There're many great battles in our 5000 years history of killing and massacring each other. Depends on how you define "great", everyone has their own "greatest" battle. While being a very unsystematic history buff, I'm more interested in court politics, conspiracies and assassinations, military history isn't my main focus when reading histories. But I think the greatest battle is the Battle of Changping between Zhao and Qin from 262BC to 260BC.
There're quite a few intrigues that make this battle particularly interesting for me. But let's go over some basics first:
Here's a overview of participating forces from wiki:
So here's how things started: so we all know there were 7 kingdoms at the end of Warring State Period: Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao, Wei, Qin. Qin had it in his mind that he want to united China (more like he's going to take everyone's land and a unified China was then just the natural conclusion of his ambition).
red - Qin forces; Blue - Zhao forces
He started by attacking Han, a relatively weaker and smaller country of the 7 and who's also conveniently located right next to Qin and between Qin and Zhao, one of Qin's more formidable adversaries. Qin had used Bai Qi to lead the campaign. Bai was probably one of the greatest generals in Chinese military history. During his military career, he had took over 70 cities, had never lost a single battle. But we'll talk about Bai Qi a bit more later.
(Bai Qi, portrait painted by artist in Ming dynasty, some 15 centuries after Bai Qi's time. So, in other words, not very accurate.)
Bai Qi first took the city of Ye Wang, cut off Shang Dang province from the rest of Han territory. Han, afraid of Qin's power, decided to give the province to Qin. But Shang Dang people really, I mean, seriously didn't like Qin, to the point they called for Zhao to help them out. At this point, Zhao needed to make a decision: 1) send troops to help Shang Dang, and officially start a war with Qin; 2)leave Shang Dang at Qin's mercy and Qin would be able to push their army closer to Zhao.
King of Zhao knew of Qin's ambition and realizing that the battle was inevitable, decided to send troops and help Shang Dang. Zhao also sent a famous general, Lian Po. Lian was an older general, very experienced, but also conservative.
The two forces met and fought a few battles. Zhao lost the battles and had to retreat and hold Gu Guan, utilizing the existing stone great wall (the original great wall) as defense. And Lian held this position for 2 years and 6 months while Qin tried to take the stronghold.
Straight forward attack wasn't getting Qin anywhere, so they started their diplomatic campaign. First they invited Zhao diplomats to Qin capital telling them Qin was interested in a treaty. Zhao diplomats were treated with respect and luxury, giving the other 5 states the impression that Qin and Zhao might not be all that serious about this war thing after all. And then they used their own agents in Zhao cities, and started spreading rumours about hao Lian was old and afraid of a real battle, and Qin was really afraid of this other younger general, Zhao Kuo.
Zhao Kuo was the son of a famous general Zhao She. And he was also a favorite of the young King of Zhao. The King wasn't happy with Lian's defensive strategy, Lian had lost all these battles and now was just hiding behind walls for all these years! Against the advises from his councilors, the King replaced Lian with Zhao, giving the young man control of 450K army. Zhao Kuo being the young and hothead general with very little real battle experiences, replaced a lot of mid level commanders, rearranged the deployments, and turned offense. He lead the main force of about 400K troops out of the stronghold and tried to take Shang Dang (the Han province we talked about at the beginning of this answer).
Qin army had set up a pocket trap for Zhao Kuo. Zhao's forces met with Qin forces and soon after Qin faked a retreat, Zhao's forces were lead into the pocket. Zhao didn't know that he was being tricked,kept on hitting Qin hard, and kept on pushing. After Zhao was 12 km away from his supply line, Qin sent a troop of 2500 cut off Zhao's main force from his supply line. So between Zhao's main force and the stronghold where all his supplies were at, there were 5000 Qin troops. The people in the stronghold wouldn't dare come out, Zhao's main force were preoccupied by enemies from every direction and couldnt break the siege.
Zhao soldiers eventually had to hold their position in a valley, and they were held for 46 days. Keep in mind that when Zhao Kuo first lead his army out, he had supply troops follow him since he never intended to stay in battle for long. I imagine a soldier probably brought at most 1 or 2 days of rations. So for 46 days, Zhao's forces were constantly being attacked from all directions, they didn't have any food for probably most part of the siege (some record said they didn't have food for all 46 days), and at the end there were very little hope there's any reinforcement coming.
Zhao itself couldn't spare any more forces, certainly not enough to face Qin forces. King of Zhao had reached out to other city states with little or no responds. After all, they thought Zhao and Qin were still in peace negotiations. In the end, Zhao had to squeeze out whatever troop they had left to save Zhao Kuo and his 400K army.
Qin weren't doing better on their end either. They had to hold such large forces at one place, cut them off from supply lines. Knowing Zhao reinforcement was coming, King of Qin actually made a trip to surrounding Qin territory, promising rewards for people who were willing to join the fight. So Zhao's "reinforcement" were held back by Qin militia. While Bai Qi continued the siege.
By the end of 46 days, Zhao had lost 200K to the fight, while the remaining 200K people resorted to killing each other for food. Zhao Kuo made one last attempt to breach the siege, only to end up as a corpse filled of arrows like a porcupine. Without a commanding officer, without supply, people were eating each other, without any hope for reinforcement, Zhao forces had no other choice but to surrender.
