How to understand a series of wars in the period of the Yellow Emperor

1. Battle of Zhuolu (Yanhuang Alliance and Chiyou)

According to legend, in ancient times, there were two tribes who fought in the Central Plains, and each of them was a beast with a face and a bronze head, with a ferocious face, holding a golden knife, a bronze axe and a strong bow and crossbow; On the other hand, holding a wooden stick, a stone axe and a stone knife, it looks a bit shabby. As soon as the two armies came into contact, they started hand-to-hand combat and shouted loudly. The former is poisonous and foggy, and the miasma is heavy; The latter beat the fog to kill, but just rushed out of the haze, but saw the yellow sand rolling in the sky, the wind was blowing, flying sand and stones. After the yellow dust, it was overcast and raining cats and dogs. At this critical juncture, the latter released all the tigers, leopards and bears carried by the army and rushed to the enemy line. Those with golden knives and bronze axes were scared out of their wits by this sudden beast, and some of them were bitten by the fangs of the beast, and their necks were beheaded; Some were opened by the teeth of wild animals, and blood flowed all over the ground; Those who survived by luck fled desperately. This is the battle between the Yellow Emperor and Zhuolu Chiyou in ancient legends.

The battle between the Yellow Emperor and Zhuolu Chiyou (now Zhuozhou, Hebei Province) was the earliest large-scale war in ancient Chinese legends. About 5 years ago, several tribal groups were formed in the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins. Among them, there are mainly Huaxia Group living in the middle reaches of the Yellow River and its nearby areas, Yi Group centered on Mount Tai, and Li Miao Group in the southern central part of Henan Province and Dongting and Poyang lakes. At that time, people's life was mainly nomadic hunting. However, due to the loose geology of the loess layer in Henan Plain, all ethnic groups who infiltrated into the Central Plains gradually entered the era of shallow farming, and their lives became richer and richer, so they gradually settled down and developed into clan society.

it's inevitable that there will be disputes between clans in order to seize grazing land, cultivated land and hunt for food. In order to solve and lead the struggle between all ethnic groups, the * * * Lord of the clan (the patriarch of arbitration) came into being. Yandi Shennong, Shaoshi and Chiyou are the masters of Xia, Yi and Li Miao respectively. Both Xia and Li groups are located in the middle of Henan Province, with Xia from north to south and Li from south to north. It is inevitable that they will have a war for pasture and cultivated land in the Central Plains.

The Xia nationality, whose leader is Emperor Yan, is not strong in internal unity, and tribes sometimes invade each other. The unity of Chiyou seems to be stronger. In view of the internal disputes of Xia clan, Chiyou led 81 brothers and clans to launch an offensive war against Emperor Yan, defeated Emperor Yan in Yugong (now the northern part of Shandong Province), and ruled some areas of Xia clan to stand on its own feet, known as Emperor Yan. When this threatened the life and death of the Xia nationality, Huangdi, a tribal leader of the Xia nationality ("Huangdi is the son of Shaodian" as recorded in Historical Records Volume 15), whose surname was Gongsun Xuanyuan, was a clan leader in the Xia nationality group in the early days, and resolutely rose up and called on all tribes of the Xia nationality to unite and resist the invasion of Li Chiyou.

Li Miao Group is based in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. At that time, copper and antimony had been produced in this area, and Cinnabar was used to smelt iron, so Chiyou could make weapons out of metal. The historical records of the Five Emperors show that there are 81 Chiyou brothers, who are full of animals and people, with bronze heads and iron forehead, eating sand to build five soldiers, fighting with swords and halberds and crossbows, and making the world famous. The Yellow Emperor still used stone tools as weapons. Legend has it that the Yellow Emperor ordered him to wield a bow, take yi as a target, and strip wood for soldiers. (The Yi copula says: "The Yellow Emperor Yao Shun ... used the string wood as an arc, used the chopping wood as an arrow, and took advantage of the solitary arrow to dominate the world." This shows that the emperor's tribe had not used metal weapons at that time. However, while using stone weapons, the Yellow Emperor was able to control cattle and horses and fight with them. Judging from the weapons used by the two clan groups, each has its own advantages. Li and Miao cooperate with metal weapons, so it is beneficial to melee; However, Xia people mainly rely on stone weapons and bows and swords, which is conducive to long-distance battles. However, in terms of actual combat ability, Xia nationality is far less than Li Miao nationality.

