In 263 AD, Cao Wei destroyed the Shu Han Dynasty, breaking the situation in which the Three Kingdoms had been established for decades. After the fall of the Shu Han Dynasty, Sima Zhao ascended the throne as King of Jin. After Sima Zhao's death, Sima Yan deposed the Wei emperor Cao Yan and established himself as emperor, changing the name of the country to Jin, which was called the Western Jin Dynasty. And this means the official demise of Cao Wei. Therefore, it is very obvious that after the successive demise of Shu Han and Cao Wei, the world formed a situation of confrontation between the Western Jin Dynasty and Eastern Wu, and as far as the Three Kingdoms Era is concerned, it has gradually entered the final stage.
After Sima Yan established the Western Jin Dynasty, he could be said to have crushed Eastern Wu in terms of overall strength. From 269 AD (the fifth year of the Western Jin Dynasty), Sima Yan, the emperor of the Jin Dynasty, planned to destroy Eastern Wu and unify the world. To this end, Sima Yan, the Emperor of Jinwu, on the one hand, developed agriculture and stored grain; on the other hand, he selected generals, built buildings and ships, and trained water troops. One of the most important is the formation and training of the water army. The Western Jin Dynasty had an army of 500,000 people, but lacked a water army, and in the face of the rough Yangtze River, although "thousands of armed horses were useless". In order to change this situation, Sima Yan ordered Wang Mao to build warships in Yizhou (益州, in present-day Chengdu, Sichuan) and rule over tens of thousands of sailors, so that the weaknesses of the Jin army could be overcome and their strength greatly enhanced.
Correspondingly, as far as Eastern Wu is concerned, after the death of Lu Kang, the son of Lu Xun, there are no famous generals. As for Sun Hao, the last emperor of Eastern Wu, he was even more faint and cruel, which led to the continuous decline of Eastern Wu's overall strength. Therefore, in 279 AD, Sima Yan officially launched the Battle of Jin and Wu, and sent more than 200,000 troops to this end.
One
First, in November 279, Sima Yan adopted the plan drawn up by Yang Hu before his death, sending 200,000 troops to attack Eastern Wu in six ways:
1. The general of the Zhen Army, Sima Ling the Prince of Lang, marched from Xia Pi (present-day southern Pi County, Jiangsu) towards Tuzhong (present-day Chu River Valley, Anhui);
2. The Andong general Wang Hun marched from Yangzhou (in present-day Shouchun, Anhui) to Jiangxi (in the direction of present-day Anhui and County), and out of the Hengjiang Ferry;
3. The Jianwei general Wang Rong marched from Yu Prefecture (豫州, in present-day southeast of Xuchang, Henan) towards Wuchang (present-day Ezhou, Hubei);
4. The Pingnan general Hu Fen marched from Jingzhou towards Xiakou (present-day Wuchang, Wuhan);
5. The zhennan general Du Pre marched from Xiangyang to Jiangling (present-day Hubei), and then went south to the Yangtze River and south of Xiangshui, reaching Jiaoguang;
6. The general Wang Hao (王濬), the general of Guangwu and the overseer of Badong (郡治 in present-day Fengjie, Sichuan), descended from Bashu to the east of the Shun River and headed straight for Jianye.
In this regard, in the author's opinion, the soldiers attacked Eastern Wu in six ways, which naturally gave the latter great defensive pressure. Because the Western Jin Dynasty had the land of Bashu, in this battle, Wang Mao led his army from the land of Bashu and directly followed the Yangtze River to attack the middle and lower reaches of Eastern Wu. On this basis, Eastern Wu also needed to divide the troops into multiple ways to resist these large armies. Because the Eastern Wu army was relatively limited, as long as there was a slight negligence, it would be rapidly expanded by the Western Jin army.
In the Battle of Jin and Wu, Sima Yan, the Emperor of Jinwu, with the lieutenant Jia Chong as the governor and the champion general Yang Ji as his deputy, led the Chinese army to garrison Xiangyang and save the troops; Zhongshu ordered Zhang Hua to support Shangshu and prepare for grain transportation.
Two
In this regard, in the view of many historians, the overall operational intention of the Western Jin army was: to use the armies of Sima Ling and Wang Hun to directly push jianye and contain the main force of the Wu army so that it could not reinforce the upstream; with the three armies of Wang Rong, Hu Fen, and Du Qian, they seized the strategic points west of Xiakou in response to the 80,000 land and water troops led by Wang Mao down the river; and then Wang Mao, Sima Ling, and Wang Hun marched south to the east to seize Jianye.
To a certain extent, under more than ten years of planning and layout, the deployment of the Western Jin army was in line with the actual situation at that time, because Eastern Wu still had more than 200,000 troops, and the wu forces were scattered along the river and all over the jiangnan, and the Jin army had to break through each of them in separate ways in order to quickly destroy Wu.
