At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the world was in chaos, and various princes took advantage of this opportunity to rise up, and Cao Cao was one of these people. If you talk about family background, Cao Cao was definitely not the most powerful at that time, although Cao Cao was the son of the eunuch Cao Teng, who was the son of the eunuch Cao Song, but because of this, Cao Cao's life has always been criticized by the people at that time, and he was often looked down upon by Yuan Shu and others, but even so, Cao Cao still relied on his excellent military ability to pacify Yanzhou and Xuzhou successively, thus occupying Henan, and then he and Yuan Shao launched a decisive battle at Guandu, defeated Yuan Shao, and gradually eliminated Yuan Shao's forces after that, thus unifying the north. He was also given the title of Chancellor in 218 AD. From then until Cao Cao's death, the Cao Wei regime was the most powerful of the major regimes. On the other hand, Zhuge Liang, the chancellor of the Shu Han Dynasty, could only be confined to the land of Yizhou all his life, so if this was the case, then Cao Cao, as the Chancellor of the Great Han Dynasty, was really much more powerful than the Shu Han Xiang Zhuge Liang?
In fact, in the same year that Cao Cao was made a chancellor, he led a large army to conquer Jingzhou in the south, although Liu Chun of Jingzhou went out of the city to surrender because of fear of Cao Cao, but after this, Cao Cao did not expand the results of the battle, and thus unified the world, he folded the sand in front of Chibi, and was defeated by Sun Liu's combined forces, in Chibi, Cao Cao not only did not stage a miracle of winning more with less, but was defeated by the tens of thousands of people of Sun Liu's alliance, which showed that after becoming a minister, Cao Cao's situation was not necessarily very good.
After this, Cao Cao, as the chancellor, seemed to have a year worse than a year, he was first taken away by Liu Bei of several counties in southern Jingzhou, and then lost to Zhou Yu in the Battle of Nan County, so that cao Cao's sphere of influence had almost withdrawn from Jingzhou except for Xiangfan. After this, Cao Cao was helpless in the face of Sun Quan and Liu Bei, even if several conquests were fruitless, and even at the Time of the Battle of Hanzhong, Cao Cao once again tasted defeat because he did not want to continue to confront Liu Bei. By 219 AD, Guan Yu led Jingzhou generals to besiege the two cities of Xiangfan, and Cao Cao was beaten to the point of almost moving the capital.
It is not difficult to see that from 208 AD to 219 AD, although Cao Cao, the chancellor of the Han Dynasty, sat on two-thirds of the world, he could not unify the world, but instead swallowed the bitter fruit of defeat again and again, so that he was beaten and abandoned, and was defeated by Sun Quan and Liu Bei many times, which is really unimaginable. After 208 AD, Zhuge Liang was invited out of the mountains by Liu Bei, which helped Liu Bei gradually develop from a guest general with no standing cone to an emperor of the Shu Han Dynasty.
The author believes that although the efforts of individuals are important, while the individual continues to develop, it is also necessary to take into account the course of history, and in the tide of history, any genius fighting is just a drop in the ocean. For Cao Cao, it cannot be said that he did not have the style of the past after becoming a chancellor, but in comparison with Zhuge Liang, Cao Cao, as a Great Han Chancellor, was not much stronger than Zhuge Liang.