Li Xin’s invasion of Chu in history

First thing’s first, spoiler alert for those who have no idea what the relation between Li Xin and Chu is in actual history. If you wish not to be spoiled, I would strongly suggest you to not read this post and turn back now.

Also, long wall of text ahead since I am not really good at inserting random pictures in my posts…
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OK, so now that we are done with the spoilers alert, I shall start with the reason why I have decided to make this post in the first place. As we all might have know, Li Xin infamous battle in history is his loss in Chu which portrayed him to be a rash and incompetent general of his time, as opposed to Wang Jian who is arguably the most important general when it comes to Qin’s conquest of the 6 states in the unification war. I will not go into too much detail about why Li Xin is actually not as bad as we thought as this was discussed in the Kingdom-pedia post on Ri Shin/Li Xin here and in the detailed academic journal article here which I have translated. In this post, I will untangle the facts that weaved into the what constituted to Li Xin’s defeat and how might Kingdom bring about this defeat.

In my Kingdom-pedia post on Ri Shin/Li Xin which I wrote a few years ago before I read up more on history, the sources were mainly from baidu and wikipedia. They were not entirely wrong but had facts from various sources, which the author of those articles might have read up from different places and pieced together forming those baidu/wikipedia articles. In Kingdom however, most of Hara sensei’s history records for the Era of the Warring States are mainly from Shiji and probably some from Zhan Guo Ce. These are the most well-known history documentation of that period available today. Hara is also known to interpret the text in his own way for the purpose of drawing the manga.

Let’s get back to the topic of this post about Li Xin’s defeat in Chu.:

In Shiji: Annals of Qin Shi Huang, it was recorded that:
二十一年…昌平君徙於郢。
Translation: 21st year…Lord Changping moved to (Yan)Ying.
In the 21st year of Ying Zheng’s rule, corresponding to 226BC, Lord Changping moved to Ying. From the word selection of “徙”, it can be inferred that he was “migrated” there rather than move there for official business. From this, there is a strong case that Lord Changping offended the king in some way and was sent to the border as punishment, much like how Li Mu(Riboku) was punished by his king after the failure of the coalition invasion in the manga. It could also be a voluntary “migration” in the sense that he left his job in Qin court and moved there himself.

It was stated in Shiji: Biographies of Bai Qi and Wang Jian that:
李信攻平与，蒙恬攻寝，大破荆军。信又攻鄢郢，破之，於是引兵而西，与蒙恬会城父。荆人因随之，三日三夜不顿舍，大破李信军，入两壁，杀七都尉，秦军走.
Translation: Li Xin attacked Pingyu, Meng Tian attacked Qing, both victorious against the Chu army. Xin then attacked Yanying, capturing it. He then moved his army west to meet Meng Tian at Chengfu. The Chu army pursued for 3 days and 3 nights without sleep, defeating Li Xin’s army, breaching 2 walls, killing 7 lieutenants, causing the Qin army to retreat.
Question: Why did Li Xin attack Yanying and moved his army west when the Chu capital, as well as the rest of the Chu territories are to the east? Yanying should be under Qin’s control and since they are winning, they should be pushing east towards the Chu capital rather than west. This happened in 226BC, 21st year of Ying Zheng’s rule as well.<– No evidence to confirm this

While not stated explicitly, we can link up the two history texts above and deduce that Lord Changping, who moved to Yanying in the same year, had rebelled during Li Xin’s invasion of Chu, forcing Li Xin to attack Yanying. Even though Li Xin was successful in taking down Yanying, he had to retreat west to meet up with Meng Tian as the main Chu army took the chance to pursue the Qin army westwards and defeating them.

In Shiji: Annals of Qin Shi Huang:
二十三年，秦王复召王翦，强起之，使将击荆。取陈以南至平舆，虏荆王。秦王游至郢陈。荆将项燕立昌平君为荆王，反秦于淮南。
Translation: 23rd year, the king of Qin resummoned Wang Jian for the invasion of Chu. Qin captured all castles south of (Ying)Chen up to Pingyu and capturing the king of Chu. The king of Qin toured Yingchen. Xiangyan made Lord Changping the new king of Chu, rebelling against Qin in Huainan.
The above text shows the second invasion of Chu led by Wang Jian. Again, Qin had to attack Yingchen(another name for Yanying) as well as recapture Pingyu, the castle that Li Xin had previously captured. It is here that we see Lord Changping “officially” betray Qin and became the new Chu king.

Since Shouheikun’s rebellion wasn’t explicitly recorded in history, though easily inferred, Hara might take this opportunity to interpret it differently for the Kingdom universe. From the one-shot that he drew before the serializing of Kingdom, Meng Wu and Chu Zi, we see that SHK decided to leave Qin and become a commoner somewhere after failing to come up with a plan to invade Chu. This “somewhere” could probably be Ying. It was until after Qin captured the king of Chu that the remnants of the Chu soldiers seek him out to be the new Chu king due to his royal bloodline, which is in line with what happened in the 23rd year of Ying Zheng’s rule as seen in the paragraph above. If this ends up being his final interpretation of what happened to SHK in Kingdom, i.e. SHK did not rebel, Hara will have to cook up something for Shin’s strange movement of soldiers westwards and his eventual loss in Chu. Considering Hara had twisted the Tonryu arc in such a brilliant way without altering history, and decided not to kill off Heki, a character he created for the sole purpose of dying in the Tonryu arc, by interpreting the text in another way, I am excited to see how he will interpret Shin’s Chu invasion, probably one of the most important arc in Kingdom’s future.