At the end of the Three Kingdoms period, people were most concerned about the history of Zhuge Liang's Northern Expedition, and there have been many discussions about this history since Chen Shou. To sum up, there are two problems: First, the cause of Zhuge Liang's Northern Expedition, that is, the question of whether the Northern Expedition should be carried out or not. Those who thought that the Northern Expedition could not succeed were also negative of Zhuge Liang's Northern Expedition, believing that it was only in vain that the people would lose their wealth. Second, the strain will be slight, is it not Zhuge Liang's strength? The starting point of the comments on these two issues is that Zhuge Liang's Northern Expedition was fruitless. According to Zhuge Liang, who once went to the Table of the Lord, he talked about the reasons for his Northern Expedition. Speaking of the southern fixed, the problem of soldiers and armor, at the same time Zhuge Liang hoped to be able to support the Han room.
If we understand the reasons for Zhuge Liang's Northern Expedition, we can also understand the policy of Zhuge Liang's Northern Expedition. It was precisely because he saw clearly the new situation in which the enemy was strong and we were weak, and the Northern Expedition was carried out on the grounds of waiting to die, so he adopted a heavy policy toward the Northern Expedition and opposed risk-taking. In the "Biography of Wei Yan", it was once said that the soldiers should go out of the Meridian Valley to bypass and sneak around. Many historical commentators hate Zhuge Liang for not following Wei Yan's plan, thinking that the strain will be slightly beyond Zhuge Liang's strengths. As everyone knows, Zhuge Liang, in view of the balance of forces between Shu and Wei, is right to insist on maintaining weight and not allowing it. Wei Yan's plan, divorced from the actual situation of the enemy and us, will be defeated and will consume the last strength.
Zhuge Liang was in Longzhong, originally scheduled to go out of the Northern Expedition from Jing and Yi, but now there is no hope of success along the way? Almost all the reviews said it couldn't work out. Considering that Wu Wu would become a stalemate of the Tang Dynasty, which would benefit Cao Wei, Zhuge Liang of Jingzhou did not want to occupy it again. Two ways out of the division is good, but all the way out is not necessarily unsuccessful. Zhuge Liang himself said that Han Gaozu developed by relying on Yizhou, so from a certain point of view, it is feasible to send troops from Yizhou alone to win the world. Because Liu Bang already has a precedent in the front. The question is how to defeat the enemy.
From Zhuge Liang's Northern Expedition, we can see that Zhuge Liang proceeded from the needs of actual combat, worked hard to study military science, and made many major inventions and creations. This issue is often overlooked by historians. Zhuge Liang's inventions in military science were not without their role. For example, the improvement of the wooden ox cart, although it solves the problem of grain and grass weight in the short term, it has no decisive effect. In many texts and works, Zhuge Liang had self-confidence in the Northern Expedition, and he did not think that the Northern Expedition could not succeed. Relying on confidence and military ability, it can be explained why Zhuge Liang, who only had a strength of "100,000", always took the offensive, while Sima Yi, who had a heavy army of "more than 300,000", always took a defensive position.
The Northern Expedition War was not zhuge Liang's strength, and the Northern Expedition war was not necessarily unfeasible, but the Shu state's military strength was already weak, and Zhuge Liang did not have a perfect set of methods to control the enemy, so the northern expedition war ended in the defeat of the Shu state. But a kind of truth-based ideology permeates Zhuge Liang's policies, and we must respect him in awe.