Chapter 47 Hero's End by Feishui

——The most incredible defeat After more than 20 years of hard work, the great hero Fu Jian has made the country rich and the people strong, and basically unified northern China. Only the peaceful Eastern Jin Dynasty has not yet been conquered.After conquering Xiangyang and capturing Zhu Xu, he himself believed that the time to unify the world was fully ripe.So he held a meeting of ministers and expressed his thoughts on destroying the Jin Dynasty, and then he asked all the ministers to express their opinions. Unexpectedly, except for the secretary supervisor Zhu Tong, all the ministers opposed the invasion of Jin, believing that the monarch and ministers of the Jin Dynasty were in harmony, united from top to bottom, and there was a danger of the Yangtze River, so they should not be easily attacked.

Fu Jian himself had a reason, and he said convincingly: "In the past, when my husband sent Weiling to the country, Gou Jian was able to capture him in one fell swoop; Sun Hao inherited the career of three generations, and when Sima's army arrived, the monarchs and ministers were captured. Even if the Jin Dynasty had the danger of the Yangtze River, it was like nothing. Throwing the whip on the Yangtze River with my many troops is enough to stop the flow!" After hearing this, the ministers couldn't agree, and they still had different opinions. Fu Jian summoned his officials and left behind his younger brother Fu Rong to discuss and make a decision.Fu Rong shed tears to persuade Fu Jian, thinking that there are three things that should not be avoided in the conquest of Jin: first, the celestial phenomena are unfavorable, and the land of Wuyue has blessings (the ancients were very superstitious about "mandate of heaven"); Such a great talent from Jiang Biao; third, the country has been fighting for several years, and the soldiers will be tired and tired, and they are afraid of war.In the end, Fu Rong repeated Wang Meng's last words before he died, and wept and said: "The conquest of Jin will return in vain, and your Majesty, you favor Xianbei, Qiang, Jie and other ethnic groups. , but our royal family and nobles are all guarding the frontier in a remote place, and now we are pouring our country to conquer Jin, if something happens, it will be too late to regret!"

Since then, dozens of people, including Fu Jian's minister Quan Yi, Fu Jian's favorite young son Fu Shen, and the national teacher Dao'an, wrote letters of remonstrance, but Fu Jian did not listen.Only the honorable Murong Chui of the Yan State who had surrendered previously strongly supported Fu Jian. Before sending troops, they themselves and their nephews and nephews had made preparations in all aspects to take advantage of the chaos and restore the country.Murong Chui's words are very pleasant: "Your Majesty is wise and mighty, but Sima Changming (Emperor Xiaowu of the Eastern Jin Dynasty) dared to occupy a corner of the country and refused to accept the king's orders. If he did not conquer, how could he show the mighty virtue of Qin Dynasty. The annexation of the Jin Dynasty was due to the will of heaven and luck. As a minister, I heard that the small is no match for the big, and the weak cannot defend against the strong. Besides, the Great Qin was ordered to command his majesty to have millions of troops, and to be able to generals like forests. Can the thieves of the usurping dynasty be left as a worry for future generations. Your Majesty should make a decision based on the secret, and there is no need to visit all the officials, so as not to delay the opportunity to establish invincible achievements."

Fu Jian was overjoyed when he heard the words: "The one who decides the world with me is Qing alone!" Before the Battle of Feishui, although the former Qin Dynasty was very prosperous for a while, it was only the glory on the surface, and there were countless ethnic conflicts hidden in it. Hebei, Liaodong and the north of Henan were full of Murong and Xianbei remnants; Hu (Xiongnu branch) is entrenched; in Guanlong area, Qiang people and Lushui Hu abound; in Zhaowei area, Dinglingsibu; in northeast Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, Tuoba Xianbei formed their own line.As for the vast Central Plains, the Han nationality is the majority.In contrast, the number of the Di people was small, and nearly 150,000 households of the Di people were sent to various places for military colonization.The internal structure of such a barely cohesive political and military group is actually very fragile.

