Yang Hu (羊祜), also spelled Shuzi, was an outstanding strategist, politician, and writer of the Western Jin Dynasty. Yang Hu was born in the gate valve "Taishan Yang Clan" at that time, and from the generation of Yang Hu to the next nine generations, each generation had at least two thousand stones or more officials (that is, the county shou above, because the gun shou's Feng Lu was two thousand stones), which was a veritable family family.
Not only that, Yang Hu also has a great aunt Cai Wenji, who is known as China's first female poet, and his sister Yang Huiyu is married to Sima Yi's eldest son Sima Shi, so Yang Hu can be called a veritable foreign relative, it is reasonable to say that Yang Hu has both a powerful family power and the identity of a foreign relative, according to the historical process we are familiar with, it is estimated that it will go to the plot of foreign relatives interfering in politics, but Yang Hu is an "atypical" foreign relative.
During the Cao Wei regime, Yang Hu was known for his excellent ability to debate, and with his erudition and ability to write, he was repeatedly requisitioned by local states and counties, but Yang Hu was not interested in this and refused these conquests. On the eve of the gaopingling rebellion, the power struggle between the Cao Shuang clique and the Sima clique intensified, Cao Shuang tried to recruit Yang Hu to take office, at that time Cao Shuang was like a day in the sky, and really grasped the military and political power of the State of Wei, Sima Yi was forced to retire from his post, but Yang Hu saw that Sima Yi was only raising obscurity in Taoguang, and Cao Shuang was not Sima Yi's opponent, so he refused Cao Shuang's conquest.
After that, readers and friends also know that after the gaopingling rebellion, the Sima family seized the power of cao Wei's regime, while the Cao Shuang clique was uprooted by the Sima family, and many people who intersected with the Cao Shuang clique were "affected", including Even Yang Hu's father-in-law Xiahou Ba. Because of his in-law relationship with the Sima family, Yang Hu was not implicated by his father-in-law, and even after his father-in-law Xiahou Ba surrendered to Shu Han, he still treated his father-in-law's family with great courtesy, which was in stark contrast to the relatives who deliberately alienated or even severed contact with Xiahou Ba's family at that time.
Yang Hu then served the funeral of his deceased mother and eldest brother for more than ten years, during which time he did not ask about the government. It was not until the death of his brother-in-law Sima Shi that Sima Shi's younger brother Sima Zhao succeeded his brother as a general and then recruited Yang Hu. Yang Hu had no intention of agreeing this time, but Sima Zhao controlled the bus of the Cao Wei regime to worship Yang Hu as Zhongshu Lang, which finally pulled Yang Hu into the court.
During his time as an official, Yang Hu neither tended to be inflammatory, nor did he pretend to be high in his status, but he was still upright and humble, which made him very highly respected by the people of insight at that time. By the time Sima Yan officially replaced the Cao Wei regime, Yang Hu had already become the leader of the Central Army, responsible for controlling the Imperial Forest Army and the affairs of the imperial court and internal and external affairs, and was made a viscount, it can be said that Yang Hu already had a pivotal position in the Western Jin Dynasty at that time.
However, Yang Hu's greatest exploits would not be established in the court after all, and after the establishment of the Western Jin Dynasty, Sima Yan actively planned to attack Eastern Wu to achieve the unification of the whole country. Yang Hu was specially transferred by Sima Yan to Jingzhou as the governor of all armies, and even retained his original official position, and it is clear that Sima Yan wanted Yang Hu to go to Jingzhou to serve as a pawn in the battle against Wu. At that time, Jingzhou was the forefront of the confrontation between the Western Jin Dynasty and Eastern Wu, and putting Yang Hu in such a key position showed Sima Yan's trust in Yang Hu.
After arriving in Jingzhou, Yang Hu analyzed the situation in Jingzhou in an all-round way, and he realized that Jingzhou under the control of the Western Jin Dynasty was not stable, not only the lives of the people were disturbed, but even the soldiers stationed in Jingzhou could not provide a stable supply of military food. Yang Hu did not directly attack the military of Jingzhou, but decided to develop Jingzhou first. On the one hand, he educated the people by opening a large number of schools in Jingzhou, so that the people could be appeased, and at the same time, he changed his attitude towards the State of Wu and adopted a policy of huaijutsu, and all the Wu people who surrendered to the Western Jin Dynasty could decide for themselves, so as to win over the hearts of the People of the State of Wu.
One of the most important measures for Yang Hu to govern Jingzhou was to design the Wu state to remove the Wu garrison in Shicheng, because Shicheng was close to the Western Jin-controlled Xiangyang City, so it had been a major threat to the Western Jin Dynasty's defense before, so that the Western Jin-controlled Jingzhou was often attacked. After the shicheng garrison was abolished, the defensive pressure of the Western Jin Dynasty in Jingzhou was suddenly reduced, so Yang Hu was able to divide half of his troops to reclaim the land, and in the year of Yang Hu's arrival, more than 800 hectares of land were reclaimed, which ensured that the previous shortage of military food was also guaranteed, and then the granary savings in Jingzhou could even be used for ten years.
As Yang Hu's administration of Jingzhou progressed steadily, he was about to usher in his life's biggest rival and best friend, Lu Kang. In the second year of Yang Hu's arrival in Jingzhou, the State of Wu also made Lu Xun's son, the famous general Lu Kang of the State of Wu, the new Governor of Jingzhou (both Wu and Jin had a Jingzhou, and although the jurisdictions of the two did not coincide, they formed a situation of confrontation between the north and the south). After Lu Kang arrived in Jingzhou, he also found that the situation in Jingzhou on the side of the State of Wu was already very critical, so Lu Kang summarized seventeen suggestions to Sun Hao, the lord of Wu, and advised Sun Hao to strengthen defense.
