After Mo Ao Zihua withdrew from the court, the entire Chu State court seemed to be relieved. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

It is true that everyone respects the old sage, but what everyone values more is their own interests.

Why is the country expanding outward? This is inseparable from the human desire to chase wealth. In the age of agriculture, it is generally impossible to make a sudden technological leap. This means that most of the output of a piece of land is fixed, so the only way for any landlord to increase his wealth is to own as much land as possible. In peacetime, the landlords would have no choice but to engage in land annexation. In this era of strife among nations, the landlords' desire for land in various countries is reflected in the expansion of their territories.

The state of Chu has developed to the present and has gone through several important stages of expansion. The first stage is the era of the ancestors of the Chu State, the blue wisps of the road, and the era of enlightening the mountains and forests, which is the initial entrepreneurial period of the Chu State. Subsequently, the state of Chu opened up the barbarians and attacked Jianghan in a big way, and soon occupied the entire Yunmeng Daze, and the power expanded along the waterway to the shores of Dongting Lake. By this time, the mountainous and difficult environment in the south stopped the Chu state, and the Chu state only symbolically collected tribute from the southern Yue people to maintain its rule, and then the Chu state turned to the north, eliminating the Hanyang Zhuji, and then expanding all the way north. Later, after encountering the obstruction of the northern powers, Qi and Jin, they found that the north was still too strong, so they turned to expand eastward along the Huai River and the Yangtze River, and in the direction of the Huai River, Chu eliminated the two most important powers in the Huai River basin, Chen and Cai, and thus obtained the territory of the Huai River valley. However, expansion along the Yangtze River was hampered, and the state of Chu in the south of the Yangtze River encountered an equally formidable enemy of the state of Wu. The state of Chu was even destroyed by the state of Wu for a time, but the state of Wu was eventually destroyed by the state of Yue, which was supported by the state of Chu. However, because of the former alliance and the fact that the Yue State was still relatively strong, the expansion direction of the Chu State shifted to the Huai River Valley. In the eyes of the nobles of the Chu State, along the Huai River all the way to the seaside, all the land is their inheritance to their descendants in the future, and now the Qi State has reached in without saying hello to me, which is simply excessive!

However, in the midst of the shouting and beating of the entire Chu State, Bo Yong of the Qu family stood up, and he said to the King of Chu and the ministers of the Chu State: "Since the Great King is going to attack the Qi State, then we have to prepare many things. The minister has heard that if the name is not right, it is not good, and now that my Chu State is attacking Qi, it is possible for Wei and Qi to disrespect the Son of Heaven, claim the king without authorization, and pre-override the princes for this reason. Our Chu country is in full swing, and we must also make our Chu country worry-free. Although Wei privately said to our country that it would remain neutral in the war between our country and Qi, this statement should not be believed. We must let Wei itself fall into a chaotic war and cannot get out, so that our country can concentrate on the war. From the perspective of His Majesty, we can contact Zhao and Qin respectively and let them attack Wei. Zhao has always coveted the land of Wei, and Qin has always wanted to take back the land of Hexi, and our country can form an alliance with Zhao and Qin to persuade them to attack Wei. If the Song State can stand on our side and help our country attack Qi, the certainty of our country's defeat will be greatly increased. ”

Zhaoyang also said to the king of Chu: "Facing Wei or Qi alone, my Chu has never been afraid, but if you face two countries at once, then my country will have some difficulty." The minister also agreed with Dr. Qu's opinion, and contacted Zhao and Qin, so that these two countries could attack Wei, and my Chu would attack Qi. ”

Da Sima Jingcui stood up and said, "If my Chu State wants to go to the Qin State, I can directly enter and exit through Wuguan. However, if my Chu State goes to Zhao State, it will inevitably pass through the land of Wei State, and Wei Guoan can let our envoys pass? ”

The ministers were all silent, yes, this is a huge problem. At this time, Zhao Sui stood up and said: "This matter is easy to do, when the king of Xuzhou was the king, didn't he sign a Xuzhou treaty at the initiative of the prince of Song State?" Among them, there is a stipulation: the two countries intersect and do not cut each other. Now that my Chu State can announce to the outside world that my country is willing to accept the Xuzhou Treaty, in this way, there will be no reason for Wei to detain our envoys, so wouldn't it be easy to go to Zhao State? ”

The King of Chu was surprised: "Is there such a thing as the meeting of the king of Xuzhou?" Why don't I know? If this is true, then the prince of Song Guoziyan, who advocated this treaty, is a talent, but unfortunately he is not from my Chu country. ”

Zhaoyang said: "The Great Kingdom is busy, of course it won't remember such a trivial matter. However, if the king says that there are no virtuous people in my Chu country, his subordinates will not dare to agree. In front of the king, the son of Boyong is the virtuous talent of my Chu State. Mo Ao Zihua's departure obviously affected the mood of the King of Chu, and Zhaoyang was keenly aware of this, so he recommended Qu Boyong's son along the river.

Speaking of this Zhengzheng, although he is very young, he has a noble character and is good at poetry. As soon as this regular poem appeared, it could almost be compared with the "Book of Songs" of the northern Central Plains countries, and Zhaoyang also liked it very much, so he recommended this virtuous person to the king of Chu.

