This is the 299th original article of Shi Shuoxing
It is said that when Wu Guozheng and the Jin State were fighting for hegemony in the Central Plains, they did not expect that the imprisoned Yue King Gou Jian had copied the Laodi of the Wu Kingdom. King Yue heard that the elite main force of the Wu army followed the King of Wu to the Huangchi Alliance, and the only ones defending Wu were the old and weak soldiers led by Prince You, so he decided to take advantage of the false attack on Wu. However, considering that King Wu's "soldiers have not been far from the country, the more they smell and cover up their emptiness, it is not difficult for soldiers." Therefore, by the spring of the thirty-ninth year of King Jing of Zhou (481 BC), when King Wu had arrived at Huangchi, "two thousand Shiliu (sailors), 40,000 priests (trained soldiers), 6,000 gentlemen (pro-army composed of members of the nobility), and 1,000 imperial officials (officials with military positions) cut down Wu."
The troops were divided into two routes: one led by Fan Li and entering Huai by sea to block the return route of the Wu army from Huangchi; the main force was led by Gou Jian himself to attack Gusu by land. The Vietnamese army met more than 10,000 people under the command of Prince Wu at Hongshang (洪上, in present-day Hengshan, southwest of Suzhou, Jiangsu), who had come to meet the battle. Wu Dafu Wang Sun Miyong and Wang Zidi disobeyed the prince's command, and led 5,000 men to attack without authorization, capturing the Generals Wuyu and Zhenyang and winning a small victory.
The next day, the main force led by the Yue king arrived and launched a fierce attack on the Wu army, annihilating the Wu army in one fell swoop, and capturing Prince You and Wang Sun Miyong. The Vietnamese army took advantage of the victory and occupied Gu Su. After Fan Li knew that King Yue had captured the capital of Wu, he collected all the military supplies from Wu Geyi and returned from Hangou to meet with the King of Yue at Gusu, preparing for a decisive battle with King Wu when he returned.
When Wu Wangfu was sent back to Wu Province, he knew that the capital city had been lost and the soldiers had no fighting spirit, so he made Dazai Boyao ask Yue for peace. At that time, Fan Li and Gou Jian considered that although the Wu army was tired, the whole army had not lost, and it was impossible to annihilate them in one battle, so they agreed to make peace. In the winter of that year, after Yue made peace with Wu Yuan, Gou Jian led his army back to China.
Because of the successive years of war, the State of Wu was "tired) of Wu Shimin. Qingrui died in Qi and Jin", and there was a famine in the country, so he "scattered the people and scattered the army" in order to restore the national strength. Three years later, in the forty-second year of King Jing of Zhou (478 BC), another famine occurred in the state of Wu. King Gou of Yue took the opportunity to attack the State of Wu again. Wu Wang Fuchai led an army to meet the enemy, and the two sides confronted each other at Kasazawa (present-day Wusong River, commonly known as Suzhou River).
The Yue King Gou Jian deployed one force each from the left and right armies, and under the cover of twilight, secretly maneuvered up and down a few miles from the main force, and in the middle of the night, he beat the drum and shouted to cross the river. Wu Wang Fuchai judged that the Vietnamese army would attack from both flanks across the river, so he divided his troops to meet the battle. When the Vietnamese army was busy mobilizing troops and concentrating on the two wings of the Wu army, the elite main forces of the three armies led by themselves secretly crossed the river and launched a surprise attack on the Wu army in person. The Wu army was defeated.
In this campaign, the operational command of the Yue King was quite innovative. In light of the fact that it was very difficult for the enemy to rely on the riverbank and the enemy to cross strongly in front of him, he used some of his troops to pretend to move on both flanks, creating the enemy's illusion, mobilizing the enemy to disperse his forces, and then unexpectedly leading the main force to carry out the enemy's front sneak crossing, concentrating his forces to launch a surprise attack on the enemy's most sensitive key Chinese army headquarters. This was the direct cause of the victory in the battle.
The tactical application of Yue Wang's gouge not only fully embodied the deceitful nature of using troops, fully grasped the initiative on the battlefield, and played the role of tactical abruptness, but also made it easy to transform the difficulties of crossing the river and the strengths of the enemy into weaknesses. This is in common with Mao Zedong's statement that "systematically creating the illusion of the enemy and giving an unexpected attack is the method of creating superiority and seizing the initiative, and it is an important method." The Battle of Kasazawa was also the first successful river crossing offensive in the history of Chinese warfare. After the Kasazawa War, the balance of power between Wu and Vietnam underwent a fundamental change, and the more they had gained an absolute advantage.
After the defeat of the Wu army at Kasazawa, it retreated to the capital, and the Vietnamese army followed in pursuit, fighting twice at Wuxi (outside the southern outskirts of present-day Suzhou) and the outskirts of the city, and the Wu army was defeated and retreated into the capital. It has been devastated ever since. After the Return of the Vietnamese Army, King Jing of Zhou attacked Chu in the 44th year (476 BC) and paralyzed the State of Wu. The following year, King Gou of Yue led an army to attack Wu and besieged the Wu capital Gusu for three years. In the third year of the Zhou Dynasty (474 BC), King Wu sent his best to surrender, but he was not allowed to do so. Wu Wangfu almost committed suicide, and the state of Wu perished.
After King Yue destroyed Wu, he led his army north across Huaishui and joined the princes of Qi and Jin at Xuzhou (徐州, in present-day southeastern Tengzhou, Shandong). At this time, "the Yue soldiers were rampaging in the east of Jianghuai, and the princes Bihe were known as overlords." The following year, in order to expand north, the capital was moved to Langxi (present-day Jiaonan, Shandong). Later, after the 8th Dynasty, it was destroyed by Chu in the fourteenth year of King Chu Kaolie (249 BC).
At the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, most of the monarchy of the Central Plains powers had been transferred to the hands of Qing Dafu, and Zhuqing Dafu was competing for power. Therefore, only 20 years after the destruction of Wu, the Jin state had a three-family Jinyang War, and the Jin state split into three regimes of Han, Zhao, and Wei. Chinese history has entered an even more turbulent Warring States era!
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