The arrival of Lu Kang made Yang Hu feel full of danger, and on the one hand, he accelerated the military deployment of Jingzhou, and on the other hand, he suggested that Sima Yan train a water army in Yizhou in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River to prepare for the attack on Wu. At this time, the situation in Jingzhou was like the calm before the storm, both sides were actively preparing for war, but neither of them took the initiative to provoke war, but the Spark that lit the powder keg appeared unexpectedly.
In the eighth year of the Tai Dynasty (272), two years after Lu Kang arrived in Jingzhou, the Wu lord Sun Hao suddenly summoned the Xiling governor Bu Xian, who was living in Xiling, and Bu Xian, fearing that someone was threatening Sun Hao to threaten him, actually raised the city to surrender to the Western Jin Dynasty, and even let his two nephews go to Luoyang as hostages in exchange for the trust of the Western Jin Dynasty. This sudden change made Lu Kang quickly organize troops to attack Xiling, because Xiling was an important military barrier in the west of Eastern Wu, and once Xiling lost Jingzhou, it would be difficult to protect, and if it was not good, it would be destroyed by the Western Jin Dynasty.
Naturally, the Western Jin Dynasty would not easily give up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and the Jin Dynasty not only gave Bu Yan an official position, but also quickly sent Yang Hu and Xu Yin to attack Jiangling and Jianping, in order to attract troops from the east and west, and then Yang Zhao, the assassin of Jingzhou, led troops to support Xiling. However, the Western Jin Dynasty's plan was discovered by Lu Kang and sent troops to counterattack, coupled with the fortification of Jiangling City, Yang Zhao, who went to rescue Bu Yan, fought head-on with Lu Kang's army, and finally was defeated by Lu Kang because of the disparity in strength and logistics, so that Xiling City was attacked by Lu Kang, and Bu Yan was also exterminated.
Yang Hu was demoted because of his crushing defeat at the Battle of Xiling, and Yang Zhao was also demoted to a commoner. The Battle of Xiling made Yang Hu realize that wu could not be rushed. He decided to use a blunt knife to cut the flesh, on the one hand, through military means to encroach on Eastern Wu little by little, on the other hand, to continue to take gentle measures against Eastern Wu to break up the resistance of Eastern Wu, in this way to accumulate strength, in order to succeed in the right opportunity.
Yang Hu's tactics were very successful, and militarily encroached on him to seize strategic areas east of Jingzhou and build a city to attack the city. On the huairou side, he strictly adhered to the faith of the Wu people, whether they were fighting or surrendering, they used the gentleman's style to impress the Generals of the State of Wu, and even harvested the grain of the people of the State of Wu as military food, and specially left an equal amount of silk as compensation, and even the animals and beasts that were injured by the State of Wu and ran to the territory of the State of Jin and captured by the State of Jin were returned to him. These offensive measures made the Wu people full of respect for YangHu, and even honored Yanghu as "YangGong".
Lu Kang saw these means of Yang Hu and realized that if he fought with the Western Jin Dynasty for a long time, his side would inevitably be gradually at a disadvantage, and eventually be conquered by Yang Hu Yide. Therefore, during the confrontation between Lu Kang and Yang Hu, the border between the Western Jin Dynasty and Eastern Wu actually maintained a long-term peace, and Lu Yang and Lu Yang also formed a deep friendship, and Lu Kang even dared to directly eat the Chinese medicine specially formulated for him by Yang Qi without the slightest doubt.
This peaceful situation began to be broken with the death of Lu Kang. In the second year of Xianning (276), Sima Yan restored Yang Hu's previous official position and renamed Yang Hu the grand general of Zhengnan, and also gave Yang Hu the power to open the capital to recruit staff. Yang Hu realized that the time was basically ripe to destroy Wu, after seven years of training and preparation of Yang Hu, the strength of the Western Jin army had already surpassed that of the Wu army, and the biggest opponent, Lu Kang, had also died two years ago, and the rule of the Wu lord Sun Hao had intensified various contradictions in Eastern Wu, and the opportunity for Yang Hu to act had come.
Yang Hu presented Sima Yan with the famous "Please Cut Down Wu Shu", and the content of the song was approved by Sima Yan, but the people in the imperial court who opposed the Wu faction believed that the northwest was in undecided and should not be cut down at this time. Yang Hu's idea was opposed by most of the courtiers and ultimately failed to materialize. Two years later, Yang Hu fell ill and asked to enter the dynasty, and on the way back to the dynasty, he learned of the death of his sister, which made his illness more serious, and during the illness he met Sima Yan and once again explained to Sima Yan the idea of destroying Wu.
When Sima Yan finally decided to destroy Wu, Yang Hu was already seriously ill, and Sima Yan wanted Yang Hu to take the disease to complete the great cause of destroying Wu, but Yang Hu said that he was no longer able to do it, and recommended Du Pre to complete the great cause of destroying Wu in his place before dying. After Yang Hu's death, the whole country grieve, and Sima Yan personally mourned for him, and he wept bitterly. The people of Jingzhou also shed tears for it, and even the border guards of the State of Wu mourned for it. In the end, Yang Hu's last wish was fulfilled the year after his death, and when the Western Jin Dynasty was celebrating reunification, Sima Yan raised his wine glass and said with tears: "This is the merit of Yang Taifu!" ”