How great was the First Emperor?

In 219 BC, Qin Shihuang ordered Tu Sui to lead an army of 500,000 in five groups, with an average of 100,000 per group. One group attacked Dong Ou and Minyue, two groups attacked South Vietnam, and the remaining two groups attacked Xi Ou.

In the first stage, the Guangdong region was quickly conquered, and there was almost no major resistance. In Guangxi, the fighting lasted for six years, and it was only at the cost of "hundreds of thousands of corpses and blood" that Guangxi and Vietnam could be unified. At the beginning of the Qin army's southern expedition to Lingnan, they occupied the Guangdong area around Panyu and left troops to garrison it. In addition, 300,000 Qin troops went west to the Guangxi area to fight against the local Baiyue. Although the leader of the Xiou tribe "Yi Xu Song" was killed, the main general After slaughtering Sui, he died in an ambush.

Until 214 BC, Qin Shihuang appointed General Ren Xiao and Zhao Tuo to continue attacking the Xiou and Luoyue tribes in Guangxi. In the same year, the great cause of pacifying Lingnan was completed, and the entire Lingnan was divided. Entered the territory of the Qin Dynasty.

Nowadays, using the current rules of regional division, we can see that the South Vietnam that Qin Shihuang conquered was actually located in the current two provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi. Different from other places, the Chinese mainly name regions based on their orientation. Most regions with the same orientation will have a geographical feature in their names that connects them.

The link between Guangdong and Guangxi provinces is a river that crosses the two provinces: the Pearl River.

Compared with other rivers, the geographical label of the Pearl River is particularly prominent. Because, in ancient times, most people would name it after a section of the geographical plate they were in based on their own cognition. In the early days, the Pearl River was also like this. At that time, the Pearl River only referred to a short section of the river from Guangzhou to the Pearl River Estuary.

However, the current Pearl River is a general name that includes three rivers that originate from different directions and eventually converge to the Pearl River Estuary. The reason why I want to tell you this definition is mainly because I don’t want to cause misunderstandings in the following geographical understanding. The Pearl River we will talk about next mainly refers to the last section of the Xijiang River, which is the Pearl River in a broad sense.

As of now, the entire Pearl River flowing area involves five provinces, and among them, the leftmost tributary originates from Vietnam.

So, when we look at the numbers, there is always the possibility that the Pearl River system is a river with a particularly wide flowing area. Looking at the Pearl River area planned by Qin Shihuang at that time, although the tributaries of the Pearl River system circulate far away, its core area is still in the Guangdong and Guangxi regions. If it were not for the Nanling, a small north-south hill between the Guangdong and Guangxi regions and Hunan and Jiangxi, there would not be any intersection between Hunan, Jiangxi and the Pearl River.

However, it is precisely because of the unique structure of Nanling that there is a connection between the two major water systems of the Pearl River and the Yangtze River, and a very majestic canal project was created between the two regions. It was precisely because of this that the emergence of this water conservancy project stabilized Qin's status as a central state. Although this canal was originally built to facilitate war, it also accelerated the process of Chineseization in the Lingnan area and promoted the integration and development of our country's culture.

Next, let’s take a look at the basis for the administrative division between Guangdong and Guangxi, and what is the basis for the division between the two?

< p>From the perspective of the water system alone, it is difficult for us to see the basis for branching out between the Guangdong and Guangxi regions. Because there are many tributaries of the Pearl River, spread across the north and south, the basis between the two must be viewed from the perspective of mountains. The terrain in Guangdong and Guangxi is not as dense as that in Fujian. On the contrary, the entire Lingnan plate presents a basin-like terrain structure with high surroundings and low in the middle. Therefore, this part of the area is called the Guangxi Basin.

The mountains in the lower reaches of the Pearl River are mainly arranged in a fan shape based on the bell mouth of the Pearl River. Therefore, compared with the Guangxi area, the Guangdong area presents a more open state. When talking about basins, everyone’s impression of a basin should be one with neat edges and a flat hinterland. However, Guangxi is indeed an exception. The outer edge of the Guangxi Basin is mainly composed of some north-south mountains. Therefore, from the edge, it looks more like a basin with many gaps on the edge.

But it is precisely because of these gaps that the rivers that merge into the Pearl River enter the Guangxi Basin through these gaps, thus breaking out of the relatively independent valley plains. Therefore, to a certain extent, it is precisely because of these gaps on the edge of the basin that Guangxi was created.

Furthermore, purely from the perspective of the topography of the Guangdong and Guangxi regions, the Guangxi region is not necessarily more complicated than the Guangdong region. Although the mountains in Guangxi are larger than those in the western part of Guangxi, if the Guangxi area were not distributed in a basin shape, it would also form a coastal estuarine plain like Guangdong. In this case, the rivers in northern Guangxi can even merge into the east- and west-oriented Pearl River, thereby allowing the southern tributaries to gather together and flow out to sea.

Looking at the basin-shaped mountains that surround Guangxi, it may be that these mountains do not have much effect on Guangdong, but for Guangxi, which is relatively closed in the area, they have a very large and positive effect. Because they will not only make Guangxi a coastal province, but also limit the entire Guangxi Province to the Guangxi Basin, thereby making the territory of the Guangxi Basin even larger.

Although, when Qin Shihuang was preparing to go to South Vietnam, he did not consider these geopolitical issues like our descendants. However, for Qin Shihuang, who was eager to expand his political territory, the biggest problem at that time was how to reach South Vietnam more quickly. With the completion of the water conservancy project between the two regions, the Qin Empire officially became the central state.

At this time, the Qin Empire integrated the entire Yangtze River Basin into the Pearl River as the core area, thus allowing it to choose the route with the least loss and least consumption among the many combat routes for the expedition to South Vietnam.

It is precisely because of this that Qin was able to take South Vietnam into its possession in the shortest possible time.