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The development of the entire situation in the first year of Zhangwu can only be described as unexpected. Whether it was the war in the south or the north, from the origin of the war to the final outcome, it far exceeded people's expectations.
The wars between the Four Kingdoms all began with Sun Ce's bizarre assassination and death. Although various signs have already shown that this matter was a secret plan of Liu Fan, it is always sad that Sun Ce, a talented man, did not die on the battlefield but was assassinated by an assassin.
Subsequently, the Wu people were in civil strife, and the two grandsons were fighting for power. Liu Fan led his troops to Anlu and peeked downstream. All knowledgeable people thought that the southern kingdom was about to be defeated. After all, one side has accumulated many years of savings, the country is prosperous and the people are attached to it, and there are many famous generals. The other side has a strong leader who suddenly died, the new leader lacks attack, the people are unsure, and the strong and weak forces are clear. Unless there is any accident, the three generations of the Sun family in Jiangdong will have a legacy. It will all be destroyed in this year.
It is reasonable for the Western Dynasty to take advantage of the turmoil in the Southern Kingdom and send a large army to the Eastern Dynasty. But what I never expected was that after the Battle of Pingcheng, Cao Cao faced off against Liu Bei again, and the war was still at a stalemate, without the one-sided situation Liu Bei had imagined.
This is not because Liu Bei is incompetent, but because Cao Cao has made up his mind not to fight in the field. When Liu Bei led his army to encircle Yecheng again and divided his troops to encircle Handan, Cao Cao only ordered Cao Ren to guard Handan and Shen Pei to guard Yecheng. Instead, he He led the main force to garrison at Kuiqiu and constantly used cavalry to harass the Westerners' supplies and logistics, making Liu Bei tireless of the trouble.
Xun You proposed a plan for this, saying that this is the enemy's territory. The Eastern Army comes and goes like the wind, but the Western Army is not familiar with the customs, so a strong pursuit will be fruitless. It is better to attack the city first and build canals between Zhangshui, Huanshui, Dangshui and Zhanshui to transport grain and grass. In this way, the Eastern rebel cavalry will have nothing to do with transportation and dare not fight to the death. They only need to capture the second city again. , Hebei will be flat.
Liu Bei readily accepted the proposal and ordered Fazheng, the commander-in-chief of the Northern Army, to attack Ye, and Guan Yu, the commander of the Central Army, to attack Handan. At the same time, he ordered Yuan Tan to return to Henan and mobilize 100,000 people to Hanoi to dig waterways between the cities and camps and repair ships. The people worked naked, worked hard at night, carried earth and dug stones, and finally built the canal in mid-June. As expected, Cao Cao's cavalry was helpless.
However, Shen Pei defended the city very well, and the Han army still encountered setbacks in Yecheng. Fa Zheng initially ordered the generals to build mountains of earth around them, and surrounded the city with ants from all sides. They also used rams and wooden donkeys to attack the city gates at the bottom of the city. The judge built a tower high and ordered the soldiers to hide in the tower and wait for the enemy with hook knives. When someone climbed up the tower, the soldiers in the tower chopped off their hands and feet with hook knives. In the past ten days, countless limbs were broken under the tower.
The chariots under the city once broke through the city gate, but behind the city gate, the judges had already tied up the fence. When the Han army wanted to take advantage of the situation and enter the city, rolling stones were thrown from the city towers, causing the Han soldiers to scream and have to withdraw from the city. outside. Shen Pei blocked the city gate with huge rocks and ordered the Euphorbia soldiers to guard the back, which made the Western Army sigh with excitement.
Fa Zheng then suggested to Liu Bei that although it was unfavorable to attack the city, the popular sentiment in Hebei was swaying at this time, which was a good opportunity to stir up rebellion in Youyan. As long as he could stir up trouble, Cao Cao would be supported by the left and right, and the governors of the eastern dynasties He must have thought that the situation was over, and when the time came, he would contact him privately and offer large sums of money to lure him back, and he would surely gain full success. Liu Bei also thought so, so he ordered Gongsun Zan's old subordinate Wen Ze to go to Yan County to contact Gongsun Zan's old friends Liu Weitai, the diviner, Li Yizi, the merchant, and Le Hedang, the merchant.
