My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 364: The Gallant Old Qin
For a period of time after the court ceremony ended, the streets and alleys of Chang'an became unprecedentedly lively.

The scenes of Liu Rong's various humiliations and responses to the Xiongnu envoys at the court meeting that day have evolved into countless versions, and are sung in all the streets and alleys of Chang'an City.

It’s no wonder that the people of Chang’an are too idle;
It was really that Liu Rong started from scratch - killing the Xiongnu deputy envoy as the beginning of the formal negotiations between Han and Xiongnu. This was too shocking and made the Han people too excited.

The two countries are at war, don't kill the envoy!
This was a political unwritten rule that was generally accepted by the Chinese people as early as the Spring and Autumn Period hundreds of years ago.

The enemy and us, whether it is between two countries, or between two individuals or groups;
Even the abstract enemy and friendly camps such as the government and thieves have spontaneously abided by this unspoken rule over the past few hundred years.

In some cases, this can no longer be considered an unspoken rule, but rather a negotiation etiquette that is expressly prohibited and must be followed.

——You obey, that's what you should do!
——If you don’t comply, you are being immoral!

No matter how right you are before or how unreasonable the other party is, as long as you dare to kill, from that moment on, all the moral high ground you occupy will become the other party's.

During the long Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, many popular stories were derived based on this diplomatic interest.

Such as Yan Zi's mission to Chu and returning the jade intact to Zhao.

Over the past hundreds of years, almost every Han Chinese has formed this stereotype: envoys are something that cannot be killed.

Even if it is to quell a rebellion, suppress bandits or eradicate bandits, as long as the other party sends an envoy to negotiate, you have to release the person in accordance with the rules regardless of whether the negotiation is successful or not.

There is no other reason;

Regardless of whether the negotiations are successful or not, the envoy sent by the other party must bring back the negotiation results.

The treatment that bandits and rebels could enjoy was naturally also enjoyed by the Huns in the past few decades.

Not only did they enjoy the treatment of "no execution of envoys", but every time the Hun envoys came to Chang'an, they returned with full loads.

This time, whether the Hun delegation would leave empty-handed was no longer a question to be considered.

To be precise, what needs to be discussed now is how many people the Hun delegation of more than a hundred people can bring back and return to the grassland safely.

After all, during the court meeting that day, Emperor Liu Rong, just because of a disagreement, killed all the Hun envoys from the Han Wang tribe and the Donghu tribe - those Hun envoys with Han blood!

The Hun delegation, which originally consisted of eighty or ninety people, shrank to less than sixty people.

Just by saying the word "traitor", more than thirty heads fell to the ground!

Next time, if I come up with some new words, who knows how many more people will die...

"happy!"

"What a pleasure!"

Amid the hustle and bustle, a teahouse near the East Market was, contrary to its usual practice during this busy farming season of spring, filled with people.

Almost everyone's eyes were fixed on the imposing figure who was standing in the center of the teahouse, with one foot on the table.

If there is anything that is worthy of praise from farmers about this ranger, it is undoubtedly his well-informed information channels and state-of-the-art information processing capabilities.

Regardless of how true or false it is - even if you just listen to it as a story, it is a rare pleasure!

After all, in this era, apart from gossip and bragging, the only legal and cheap form of entertainment is probably to make babies.

"You guys don't know!"

"That day in Xuanshi, the emperor didn't even raise his head. He didn't even wait for the Xiongnu envoys to kneel and pay their respects before he took the Han people in the envoys away!"

"The Xiongnu envoys haven't even left the Xuanshi yet, and those traitors have already been taken to the East Market and executed!"

"——Gentlemen, think about it, have we ever been so harsh in dealing with the Xiongnu?"

"Not to mention those traitors who forgot their roots, ran to the grasslands full of barbarians, voluntarily let their hair down and wore left-side robes, and defected from the Han to the Hu!"

"It's so refreshing, it really is!"

"what?"

The big man asked in a rather bewitching voice, "Ah?", and a burst of laughter immediately broke out in the teahouse.

In fact, there was no need for the knight to deliberately mislead.

In recent days, discussions about the Xiongnu delegation in the streets and alleys of Chang'an have basically been of this tone.

——A group of people gathered together, and everyone spoke one after another, sharing the information they had learned;

When they got to the point of joking, everyone burst into laughter, and then continued talking and laughing.

But the situation in this teahouse today is obviously different.

Especially after the ranger's opening remarks, the following topics were heading more and more towards the direction of "pointing fingers at the world".

"Hey, have you heard?"

"Your Majesty doesn't want to marry again this time!"

