Wei Yan's personal martial prowess is now ranked among the top five in the Han Dynasty. And in such a small-scale chaos, the role that personal martial prowess can play is actually quite large.
Cao Tai watched helplessly as Wei Yan acted like a murderer, cutting down more than a dozen Wei soldiers who were protecting him. The closest one to him was less than twenty steps away.
Cao Tai panicked immediately.
After all, if Cao Tai was a brave man, he would not order his soldiers to move closer to him when the battle had just begun and the outcome was still unknown.
But precisely because Cao Tai cherished his life, he made the third and most fatal mistake.
Seeing that Wei Yan was about to kill him, Cao Tai quickly called the guards around him to protect himself and retreated to Guanxia in order to save his life.
Of course, if he had just left the pass to avoid Wei Yan's attack and continued to command the soldiers to fight, Cao Tai would not have lost Tongguan. But the first thing Cao Tai did after he left the pass was to order the soldiers around him to protect him and fight his way out Close it.
He chose to run away.
If this is done, who of the Wei troops left behind in Tongguan by Cao Tai can fight with peace of mind.
In this way, Wei Yan completely controlled Tongguan at the cost of only more than 200 casualties. Even most of the defensive equipment was not damaged and was collected by Wei Yan intact.
As for the remaining Wei troops, whether they were those who surrendered voluntarily or those who desperately escaped from Tongguan, Wei Yan did not pursue them, but allowed them to leave.
Wei Yan knew how bad the situation he would face next would be. If Cao Wei surrendered these troops, he would leave behind a time bomb. If the situation was unfavorable one day, these surrendered troops would choose to betray him, and he would have no time to do so. to deal with these bad things.
Not arresting all these Wei soldiers and executing them was a sign that Wei Yan had a bottom line in his heart.
As for whether letting these Wei troops leave will increase his enemies, Wei Yan is really not worried.
What he will face in the future may be a siege by tens of thousands of troops. It makes no difference whether there are a thousand more people or a thousand fewer people.
Therefore, after Wei Yan released these Wei troops, he immediately ordered the gate to be closed, and then began to collect all the tools for defending the city, seizing all the time to arrange the defense matters.
And Cao Tai. After Cao Tai escaped from Tongguan, he finally realized what he had done.
If he ran away like this, he would cut off Cao Zhen's escape route. If he went back like this, he would definitely not be able to save his head.
He is not Xia Houmao. He took Cao Pi's sister as his wife and has an amulet. Although his father is Cao Ren, his uncle is called Cao Hong.
In Cao Pi's case, the status of Cao Ren and Cao Hong cannot be compared with that of the brothers Xiahou Dun and Xiahou Yuan.
Although Cao Rui has succeeded to the throne and become the emperor of Wei, his attitude towards the clan generals is not as good as his father! ! !
Cao Tai felt that for his serious sin of losing Tongguan, he might not need to report it to Emperor Cao Rui. Once Cao Zhen knew about it, he would probably beheaded directly.
Therefore, Cao Tai immediately wrote a letter asking for help to Cao Zhen.
In the letter, Cao Tai did not tell Cao Zhen that Tongguan had been lost. Instead, he lied that Tongguan had only been attacked and that he was still holding on, but the number of enemy troops was too many, more than 10,000, so he hoped that Cao Zhen could give him Send some reinforcements.
After writing this letter, Cao Tai immediately began to send people to the nearby area to gather the Wei troops who had escaped from Tongguan, reorganized his army, and planned to wait until Cao Zhen's reinforcements arrived before he counterattacked Tongguan.
As long as he recaptures Tongguan, he will be able to make amends for his past mistakes. In the name of the Cao clan, he can ask the elders to intercede. I believe that Cao Zhen, who knows the truth afterwards, does not necessarily have to kill himself.
After all, you can’t write two characters of Cao in one stroke, everyone is from your own family.
Yes, at least in this regard, Cao Tai was more ambitious than Xia Houmao. Xia Houmao only wanted to escape after the defeat, but Cao Tai at least wanted to make up for his mistakes.
But I really can't understand where Cao Tai's confidence comes from.
When Wang Chang came to Cao Tai with 3,000 soldiers and horses, Cao Tai thought that Wang Chang was the reinforcement sent by Cao Zhen, and hurriedly asked Wang Chang to obey his order and attack Tongguan. When Wang Chang's eyes turned white, Rotten.
How many people are there in the enemy army and who leads it? After they occupy Tongguan, I don’t know anything about the arrangement of the defense equipment in Tongguan City. You ask me to lead 3,000 people to attack a male pass? !
This is not how you seek death.
Besides, you, Cao Tai, lost Tongguan, but you want me to help you get it back. How can anything in the world be so cheap?
