Even if the men worked hard to cultivate, they could not produce enough food for military service, and the women who worked day and night to weave could not meet the needs of the military tabernacle. It is not uncommon for people to be tired, orphans, widows, the elderly, the sick and the sick unable to live, and people to die on both sides of the road. It was not until after Meng Tian's death that the laborers on the border south of the Hetao were unstable due to Chen Sheng's uprising and the Kwantung Rebellion, and soon dispersed, forcing the Qin Empire to abandon the land south of the Hetao.

The extant historical sources mention the history of Qin's southern expedition to Baiyue, which can be said to be quite brief. Regarding the process of the Qin army's southern expedition to Baiyue, the military deployment, the operational environment and the military difficulties faced by the Qin army, the record of the "Historical Records" can even be described as "one scale and half a claw", but it can be affirmed that the time of the southern expedition to Baiyue was actually much earlier than the northern expedition to the Xiongnu.

According to Zhao Tuo, the king of Nanyue in the first year of Emperor Wen of Han (179 BC), he had been living in the Lingnan region for 49 years. Since the "Historical Records" records that Zhao Tuo was born in Zhending and was not a native of Lingnan, it can be used as a reference to the time he lived in Lingnan to deduce when Qin Shi Huang began his southern expedition to Baiyue.

Since the first year of Emperor Wen has been pushed up to 49 years, it is the twentieth year of the reign of King Qin (227 BC), which is the year after the destruction of Zhao. Therefore, it is certain that Qin Shi Huang began to carry out military operations to conquer the south of the Five Mountains at the same time as the destruction of the Six Kingdoms, and it lasted for more than ten years.

Since ancient times, Lingnan has been a "miasma land", also known as "Baiyue", which means that there are many tribes living in the area.

Jia Yi, a writer in the early Han Dynasty, was demoted to the title of Prince Taifu of Changsha. I also heard that the climate in Changsha was humid and rainy, and I thought I would die early. The Han people are afraid of Changsha, and Lingnan, which is further south than Changsha, has a harsh environment that can be imagined.

Even the Fubo general Ma Yuan, who galloped on the battlefield for half his life and never said bitterness, since he was ordered to crusade against the Zheng sisters who launched a rebellion in the Jiaozhi area, after quelling the rebellion, he also said that he regretted not listening to his younger brother Shaoyou's words and becoming a commoner, but joined the army to pacify the Vietnamese.

At that time, the Han Dynasty had ruled the Lingnan region for more than 100 years, and the land was half reclaimed. The roads are rough. The four levels of political power at the county, county, township, and li levels have been established, and many Yue people have been sinicized, and their natural environment and human environment have changed dramatically.

When Ma Yuan mentioned the battle of the conquest of Vietnam, he still had lingering palpitations. I'm afraid that I will die in a foreign land. It can be imagined that it was during the Qin Dynasty. The natural and cultural environment of the Lingnan area is ten times worse than that of the Ma Yuan era 200 years later, and the existing historical materials all refer to it. The main purpose of Qin Shi Huang's military campaign against Lingnan, known as the "land of miasma", was to take a fancy to the local production of rhino horn, ivory, jadeite and pearls, as well as to promote its prestige abroad.

In about 227 B.C. (the twentieth year of the reign of King Qin), Qin Shi Huang ordered Wei Tu Sui to take Nanjun as a logistics center, and levy the so-called "building boats" such as "officials", "new Qianshou", "armor soldiers" and various military supplies in the local area, along the Xiangjiang waterway as the main supply line, and penetrate into the land of Baiyue. The southern expedition of the Qin army was like a bamboo, and the Yue people fled into the deep mountains and dense forests one after another to escape the rule of the Qin people.

Before Qin's conquest of Baiyue, because the tribes in the Baiyue area had been full of contradictions, and even most of them attacked each other, it was difficult to twist into a rope to resist the offensive of the Qin army, but the problem was that there were many tribes in the Baiyue area, although they fought separately, but the Yue people's measures of escaping into the deep mountains and jungles made it difficult for the Qin army to completely eliminate its vitality.

In the middle of the war, the Qin army killed the leader of the largest tribe in the region, the leader of the Western Ou Kingdom, but the Yue did not give in, but instead elected Ji Jun as the new leader, who defeated the Qin in a night attack and killed Tu Sui, the supreme commander of the Qin army.

Qin annihilated the Six Kingdoms and won a hundred battles, but the campaign in the Baiyue region actually caused the Qin army to "shed hundreds of thousands of corpses" ("Huainan Zi Human Training"), and even the commander was killed.