"Not only will we not marry the Xiongnu, but we will also ask them to pay compensation to the Han people!"

After the laughter, a loud shout was heard from the corner of the teahouse, which immediately made the ranger see stars.

"Yes!"

"The emperor has said that the Xiongnu people should cede the land west of the Yellow River and the Xiongnu East Sea north of the Yan State to our Han family!"

"——Hey, gentlemen, think about it;"

"Don't even mention us Han people - just talk about us Qin people. When was the last time I heard that outsiders gave us land? "

"It must have been at least sixty or seventy years, the First Emperor..."

"Uh, what happened during the reign of Qin Wangzheng?"

As soon as these words were spoken, everyone in the teahouse blushed again, with expressions of indescribable pride.

——No matter what the history books say or how the official characterization is made, Qin will always be the past that the Qin people are most proud of.

Once upon a time, the old Qin people were trapped in a corner and their lives were in misery.

When the lower-class people in the Guandong countries were drinking muddy wine and the upper-class nobles were drinking delicious wine, the old Qin people, from the kings and dukes to the common people, could only pick up the rotten fruits that fell from the trees.

Just find a cave, build a pit with stones, and throw the rotten fruits into it.

After a year or so, you will get a pool of bitter wine that has naturally fermented from rotten fruits.

——The bitterness of Qin wine, from the beginning of brewing to the taste of the finished product, fully interprets the life of the old Qin people.

bitter!
Food, clothing, daily necessities, farming and war - all can be summed up in one word: "hardship".

When guests came from Guandong, the old Qin people would entertain them with their most famous bitter wine and a whole piece of boiled meat with fat.

Eight out of ten guests from Guandong who have been received by the old Qin people will say that the Qin people are arrogant and rude, and they treat their guests with inferior wine and dirty meat, which is extremely rude.

Even the princes in Guandong said that the old Qin people were "horse herders and slaves, no different from barbarians."

It was under such harsh conditions that the Qin people succeeded in achieving an unprecedented feat: sweeping across the world and unifying China with their lives and military exploits. As Qin gradually became stronger, what the Qin people were most proud of was the unparalleled military strength of the Qin warriors.

Everyone knows that Qin had a strategist named Zhang Yi, who used his eloquent tongue to travel around Guandong and made Qin win without losing a single soldier or a single clan, while the various countries in Guandong competed to cede land in exchange for peace.

In later generations, there was even a paper called "On the Six Kingdoms", which focused on reflecting on the demise of the six kingdoms. It was not because of Qin's strength, but precisely because the six kingdoms had their own ulterior motives and would rather cede land to Qin than truly unite to resist Qin, which made Qin increasingly powerful, to the point where even if the six kingdoms united, they were already powerless to reverse the situation.

However, few people have ever thought about this: Why did the six states in Guandong prefer to cede land and serve Qin rather than rise up in resistance?
Don't like it?
of course not.

The monarchs of the six kingdoms in Kanto could be wise or mediocre, but at least they were not stupid.

From the perspective of the king, every decision they make is actually the decision that best suits the interests of their country.

As for ceding land to Qin, it sounds like a coward, without any blood, and even reveals a full air of stupidity;
But in fact, for the countries at that time, ceding land to Qin was the most cost-effective and least loss-making option.

——Zhang Yi never relied on his eloquence to persuade the six states;

But it was the three-foot-high indestructible swords in the hands of hundreds of thousands of Qin warriors behind Zhang Yi!
Rather than saying that Zhang Yi won countless cities and lands for Qin with just empty words, it would be better to say that Zhang Yi held a bronze sword with the words "My great Qin has a million sharp soldiers" on the necks of the monarchs of various countries and forced them to cede land to save their lives.

Indeed, as the later paper "On the Six Kingdoms" said: Today we cede five cities, tomorrow we cede ten cities, and then we can sleep peacefully for one night; when we wake up and look around, the Qin army has arrived again.

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Cut today, cut tomorrow - cut every day, all it can do is buy a good night's sleep;

When I woke up at dawn, the Qin army came again, and it was time to cede land again...

It sounds frustrating and stupid;
But is it okay not to cut it?
If you cede it, you will lose a city, but at least you won’t have to fight that day and can sleep well that night.

But if you don’t cut it, then fighting will start immediately!

The final result is most likely that Qin will win and you will lose.
After investing massive amounts of manpower, material resources and financial resources, the final result might very well be that Qin took away ten cities!
Before the war started, you could have just taken three cities and saved the entire war and all the other losses...

It's like having two pills in front of you.

They're all poison.

