Before the Qin State Reform was completely completed, it had already shown its tremendous power.
In 354 B.C., the second year of the change, Qin took Wei to defend against Zhao, and when the army came to Handan, Qin sent troops to Yuanli of Wei, defeated the Wei army, annihilated 7,000 enemies and occupied Shaoliang. In 352 BC, Qin took advantage of the defeat of Guiling of Wei to appoint Shang Ying as Daliangzao and sent troops to Wei to occupy Anyi, the old capital of Wei. In 351 BC, the Qin army sent troops to surround Guyang of Wei. In 341 BC, Qin united Qi and Zhao to attack Wei, but Wei was defeated, and King Hui of Wei was forced to cede the land of Hexi to sue for peace. At that time, Wu Qi opened up all the land west of the river for Wei was lost, and Qin and Wei's capital Anyi were separated by a Yellow River, and Wei, the hegemon of the Warring States, was in danger of being destroyed for the first time, and in 339 BC Wei was forced to move its capital to Daliang, away from Qin's attack.
In less than 20 years, the Qin State changed from being chased by the Wei State to chasing the Wei State, and under the joint attack of Qi and Zhao, the Wei State, the overlord of the world in the early Warring States Period, was completely defeated, and the courage of the Wei Wushu was no longer the back of the year.
The Qin State was so powerful that it forced the overlord Wei to collapse and relocate its capital, and this momentum immediately caused a shock in the entire international community.
After living in the west for many years, the Qin State finally stepped onto the stage of the Warring States War with a new attitude.
The so-called joint vertical is "to unite the weak to attack the strong", and the horizontal is "to attack the weak in the world".
And the "one strong" here mainly refers to the Qin State.
In other words, the emergence of the policy of combining vertical and horizontal is mainly due to the fact that the strength of the Qin State suddenly broke the pattern of the world and made the six countries east of Hangu Pass a whole.
In this case, how to face the attack of Qiang Qin is a question for everyone to think about, especially under the blow of the Wei State in the battles of Guiling and Maling of the Qi State, and under the blow of the Battle of Shaoliang in the Qin State, how to deal with the two major powers in the east and west after the decline of the hegemony has become the primary problem.
Under Hui Shi's strategy of "combining Wei with Qi and Chu with soldiers", he began to ease relations with Qi, so there was the king of Xuzhou with Qi, and at the same time, three giants of the vertical and horizontal family stepped onto the stage of history.
They are Gongsun Yan, Su Qin, and Zhang Yi.
First of all, each of them is an internationalist, although each has his own motherland, but the fame is only in his own home country, Gongsun Yan is a native of Wei, at first served as the head of Wei, and later left Wei to Qin as an official, led the Qin army to attack Wei twice, and won. Later, he ran back to Wei and continued to be the head of the rhino.
Su Qin was a native of Luoyang in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty of the Warring States Period, and when he first went to Qin to seek officials, he ran to Zhao and was useless, and then to Yan State, and finally launched the Six Kingdoms Alliance, and then ran around for many years. And he and Zhang Yi were both students of Guiguzi, and when he was running, he designed to force Zhang Yi to the Qin State, reused by the King of Qin, and sent many envoys to other countries in order to break the alliance.
Gongsun Yan and Su Qin's main idea was to join forces, and the main purpose was to unite the six eastern countries to fight against Qiang Qin.
The policy of cooperation is based on a geopolitical analysis of Su and Qin, the common danger of the six countries comes from the Qin state, which has the advantages of location, terrain and system, and its national strength is above the six countries, if the station country wants to make peace with the Qin state alone in order to seek peace for a while, it can only seek skin with the tiger, so it must not ally with Qin, can not show goodwill to Qin, and the only way in front of the six countries is to jointly resist Qin. The six countries of Shandong are interdependent and mutually relevant, and should become a strategic whole with common interests, only in this way can the six countries work together to contain the Qin state and maintain the balance of power.
Specifically, there are two manifestations of the alliance, one is to attack, that is, to join forces of the six countries to attack Qin, go deep into the interior of Qin, and finally achieve the goal of weakening Qin or even destroying Qin, and the other is mutual assistance. If Qin attacks one country, the other five countries must work together to save it, otherwise one country will be destroyed and the five countries will perish.
It should be said that such a strategy was the most successful way to contain Qin after the complete success of Qin's reform. It also posed a great threat to the Qin State at the beginning.
There have been two major alliances in history, one was in 333 BC, which was facilitated by Su Qin and participated in the six countries. The second time was fifteen years later, in 318 BC, which was promoted by Sun Yan, the prince of Wei, and was led by the king of Chu, Mi Huai, and the soldiers of Yan, Zhao, Wei, Han, and Chu came to Hangu Pass, which shocked the Qin State.
In the face of the alliance, the Qin State thought of cracking it with a series of horizontal moves.
In the face of the first merger, the Qin State first showed weakness to the Wei State, and was willing to give up the Seven Cities to settle with the Wei State. These seven cities are around Anyi, if they can be regained, the safety of Anyi will be guaranteed, and Wei State cannot resist such a **, so it will break away from Hezhong. Under the persuasion of Qin, Qi was willing to send troops with Wei to attack Zhao to obtain land, so the first joint effort against Qin failed.
The second time the longitudinal group, the Qin State went out to meet the battle, and secretly cut off the grain route of the Chu army, as a result, the Chu army retreated first, and the other four countries also returned home in a hurry, and failed.
Moreover, the Qin State realized that the Qi State did not participate, and even more realized that among the six eastern countries, the most powerful were Qi and Chu, and as long as these two countries were not aligned, they would not pose a huge threat. So he sent people to make friends with the Qi State many times, especially arranged for Zhang Yi to send an envoy to the Chu State, to deceive the Chu State, so that the King of Chu was furious, and sent troops to attack the Qin State twice before and after, the first attack on Qin failed in 313 BC, and the second time Chu gathered troops from all over the country to attack the Qin State, and once attacked Lantian only a few dozen miles away from the Qin capital Xianyang. However, Qin's Lianheng policy played a role, and under Qin's request for help, the Qi ** team invaded Chu itself, and Wei and Han were also ready to attack Chu with fire, and the Chu army was forced to retreat, losing the best opportunity to hit Qin hard.
And the reason why it is difficult for Chu to attack Qin and attack Qin together is because Qin constantly plays a horizontal role, especially taking advantage of the inherent contradictions and respective interests of the six eastern countries, and intends to constantly use various means, concessions, bribery, deception and other ways to make it difficult for the six eastern countries to cooperate, and also maintain high pressure with their own powerful forces, creating a kind of illusion for the eastern countries, if you have a good relationship with my Great Qin, I will not fight you, or do not attack you first, so that the six countries always have the intention of befriending Qin to seek personal interests. As a result, the joint attack on Qin failed, and the attack on Qin alone was also unsuccessful, and the six countries were repeatedly restrained and attacked by Qin.
In the vertical and horizontal alliances, the strength of the Qin State continued to increase, it took Sanchuan in the east, Bashu in the west, Shangjun in the north, and Hanzhong in the south, while the strength of the Six Kingdoms did not increase much.
The fundamental reason is why the vertical and vertical effect is not as good as the horizontal effect, why the Qin State is increasing in strength, while the national strength of the six eastern countries is declining, the essence is that the Qin State is the most powerful, one country and one heart, and the six countries are weak and each has a ghost, and it is difficult to achieve the unity of the six countries.
Therefore, in the combination of vertical and horizontal, the Qin State still roared eastward with its own strong national strength and its own tiger and wolf army. The war is fought by strength and the will of the people, and what the six countries lack is this strength and popular will.