of China, there were seven countries, namely Qi, Chu, Yan, Zhao, Wei, Qin, and Han. Among the Seven Kingdoms, Qin was located in the westernmost part of China at that time, that is, in parts of present-day Shaanxi and Gansu, which was located on the Loess Plateau, the second stage of China. Several other countries are located in the central and eastern regions, on the Great Plain of North China, which is today a flat river. The advantage of the Qin Plateau is that it has natural barriers such as the Kunshan Mountains as protection, and the unique geographical advantages make the Qin State develop quickly. Jia Yi, a political commentator of the Western Han Dynasty, has such a description in his "Treatise on the Passage of Qin": Qin Xiaogong has the solid foundation of Cuihan, the land of Yongzhou, and the monarchs and ministers stick to the Zhou room, which has swept the world, encompasses the inner world, encompasses the four seas, and annexes the heart of the eight wildernesses. It can be seen that the Qin State has coveted the Six Kingdoms that possess a large amount of fertile land for a long time. Since the Shang Dynasty changed the law, the national strength of the Qin State has become stronger and stronger. Since the time of King Qin Zhao, the pace of the war of annexation of the Six Kingdoms has been accelerated, and when Qi and Wei are holding each other, they first increased their troops in the land of Han and Wei, which are located in the Central Plains. The first obstacle to Qin's domination of the world was Han Wei, who was located in the Central Plains. At that time, the state of Chu had been weakened, and the state of Qin had no worries to the south, so it could attack the eastern part of Kuohan and Yiluo, so as to open the way to the Central Plains in the future. In Han Wei east of Cuihan, King Xiang of Wei and King Xiang of Han died in the same year, and civil strife broke out in Zhao (King He of Zhao Huiwen and Gongzi Zhang were in the same room; King Wuling of Zhao was trapped and starved to death in the Dune Palace). Taking advantage of the turbulent situation between the two countries, Qin took Zuo Geng (official position) Bai Qi as his commander and raised troops to attack Han Wei.

Character Analysis

▲ Portrait of Bai Qi, a famous general of the Qin State Bai Qi, nicknamed Ren Tu. A native of Yixian County (now Baijia Village, Changxing Town, Yixian County, Baoji City, Shaanxi Province), he was a military strategist in the Warring States Period and a famous general of the Qin State. Bai Qi served as a general of the Qin State for more than 30 years, during which he successively attacked more than 70 cities, annihilated nearly a million enemy troops, and was named Wu Anjun. Bai Qi went through many battles in his life, such as the Battle of Yique, the Battle of Yanying, the Battle of Huayang, the Battle of Shencheng and the Battle of Changping. In the old Mengxue "Thousand Character Text", Bai Qi, Wang Qian, Lian Po, and Li Mu were called "the four famous generals of the Warring States." "The Battle of Yique was the battle of Bai Qi's fame, and after the war, he was promoted to the rank of knight, and his status in the Qin State rose steadily. But from today's point of view, Bai Qi is a heinous war demon, only in the battle of Yique, he killed as many as 240,000 Han and Wei coalition troops, so that at that time, when they heard Bai Qi's name, the locals trembled. After that, in the battle between him and the Zhao army in Changping, Shanxi, he killed 400,000 Zhao troops, fully exposing his cruel and murderous nature, and he really did not waste the nickname of "human slaughter".