In the first month of 280 (the first year of Taikang), more than 100,000 troops under the command of the Andong general Wang Hun marched towards Hengjiang (in present-day southeastern Anhui and County), sending Chen Shen and others to lead part of their troops to attack Xunyang (southwest of present-day Wuxue, Hubei), and sent the Wu general Li Chun to lead an army to Gaowangcheng (高望城, southwest of present-day Jiangpu, Jiangsu) to attack the Wu army Yu Gongbu. On the 25th day of the first month of 280 AD, Li Chun occupied Gaowangcheng, broke Yu Gong's army, advanced to the east of the Hengjiang River, and seized the favorable crossing of the river. At the same time, Chen Shenjun, who joined the army, captured Yangse Township and defeated the Wuya general Kong Zhong. Wu Liwu's general Chen Dai and Pingyu's general Zhu Ming led their troops to surrender to the Jin army. In this regard, in the author's opinion, like the Battle of Wei and Shu, in the Battle of Jin and Wu, there was also a situation of generals defecting on the Eastern Wu side.
Three
In February 280, when Emperor Sun Hao of Eastern Wu learned that Wang Hun of Jin had led a large army south, he ordered the chancellor Zhang Ti to lead Shen Ying, the protector of Danyang (present-day Nanjing, Jiangsu), sun zhen, and Zhuge Liang, a deputy commander, to lead 30,000 troops to cross the river to prevent the Jin army from crossing the river. It has to be said that in the Battle of Jin and Wu, Eastern Wu was obviously hindsighted. This shows that the Eastern Wu side lacked the necessary preparations, such as not sending a small number of people to inquire about the Western Jin army. Of course, this is also because the Western Jin army was divided into six roads, which made it difficult for Eastern Wu to obtain comprehensive information in advance.
In March 280, The Eastern Wu chancellor Zhang Ti (張悌) and Shen Ying and Zhuge Liang led an army of 30,000 people across the river to engage the Jin army, and were defeated at Banqiao. Zhuge Liang led the crowd to meet Zhang Ti, but Zhang Ti refused to flee for his life and was martyred. At the same time, Wang Hengjun progressed smoothly, breaking the Wu yanjiang garrison one by one, annihilating 50,000 or 60,000 Wu troops, and capturing Wu Governor Cai Ji. After Wang's army won the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River, he swung his army down the river and reached Niuzhu on March 14. When it is fifty miles southwest of Jianye. Therefore, it is very obvious that in the Battle of Jin and Wu, the various armies of the Western Jin Dynasty basically went smoothly, even better than expected.
When the large army approached the capital, Sun Hao sent the guerrilla general Zhang Xiang to lead a water army of 10,000 people to meet the attack, but the Wu army had become a bird of fright at this time, and Zhang Xiang's troops fell without a fight when they saw the Jin army's flag. Wang Mao's armor covered the Yangtze River, the flag reflected the sky, the momentum was very grand, and he continued to advance. Therefore, for Sun Hao, he could only give up resistance like Liu Chan, the lord of the Shu Han Dynasty.
Four
Finally, in March 280, Wang Hun, Wang Mao, Sima Ling, and other large armies had approached the north bank of the Yangtze River in Jianye, the Eastern Wu capital, and the Eastern Wu situ He Yuan and the Jianwei general Sun Yan surrendered the Seal Ofsign and surrendered to Wang Hun's army. For Sun Hao, the last emperor of Eastern Wu, he understood that he was now the general trend. Therefore, he adopted the strategy of Xue Ying of Guanglu Xun and Hu Chong of Zhongshu Ling, and sent emissaries to send letters to Wang Hun, Wang Mao, and Sima Ling respectively, requesting surrender, in an attempt to provoke the three to compete with each other for merit, causing internal strife in the Jin army. However, such a scheme clearly failed.
Soon after, Wang Mao led a crowd of 80,000 people on land and water, and the ark was hundreds of miles away, entering Jianye. Sun Hao, the lord of Wu, tied his hands and pulled the coffin and went to Wang Mao's military gate to surrender. At this point, the Jin army even conquered the four prefectures and forty-three counties of Eastern Wu, surrendered 230,000 Wu troops, and Eastern Wu declared its demise, which also meant the complete end of the Three Kingdoms period.
Looking back at this war, we will find that although the Jin forces were superior, the focus of the Jin army's attack was on Jiangling (Jingzhou) in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and the action on the Jianghuai battlefield was only to contain. This was crucial for the Jin army to win the war quickly. It should be known that in the Battle of Shuishui in former Qin's attack on the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Emperor Jian Jian sent several times more soldiers and horses than this war, but because the focus of the attack was on the Jianghuai battlefield rather than Jingzhou, the water army could not open the situation for a long time, and finally the army was defeated. In general, by 280 AD, the complete end of the Three Kingdoms era was already the trend of the times. At the time of the fall of the Shu Han Dynasty, Tan Zhou and others urged Liu Chan to surrender. Now, eastern Wu generals faced the Western Jin dynasty army, although there were figures like Zhang Ti who regarded death as a homecoming, but most of them still looked down. After all, the general trend of the world will be divided for a long time, and it will be divided for a long time.