After the former Qin captured Xiangyang and captured Zhu Xu, it concentrated 60,000 cavalry to attack San'a (now Baoying, Jiangsu), which shocked the emperor and ministers of Jiankang.At that time, Xie An presided over the government, and hurriedly sent his younger brother Xie Shi, the general who conquered the captives, to gather sailors in Tuzhong (now Chu County, Anhui). He also sent his nephew Xie Xuan from Guangling to San'a to repel the Qin army.Later, the two sides won and lost each other, showing a stalemate. General Huan Chong of Jin Dynasty was the governor of Jingzhou at that time. At the end of 381, he sent his nephew Huan Shiqian to defeat the former Qin army in Jingling (now Qianjiang, Hubei), beheading nearly ten thousand people and capturing more than ten thousand alive. In June 383, Huan Chong personally led another 100,000 Jin troops to attack Xiangyang and achieved certain victories.Infuriated, Fu Jian sent his sons Fu Rui and Murong Chui to rescue Xiangyang with 50,000 riders on foot.Murong Chui made good use of suspicious soldiers, he ordered each soldier to hold ten torches overnight and hang them on the branches of trees, "lighting dozens of miles away".Huan Chong thought that there were countless Qin soldiers, so he returned in fear, and surrendered to Shangming (now Songzi, Hubei).

After Huan Wen's death, Xie An knew that the central government should maintain a "direct line" army that could be directly commanded, so he used "earth break" as a means to recruit a large number of strong young men from the expatriates from the north, named "Beifu Bing". ", Xie Xuan is in charge of training.Although the number of "Beifu soldiers" is only about 100,000, they are all descendants of northern refugees who lost their land and harbored hatred, and Han Chinese who fled to Jiangdong because they could not bear the pressure of the minority regime.

Fu Jian issued a letter ordering each prefecture to dispatch one soldier from ten to one, commandeer public and private horses, send out 250,000 infantry and riders as the vanguard, and Murong Chui was in command. We look at each other with drums and drums.At the same time when the troops were sent out, Fu Jian had pre-appointed the emperor of the state of Jin as Minister Zuo Pushe, Xie An as Minister of the Ministry of Officials, and Huan Chong as servant. He also built a beautiful mansion in Chang'an to accommodate everyone. The great Confucian Wang Fuzhi had the following views on the emperor's personal conquest: "Fu Jian will not commit suicide by invading the Jin Dynasty, and then he will rebel quickly with the Xianbei; Wan Yanliang would not be discouraged by quarrying the river, but would kill the emperor in the country; the power of the Buddha (Tuoba Tao) was defeated in Xuyi; Shi Chonggui's body was captured in Khitan..." In addition , Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty also conquered himself and eventually subjugated the country. He was as brilliant and mighty as Tang Taizong, and he returned to the Liao Dynasty without success.The only successful examples of imperial conquests are the Ming Chengzu Zhu Di in the Ming Dynasty and Emperor Kangxi who conquered Galdan in the Qing Dynasty.Even Song Zhenzong, who had taken the initiative in the name of the Chanyuan Alliance, was still bitter about Kou Zhun's pushing himself into a critical situation where he was at the edge of the city, and was later demoted.Therefore, the emperor's personal conquest, such a light move is indeed the most likely to lead to peril, and the beginning of this peril began with Fu Jian.

When the Eastern Jin court heard that Fu Jian was coming, he hurriedly appointed Xie Shi as the governor of the conquest, with Xie Xuan as the forward governor, plus Xie Yan (the son of Xie An), Huan Yi and other generals under his command, a total of 80,000 soldiers and horses. The rest of the people tried their best to resist the invasion of the former Qin Dynasty.Therefore, the "Beifu soldiers" became the main fighting force of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. In the early days of the war, the former Qin side progressed extremely smoothly.Fu Rong and others captured Shouchun, a strong city in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and captured Xu Yuanxi, the general of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and Wang Xian, the prefect of Anfeng.Murong Chui captured Yuncheng and killed Jin general Wang Taibing.Qin general Liang Cheng also led 50,000 powerful soldiers, stationed in Luojian, and defeated the Jin army several times.

When the Jin court heard the news, they hurriedly sent Xie Shi, Xie Xuan, Xie Yan, Huan Yi and others to raise troops, and went to the front line to resist Qin soldiers one after another.Fearing that Liang Cheng's troops would flourish, at a distance of twenty-five miles from Luojian, the Jin army stayed on the sidelines and did not dare to advance. General Hu Bin of Longxiang in the Eastern Jin Dynasty first stood firm at Xiashi, but soon ran out of food and thin soldiers, so he could only pretend to transport sand as food every day to deceive the Qin army that he still had food.In private, Hu Bin sent someone to send a letter to Xie Shi and other Jin generals, claiming that the thieves had run out of food, and expressed that he might die and return to the court.After the messenger broke through, he didn't go far and was captured by Fu Rong's army.Fu Rong was overjoyed, and sent a flying cavalry to tell Fu Jian, saying that "there are few thieves and easy to capture, but fearing that they will escape, it is advisable to quickly enter the army and win in one battle."