Now Bai Qi had a new problem. What was he going to do with 200K of hungry desperate enemy soldiers? This was a decision that made Bai Qi one of the most horrific historical figure in Chinese history. He had nothing to feed these people, he couldn't send them back to Zhao. If he did, he'd end up fighting these people all over again very soon. He made the horrible choice to kill them all. Even in ancient times, there were rules of engagement- warring countries don't kill diplomats, treat prisoners of war with certain respect. Killing surrendered, defenseless soldiers in such great number was a despicable crime. But Bai Qi felt that he really didn't have a lot of options. If he's going to do it, he had to do it fast before these people can recover.
So he secretly ordered all his troops to wear white hairband, and when the night came, to kill all those who didn't wear white hairband. Qin army killed all 200K people in a single night. One can only imagine what kind of hell it'd have been... According to some record, Bai Qi actually buried 200K people alive. But this is considered more of a hearsay, since there's no archaeological evidence to show that many people being buried alive, and the work would have been impossible to do in one night. It's more likely that Bai Qi's soldier just slaughtered them.
Bai Qi, being the sociopath he was, kept 240 younger Zhao soldiers, sent them back to Zhao to give then the horrifying news. When the news reached Zhao, every family had someone dead- parents, children, wives... everyone was mourning for a loved one's death.
This battle marks the decisive point of Qin's conquest of China. After Zhao was thoroughly defeated, there were no single state, strong enough to face Qin force alone. However, Bai Qi's action of killing 200K surrendered soldiers also made people realize that there would be no negotiation with Qin. It would either fight or death. This made Qin's war effort a lot harder. It took Qin another 30 something years to took Zhao in 228BC, and another 7 years to conquer other states and he established Qin Dynasty in 221 BC.
Now back to our question: why I picked this battle to be the "greatest battle" in Chinese history? For me the attraction comes from the complicity of the battle in and out of the battlefield. A lot of politics, diplomacy, strategy, and even espionage were involved and impact the outcome of the battle.
I like this battle because there's no obvious good guy. Qin was the rising power, the future, and Bai Qi was a cunning, genius general and a murderous sociopath with absolutely no regard to human life. King of Zhao was young and stupid, replaced the older more cautious general with a hotheaded young man who ended up getting himself and 400K people killed. But, was the old general Lian really could save Zhao with his defensive position? It seems he really had no plan other than to hide behind the wall. If I were the King, I'd be pretty impatient as well.
Four Hundred Thousand People dead in a little over a month! Can you imagine what a scene it would be? It's like the entire city of Oakland, dead. The entire civil war has 750K casualties, north and south combined. Chang Ping battle ended up with 550K (400K from Zhao, 150K from Qin). We end up killing 2/3 of civil war casualty in a bit over a month, 2000 years ago, without the "help" from firearms and cannons.
The fight, the siege, the blood, and no food, no support, the desperation, and eventually people start eating each other. I read the words but I just can't even wrap my mind around that. And what exactly drove Bai Qi to make that decision? Was he sitting in his tent, drinking, listening to the screaming outside, or did he go out and join the massacre? What would you do as a soldier if your commanding officer ordered you to kill defenseless POWs? and 200K of them? Record says that people could hear blood running like streams, the entire river dyed red and remaining red for months after... I thought about this things and I just don't understand how otherwise normal nice people would do such thing.
I think that's why I like history... we all play our part, and things just play out the worst way possible.
*We don't know exactly how old Zhao Kuo was. However, all the record of him describe a relatively young and inexperienced person, in contrast of Lian Po being an older and more steady person. Zhao Kuo eventually become the laughing stock later on because of his foolishness. Remember Zhao Kuo was the son of a famous general Zhao She? He had learned military strategy from his daddy and he LOVED to talk about it. In fact, the reason King of Zhao liked him so much because the guy could TALK. He could talk about strategy on a piece of map like no other. As story goes, even his father couldn't match his planning and execution (by execution I mean pushing little wooden soldiers on a map). The phrase "纸上谈兵" (talking strategy on paper) refers to him. Poor man... I have no doubt he was probably a very smart and brave man. But when facing Bai Qi, young naive talker was no match.
**Bai Qi favors breaking his forces and move them around. You can see from his strategy here:
He had to break his forces into several smaller teams, while Zhao its main force to hit Chang Ping. Bai Qi was quite famous for this "movement" style. He moved his troops around, hit his enemy hard from multiple directions. And he was not afraid of killing people. I think on top of being a sociopath, he had taken a very practical perspective to look at Warring States wars. After all, we don't call this period "Warring States Era" for nothing. When you end up fighting this state today, that state tomorrow, and this state again next month, the best strategy was to take them out once and for all. Sending surrendered army back to its states, you'll only fight them again like in 3 months or in 3 years. I think he definitely went overboard with his "kill them all" principle with 200K massacre, but it's not really that much of a surprise that he came to that decision.
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update: I rant a little bit about how this answer won't get any upvotes. Just want to thank everyone who promote my answer! Andy, Matthew, Thank you!
Also, special thanks to Alok Bishoyi for the editing, thank you for helping me dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s.
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