Liu Beiyuan was a small trader who woven mats and sold shoes, and the reason why he was able to open the country and become the Emperor of Han Zhaolie of the Shu Han Dynasty was inseparable from six people. The first was Zhuge Liang, who tailored the national policy for Liu Bei's development of Longzhong, and participated in the planning and implementation of the major battles in the process of the establishment of the Shu state, which was Liu Bei's right and left arm that could not be temporarily separated.
The other five refer to the five military generals Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Ma Chao, Huang Zhong, and Zhao Yun, who are collectively known as the Five Tiger Generals by the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. No matter how clever and perfect Zhuge Liang's strategy and tactics are, they also need to be implemented by someone. And the Five Tigers will play the role of executors in it, without them serving in the battlefield and fighting bloodily, Zhuge Liang's tricks can only be on paper. Therefore, the importance of the Five Tiger Generals is not inferior to Zhuge Liang.
The Five Tigers will rely on their extraordinary bravery and outstanding military ability to create one battlefield legend after another. Guan Yu once slashed Yan Liang on horseback, flooding the Seventh Army and shaking Huaxia. Zhang Fei immediately crossed his gun at the head of the Dangyang Bridge, blocked thousands of Cao Cao's elite soldiers, and defeated Cao Wei's famous general Zhang Gao under the Wakou Pass. Ma Chao, on the other hand, had beaten Cao Cao in the Battle of Tongguan and abandoned his robe, issuing a lament that "horses do not die and I have no burial ground". Huang Zhong, who was old and strong, beheaded the Cao Wei general Xiahou Yuan in the Battle of Dingjun Mountain, while Zhao Yun used the "empty city plan" in the Battle of Hanshui and defeated the Cao army.
However, both the history of the Three Kingdoms and the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms focus on describing the martial arts and achievements of the Five Tiger Generals, while their character is brushed over and not much commentary. However, since ancient times, the evaluation of a historical figure, virtue and talent, are two aspects that are equally important and cannot be discarded. Among them, "morality" plays a decisive role in a person's historical evaluation. Virtue and talentlessness are mediocre at best, but they do not pose any threat or destruction to the national society. But if there is talent and no morality, it is like a wild horse that has lost its reins, rampage, and it is likely to cause unimaginable serious consequences.
Looking at the evaluation of the Five Tiger Generals in later generations, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Zhao Yun have all been settled in coffins, and there is almost no controversy. However, Huang Zhong and Ma Chao, as the more marginalized figures among the Five Tiger Generals, the historical evaluation of them by later generations is more vague and general. However, looking carefully at the history books, the ancients had made some evaluations of Ma Chao, among which a poem by the Tang Dynasty poet Rong Yu was the most convincing.
In 784, more than 500 years after Ma Chao's death, something happened in the Tang Dynasty. The Huaixi warlord Li Xilie rebelled, and the tang dynasty's highly respected Taishi, duke of Lu County, and official Shangshu Yan Zhenqing were ordered to go and recruit rebels. However, Li Xilie had already rebelled with an iron heart, not only refusing Yan Zhenqing's surrender, but also forcing Yan Zhenqing to surrender to him in turn. Yan Zhenqing's righteousness was awe-inspiring, and he categorically refused regardless of life and death. Annoyed, Li Xilie killed Yan Zhenqing.
The news spread, shaking the government and the opposition. The poet Rong Yu was heartbroken and wrote a mourning poem "Wen Yan Shangshu Trapped in thieves": "I heard that Zhengnan was not there, and it was not a good official to hear it." Can hold the Su Wu Festival, not ma Chaoxun. The country is broken and there are no home letters, and there are flocks of geese in autumn. The same honor is not the same humiliation, today the negative general. He praised Yan Zhenqing's noble sentiments of being loyal and regarding death as a homecoming, comparing him to Su Wu in the Han Dynasty.
But at the same time, the poet also uses Ma Chao as a negative teaching material, compared with Su Wu, to reflect Yan Zhenqing's noble qualities. The fourth sentence of the poem, "Not subject to Ma Chaoxun", can be described as a cone of bones, exposing Ma Chao's despicable soul. It turned out that Ma Chao was a Warlord of Xiliang in his early years, but he was capricious and lighter than going. His father Ma Teng had already fallen into Cao Cao's hands, but he brazenly rebelled regardless of his father's life and death, resulting in more than 200 mouths of the whole family being beheaded by Cao Cao, and taking his father's life as a weight for the sake of fame and wealth, which had already caused criticism at that time.
After that, Ma Chao was even more out of control, first surrendering to Han Sui and then turning against him, then returning to Zhang Lu and abandoning him, and finally surrendering to Liu Bei, in essence, he was a "three-surnamed family slave" like Lü Bu. After Ma Chao submitted to Liu Bei, he was never reused, and rarely led the troops alone, and it was precisely because of his previous bad deeds that Liu Bei did not trust him enough. Therefore, the poet Rong Yu will take him as a negative model, reflecting Yan Zhenqing's loyalty.
References: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Quan Tang Poetry