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| Battle of Changping | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Warring States Period | |||||||
 Battle of Changping between Qin and Zhao | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
| State of Zhao | State of Qin | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
|
Lian Po (replaced mid-battle) Zhao Kuo † |
Wang He (王齕) Bai Qi Teng | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 450,000 | 550,000 | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 450,000 (executed) | around 250,000 | ||||||
The Battle of Changping (長平之戰) was a military campaign that took place during the Warring States period in ancient China. It concluded in 260 BC with a decisive victory by the State of Qin over the State of Zhao, greatly weakening Zhao.
The main source for the events of this period is Records of the Grand Historian, written more than a century later.
Prelude
In 265 BC, Qin attacked the State of Han and captured Qinyang, which effectly cut off Han's Shangdang Commandery (in modern-day Changzhi, Shanxi province) from its heartland, making it an isolated northern exclave. Shangdang was a productive and strategically important region just west of Zhao's capital Handan, and its capture would allow Qin easy incursions north and west into Zhao territory. Within the following years, the Qin army further isolated Shangdang from Han by capturing the main roads and fortresses across the Taihang Mountains, and Shangdang was poised to fall.
The battle
Early skirmishes
The Qin army, led by Wang He, was however quick to invade Shangdang before the Zhao army mobilised, and Feng Ting had to evacuate the city.
After arriving at the front line, Lian Po set up three defensive lines pivoted south of Changping Pass (at the border between present-day Gaoping and Zhangzi County). In April 262 BC, the Zhao army first met the Qin army in field battle west of Gaoping Pass (at the border between present-day Gaoping and Qinshui County, Shanxi), and suffered several defeats during initial confrontations with the Qin vanguards. The Qin army quickly capitalized on the momentum of these successes and captured Gaoping Pass, and Lian Po's first defensive line collapsed. Having assessed the enemy's strength, Lian Po concluded the only way to counter the Qin offensive was to hold the second defensive line at the Dan River (丹水, the largest tributary of Qin River, which traverses the present-day Gaoping city). He started focusing on further reinforcing the Dan River positions using fortified ramparts built along the mountains, and hoped to exhaust the Qin army, as Changping was much farther away from Qin territory than Zhao and keeping the army supplied would be much more taxing to the Qin.
The Qin army did manage to breach the defense line once but did not have the strength or equipment to exploit it, and by July the two sides were forced into bitter stalemate across the Dan River, which lasted the next two years. Both sides surged their troops with more reinforcements, with the combatants numbering nearly a million in total.
Change of Zhao strategy
While Lian Po's strategy of wearing out the Qin army was more or less working, problem started to arise back home. The Qin was desperate to break the stalemate, so they sent spies into Zhao and Han to spread rumors that Lian Po was too senile and cowardly to fight. King Xiaocheng of Zhao was already dissatisfied with Po's strategy of dragging out the war for so long, which was also very logistically taxing for Zhao, so he had Po replaced by Zhao Kuo, the overconfident yet untested son of the famous late general Zhao She. Upon hearing that the Zhao king fell for the rumor, the Qin secretly replaced Wang He with the renowned general Bai Qi, who was known for being brutally efficient in annihilation battles.
According to legend, Zhao She had told his wife on his deathbed never to let his son Zhao Kuo command an army, because Kuo regarded wars as easy games and treated risk with hubris rather than caution, despite having never experienced any actual battles. When Zhao Kuo was appointed general, Lady Zhao and minister Lin Xiangru tried to persuade King Xiaocheng to rescind the appointment, but failed. However, Lady Zhao did manage to extract a promise from the king that the Zhao clan would not be punished if Zhao Kuo failed his mission and lost the war.
Zhao defeated
In July 260 BC, Zhao Kuo arrived at the front line and assumed command of the Zhao army, which had been reinforced to over 400,000 men. He discarded all the previous defensive strategies made by his predecessor, and instead decided to take his main force of his army north to cross the river and attacked the left flank of the Qin army line stationed along the west bank of the Dan River, hoping a decisive offense could break the Qin army.
