In the Warring States Period, the princes competed for hegemony, and there were countless battles of all sizes, among which the Battle of Changping could not be ignored, the Battle of Changping was one of the most famous battles in the history of the Warring States Period, and in the study of later historians, the Battle of Changping was regarded as the top priority, one was because the scale of the Battle of Changping was in the forefront of the entire Warring States Period, and the other was because the impact of the Battle of Changping was too huge.
In fact, the Battle of Changping was a turning point in the development of the Warring States Period, before the outbreak of the war, the Qin State was not a monopoly, the Zhao State was able to be compared with the Qin State militarily, and the resistance against Qin with the Zhao State as the main force was also able to proceed step by step, and the road of the Qin State to the east was not smooth; However, after the Battle of Changping, this situation was reversed.
The defeat of Zhao meant that the overall strength of the six states of Shandong had dropped significantly, and since then, the situation in the entire Central Plains has also transitioned to a situation dominated by the Qin state, so the battle of Changping is of great significance for the development of the entire Warring States period. Because of this, some details of the Battle of Changping have also become things that people are keen to analyze, such as the most controversial in the course of the Battle of ChangpingSwap event(Zhao Kuo replaces Lian Po).
The Battle of Changping was a war launched by the Qin State, and the Zhao State was mainly a defensive counterattack, at that time the leader of the Zhao ** team against the Qin army was one of the four famous generals of the Warring States Period, Lian Po's military talent was very outstanding, under his leadership, the Zhao State built a defensive barrier to prevent the Qin army from directly contacting the territory of the Zhao State, so to speak, the Qin State troops were isolated at the door of the Zhao State.
This strategy of defending as an offensive was implemented for three years, during which the Qin army did not find any breakthrough point, and the two sides remained in a stalemate; If Zhao has been implementing this kind of policy, the final outcome of the war is still difficult to predict, because Zhao is fighting at home, but Qin is a long-distance war, the two sides are very different in terms of combat environment, and the financial and material resources consumed are not an order of magnitude, so Zhao can completely implement this policy to the end.
But what is puzzling is that at such a node, Zhao Guo chose to change the generals and replaced Lian Po with Zhao Kuo. After Zhao Kuo took office, he abandoned Lian Po's strategy of taking defense as an offense, wanted to take the lead in grasping the initiative in the war, and defeated the Qin troops by taking the initiative, but it led to the fiasco of Zhao's ** team.
Therefore, the strategy of changing generals implemented by Zhao Guo was criticized by many people in later generations. So is Zhao Guo's change of generals really a big problem? This article focuses on analyzing this problem and taking a look at why Zhao Guo changed generals?
Of course, many people think that the reason why Zhao changed its generals was because they listened to the rumors spread by Qin, and Qin's war plan was blocked at that time, because Lian Po did not come out of the city, resulting in Qin spending huge financial and material resources but no progress, so they began to spread rumors to Zhao State, trying to drive a wedge between King Zhao and Lian Po, and King Zhao listened to such a message and thought that Lian Po was disloyal to Zhao State, so he replaced Lian Po with Zhao Kuo.
But is this really the case? We do not rule out the influence of rumors in this matter, but the rumors are definitely not the initiator of the matter. First of all, spreading rumors to disturb the morale of the military occurred many times in the Warring States PeriodThis is a type of counter-inverse schemeThis was already a conspiracy in that era, and it is untenable to simply say that rumors can influence a country's military decisions.
Secondly, Lian Po's result in the process of confronting the Qin army is obvious, although Lian Po did not take the initiative to attack, but with the support of Lian Po's decision, Zhao did not suffer direct damage to his interests in this war, that is to say, Qin did not really defeat the Zhao ** team, nor did he occupy the slightest territory of Zhao under the obstruction of the Zhao ** team, how can it be said that Lian Po really had a private affair with the Qin state?
Although it is said that the distance between the king of a country and the battlefield is relatively far, it is impossible not to know anything about the situation on the battlefield, after all, such defensive measures have been in place for three years, so that they will not really doubt the military generals because of rumors that are completely different from the facts. Therefore, for the change of generals in Zhao State, some people are more inclined to push the boat with King Zhao. There are many reasons to support this view, and we will focus on it next.