The king of Chu was also very curious when he saw Ling Yin's rare recommendation of a talent, so he asked Bo Yong, so he knew about this young scholar who began to become famous in the entire Chu country: Qu Yuan, whose name is regular, and his character is Lingjun.

Zhaoyang said to the king of Chu again: "My Chu country is fighting Qi, although we need to cut down the enemy, but more importantly, we still need the strength of our Chu country. This time, our Chu State and Qi State are at war to make Qi State realize the strength of our Chu State. Moreover, from now on, China should be prepared for war, and China should immediately stock up on grain, grass, chariots, horses, and weapons on the Huaibei front. ”

The king of Chu asked Sima Jingcui: "Aiqing thinks that how many soldiers and horses do I need to send to attack the Qi State?" ”

Jing Cui replied: "King Bing, in the opinion of the ministers, Qi is a big country in the East, and our country is at war with it, so we must deal with it carefully. Since our country wants to attack the Qi country, we should do our best to attack it, and we must surrender the Qi country with one blow. Now the king has 100,000 royal divisions, and in the opinion of the ministers, he should leave 50,000 troops to guard the national capital, send 50,000 royal divisions, and then mobilize the troops of the feudal monarchs and county princes in Huainan and Huaibei, and get more than 100,000 troops. If such an army of 150,000 attacks the Qi country, the Qi country will definitely be able to go down with one drum! ”

50,000 royal divisions, 100,000 feudal monarch troops, 150,000 troops! Everyone present gasped. The state of Chu has been a militaristic country since its founding, and the army that can be dispatched is actually far more than that. However, like this time, it is very different, the royal division of the Chu State, that is, the army personally led by the King of Chu, has always been the trump card army of the Chu State. And today's Chu King's division is an extraordinary army.

In that year, Wu Qi changed the law in the Wei State, implemented the military pawn system, and successfully changed the mobilization system of the Spring and Autumn Period to the conscription system, thus successfully realizing the separation of soldiers and peasants. Subsequently, Wu Qi took the refined professional soldiers as the basis of the army, and gradually replaced the temporary mobilization soldiers in wartime. The core content of the military pawn system is the elite soldier strategy, which replaces the original mercenaries and mobilized soldiers with elite soldiers in the true sense, so that the military pawn has become the country's standing army. The selection of military soldiers is very strict, and one of the requirements for physical fitness is: soldiers wear three layers of armor (upper body armor, thigh armor, and trap armor), iron helmets on their heads, swords on their waists, spears on their shoulders, bows on their shoulders, 50 arrows, dry food on their backs for three days, and 100 miles (about 40 kilometers) in half a day. And once the standard is passed, as a professional soldier, he can enjoy the treatment of exemption from the conscription of the whole family, and even the outstanding can be immediately promoted to middle and lower rank officers. Wu Qi relied on the 50,000 standing army obtained from the Hexi reform of the Wei State, and actually defeated the 500,000 Qin army led by Qin Huigong, so that the whole world began to realize the power of the national standing army of Wushu.

Later, when Wu went to Chu to change the law, he implemented many policies in Chu because they violated the interests of the Chu nobles, and most of these policies were abolished after the death of King Mourning of Chu and Wu Qi. And the only thing in the entire Chu State that has not been abolished is this military pawn system. Because the king of Chu saw very clearly that only with a strong enough military force in his hands and the authority of the central government could he truly and effectively deter the local feudal monarchs of Chu. And with the vast territory of 5,000 miles in the entire Chu State, the king of Chu can only afford to raise these 100,000 soldiers. This is equivalent to immediately emptying half of the standing army of the Chu State, considering that the Chu State also needs to rely on the remaining standing army to deter local forces, these 50,000 royal divisions are almost the maximum force that the King of Chu can come up with. Da Sima said that the State of Chu did its best to attack the State of Qi, which was really not a joke.

So the ministers all looked at the king of Chu, would the king of Chu agree to such a big plan?

The king of Chu slowly stood up from the throne and said to his ministers: "Since Sima thinks that my Chu State can only compete with the Qi State by doing his best, then the widow agrees with Sima's plan. And this time, this king will personally lead his troops there. If you don't break the Qi country, you won't give up! ”

The ministers of Chu heard the determination of the king of Chu from the tone of the king of Chu, so everyone did not object. Soon, the war machine of the traditional military power of Chu immediately began to operate in full force, and the power it exuded made everyone fearful.

In August 334 BC, Qu Yuan, a young nobleman of the Chu State, arrived in Linzi, the capital of Qi, and the news released shook the whole world. The state of Chu announced its acceptance of the Treaty of Xuzhou, and after accepting the Treaty of Xuzhou, the state of Chu condemned the state of Qi on a series of grounds such as disrespecting the king of Zhou, wantonly overriding the princes, and destroying the small state of Huaisi without authorization. Later, Qu Yuan announced in front of the King of Qi and many nobles of Qi in the court of Qi: From now on, Chu and Qi will officially be at war!