The course of the engagement

In 304 B.C., King Zhaoxiang of Qin came to the royal city of Luoyang to force the "Jiuding" of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. "Ding" was originally used to cook and eat, and later, it gradually evolved into a symbol of the supremacy of royal power and the unity and prosperity of the country. Jiuding, according to legend, is Dayu after the establishment of the Xia Dynasty, with the world's nine pastoral tribute of the gold cast into Jiuding, symbolizing Kyushu. During the Shang Dynasty, there were strict regulations on the "tripod" that represented the status of the royal family and nobles: the scholar used one tripod or three tripods, the doctor used five tripods, and the Son of Heaven could use nine tripods, and the nine tripods were performed when sacrificing the ancestors of heaven and earth. In fact, as early as 606 B.C., King Chuzhuang, one of the five hegemons of the Spring and Autumn Period, raised troops to attack Lu Hun Zhirong and approached the suburbs of Luoyi under the situation of rectifying the internal affairs of the (chì), building water conservancy, implementing reforms, and strengthening the country. However, this time it's not just about asking, it's time to "force". Later, this matter was stopped due to a rebellion within the Qin State and the Qi State sent troops to rescue Zhou. Although the power of Zhou Tianzi had seriously declined at that time, if any princes dared to challenge the Son of Heaven, other princes would go to the rescue in the name of "righteous army", which was very similar to the situation in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. The state of Chu in the south was attached to Qin for its own interests, and in view of the various evil deeds of Qin, which caused the dissatisfaction of the three kingdoms of Qi, Han, and Wei, they jointly raised troops to attack Chu. At the critical moment, the state of Qin not only did not save this little brother who was attached to him, but took advantage of the fire to rob, captured several cities of the state of Chu, and lured the king of Chu Huai into Qin and imprisoned him, taking his sixteen cities. The Chu people made the prince the king, that is, the king of Chu Qingxiang, and Qin and Chu lost peace. Soon, King Xuan of Qi died, Wang Li (mǐn) was established, Meng Weijun dismissed the prime minister, Qin lured Meng Yanjun into Qin to kill him, Meng Yanjun managed to escape from Qin, and the Qi people still regarded Meng Shanjun as the prime minister.

In the seventeenth year of the reign of King Zhou (298 BC), Meng Weijun led the allied forces of Qi, Han and Wei to attack Qin and attack Hangu Pass. The Qin State sued for peace with the coalition forces, returned Han Hewai and Wusui, returned Wei Hewai and the Fengling Land, and the Three Kingdoms retreated. However, the Qin army took the opportunity of the retreat of the Three Kingdoms, sent troops out of Hangu, recovered the lost territory, defeated the Wei army in Xie (now southwest of Linyi, Shanxi), and stationed troops in Wusui (now southeast of Yuanqu, Shanxi); Pursued the Korean army to Xincheng (southwest of present-day Yichuan), defeated the Korean army, and captured Xincheng. At this point, the Qin state had surrounded the Zhou royal family from the west, north, and south.

At this time, the Zhou royal family was in a difficult situation, and had been divided into the Eastern Zhou and Western Zhou, and the king of Zhen lived in the Western Zhou Kingdom. The Eastern Zhou State did not respect the king's order, colluded with Qin, and attacked the Western Zhou State year after year, and the king led the army and people of the Western Zhou State to fight for many years, and the people were killed and wounded. Seeing that Qin had captured Xincheng and was in danger on Thursday, King Xun issued an edict ordering Han and Wei to jointly resist Qin. In the spring of the twenty-second year of King Zhou (293 BC), Han and Wei sent troops into the city of Zhou, and King Zhen entangled a total of 240,000 soldiers from Zhou, Han and Wei in Wangcheng, worshiping the Korean general Gongsun Xi as the commander, and decided to raise troops to attack Qin.

At that time, King Qin Zhaoxiang and his Xiangguo Wei Ran were both stationed in Yiyang, and King Qin wanted to take Xiang Shou as the commander, and Wei Ran suggested that Bai Qi be the commander. At that time, Xiang Shou was the highest military administrative official in the area occupied by Qin Xin; And Bai Qi is a lower-level left guard (Qin Jue 12th level). However, Wei Ran believes that this person is good at using soldiers, has fought for many years, and has not been defeated, and is a rare general. The king of Qin adopted Wei Ran's suggestion and replaced Xiang Shou as the commander of the Qin army with Bai Qi. Bai Qi led hundreds of thousands of Qin troops from Yiyang and Xincheng to Luoyang, and was responsible for leading the Qin army to fight again with the Han and Wei coalition forces in the Yique Mountain area.

Yique (què), is the mouth of Longmen Mountain and Xiangshan in the south of Luoyang, the two mountains are sandwiched, the Yi River flows through it, looking at it from afar, it is like a natural gate, it is called "Longmen" in later generations, and it is called "Yique" in ancient times. The geographical location of Yique is very important, and it is the only way for the Qin State to go east to the Central Plains. Han and Wei tried to stop the momentum of Qin's eastward advance, and mobilized the strength of the whole country to attack Qin, with a combined force of 240,000 troops, while the number of Qin troops led by Bai Qi was less than half of the combined army of Han and Wei. Prior to this, the Qin army had occupied Yiyang, and then occupied Xincheng in Korea (southwest of present-day Yichuan County). Although the Qin army was fighting Korea, Wei had already felt the chill of death, so he agreed to join forces with Korea to meet the Qin army.