First of all, Zhao's military strength is not weak, it has the qualifications to compete with Qin, but in this case, Lian Po chose to fortify the city, which is actually something that the leading class of Zhao at that time did not understand, after all, Zhao's military strength is not as weak as Yan or South Korea.
In their view, there was no need for such a thorough defensive measure, and as we mentioned above, the Qin state was a long-distance expeditionary battle, and their war environment was much worse than that of China, so the Zhao state could have chosen to fight the Qin state.
In this way, the policy adopted by Lian Po is contrary to the idea of King Zhao, and Lian Po naturally does not get his support, but Zhao Kuo's idea is consistent with the idea of the ruler, in terms of Zhao Kuo's practice, he advocates sending troops to fight, and he does not support Zhao **'s team to fortify the city, so this kind of change of generals is actually a natural result, after all, Lian Po's approach does make King Zhao puzzled, and Zhao Kuo's approach is indeed in the hands of King Zhao.
Secondly, the king of Zhao at that time was actually anxious to end this fight; Qin is a long-distance battle, such a struggle needs the support of various institutions and systems in the country, the agricultural nation needs to provide food and grass resources, the country's leadership class also needs to make timely decisions, a war will involve the operation of the whole country, so the Qin State is in a relatively disadvantageous position in that war, but the Qin State does have a good national development system to support.
After the Shang Dynasty reform, all strata of the Qin State had a clear purpose and process, so when the Qin State was in operation, it was more rapid and stable than other countries, and the things needed on the battlefield could be produced quickly, and the impact of the rapid changes on the battlefield could also be quickly decided by the discussions of the rulers, which indirectly alleviated the unfavorable situation faced by the Qin State.
Zhao ** is strong, but the logistics support is not available
However, Zhao did not have such a benign development system, although Zhao also carried out reforms, but it was a simple military change, only in the structure of the army, the establishment and the improvement of the mode of operation, for the domestic economic development of Zhao, administrative development and so on did not touch, therefore, Zhao other systems other than military development, and at the beginning of the development of other systems, there is not much difference from the beginning of development, has always been in an unfavorable situation, especially in terms of social productivity.
Waging war itself requires strong economic conditions to support, it needs to spend a lot of wealth, and at the same time, it also requires the agricultural nation to provide a large amount of grain and grass resources for postponement and supply, so once a war breaks out, a large part of the economic conditions that support the country's development must be assigned to the battlefield, which is a great test for the country's overall development.
The long-term war was a test for both Qin and Zhao
It's okay if the war is short-lived, but Lian Po adopts a defensive policy, not a head-to-head confrontation with the Qin State, but only a long-term defensive confrontation, which makes the timeline of the war very long, as we can see, before the real war broke out, the two countries fought against each other for up to three years.
During these three years, Zhao's army needed to be stationed on the military front line for a long time, and the financial and material resources consumed were geometric multiples**, but because of the uncertainty of the war, they could not participate in social production, so all the wealth spent was in vain, which put forward a great test to the country's past wealth accumulation.
In fact, in the process of confrontation between the two countries, both Qin and Zhao were exhausted, and after three years, both countries had no extra money and food to support the confrontation on the front line, and the war seemed to be developing in the direction that Lian Po wanted, after all, the reason why Lian Po would adopt a long-term defense policy was also to take a fancy to the disadvantages of Qin's long-distance raids, and tried to use the war advantage in this area to drag Qin down first.
The Qin State has the grain and grass of the land of Bashu, and the Zhao State has reached the bottom line of development
But what Lian Po didn't expect was that although the Qin State did show a shortage of resources, but in the era of King Qin Huiwen, the Qin State had already pocketed the Bashu region, and they still had the last choice, that is, to transport grain from the Bashu region, so with the support of the King of Qin, the Qin State began to build the plank road, and finally successfully transported grain and grass.
This means that the confrontation between Qin and Zhao will continue for a long time; The one who can't sit still now is Zhao Guo. Because the three years have touched the bottom line of the development of Zhao, there is really no extra wealth in Zhao to continue to support the continuation of the war, so at that time, it was just King Zhao (Zhao Xiaocheng Wang) who was eager to end this war, and for King Zhao, even if the war failed, it was better than continuing to drag on.