These three are all sworn brothers of Gongsun Zan, and their families are worth hundreds of millions. However, time passed and both Li Yizi and Le Hedang died of illness, leaving only Liu Weitai alive. But it was enough. As a divination master, Liu Weitai was quite well-known among the prominent families of Youyan. When the Western Army Canal was about to be completed, he raised troops in Jixian County. Eight ethnic groups in Yan County responded, and more than 10,000 people gathered at once, which was quite popular. Momentum.
Unfortunately, this did not achieve the desired effect. When he learned that Yan was in trouble, Cao Cao did not move his troops. Instead, he ordered Cao Zhen to lead the troops from Liaodong to the west for encirclement and suppression. Knowing that he was unable to defeat them, Liu Weitai led his troops to leave Jixian and enter Daijun via Wuruan Pass. Some of them missed their hometown and did not want to leave, so they were captured and beheaded by Cao Zhen who came.
The stalemate lasted until mid-July. The Western Army, which had an absolute advantage in strength, was still unable to open a breakthrough. The wounded in the army were numerous and they were longing for home. This made Liu Bei very uneasy. But no one expected that at this time, the news that Chen Chong had taken Hanzhong and penetrated deep into Brazil came, which actually reversed the situation.
After Liu Bei received Liu Xie's letter reporting his victory, he couldn't help but sigh to his surroundings: "The Prime Minister, with just one army from the Western Prefecture, was able to achieve such results. It is truly unprecedented and unparalleled! I'm afraid the people of Shu will be frightened by this!" He informed the three armies of the matter and ordered the soldiers: "Our three armies cannot win without a prime minister. If it is passed down to future generations, wouldn't it be a laughing stock?"
When the officers and soldiers of the three armies heard this, they all felt deeply ashamed, and then their morale was greatly boosted. The next day, Huang Zhong, the general against the invaders, picked out 500 men who dared to die from the army. They were all covered in armor and stomach, and they went straight to the tower under the rain of arrows and rolling stones. Huang Zhong wore a bright light armor, rushed to the front regardless of his safety, and actually killed Yecheng in one breath. The city wall finally opened a gap on the south side.
Zhao Yun, Chen Dao and others followed closely behind, and more than a thousand people fought in bloody battles all day and night. Finally, they captured the outskirts of Yecheng from Shenpei, who had no choice but to retreat to Zicheng. After the war, when Huang Zhong took off his armor, he found that the Mingguang armor was full of arrows like a hedgehog. The soldiers counted the arrow clusters carefully, and there were as many as 164 arrows. After Liu Bei heard about it, he asked Huang Zhong for it. After seeing this piece of armor and stomach, Huang Zhong couldn't help but encourage Huang Zhong: "The Han Dynasty was promoted to the top of the three armies. How can Guanying and Geng Yan compare?" He was immediately promoted to General Zuo, and his reward was second only to Guan and Zhang.
Since the outer walls of Yecheng were lost, the Zicheng was certainly not a problem. Around late August, the Eastern defenders ran out of bows and Shenpei was at the end of his rope. He hanged himself in the city that day. His nephew Shenrong opened the city and surrendered, bearing thorns. Waiting for Liu Bei's disposal. In the same month, Guan Yu led his troops to attack Handan and captured Cao Ren. When Cao Cao saw that he had lost two cities and two generals in his palace, he couldn't help but burst into tears and cried bitterly by the river. But the defeat was irreversible, so he had to lead the remaining troops to retreat to the Guantao and Qingyuan areas.
Seeing this situation, all the generals of the Han army asked Liu Bei to fight, hoping to take advantage of the victory to pursue the enemy and defeat the enemy in one fell swoop. However, Liu Bei thought for a long time and declined the suggestion. He said: "It has been a long time since we have been attacking the city for months. After the battle, the whole army was exhausted. Although Cao Cao lost many generals, he was waiting for work. In addition, the soldiers were in a desperate situation, and they may become mournful soldiers. If they failed to win, they were afraid that the hard-won achievements would be in vain. It is better to go first Rest."
When he discussed the war with his cronies in private, he added: "As the saying goes, you should take care of one and the other, but you can't have both. So when we formulated the strategy in Chang'an at the beginning of the year, although the war was going on at the same time on the Bashu and Hebei fronts, The reality is that the west route attacked and the east route broke through, but since the prime minister has made a breakthrough and is likely to take over Bashu in a battle, then I should not take risks anymore, but should fully support the prime minister!"