One hundred thousand Qin troops marched eastward under the leadership of Bai Qi. This year, this 25-year-old young man had the rank of left guard, which is equivalent to today's colonel officer. Let a colonel command an army of 100,000 people and attack the 300,000 allied troops of Han and Wei for a long time, which shows that the Qin State was eclectic in employing people at that time. After Bai Qi entered the Luoyang territory, he sent people to reconnoiter the deployment of the Han and Wei coalition forces, and found that the main force of the Han army of 220,000 people was in a defensive formation at the front, and the Wei army of 80,000 people was in the flank and rear position of the main force of the Han army, posing as a backup. He also found that the Korean army was fully prepared, with excellent weapons such as swords and crossbows, and almost exhausted the country's troops. The Wei army was heavily armoured, and the soldiers were heavily armed, with heavy helmets, bows and arrows, and swords and halberds, which were also very powerful.

Bai Qi calmly analyzed the situation at that time and found that the Han and Wei coalition forces were united on the surface, but in fact the relationship was not close. Although there were many people in the two armies, they were afraid of the tiger and wolf army of the Qin State, and they both wanted to let the other party go first to resist most of the impact of the Qin army, and they retreated to the back to watch the fire, and waited until the war was about to go on before coming up, and directly profited. Bai Qi seized the enemy's psychology of passing the buck to each other, attacked the east and west, and sent a small number of troops to attack the South Korean army, and used this flank force to contain the South Korean army. Then concentrate the superior forces and storm the Wei state with the vast majority of the main force. In terms of troops, the Qin army was small in number, only half of the opponent's troops, and it came from afar, the soldiers were tired, and the food and grass were insufficient, which was very unfavorable to the Qin army. But Bai Qi is good at finding out the enemy's weaknesses, and he finds that although the opponent is well-armed and numerous, there is no unity inside. The first was the Wei army, who thought that he was here to help and was unwilling to resist the Qin army in front; And because the Han army was defending the country, it had to stand in front of the Qin army. Moreover, although the coalition forces had made preparations for a long time, the position they had set up was a general defense, which created conditions for the Qin army to take the initiative to attack.

Wei's heavily armored troops, instead of playing their main role, became a burden to this force. The soldiers were heavily armed, each dressed in "three-tiered armor," with a stiff bow that required great force to draw, with a quiver with 50 arrows on their backs, with iron helmets on their heads, halberds in their hands, swords at their waists, and three days' worth of dry rations. Bai Qi looked at his soldiers, only the front chest and back armor, which belonged to light armor, at most one shawl, and the cavalry simply did not tie the shawl, although this is not conducive to protection, but can attack quickly. The Qin army's mobility was just right to deal with the Wei army's bulkiness. Bai Qi thought that as long as he could block the Han army in the river valley, and send light cavalry to quietly touch the back of the Wei army, and first defeat the 80,000 stupid armor soldiers of the Wei State, he could attack from both sides and wipe out the Han army in a narrow strip.

The battle began, and the Qin army first attracted the attention of the South Korean army with suspicious soldiers on the Western Front. They played countless flags, beat drums and shouted, people were boiling, and the Korean army saw that there were colorful flags in the west, and they did not know the truth and reality, so they had to wait for the battle, and from time to time they opened their crossbows and shot at the Qin army's position in the west. The Wei army in the rear of the side slackened, thinking that there was a Korean army in front of them, so let's take a nap first. At this time, the main force of nearly 100,000 Qin troops, all lightly armed and simple, crossed the mountains and mountains in Yichuan, and took advantage of the fact that the attention of the coalition army was on the front position, and quietly went around to the present-day Yichuan Baiyuan (named after the Baiqi troops), and the mountains roared like a tsunami to the Wei army. Those Qin soldiers were as fierce as tigers and wolves, and they didn't have heavy armor on their bodies to drag them down, so they simply took off their clothes, went into battle shirtless, cut off a head, tied them around their waists with ropes, showed off and encouraged each other, and quickly killed the Wei army. And the main force of the Korean army, which had been ambushed in the narrow river valley of Yique, was blocked by the Qin army on the western front, and could not get out, and could not fight. At this time, the Wei army had been routed, and the commander was captured on the spot. The Qin army, which had already entered the Wei army's formation, poured over from the periphery and cooperated with the Qin army on the periphery to attack the Han army, and the Han army was attacked from both sides. In just a few hours, the heads of seventy or eighty thousand Wei soldiers hung on the belts of the Qin soldiers. On the battlefield, the Qin army absolutely did not leave a living mouth, the reason is very simple: the head is the weight of the Qin army's soldiers to become a knight, and it is an effective incentive for the Qin state's achievements, every time a soldier beheads an enemy, he will get some arable land, and the more people killed, the more land he gets; At the same time, every time you kill an enemy, you will be promoted to a knighthood, and the more you kill, the higher your title, and after the title reaches level four, you can become an official and no longer have to serve in conscription. It is conceivable that in the eyes of the Qin soldiers, the head of the enemy is wealth and status. Before the battle began, the Qin army saw the enemy's head, just like seeing a treasure, and his heart was itching, and he was anxious to cut it off and exchange it for cultivated land and titles.

