In 218, Guan Yu, encouraged by Liu Bei, decided to go north to capture Fancheng, Cao Cao's military stronghold. Just when Guan Yu flooded the Seventh Army and was about to win victory, Sun Quan turned his back on Sun Liu's alliance and sent Lü Meng to take advantage of the opportunity to sneak into Guan Yu's rear, which eventually led to Guan Yu's defeat of Maicheng and finally being brutally killed by Sun Quan. So the question is, when Guan Yu defeated Maicheng, Ma Chao's station was in Linfeng, which was only 20 miles (10 kilometers) away from Maicheng, why did Ma Chao turn a deaf ear to the news of Guan Yu's failure?
If we want to understand this problem, we must first understand the status of the two in Liu Bei's mind at that time: Guan Yu's status is naturally needless to say, he was Liu Bei's brother when he started from scratch, and it can be said that he was one of the core figures of Shu Han; On the other hand, Ma Chao was just a small person who surrendered to Liu Bei after the defeat of the army, and as a military general who surrendered not long ago, Ma Chao and Guan Yu himself did not have much friendship, and he also had his own military tasks to carry out in Linfeng, so it was a common sentiment for Guan Yu to see death and not save him.
Second, even if Ma Chao served as the governor of Linfeng, he might not have the actual military power to mobilize the defenders of Linfeng. Although Ma Chao's previous talents Liu Bei had also heard of, as a military general who had recently surrendered, Liu Bei still had doubts about Ma Chao, a foreigner, so even if Ma Chao's garrison was in Linfeng, Liu Bei did not give him enough military power to mobilize the defenders of Linfeng to rescue Guan Yu. After Guan Yu was killed, Liu Bei was very angry with Liu Feng and Meng Da, who could not be saved by seeing death, and even directly gave Liu Feng to commit suicide, if Ma Chao really had the behavior of seeing death and not saving, then he would definitely be demoted together.
Finally, even if Ma Chao was appointed as the Governor of Linfeng, he was probably not in the garrison at that time. According to historical records, Ma Chao had already been appointed as the governor of Linfeng in 215 AD, and the time of Guan Yu's defeat and taking Maicheng was in 219 AD, so where was Ma Chao during these 4 years? In fact, when Guan Yu defeated Maicheng, the possibility of Ma Chao not being depressed was very high.
In 220, shortly after Guan Yu's death, Peng Xi was transferred by Liu Bei to be the Taishou of Jiangyang, so he held a grudge and went to Ma Chao to complain, and said a lot of rebellious words, and was finally reported to Liu Bei by Ma Chao. It can be seen from this that when Guan Yu defeated Maicheng, Ma Chao and Peng Xi should have been in Chengdu and did not command the battle at the front line of Linfeng, so Ma Chao had no way to save Guan Yu who defeated Maicheng.