Therefore, Wang Chang directly deprived Cao Tai of his command authority. He collected the last remaining thousand or so Wei troops from Cao Tai, and then wrote a letter to Cao Zhen, telling the general who was once again tricked by his own people all the most authentic information.
Tongguan has been lost. Return to the army quickly. If we continue to attack Tongguan, something big will happen.
As for Tongguan, Wang Chang had no intention of attacking on his own anyway.
Wang Chang was not Cao Tai. He foolishly attacked a great pass without knowing anything. He had long ago concluded by asking the escaped Wei soldiers guarding the pass and his own observation experience that the number of Shu thieves in Tong Pass was probably 3,000. There are many people around, and they have already mastered most of the ordnance and supplies originally used to guard the pass.
In addition to the uncertainty about who the general of this Shu bandit is, Wang Chang already has a rough idea of his opponent's situation.
I have a total of more than 4,000 people at my disposal. How about going to defeat a great pass guarded by 3,000 people? !
Therefore, Wang Chang set up camp directly outside Tongguan.
On the one hand, we cannot give the Shu thieves a chance to arrange their defenses calmly. They must know that they will face a flanking attack from the Wei Dynasty at any time, putting pressure on the Shu thieves in Tongguan.
On the other hand, Wang Chang was also waiting for Cao Zhen's reinforcements to arrive before launching an attack to retake Tongguan.
During this period of time, Wang Chang was not idle, and began to look for wood nearby to build siege equipment.
Facing such a powerful pass, if you want to defeat it without siege equipment, unless the Shu thieves guarding the city are on the same level as Cao Tai and take the initiative to open the gate, you can't even think about it.
Therefore, siege equipment is necessary.
But then, Wang Chang suddenly discovered that there were no mature trees within a radius of twenty miles to the west of Tongguan! ! !
As for the reason, there is no one else to blame but Wang Chang himself - when Wang Chang was still the guard of Tongguan, he personally ordered that all the trees within 20 miles west of Tongguan be cleared.
This is to prevent the enemy from attacking by using local materials and using mature trees to build siege equipment. This is common sense in military affairs.
Well, now, if Wang Chang wants to build siege equipment, he must go further west to find suitable wood. He has to waste a lot of time going back and forth.
Therefore, Wang Chang stayed at Tongguan City for three days. Until Dai Ling came with five thousand soldiers to help, he did not complete enough siege equipment.
And Dai Ling. Dai Ling was a little dumbfounded when he saw Wang Chang stationed outside Tongguan City.
The order I received was to reinforce Cao Tai, who was still defending Tongguan. As the first batch of reinforcements, you, Wang Chang, did not stay in Tongguan and went to camp in the wild. Why, you won’t sleep if you have a bed, you like to sleep in the wild, right? ? !
Then, when Dai Ling learned the actual situation, he was also furious.
But, there is no other way.
Wang Chang dared to directly control Cao Tai and removed Cao Tai's military power, which was already an extraordinary move. Even if Dai Ling was dissatisfied with Cao Tai, he could not do anything to him.
After all, his surname is Cao, which is the same as the Emperor of Wei.
Therefore, Wang Chang persuaded Dai Ling. Now it is meaningless to be angry again. Let's think about how to retake Tongguan.
Wang Chang had more than 4,000 people, and Dai Ling brought 5,000 people, adding up to less than 10,000 people.
The troops are sufficient, but the siege equipment is still somewhat insufficient. Therefore, Wang Chang's suggestion is to wait for a few more days, on the one hand, to send people to build enough siege equipment, and on the other hand, to wait for the general's reply. .
If the general returns the reinforcements in person, Wang Chang feels that it would be better not to waste their troops.
But Dai Ling disagreed with Wang Chang's idea.
Dai Ling said that when he came, the general did not know that Tongguan had been lost. As for the military report sent by Wang Chang, it was hard for us to say when the general would see it and whether he would order the entire army to withdraw after reading it. Staying here doing nothing is such a waste of time.
Don't forget, once Tongguan is cut off, the army's food and grass supplies will also be cut off. Every day we delay means we are consuming a day's food.
With our remaining reserves of food and grass, we cannot afford such delay and consumption.
Furthermore, according to the information provided by Wang Chang, the Shu thieves had just captured Tongguan a few days ago, which means that no one can be sure whether the Shu thieves will have a large number of reinforcements arriving. If not, it would be better to wait a few days and concentrate their forces. It doesn't matter, but if it does, it's troublesome.
Therefore, Dai Ling believed that he should take advantage of the opportunity that the Shu thieves had just captured Tongguan and were not yet stable, and immediately launched an attack on the Shu thieves at Tongguan to consume the strength of the Shu thieves in the city.
Even if it means paying a high price, you must do it.
After all, Tongguan, the Shu thieves are eager to waste it like this, but General Cao Zhen really can't afford to wait.
(End of chapter)