So Liu Bei left Guan Yu to lead the Chinese army to garrison in Yecheng, while he led the rest of his troops back to Luoyang. The war in Hebei temporarily came to an end when the Western Army captured Wei and Zhao counties.
The impact of Chen Chong's invasion of Shu was not only limited to the Western Dynasty, but more far-reaching was the outcome of the dispute between the two grandsons in the south of the Yangtze River.
After Liu Fan learned that Chen Chong had invaded Shu, he hurriedly led his army back. This freed Sun Quan from worries and was able to mobilize Lu Su, Lu Yi and other troops in the north of the Yangtze River to come south to participate in the war against Sun Shao. While Cao Cao was in confrontation with Liu Bei, he still worked hard to support Sun Quan and collected more than 4,000 war horses from Youyan, which were all sent to Jiangdong at this time. After Sun Quan assigned it to Lu Meng, the governor of Xuzhou, he moved across the south of the Yangtze River for a while, causing Sun Shao to be defeated repeatedly in field battles and could only defend himself around Luoxian County.
For Sun Shao's camp, losing Liu Fan's support is undoubtedly huge bad news. Liu Fan not only took care of Sun Shaoduo in terms of military supplies and supplies, but more importantly, the Jingzhou navy could serve as Sun Shao's backup, which made Sun Quan's navy dare not act rashly. As soon as Liu Fan withdrew, Sun Shao could not help but fall into a military disadvantage. What was even more terrible was that the waterway on the flank was completely open to Sun Quan, allowing Sun Quan's navy to move between them.
Deng Dang persuaded Sun Shao that it would be better to retreat south to Guiyang, wait for Sun Quan to pursue and extend the front, and then wait for an opportunity to counterattack. However, Sun Shao denounced it as nonsense. He told the generals: "I am the legitimate son of the Marquis of Wu, and the country should belong to me. But now my father's accident happened, Sun Quan pretended to usurp power, and the country and counties don't know what to do. Therefore, I have to reaffirm my righteousness to all the states. Once I return to Lingnan, my elders will regard me as an incompetent and cowardly person, and will succumb to the thieves. In the future, Sun Quan will trap me in Lingnan and attack me with several times the number of thieves. Could it be that Can you survive?" Deng Dang was speechless.
However, the war was no longer in doubt. As Deng Dang expected, Sun Quan ordered Zhou Yu to lead the navy south along the Xiang River, cross Sun Shao and take Linxiang directly, and conquered it in one day, thereby locking Sun Shao's troops in the narrow area between Linxiang and Luoxian. Then Zhou Yu took charge of the southern counties on Sun Quan’s behalf, claiming that once things were done, he would let bygones be bygones.
Sun Shao's army was a temporary move without careful planning. Officials in Jiaozhou and Jingnan were forced by the situation. When they heard the news from Zhou Yu, they all welcomed the envoy anyway. By August, except for Sun Shao's own army, all officials under the original Sun Ce shogunate had recognized Sun Quan as orthodox.
Under Sun Quan's heavy siege, Sun Shao's troops were in food shortage and morale was low. Soldiers fled every day, and Sun Shao was unable to support himself. Sun Quan knew that the time had come, so he sent Liu Ye to make peace with Sun Shao, saying that as long as Sun Shao gave up his claim, Sun Quan would let go of all the rebel soldiers, and Sun Shao would not be allowed to hold important positions, but he would still be supported by the state government, with an annual rank of thousands of stones.
The situation has reached this point, the morale of the people and the military are useless, and there is no way to escape. Sun Shao had to admit defeat. In early September, Sun Shao, dressed in white, came out of Sun Quan's camp in a single boat, and all the troops in Yangzhou cheered. With the successful resolution of the dispute between the two grandsons, it also means that Sun Quan, the former governor of Lujiang, has been unanimously recognized by Jiangdong and officially became the new leader of the Yangzhou shogunate.
At this point, the war in the first year of Zhangwu came to an end, and the continuous turmoil between the north and the south finally evolved into a situation where the Western Dynasty was dominated by one family.