Unknown to him, Bai Qi had anticipated this and responded with a maneuver that resembled the Battle of Cannae. Bai Qi had deliberately reduced the strength of his left flank forces stationed along the river, and had the mountain fortifications further west of the river reinforced instead. When Zhao Kuo attacked, the Qin left flank quickly lost their riverside positions and withdrew west toward the fortifications, drawing Zhao Kuo chasing after them. Then a Qin detachment of 25,000 men traversed north through the Taiyue Mountains to performed a wide left encirclement behind Zhao's third defensive line stapled around the Changping Pass, cutting off Zhao supply lines from the north. At the same time, another detachment of 5,000 light cavalry with bows and crossbows advanced on the right and crossed the Dan River to cut off communications between Zhao Kuo's camp and their main depot further south along the river, splitting the Zhao army into two. The two detachments eventually completed a trangular encirclement that trapped the Zhao forces around a small mountain range.
Zhao Kuo soon found his attack against the Qin left flank halted by the Qin mountain fortifications, unable to make any progress. He then realized that his rear were being ambushed by the Qin cavalry and provisions were running low, and had to pull back his attack and attempt . After unable to reach the friendly forces in the south, the Zhao army dug in on a hill and awaited relief. However, since 295 BC, Zhao foreign policy had been dominated by opportunism and had frequently shifted between hezong (合縱) (anti-Qin alliances) and lianheng (連橫) (pro-Qin alliances), depleting its diplomatic goodwills with other states. Therefore, as the battles in Changping unfolded, Zhao was unable to secure any reinforcement from either the State of Chu or the State of Qi. King Zhaoxiang of Qin used this opportunity to mobilize additional forces against Zhao from Henei (in modern-day Henan province), by bestowing one grade of noble rank on the population as merits and ordered a nationwide mobilization conscripting every able-bodied man over the age of 15, with the king himself personally overseeing the reserves to the Changping frontline in order to further bolster the encirclement.
With the enemy firmly trapped, Bai Qi started launching counterattacks to deny them any chance of escape and to further wear them out. Zhao Kuo's improvised hill fortification was besieged for 46 days. In September, having run out of food and water and with low morale, his desperate army made several unsuccessful attempts to break out. He was killed by Qin archers while leading his best troops in a final attempt to breach the encirclement. With their commander dead, the remaining Zhao army surrendered.
Aftermath
Bai Qi ordered the captured soldiers to be executed, presumably by being buried alive; but the local population was hostile to Qin rule, and he was afraid executing the captured soldiers would precipitate a revolt. He released 240 of the youngest soldiers to spread terror in Zhao, then the rest were buried alive as planned. Sima Qian claimed over 450,000 Zhao soldiers were killed during and after the battle. Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (685–762) later built a temple over a collection of some of the human remains, and bones continue to be discovered on the site.
Prior to the campaign, Zhao had been one of the most powerful of the Warring States. The campaign addressed the immediate Qin threat, as three years of war financially and domestically exhausted both states. However, Zhao never recovered from the defeat, which allowed Qin to gain military dominance over the other states. In 221 BC Qin would use this dominance to unify China.
In popular culture
The 2004 Chinese television series Changping of the War is based on the battle. The battle also features as background to the events taking place in the manga Kingdom with the events having a direct and indirect impact on the character development of several major characters on many sides, most notably Wan Ji of Zhao, who led an army of other survivors and families of those killed in bloody and gory revenge upon Qin citizens. Wang He, the other general, was divided into two different generals, Wang Qi, and Wang He, the former fought on Changping. Changping is also a major plot point in The Legend of Haolan-the catastrophe and chaos in Zhao State causes the main characters to flee to Qin.
Notes
- Sima Qian claimed over 450,000 Zhao soldiers were killed during and after the battle; all survivors were killed (buried alive) with the exceptions of 240 of the youngest soldiers who were released.
- http://218.193.49.104:8080/ziliao/白平论著/啄木斋文丛/训诂类/“坑”非活埋辩.pdf
- 长平古战场 Archived 2009-10-26 at the Wayback Machine
Sources
External links
- The Original Text in its Entirety (Chinese)
- A comparative reading on the texts in both modern and classical Chinese
- CHINAKNOWLEDGE Shiji ?? "Records of the Grand Scribe.
- English version
- 山西：長平之戰
35°47′53″N 112°55′26″E / 35.79806°N 112.92389°E / 35.79806; 112.92389
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