Fu Jian read the letter and was very happy. He was afraid that the main force of the Jin army would run away without a fight, so he immediately abandoned his army in Xiangcheng, and he only led 8,000 Qingqi to double the road and headed straight for Shouchun.All of this, the Jin army knew nothing about it. However, misfortunes come and blessings come, people are not as good as heaven.Liu Jianzhi, the general of Longxiang in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, suddenly became brave. He personally led 5,000 strong soldiers to attack the Qin general Liang Cheng's camp at night, beheading Liang Cheng and other ten Qin generals, and killing more than 15,000 Qin soldiers.

Seeing that Liang Cheng had been defeated, Xie Shi and the others immediately became courageous and marched forward by land and water to meet the enemy. Fu Jian and Fu Rong climbed to the city, and saw that the troops of the Jin State were well organized and the soldiers were elite, and looking north, the vegetation on Bagong Mountain looked like people (in fact, Sima Daozi, king of Kuaiji in the Jin Dynasty, was afraid of Qin, and temporarily hugged the Buddha's feet to pray to the god of Zhongshan. puppet and ceremonial guards made of grass and cardboard, Fu Jian began to feel guilty, and turned to Fu Rong and said: "These are also powerful enemies, how can you say that they are few?" In order to fight psychological warfare, he sent the formerly captured Jin general Zhu Xu to the Jin camp to persuade Xie Shi and others to surrender.It’s really God’s blessing for Qin. As soon as Zhu Xu passed by, he told Xie Shi all the truth and falsehood in Fu Jian’s army: “We should immediately fight with the Qin army’s first-arriving army. Millions of Chinese troops are coming one after another, and the Jin army is no match for the opponent at all." At that time Qin general Zhang Hao was defeating Xie Shi's army in Feinan. Generals Xie Xuan and Xie Yan had tens of thousands of soldiers on one side of Feishui to meet them. Jin General Xie Shi sent an envoy to inform Fu Rong: "Your army is going deep, and it is not a long-term solution. I hope you will retreat a little bit to make room for the fighters on both sides to fight. I will watch it with you immediately. What a joy!" Fu Rong was not a king who was obsessed with ancient times like Duke Xiang of the Song Dynasty. He was also a dragon among those capable of writing and fighting. Move back. Unexpectedly, after this battle, Zhu Xu shouted, "Qin's army is defeated!"The soldiers of Xianbei, Qiang, Jie and other ethnic groups in the Qin army had their own ghosts and turned around and ran away. The army behind could not see what happened in front of them at all. Throwing down his staff, he turned and fled. Fu Rong rode his horse to stop the fleeing army, but the horse fell down and was killed.The Qin army was completely defeated, and the Jin army took advantage of the victory to advance. Fu Jian himself was shot by a stray arrow and fled to Huaibei alone.The Jin army took advantage of the victory to chase north, regained Shouyang, and captured the Huainan prefect of the former Qin Dynasty. Clearing away the fog of history, the Battle of Feishui may not be considered a special case of winning more with less.Fu Rong's 300,000 troops stationed at Yuncheng in the west and Luojian in the east, and hundreds of thousands of troops were allocated to garrison key points along the way. The actual number of 900,000 troops in Feishui at that time was estimated to be more than 100,000 (Qin The front line of the army is long, the front army has arrived in front of the formation, and the middle is full of troops, and the last army has just set off from Chang'an). On the other hand, the Jin army originally had 80,000 elite soldiers waiting for the battle, and with the addition of new troops added later, there are also 100,000 troops in total. Left and right, coupled with leisurely waiting for work, internal unity, especially after the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty, the fear of the Han gentry's slaughter and massacre by the Northern Dynasty regime, all turned into the same hatred of the same enemy in resistance. Accidental factors finally made the ambition of the great hero Fu Jian to rule the world come to naught! What is puzzling is that Xie An, the prime minister of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, became famous in one fell swoop because of this battle. Countless poems and songs praised him, but there is no such thing as his strategy of arranging troops in the history books. I only remember that after the news of the victory was delivered, Taifu Xie said to the guests playing Go He said "the younger generation will break the thief", with a calm expression, but when he entered the house, his heart was ecstatic and his footsteps were too heavy, breaking the heel of the wooden clogs.As far as I can see, the Eastern Jin Dynasty's victory in the Battle of Feishui was also very accidental, and the Universiade hit it and won an inexplicable victory.If he failed, Xie An would probably be like Wang Yan, the Prime Minister of the Western Jin Dynasty who "talked all over the place".