Liu Bei was a famous politician in the Three Kingdoms era, and was well known to the Chinese people because of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". Liu Bei in the Three Kingdoms, as if he did not have any ability, but he has always been "good at using people.". And he is not only "good at using people", but also "good at recognizing people". It is precisely because he has a unique vision that he will attract such fierce generals as Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, and will get the help of famous ministers like Zhuge Liang!
However, some people believe that Liu Bei had four major failures in his life in knowing people, because he misread four people. Of these four, the first was his former enemy Lü Bu, the second was Liu Biao's son Chun, the third was his brother Guan Yu, and the fourth was his biggest rival in his later years, Lu Xun. Let's analyze the situation of Liu Bei and these four people.
First, mistakenly believe in the villain Lü Bu
Anyone who is familiar with the Three Kingdoms knows that the Three Yings fought Lü Bu. Lü Bu is a very strong and fierce general in the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", but his character is very inferior, and he is a wall head grass who likes to recognize his father indiscriminately, nicknamed "three surname family slaves". So, for this kind of person, what is the matter with Liu Bei mistakenly believing him?
It turned out that in 195 AD, Lü Bu faced Cao Cao's powerful offensive and wanted to contact all forces to protect himself. So, he found Liu Bei. In the second year of Chuping (191 AD), Liu Bei was still only the county commander of Pingyuan County. Later, he became the Minister of The Plains and led three thousand soldiers to save the North Sea Kingdom. A few years later, when Liu Bei rescued Xuzhou, there were only "more than a thousand soldiers" in his hands. When Lü Bu found Liu Bei, Liu Bei originally did not believe him, and probably out of the consideration of lack of talent, he left Lü Bu behind.
Unexpectedly, later Cao Cao called, and Liu Bei went to meet the battle. Lü Bu stabbed Liu Bei's wife in the back. After being defeated by Cao Cao, Liu Bei was left homeless and fled all the way to Haixi, where he survived with a wealthy merchant named Lu Zhu. At this time, Liu Bei did not have Zhuge Liang around him, and he did not have many people and horses, and he was indeed because he mistakenly believed Lü Bu and lost a base area. However, when we evaluate a person's merits and demerits, we cannot look at the success or failure of the moment, let alone "if a person is not a sage, who can be blameless"?
Second, ignore the straw bag Liu Chun
Around 201 AD, Liu Bei defected to Liu Biao, the "big landlord" of Jingzhou, and Liu Bei has always claimed to be a "descendant of the Han royal family", and Liu Biao is also a descendant of the authentic royal family, so Liu Bei recognized Liu Biao as his brother and stayed in Jingzhou to make friends with various haojie, and the time before and after was six or seven years. In the middle, he also visited Zhuge Liang and carried out the famous "Longzhong Pair"!
Liu Biao was a man who "had no great ambitions", and Liu Bei remained under him only because of his lack of wings. Originally, after Liu Biao's death, he could temporarily use Jingzhou as a base area to develop, but he did not expect Liu Biao to pass on the family business to his second son Liu Qi. Liu Chun was originally the second son of Liu Biao, and because he was favored by his mother Cai Ji, he crossed the rank to become the heir.
In the thirteenth year of Jian'an (208 AD), Cao Cao attacked Jingzhou. Liu Bei was garrisoned outside, and by the time he heard the news, Liu Chun had already surrendered. Liu Bei had no choice but to flee to Jiangxia to join Liu Qi (Liu Biao's eldest son) stationed in Jiangxia, and at that time there were 100,000 people who followed Liu Bei into exile. Liu Bei could not bear to be an enemy of Liu Chun, so he staged the famous "crossing the river with the people" incident.
So is Liu Chun a "straw bag"? The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms records that when Cao Cao attacked Jingzhou, Liu Biao's original subordinates all thought that they should surrender, but Liu Chun also tried to resist, but they were dissuaded. The history books do not record liu chun's date of birth and death, but it is speculated that he should be a "child" with no experience in political and military struggle, so it is unfair to blame him for surrender completely.