The one on the left will kill you instantly if you eat it;

After taking the pill on the right, you will feel more and more uncomfortable and weaker, until you are so uncomfortable and weak that you will die.

Of course you don't want to take either of these two poisonous pills.

But what if, in addition to these two poisons in front of you, there is also a gun pointed at your head?

If both are harmful, choose the lesser one.

——When two options are both bad, you can only choose the one that is relatively less bad.

The Kanto states in the late Warring States period made the decision to "cede land and serve Qin" according to this behavioral logic.

What the old Qin people are proud of is never that the old Qin produced a good talker named Zhang Yi;
What really makes the old Qin people proud, even though Qin has been destroyed for decades and has been defined as an "illegal pseudo-regime" by the Han Dynasty, is the Qin warriors who supported Zhang Yi in his crazy and suicidal attempt in Guandong, but who not only survived but also gained cities and lands in return.

For the old Qin people, true strength means that I am so strong that I don’t even need to draw my sword - just reach out to the hilt and you will kneel down and beg for mercy.

For the old Qin people, a truly powerful country is one that is so powerful that it does not even need to mobilize its army - the mere existence of the army is enough to frighten the enemy, and they would rather accept humiliating territory than start a war.

The old Qin people were once so powerful;
The old Qin was once so powerful.

While cherishing the memory, the "old Qin people" in Guanzhong also concluded that they would probably not see the Han Dynasty become that powerful again in their lifetime.

This time, the people of Lao Qin were pleasantly surprised to find that similar clues seemed to be beginning to emerge.

——The enemy has started to cut the soil!

No one understands better than the Qin people what it means when the enemy cedes land.

Enemy, finished!
Once the cession of territory begins, what will follow is bound to be repeated threats of force on our side and the enemy's cession of territory in exchange for peace.

After this cycle repeats itself many times, there will come a day when the enemy will become so weak due to the continuous cession of territory that it will not be eligible to exchange for peace even if it cedes territory.

Because the enemy continues to cede land to us, we will become so powerful that we can easily take over the remaining land of the enemy regardless of whether the enemy cedes land to us or not.

On that day, the enemy's annexation of territory will come to an end.

To be precise, from that day on, the enemy no longer had a chance to gain ground.

Every inch of the enemy's land will be in our pocket, easily accessible...

"The land west of the river~"

"Suck it!"

"Is it a grassland that is even more fertile and vast than the land of Henan?"

Such words caused everyone in the teahouse to think about it.

The Qin people are no strangers to grasslands or animal husbandry.

——As early as the beginning of Zhou Dynasty, the ancestor who was first granted the land of Qin was entrusted by the Zhou emperor with the task of "raising horses" and was granted the 800-li Qinchuan.

At that time, there was no need to go to the north - Qinzhong itself was a grassland!
Outside of Xianyang City, there are vast green grasslands!
Even a hundred years ago, you could still see the faint green just a dozen or twenty miles outside of Xianyang City.

Although most of the Qin people still made their living by farming, there was a foreign ethnic group that depended on the Qin during the Qin Dynasty and made their living completely by nomadism.

——During the reigns of King Huiwen and King Zhaoxiang of Qin, they were called the Yiqu tribe;

By the time of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, they had become the "Yiqiu people".

Most of the Yiqiu people today have lost the concept of "Yiqiu" and have basically completely integrated into the melting pot of Chinese civilization.

The brave warriors among them are now known as: Knights of the North;

Among their nobles were the nine ministers of the current dynasty and the former Prince Yiqiu.

Of course, there are also quite a number of people who flowed into the former Lao Qin, now Guanzhong, and became thorough Han people.

At this time, there were several farmers in the teahouse who had Yiqiu blood flowing in their veins. They had heard about nomadic life from their ancestors, but they did not feel that they were "not Han people" at all.

For these people, the fact that the Huns started to take away their land - especially a piece of grassland like Hexi - meant only two things.

1: Giving up territory in exchange for peace is just the beginning.

After taking Hexi and Donghai, and then Munan, there would be no place left to take.

If there is nothing to cut, then there is nothing to talk about;
There is no room for negotiation, so we can only fight...

2. After owning the pasture, the Han people will also have their own animal husbandry.

As for animal husbandry, especially animal husbandry that belongs to the Han people themselves, it is naturally impossible to let foreigners take over.

Outsiders cannot be trusted, and local farmers are not good at it.

In this way, the Han Dynasty's future animal husbandry can rely on these Yiqu people who have nomadic blood and identify themselves with the identity of "Zhu Xia"...

(End of this chapter)