Qin Shi Huang was furious, in order to quickly end the war, he only ordered an increase in troops against Baiyue, and the death of Chu State released the Qin army's troops, giving Qin Shi Huang the confidence to increase his troops, which was "500,000 soldiers", divided into five armies: one army to fortify the ridge of Rongcheng (now Jingxian County, Hunan), one army to guard the fortress of Jiuzhi (now Ningyuannan, Hunan), one army to the capital of Panyu (now Guangzhou, Guangdong), one army to guard Nanye (now Kangjing, Jiangxi), and one army to balance the water of Yugan (now Yuganjing, Jiangxi). Five ways to advance together, trying to capture the entire territory of Baiyue in one fell swoop.

However, the increase in troops, coupled with the resistance of the Yue people, who took advantage of their familiarity with the terrain and constantly attacked the Qin army's barely maintained supply lines, caused the Qin army to almost collapse, so Qin Shi Huang ordered Jian Lu (i.e., Shi Lu) to be in charge of transporting food and wages.

In order to support the material consumption of the long-term war, Shi Lu decided to send soldiers to dig a canal connecting the Xiang River and the Li River, which was later called the Ling Canal, so that the soldiers and grain and grass in the Central Plains and the areas north of Wuling could enter the Baiyue area by water.

Since the excavation of the Ling Canal was a huge project, it would have taken at least three to five years to complete it according to the technical conditions at that time, so the war came to a stalemate.

The completion of the "Ling Canal" only provided better logistical support for the war, but could not guarantee victory after the war. After the death of the commander of the Qin expedition to South Vietnam, Wei Tu Sui, who succeeded him as the commander-in-chief, was at first unable to deal with the jungle warfare of the Yue people, and finally came up with the strategy of army reclamation and protracted warfare and assimilation of immigrants by "using the people to resettle the people, and mixing with the Vietnamese".

Reclamation and resettlement tactics are the most effective methods to control the Baiyue region, but they are slow to produce results, and it will take at least five or six years to achieve initial results. Since Qin Shi Huang had already wiped out the Six Kingdoms at that time, he had sufficient conditions to relocate the "Xinqianshou" (the so-called "people of Zhongxian") of the Six Kingdoms of the Kwantung region to the Baiyue region to "migrate to the border".

Qin Shi Huang and the officials of the Qin State did not regard these "new Qiantou" as human beings at all, and left them in the Baiyue region to live with the "Yue people", which said that Qin Shi Huang had two benefits: first, it eliminated the "chaotic people" or "lazy people" of the Six Kingdoms, and second, stabilized the Baiyue region.

In 214 B.C. (the 33rd year of the reign of Qin Shi Huang), after the edict levied the deceased, sons-in-law and Jia people to the Baiyue region, Qin Shi Huang thought that Lingnan was "rough", so he set up three counties in the local area: Guilin, Nanhai and Xiangjun. The following year, the First Emperor ordered the prison officials who had enforced the law unfairly to guard the Baiyue region.

From the 20th year of the reign of King Qin to Tu Sui's attack on Baiyue, to the 33rd year of Qin Shi Huang's "rough determination" of Lingnan, the war in the Baiyue region was carried out for a total of 13 years.

Although the Baiyue region was roughly determined, so that the Lingnan region has since been included in the Chinese territory, but the Qin State has paid a very heavy price for this, the long-term conquest of Vietnam has led to the people are depressed, and the people are not happy, and the then Nanhai Lieutenant Ren Huan learned that the imperial court because of the war against Vietnam, the Central Plains has been extremely tired, so he stayed in Nanyue, said that the king will not return, and sent someone to write a letter, asking the court to collect 30,000 women without mothers to sew clothes for the soldiers. Qin Shi Huang only agreed to give him 15,000 men. So the hearts of the people were scattered and fell apart, and seven out of ten families plotted rebellion.

On the other hand, most of the leaders who immigrated to the "Shuyue" were born in the hometowns of the Six Kingdoms, and in order to escape the "Shuyue", they fled into the mountains and dense forests one after another, and became the fuse of the rebellions in the hometowns of the Six Kingdoms after the First Emperor.

In order to seek the elixir of immortality, Xu Fu was sent to lead thousands of boys and women to cross the East China Sea to seek immortals, which cost a huge amount of money. (The "Six Posts of Chu Yi" refers to the fact that Xu Fu and the boys and girls never returned after arriving at their destination (that is, present-day Japan), and the Qin family, an important Japanese minister, was their descendants.) However, referring to the "Historical Records" and "Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms", it can be seen that this statement did not appear before the Eastern Han Dynasty. As for Xu Fu, that is, Emperor Jimmu, in addition to the inconsistency of the age, there is no literature to examine. (To be continued......)