The Book of Wei says that Before his death, Liu Biao wanted Liu Bei to be regent, but Liu Bei himself "eulogy" refused. Liu Bei came to express the "benevolence" he had done, and secondly, he also trusted Liu Chun to a certain extent, believing that he would not easily abandon the inheritance created by his father. However, Liu Bei ignored the fact that Liu Chun was still just a "child", and he had no ability to make decisions at all! In the end, Jingzhou fell into cao Cao's hands before the Battle of Chibi!
Three
Overestimating brother Guan Yu
Guan Yu's "careless loss of Jingzhou" is a famous Three Kingdoms story. During the Three Kingdoms period, Jingzhou had a very important military strategic position. Many of the major events that took place in Liu Bei's life were related to Jingzhou. For example, the incident of "crossing the river with the people" mentioned earlier occurred after Liu Chun surrendered and sent Jingzhou.
Guan Yu was the best brother in Liu Bei's life, and when they met at the end of the day, they fought together for half their lives and walked in the sea of fire in the Sword Mountain. Liu Bei believed in him, respected him, and even the last big defeat in his life, was also fought for him. In the end, he ended up hating because he could not avenge him. We will mention this later, let's not talk about it here, but now let's talk about how he overestimated Guan Yu.
This place in Jingzhou is the place where the three kingdoms meet, and it has always been a matter of contention between soldiers and families. Any force occupying it can do something big. Therefore, Liu Bei was also painstaking in the selection of town guards in Jingzhou. At that time, he did not dare to let Zhuge Liang, who had just served under his command, guard alone, nor did he allow generals who were estranged from him to guard the town. Therefore, he thought twice and chose Guan Yu.
However, although Guan Yu was brave in battle, he was "insufficient in strategy." However, Liu Bei did not expect that this was both Guan Yu's advantage and his fatal flaw. Later, Guan Yu raised troops to attack Xiangfan and flooded the Seventh Army, which made Kyushu shake, and Cao Cao once wanted to move the capital, but later Cao Cao returned to God and joined forces with Sun Quan to form a fatal blow to Guan Yu. In the end, Guan Yu lost Maicheng and was in a different place! On this issue, Liu Bei not only overestimated Guan Yu, but also his own cleverness was mistaken by cleverness.
Third, underestimate the opponent Lu Xun
As mentioned above, Liu Bei and Guan Yu are friends of life and death, and their feelings are deep. After Guan Yu lost Jingzhou, Liu Bei did not do much to him. Later, Guan Yu walked to Maicheng and died, and Liu Bei was so grief-stricken that he had to personally conquer Eastern Wu and avenge Guan Yu. Thus, the prelude to the Battle of Yiling was opened. This great war was the last large-scale battle in the history of the Three Kingdoms, but it did not make Liu Bei get revenge as he wished, but instead made a young man named Lu Xun famous in history.
Lu Xun was a young military commander in Eastern Wu, whose name was rarely heard before the Battle of Yiling. In July 221, Liu Bei led an army of tens of thousands of people and took the lead in occupying the area of present-day Badong in Hubei Province, and after a confrontation with Eastern Wu, Eastern Wu was defeated, and Sun Quan wrote to Cao Cao to ask for peace. Subsequently, Lu Xun took the throne and decisively implemented a defensive strategy, allowing the Wu army to withdraw from the lofty mountains and mountains of Hubei.
In the first month of the following year, Liu Bei's army penetrated deep into the Yangtze River, but it took the wrong way of encampment. In the area from Wuxia to Yiling, the front line of the two armies totaling hundreds of miles, set up dozens of camps, and as a result, Lu Xun burned the company camp, and then sent troops to take advantage of the chaos to attack back and forth, and Liu Bei was defeated! In this battle, Liu Bei completely underestimated the strength of Lu Xun and Eastern Wu, which eventually led to a fiasco. Since then, the elite of the Shu army has been damaged, and almost the entire army has been destroyed.
epilogue
Liu Bei's four failures in his life had a huge impact on his life, and it can even be said to be fatal. At the same time, carefully considering Liu Bei's failure, it can be found that these are actually due to weaknesses in human nature. Lü Bu was only taken in because he lacked strong generals under his command and held the psychology of luck; ignoring Liu Chun was that his false "benevolence" harmed him; if he credulously believed in Guan Yu, it was he who played nepotism; underestimating Lu Xun was the perfect performance of his high self-esteem and pride and conceit, which was the same as Guan Yu's contempt for Lu Xun in the first place!