At this time, the Korean army had just come to its senses, and it was attacked from both sides, and the Qin army concentrated its strength again and directly knocked out the command system of the Korean army, and the rest of the Korean army fell into panic and were killed countless times in the rout. Bai Qi captured Yique, non-stop, and immediately led the army to pursue the defeated Korean army to the east, and the Qin army killed people when they saw them, and cut off their heads when they saw them, and did not take prisoners, leaving only the head. With weapons in their hands and human heads around their waists, they pursued and killed almost frantically, occupying five Korean cities to the east.

In the battle of Yique, the 240,000 people of the coalition army all became prisoners except for the battle death, and Bai Qi was unrelenting, beheading all the prisoners at the foot of Yique Mountain, and the corpses were all over the field, bleeding and drifting, and the whole world was shocked. The elite forces of Han and Wei were all wiped out in this battle, and since then they have been in a state of collapse, and they are no longer able to compete with the Qin state. The victory in this battle made Qin's eastward invasion of the Central Plains an irresistible momentum. Bai Qi was promoted to the rank of lieutenant for his merits, and at the same time, he became famous for his glorious victory and the brutal murder of 240,000 people.

▲ Restoration map of Qin soldiers more than 2,000 years ago

War Impact

After the Battle of Yique, Bai Qi took advantage of the victory to pursue, attacked Han and Wei, and was like a bamboo, and wantonly annexed the land of the two countries. In 293 B.C., Bai Qi pursued the victory, and captured 61 Wei cities without waiting for the envoys of the city to negotiate. In 292 BC, he captured the wall of Wei. In 291 BC, Wan captured Korea. In 290 BC, Korea was forced to cede 200 li of land to Wusui and 400 li of land to Hedong by Wei State. In 289 BC, he led a large army to attack Wei, and connected 61 cities such as Pusaka. After a series of blows, Han and Wei were already vulnerable and could no longer pose any threat to Qin. These victories not only greatly stimulated the ambitions of the Qin state, but also greatly enhanced the economic strength of the Qin state, especially the occupation of Wan, the center of iron production and iron smelting, which strengthened the Qin state's weapons manufacturing industry and laid the material foundation for Qin's final unification of the world.

Strategy analysis

In the battle of Yique, Bai Qi seized the self-protection strength of the coalition army, passed the buck to each other, refused to fight this fighter first, annihilated a total of 240,000 Han and Wei allied troops, captured 5 cities including Yique, and created a large-scale annihilation war in the history of the pre-Qin war. There are three characteristics of Baiqi's operational guidance: First, it does not take the siege of cities and land as the sole goal, but takes the annihilation of living forces as the main purpose, and is good at field offensives, and must seek annihilation in battle. Second, in order to achieve the goal of annihilation, emphasis is placed on pursuit warfare, in which the enemy is pursued and attacked fiercely until the enemy is destroyed. The third is to focus on the construction of fortifications in field warfare, first luring the enemy troops to break away from the fortified positions, and then building fortifications to block the enemy in the area where the enemy is expected to be annihilated, and to prevent him from breaking through. This kind of operational guiding ideology of using fortifications as an offensive auxiliary means is very appropriate.

☆☆ War Archives ☆☆

Campaign Name: Battle of Eque

Time of occurrence: 239 BC

The warring sides: Qin VS Wei and the Korean coalition

Place of battle: Yique (now Longmen, Luoyang City, Henan)

Strength comparison: 100,000 Qin troops VS 240,000 coalition troops

The result of the war: 240,000 Wei-Han allied troops were annihilated

Nature of war: offensive warfare

Intelligence Level: ☆☆☆☆☆