Before the war, the Yellow Emperor knew that Chiyou tribe used bronze weapons, which was powerful and difficult to resist, but it also had a big weakness, that is, it developed from the south and was not familiar with the weather and terrain in the north. In view of the weakness of Chiyou tribe, the Yellow Emperor decided to take the strategy of leading the enemy to retreat, that is, he did not make a decisive battle when he contacted Chiyou tribe at first, led it to a strange environment, made use of the favorable weather and geographical conditions, increased the difficulties of Chiyou's life and action to weaken its strength, and then seized the opportunity to annihilate it when it was passive and its combat effectiveness declined.

according to this idea, after the Huangdi tribe came into contact with Chiyou tribe (probably in the present central part of Henan Province), Huangdi retreated to the north voluntarily, and Chiyou tribe immediately followed suit. At that time, the forests in the North China Plain were closed to the wild, and it was impossible for both sides to study which way to advance and retreat. After Chiyou tribe entered Hebei Plain, the environment was unfamiliar, the climate was uncomfortable, the language was impassable, the enemy's situation was unknown, and food and drinking water were lacking, etc., so it became increasingly difficult to move, and the deeper the environment, the stranger the casualties could not be replenished, so the greater the spiritual threat. After arriving in the northern part of Hebei Province, the Chiyou tribe was extremely tired because of the long journey, completely passive, and their strategic will declined greatly. On the contrary, the Huangdi tribe is in a very active position because of its favorable weather and geographical location. Finally, the Yellow Emperor captured a special favorable weather in Zhuolu area, that is, when the wind was blowing and the Chiyou tribe was in a coma, he used the compass to indicate the direction and led the tribes with bears, scorpions, wolves and leopards as Tuteng to attack the Chiyou tribe, so he defeated it in one fell swoop, Chiyou was captured and killed, and at the same time all the people were scattered, and the war was over.

After the Zhuolu War, China entered a new historical period, especially for today's Han nationality, which is of epoch-making significance. Today, the Han nationality accounts for 94% of the national population and about 1/5 of the world population, which has something to do with the achievements of the ancestor emperor of China. It has something to do with the emperor, and it is very important that it is caused by this war. The Han nationality originally developed from the Chinese nationality, and the Chinese nationality gradually developed from the assimilation of other nationalities by the Xia nationality for thousands of years. Since the Zhuolu War, the Yellow Emperor has won the support of Xia tribes, and gained great prestige for a while. Other small tribes around him have also surrendered to the Yellow Emperor, honoring him as the Lord of * * *. Huangdi, on the other hand, took advantage of the victory and continued to conquer the four major events. "Historical Records" said: "There are those who are not satisfied in the world, and the Yellow Emperor will levy them, and those who are flat will go." At that time, the Yellow Emperor used to "climb Maruyama Mountain (now Shandong Province) and Daizong (Taishan Mountain) in the east, and climb the head of a chicken in the west (both in the west of Pingliang County, Gansu Province), and climb Xiongxiang in the south (Xiongshan is now Xionger Mountain in Yiyang County, Hunan Province; Xiangshan Mountain is in the southwest of Yueyang County, and it pursues meat and porridge in the north, which is in line with Busan (now the northwest of Zhuolu County, Hebei Province). It can be seen that the military power of the Yellow Emperor at that time was far beyond the original territory of Xia nationality and reached the scope of activities of Yi nationality and Li Miao nationality. However, in this era, all tribes are mainly nomadic, and sometimes migrate. It can't be said that a fixed national border has been established, but it only reflects the situation that the voice of the Yellow Emperor spread far and wide. As the influence of the Yellow Emperor on the surrounding tribes expanded, the influence of the Xia clan on other clans also increased. Over time, many clans around them either submitted to Xia nationality or were assimilated by Xia nationality. While the Xia nationality is developing and expanding day by day, its population is also increasing, which is an important source of the large population of Han nationality today.

After the Zhuolu War, Fiona Fang was awed by the majesty of the emperor for hundreds of miles, and all clans kept their place and did not dare to wage war easily, which made the Central Plains and its four sides tend to be stable. Therefore, the regions where the clans are active are relatively fixed. The relatively fixed activity area makes clan members gradually shift from hunting to farming. Making a living from farming, people gradually understand the significance of labor creation, and realize the benefits and happiness of labor creation, thus making the productivity gain unprecedented development.

