In the Battle of Pengcheng, Xiang Yu defeated nearly 600,000 of Liu Bang's princes' combined forces with 30,000 elite horses, of which nearly 300,000 were killed or drowned, nearly 100,000 deserters were pursued and annihilated, and corpses were strewn across the wilderness in counties in northern Jiangsu, and the people were accustomed to seeing dead people, and it was often not strange. Such a battle record was simply unprecedented, but because Xiang Yu's troops at this time were 30,000 cavalry (the large army was still in the State of Qi to quell the chaos), he could not take advantage of the victory to launch a large-scale siege of Xingyang, but could only send two cavalry units to attack the two peripheral military strongholds of Jingxian and Suoting south of Xingyang, and as a result, they were easily defeated by Han Xin reinforcements from Guanzhong, thus giving Liu Bang a chance to breathe.
In this way, Xiang Yu is really like the famous Western general Hannibal of his contemporaries, they all know how to win, but they don't know how to use it. The huge tactical superiority does not make up for their huge strategic deficiencies, which is the root cause of their ultimate failure.
So what exactly was Xiang Yu busy with during this period? History tells us that Xiang Yu was busy appeasing the other princes, the princes were all wall grass, who forced them to mix with whom, and now Liu Bang Pengcheng was defeated, it was Xiang Yu who won them a great opportunity to return to their camp, as for the past, it is not to blame in the past, after all, the chief evil is Liu Bang, you are only an accessory.
Xiang Yu didn't want to be a public enemy anymore, it was really lonely.
In order not to let himself be alone, Xiang Yu temporarily let Liu Bang go, and he still naively thought that Liu Bang would learn to be obedient because of Peng cheng's defeat and no longer dare to oppose himself.
If a person wants to enjoy success, he must first learn how to accept failure, and give up halfway because of a temporary failure, and there will only be greater failures waiting for him. Liu Bang, a famous and successful person, understands this truth.
But Xiang Yu didn't understand, he always thought that even if Liu Bang was not willing to lose, he would not be able to pose much of a threat to himself, and the Battle of Pengcheng was proof of this!
Xiang Yu's first major shortcoming is pride, self-esteem, self-congratulation, extreme narcissism, Lao Tzu is the first in the world.
People who have such ideas are actually seeking their own death.
Let's take a look at what Xiang Yu did during this time to rebuild the Western Chu Alliance:
In April 205 BC, Xiang Yu killed his own Qi king Tian Fei and made peace with Qi Guotian.
Then, Xiang Yu secretly sent people to persuade Sima Xin, the former king of Sai, and Dong Fei, the king of Zhai, to surrender to Chu.
In May 205 BC, under the command of Xiang Yu's secret envoys, Wei Bao, the king of Wei, asked Liu Bang, the king of Han, for leave, asking to return to Wei and visit his parents. However, as soon as he returned to the State of Wei, he cut off the yellow river crossing and surrendered to Chu.
Not long after, The Acting King Chen Yu and zhao Xie, the King of Zhao, also turned their backs on Han and surrendered to Chu. At this point, the world was divided, Guanzhong and Handi were the Han camp, Qi Chu Wei Zhao was the Chu camp, and the Chu-Han War entered the stage of stalemate.
Fighting each other is painful, and both sides are suffering. After eight years of the War of Resistance Against Japan, China suffered, and Japan was not necessarily at ease; the Chinese people were miserable, and the Japanese people were not happy.
A protracted battle of mutual stalemate will not only test the wisdom, courage and sacrifice of both sides, but also the will, endurance and overall view of both sides, the latter being even more important. Whoever can persist to the end is the winner in the end. Xiang Yu had the former, but the latter he was inferior to Liu Bang.
Later facts also proved that although Xiang Yu's diplomatic efforts to rebuild the Western Chu Alliance caused Liu Bang a little trouble, they did not have much effect. The Battle of Pengcheng had already proved that these northern princes were either too incompetent and were just cannon fodder at key moments; or they were churning sticks at both ends of the first rat, which would only add to the chaos at key moments; as a result, they were all broken by Han Xin in a short time.
Let's take a look at what effective preparations Liu Bang made at the beginning of the stalemate stage.
In June 205 BC, Liu Bang returned to The Political Center of Guanzhong, Liyang, made his concubine Liu Ying crown prince (the future Emperor Hui of Han), and granted amnesty to calm the hearts and minds of the people in Guanzhong.
At the end of June, the Han soldiers diverted water to irrigate the waste hill, and the waste hill fell, and Zhang Handan committed suicide. At this point, the Yongguo Kingdom was divided into Han, and was zhongdi, beidi, and longxi county.
Guanzhong was completely determined, and Liu Bang could be at ease from then on.
Everything seemed to be going well, but at this moment, a huge crisis suddenly broke out. In the month of the Guanzhong famine, illegal traders took the opportunity to hoard and manipulate prices, arbitrarily rushing, rice a stone as expensive as 10,000 yuan, a horse as expensive as a hundred gold, so that people cannibalism, hunger and death.
The tragic situation of people eating people has already appeared, but Liu Bang still has to conscript the old people and children to the front line, for any dynasty in the future, the people have long rebelled, but Guanzhong has not erupted in a large-scale peasant uprising, which shows how much the Qin people hate Xiang Yu to the bone, they would rather tighten their belts and starve to death, but also support the King of Han against Western Chu.
Faced with such a dilemma, Liu Bang was not in danger, and moved the residents of Guanzhong to Hanzhong to reclaim and colonize, turning a catastrophe into invisible.
In August, Liu Bang returned to xingyang, the front line.
Before leaving, Liu Bang ordered Xiao He to assist the crown prince in guarding Guanzhong, and began to build a decree to establish a temple, a shrine, a palace, and a county; in case of emergency, he could act cheaply.
Xiao He then investigated the Guanzhong hukou according to the information obtained in the Qin Palace in the early years, supplemented the front with the sons of Guanzhong, and transported grain and grass to fully support the war on the Xingyang front. Since then, the Han army has had soldiers who can't fight and can't eat enough grain, on the contrary, Xiang Yu only knows how to rush and fight hard, but does not know how to rely on the rear, and as a result, the army fights less and less, the food is consumed less and less, and finally the soldiers are exhausted, how can they not be defeated?
In fact, in the final analysis, the war is fought in the economy, the economy is not good, the strategy and tactics are useless no matter how strong, since the Warring States era, the economic strength of The Qin land in Guanzhong is stronger than that of the Chu land in Jiangnan, and it is natural that Qin destroyed The Chu. Therefore, in the same way, Liu Bang had the land of Guanzhong, and even if his military ability was inferior, he could slowly grind Xiang Yu to death.
By September, while Liu Bang was firmly defending the xingyang and chenggao fronts, he actually had the strength to send Han Xin to pull away a group of people and horses to open up the northern battlefield.