The ancient Chinese had a saying called: "Those who are not filial to others will be unfaithful", which means that if a person is not filial to his parents, then it is difficult to expect him to stand up and be loyal to the country when the country is in trouble. This sentence is highly respected by Confucianism, and is often used as the criterion for later generations to judge talents.
Cao Cao, as a generation of tyrants in the Three Kingdoms period, himself was very personal, others were saying words of benevolence, but he often used deceit to make arguments; others often selected officials according to the character of the family, but he was meritocracy; when Liu Bei nianzi said in this regard, "Don't do it with evil and small, don't do it with good and small", he said in a strong voice, "I would rather bear people than others bear me."
Logically, Cao Cao should be an eclectic person who takes talents.
But in his lifetime, he really did not have meritocracy for a very talented person, because this person had a moral stain, and this person was a native of Qinghe Country in Jizhou, called Zhu Ling.
Zhu Ling was a person who greatly admired Cao Cao. He was originally a subordinate of Yuan Shao, and when Cao Cao conquered Tao Qian, Yuan Shao sent several armies to support Cao Cao, and Zhu Ling was one of them. After the battle, Zhu Ling was reluctant to go back, and after getting along with Cao Cao, he felt that Cao Cao was the real lord of the world who deserved his life, so he led his men to join Cao Cao's army.
Cao Cao was of course very happy that such a general who could recruit good warriors and soldiers, and also carry thousands of soldiers and horses, so as to turn to himself, was very happy, and he happily accepted Zhu Ling's troops. But privately Cao Cao said to others: This person cannot be of great use.
Why did Cao Cao have such an evaluation of Zhu Ling? It turned out that when Zhu Ling was under Yuan Shao before, his reputation for being able to fight good battles spread to Cao Cao.
At that time, ji Yong, a Qinghe man who was Yuan Shao's subordinate, surrendered to Gongsun Zhan for betraying Yuan Shao in Juancheng, and Yuan Shao was so angry that he sent Zhu Ling to attack Juancheng. However, Ji Yong knew that Zhu Ling's mother and brother were in The City, so he tied up his mother, learned from Xiang Yu, and put the bound Mother of Zhu Ling in the city to threaten Zhu Ling.
Zhu Ling saw that his mother was bound on the city, so he cried on the spot, but in order to make meritorious contributions, he said: "Once the eldest husband works hard for others, his own life is still unable to take care of the whole, where can he care about the lives of his parents, wives and children?" So after crying bitterly, Zhu Ling still led his troops to storm the city.
Panicked and embarrassed, Ji Yong saw that Zhu Ling did not even care about his own mother in order to make a contribution, so he killed his mother and brother, and finally the city was attacked by Zhu Ling, and Ji Yong was also captured by Zhu Ling. Zhu Ling's image of distinguishing between public and private, not showing favoritism, and being able to fight a good war has also been widely known ever since.
However, when Cao Cao heard Zhu Ling's information, he felt very bad, so when Zhu Ling defected to Cao Cao, he said: "This person should not be of great use."
We may be very strange, Cao Cao yourself is not a moral imitation, why do you look down on Zhu Ling in order to make meritorious contributions to his mother? Besides, Zhu Ling did not do it intentionally, in such a situation, it is really "loyalty and filial piety cannot be both"!
But Cao Cao had a deep-seated view of Zhu Ling, perhaps this could be explained by Han Feizi's words. Han Feizi once said: "The virtue of the courtiers is benevolence, while the virtue of the king is unkind", Cao Cao, who established himself as a treacherous ruler and took the world, did not like to see his courtiers also cruel and cold-blooded, so he gave Zhu Ling a label of "this person is not of great use".
After Zhu Ling joined Cao Cao's army, because he was defecting to the "Ming Lord" he expected, he fought harder and did everything that Cao Cao gave him well, hoping to have more opportunities to make meritorious contributions.
In the fourth year of Jian'an, that is, in 199 AD, he led his troops to intercept the desperate Yuan Shu, who was forced to be helpless and died of illness. In the ninth year of Jian'an, Zhu Ling led 5,000 recruits to guard Xu Nan. Thirteen years after Jian'an, Zhu Ling followed Cao Cao on his crusade against Jingzhou. In the sixteenth year of Jian'an, Zhu Ling accompanied Cao Cao in his crusade against Ma Chao, and Zhu Ling secretly attacked Ma Chao's rear, which greatly helped Cao Cao. Zhu Ling then accompanied Xiahou Yuan to pacify Sui Mi and Huan Qi.
What can be seen is that no matter when Cao Cao gave Zhu Ling the task, Zhu Ling was excellent. But Cao Cao never gave Zhu Ling a very important task, either to defend, or to follow others to attack, or to intercept other people's small troops, it can be said that Cao Cao really never "used" Zhu Ling.
Not only that, Cao Cao was also very dissatisfied with Zhu Ling's troops. After Zhu Ling successfully quelled a rebellion among his subordinates, he beheaded the leader of the rebellion and then reported to Cao Cao. Cao Cao did not praise his behavior, but instead reprimanded him for being too harsh on the soldiers, which was precisely because of this that the soldiers were unstable and there was a rebellion. All in all, when Cao Cao looked at Zhu Ling, he had the feeling of picking bones inside an egg.
Under the premise that seeing Zhu Ling many times was not very cool, Cao Cao even felt that it was dangerous to let Zhu Ling lead the troops to make meritorious contributions. Because of yu ban's outstanding achievements at that time, and his literary and martial arts skills, and his prestige in the army, Cao Cao finally decided to seize Zhu Ling's military power and let Zhu Ling follow Yu Ban as Yu Ban's follower. The inexplicable Zhu Ling was inexplicably stripped of his military power, but he did not dare to resist, or silently became a staff general under the forbidden hand.
Zhu Ling, who was "not of great use", was now cao Cao simply did not use it. Since then, there is almost no record of Cao Cao appointing Zhu Ling to lead troops to fight. Until after Cao Cao's death, Cao Pi instead gave Zhu Ling the official a knighthood and appointed him to lead the army to fight, and established a lot of merit for himself.
Why is Cao Cao's antipathy towards Zhu Ling, who has always been meritocracy, so deeply rooted? This may be a mystery that history is difficult to solve. Perhaps, it was because Zhu Ling, as Yuan Shao's subordinate, led troops to Cao Cao and made Cao Cao feel that Zhu Ling was an unfaithful person?