Therefore, King Zhao replaced Zhao Kuo, who advocated war, and led the war as the commander of Zhao's ** team; Therefore, we say that the change of generals of Zhao has actually been planned for a long time, because in the process of long-term confrontation between the two countries, the foundation of Zhao's development has been injured, which is what King Zhao is most unhappy to see; Therefore, the longer the confrontation between the two countries continues, the deeper the mind of King Zhao's change of generals will become, and at this time, he will be affected by rumors, so he will naturally be more sure of what he thinks.
Bai Qi Changping surrendered, and Zhao suffered heavy losses, so that Zhao Kuo and Zhao Xiaocheng were both criticized
The last point we want to say is that the reason why we wantonly criticized Zhao Kuo and Zhao Wang's decision to change generals is more because of Wu Anjun Bai Qi's Changping killing, in fact, if there was no Bai Qikeng's killing of Zhao State's 400,000 soldiers, the impact of the Battle of Changping would not be as great as what we see, and it may just be an ordinary war in the Warring States Period.
Because of the death of 400,000 soldiers, the military strength of Zhao State took a sharp turn, and at that time, Zhao State was the main force of the six countries of Shandong to resist Qin, and the collapse of Zhao's strength represented the defeat of the cause of the six countries of Shandong to resist Qin, which affected the situation of that era.
Therefore, when we analyze history from the perspective of later generations, we will devote more effort to this kind of event that has affected the ten major patterns, which will amplify the impact of King Zhao's decision-making; But if we stand in the era and situation in which King Zhao lived, it will be much more objective to consider.
It was an unspoken rule not to kill and surrender in the Warring States Period, and King Zhao Xiaocheng did not expect Bai Qi to kill and surrender on a large scale
King Zhao actually didn't expect the event of killing and surrendering, and it was actually an unspoken rule to fight or surrender before the Battle of Changping, Even if it is killed, it will not have such a large scale, so King Zhao is just anxious to end this war and end the impact of the long delay on the domestic economic development of Zhao State, he himself did not expect that the defeat of the war would touch the root of Zhao's strengthI didn't expect the unspoken rules to be broken
The collapse of Zhao's strength is not simply brought by the battlefield, if Bai Qi does not kill and surrender, the death on the battlefield is acceptable to both countries. Therefore, many times we actually magnify the mistakes of King Zhao from the perspective of God of later generations.
In fact, if the killing and surrendering incident really did not exist, the losses of Zhao in this war would be much smaller than if it continued to drag on, because if the comprehensive strength of Qin and Zhao was compared, the time that Qin could support was definitely not comparable to that of Zhao. Considering it from another aspect, there is no problem with the original intention of King Zhao's approach, but in the Battle of Changping, after the white battle was killed, the Zhao State has been in a slump since then, and the Qin State has removed the last hard bone on the road to the east, so to speak, it is the unexpected negligence of King Zhao Xiaocheng that built the unification and hegemony of the Qin State.
If you stand in the perspective of King Zhao, the matter of replacing generals is not a decision-making mistake, because Lian Po's approach did not bring losses to Zhao on the surface, but if you actually analyze it, you will find that this is an act that will drag down the development of Zhao State, and the impact on Zhao State is far more far-reaching than the defeat of a war.
At the same time, judging from the development environment of Zhao at that time, Zhao really did not have any extra resources to provide to the battlefield, and the defeat of the war was inevitably required by Zhao Guo, so it is completely untenable to simply attribute the defeat of the war to Zhao Kuo. As a commander, Zhao Kuo lacks experience and talks on paper, and may be mainly responsible for the defeat of the war, but it is simply a strange injustice to let Zhao Kuo take the blame for the entire Battle of Changping; When the Qin State broke the unspoken rule of not killing and surrendering, Zhao Kuo also became a victim of the game between Qin and Zhao.
However, behind the defeat of a war is the lack of comprehensive strength of the entire country, which is related to the country's economic development, military development, administrative development, and so on. In fact, having said that, if Zhao really has the same comprehensive national strength development as Qin, it can continue to drag on the battlefield with Qin, so the war is actually a comprehensive national strength and the country's overall development system.
When analyzing the victory or defeat of a war, we also need to be objective and rational, and we cannot just look at the impact of a policy decision on the war. In fact, even if Zhao did not change its generals, Lian Po would not be able to achieve the final victory, which was determined by the comprehensive national strength of the two countries, and there was no room for improvement.