Archaeology proves that social production made great progress in this period, and a number of new ploughing tools and harvesting tools appeared in agriculture. The variety of crops has increased. Millet and millet are the main crops in the Yellow River basin, and rice, wheat and sorghum have appeared. Rice is the main crop in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and peanuts, sesame and other crops have also been found. Livestock breeding has also developed, not only in number, but also in variety.

besides agriculture, handicrafts have also made new progress. The short history of pottery making has begun to use pottery wheels, which has rapidly improved productivity. The technology has reached a considerable level, and the eggshell pottery of Longshan culture in Shandong Province is still difficult to imitate. With the assimilation and integration of Xia nationality and Li Miao nationality, the metal smelting and casting technology in the south gradually spread to the Central Plains and the North, which made the metal smelting develop generally. Today, small tools, ornaments, copper slag, tongs and other smelting and casting remains of red copper or primitive bronze have been unearthed in many places, which shows that the legend that "the Yellow Emperor took the copper from the first mountain and cast the tripod under the Jingshan Mountain" (Book of Records of the Historian) is not groundless. Jade production has also entered a new era. Cutting, grinding, carving, engraving, engraving and polishing techniques have been adopted in the Yangtze River valley, and exquisite jade ritual vessels and ornaments have also been produced in batches. Later, the jade carving technology in the Yellow River valley also developed. In addition, textiles have appeared, and the people of Lebanon used to be covered with animal skins, but now they have clothes. These indicate that historical changes have taken place in social life.

The construction industry has risen from this. The common people of Li people generally built houses to avoid the wind and rain, and the Yellow Emperor and other landlords began to build palaces. "White Tiger Pass" contains: "The Yellow Emperor made a palace to avoid the cold and heat, and this palace was also the beginning." People's way of life has undergone a historic change from burrowing in the wilderness to building houses, which will inevitably lead to changes in people's family concepts, kinship, communication methods and living habits.

After the Zhuolu War, Huangdi also led various creative activities, such as inventing boats and cars, writing, bows and arrows, etc. According to legend, the so-called "planting hundreds of grasses and trees at times, flowers, birds, animals, insects and moths in the spring", "building a building to shelter from the wind and rain", "hanging clothes to govern the world", and the so-called "serving cattle and riding horses to benefit the world" and "chopping wood as an arc" are all records of the improvement of the cultural life of the Yellow Emperor at that time. It can be seen that although the Chinese nation has been distributed in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River since the beginning of the Neolithic Age, it began to engage in various inventions and creations after settling in the Central Plains, pushing human barbaric life into civilized life.

The Zhuolu War had the deepest influence on the Chinese War in the military aspect. As the Zhuolu War was a large-scale war between tribes, the final result was that the weakness of the Yellow Emperor defeated the advantage of Chiyou, and then the Yellow Emperor took advantage of the situation to recover the Central Plains, which made the Xia tribes unite. Since then, other clans and tribes have been further conquered, and Li, Yi, etc. have formed an alliance with Xia, which has a great relationship with the Yellow Emperor's military talent and its performance in the war, and its influence is far-reaching. Although the later leaders could not learn the Yellow Emperor's military strategy from theory, they indirectly learned the Yellow Emperor's art of war from what they heard and passed down from generation to generation, which laid an important foundation for the military development of China. From the battle of Zhuolu, we can see that the Yellow Emperor's military strategy and use of troops have reached a fairly high level. First of all, he can correctly use the weather and terrain, so that he has mastered a large part of the war initiative. Later, after expounding the principles of fighting among the valley, the river, the enemy and the land, Sun Tzu said, "Where these four armies benefit, the Yellow Emperor is superior to the four emperors" (Records of the Five Emperors in Historical Records), so it can be seen that this tactic of fighting by the Yellow Emperor has been inherited by later generations and has been promoted to theory and handed down. Secondly, the Yellow Emperor's strategy of luring the enemy into depth and destroying each other was very clever. The Yellow Emperor knew that the fighting capacity of his tribe was not as good as that of the Li and Miao people in Chiyou, and the decisive battle might fail at the beginning of the war. Therefore, he took the method of luring the enemy from Henan to Zhuolu in Hebei. After the enemy was very tired, he chose a favorable weather and terrain to fight it and win it in one fell swoop. This strategy is actually a brilliant move for the weak army to defeat the strong enemy, which has been inherited by future generations and regarded as a classic for the weak army to win. Thirdly, the use of all kinds of wild animals to assist people in the war also created a precedent for animals to participate in the war later. In addition, this war also played a positive role in promoting the subsequent weapons manufacturing and technical development. Therefore, many historical books say that the battle of Zhuolu is a major event that the Chinese nation will rise and fall in the development period.

In short, the battle of Zhuolu is a major turning point for the Chinese people to break away from primitive barbarism and enter the civilized era. It not only makes their own people soak in the dawn of culture at first, but also surpasses the generations because of the high exhibition of Xia culture. It is like rising at dawn and shining on the sea, which makes all the clans in the neighboring countries hear the news and yearn for it, laying the foundation for the gradual assimilation of all ethnic groups on the land of China.

2. Battle of Hanquan (Huangdi and Yandi)

The smoke of the battle of Zhuolu has just dispersed, and a new war is brewing, but this new war broke out within the Yanhuang Alliance. The Yanhuang Alliance was established during the invasion of foreign enemies. The alliance formed by these two in-laws tribes was first led by Emperor Yan. However, in the war against foreign invasion, Emperor Yan lost his authority gradually, while the Yellow Emperor won the trust of all tribes with his wisdom and courage in the war, and gradually established unparalleled authority with the army he led defeating Chiyou.

The contradiction is irreconcilable, and the former allies have finally turned against each other. Yandi and Huangdi each led their own tribes to prepare for a fight. However, although the war has not started, the outcome is predictable. The Huangdi clan has famous soldiers such as Feng Hou, Da Hong and Li Mu, an elite division honed in the war, and the support of many tribes, while Yandi's army is made up of old, weak, women and children.

the two sides fought fiercely in Hanquan. Looking at Hanquan, there are different opinions in ancient times. There is a famous sentence of the Yellow River "Hanquan involving Jin and Luo" in Linghe Fu in Cao Wei period, and the so-called "Linghe" is the Yellow River. It shows that Hanquan should actually be a lake on the bank of the Yellow River, and its specific location should be in the Yellow River section of Mengjin today. This also shows that the Battle of Hanquan took place in Mengjin, Luoyang. Although there are other views on Hanquan's view of the earth, the materials cited by these views are not earlier than those in Linghe Fu.

The battle of Hanquan was not as fierce as the battle of Zhuolu, but it still went through three battles before Emperor Yan's army was finally defeated and captured. The Yellow Emperor released Yandi, and Yandi had no choice but to lead the whole family to surrender.

Through the Battle of Hanquan, the Yellow Emperor settled the disputes within the alliance, and all tribes elected the Yellow Emperor as the son of heaven to replace Yan Di Shennong. "The Book of Shang Jun Painting Strategy" said: "The Yellow Emperor is the meaning of the monarch and the minister, the gift of father and son, the matching of husband and wife, the expert knife and saw, and the external use of armor soldiers." This means that the Yellow Emperor established a new ruling order by "practicing knife and saw and using armor soldiers externally".

This new order is actually the appearance of a new social form, which is the Emirates Kingdom.

According to Guanzi, in order to rule this kingdom, which was formed by the combination of princes with ten thousand surnames, the Yellow Emperor appointed the "Six Phases" responsible for the management of Tianshi, Cangjie, handicrafts, agriculture, military forces and prisons. At the same time, the Yellow Emperor established a "central official system" with people like Feng Hou as the three public officials and Cang Xie as the official historian.

In order to rule this huge kingdom, which stretches from the sea in the east to the desert in the north, quicksand in the west and Jiangnan in the south, the Yellow Emperor began to patrol and hunt in all directions, and he built his capital in "Henan", namely Heluo area. For example, Wei Shu quoted Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty as saying "The Yellow Emperor is the capital of Henan".

In his later years, the Yellow Emperor cast a tripod in the Yang of Jingshan Mountain, collapsed in Jingshan Mountain and was buried in Qiaoshan Mountain. Historian Xu Shunzhan believes that the epoch-making society represented by the Yellow Emperor presents the dawn of civilization with great turmoil, great integration, great changes and great inventions, which complement each other with various civilization centers in the world and illuminate the east of the earth.