Introduction
During the Three Kingdoms period, there were three very important battles that turned the historical pattern around, namely, Yuan Shao's Battle of Guandu against Cao Cao, Sun Liu's Battle of Chibi against Cao Cao, and Liu Bei's Battle of Yiling against Eastern Wu. The results of these three major battles were the reversal of strength and weakness, and the weak army defeated the strong army. The Battle of Yiling and the Battle of Chibi have very similarities in the key points of victory and defeat. The Battle of Chibi was won by fire, and the Battle of Yiling, why would Liu Bei repeat Cao Cao's mistakes.
Why did Liu Bei lose in the Battle of Yiling?
The Battle of Yiling was Liu Bei's initiative to attack Eastern Wu, nominally under the banner of avenging Guan Yu, but in fact it was to retake the strategic key points of Jingzhou and obtain a forward base for the future pursuit of the Central Plains and the sweeping of Jiangnan.
The Battle of Chibi was Cao Cao's initiative to attack Jiangnan, and Liu Bei, after jingzhou's victory, in order to further expand the results of the battle and unify the world, forced Sun Liu to join forces against Cao.
At the beginning of the battle, the attacking side took the initiative and the army was on the top. However, instead of being able to break through the momentum, he was temporarily in a state of stalemate with the enemy.
Although The Lu Xun people who led the army against Liu Bei in Eastern Wu were young but calculating, they were quite similar to Zhou Yu, who led the army against Cao Cao. The Wu army fought and retreated, and the echelon fortified to block the enemy, using the strategy of fatigue, so that Liu Bei's Shu army gradually reduced the sharpness gained by winning the opening game.
Entering the middle of summer, the Shu army had to camp and breathe. At this critical moment, Liu Bei, the commander of the Shu army, made a mistake, and it was a fatal mistake. This is the company camp for a hundred miles.
In ancient times, war armies generally used wooden fences to make walls, set up tents on the inside, and set up antlers and other obstacles outside the fence to block the enemy's attack.
In order to gain momentum, Liu Bei connected the Shu army's military camps together, thinking that this would be able to resist the enemy. But it exposed weakness to the enemy. Even The Wei Emperor Cao Pi, who was thousands of miles away, saw the doorway and, after learning that Liu Bei was so encamped, concluded that Liu Bei would undoubtedly be defeated.
Why did Liu Bei, the winner of the Battle of Chibi, not defend himself against fire?
Liu Bei had experienced the Battle of Chibi and witnessed the whole process of the Battle of Chibi. The biggest mistake Cao Cao made at the Battle of Chibi was to chain the ship and form a water village.
Although the momentum was huge, the soldiers on the ship came and went, but they lacked mobility. Although the defense was tight during the day, Zhou Yu used the yellow cover night attack to attack and succeed in one fell swoop.
Liu Bei's camp on land, especially under the woods, was simply a repeat of Cao Cao's mistake in the Battle of Chibi. Lu Xun seized on this fatal weakness, almost completely using Zhou Yu's yellow cover strategy, secretly approaching the Shu army camp on the edge of the woods to attack the night fire, Liu Bei could not prevent it.
If it were not for the company battalions, the battalions would not have suffered such a fiasco by maintaining a safe distance from each other and cooperating with each other. The tens of thousands of elite divisions of the Shu Han Dynasty were almost lost in this battle.
Liu Bei was defeated and retreated to the White Emperor City, and if it were not for the world-shaking Zhao Zilong leading the army to respond, I am afraid that Liu Bei's life would not be guaranteed. However, Huang Quan, the leader of the Shu army in northern Jiangsu, was cut off and became a lone army, across the Yangtze River, unable to respond to Liu Bei, and had no choice but to surrender to the State of Wei. Liu Bei's defeat at Yiling, the army, generals, and equipment all suffered heavy losses.
The Battle of Yiling and the Battle of Chibi were the same fatal mistakes of the same era. After more than a thousand years, Chen Youyu fought with Zhu Yuanzhang's Poyang Lake water army, and Chen Youyu also connected the building ships and was defeated by Zhu Yuanzhang with a night attack. The lessons of history are often not carefully learned, leading to the same mistakes being made again and again.
epilogue
Attacked by Lü Meng, Liu Bei Zhuge Liang sat idly by, causing Guan Yu to lose Jingzhou in defeat and lose tens of thousands of troops. After the Battle of Yiling, Liu Bei lost tens of thousands of troops.
After these two defeats, the Shu Han Dynasty was seriously injured, and the national situation began to gradually weaken. Although Zhuge Liang later bowed down and did his best to assist Liu Chan, the lord of the hou, it was to no avail, and the situation was difficult to reverse.
If zhuge Liang had not been good at internal politics and repairing diplomatic relations with Wu and Wei, I am afraid that shu Han would not have been able to last in the following decades.
Later historical evolution proved that Zhuge Liang's famous "Longzhong Pair" in which Jingxiang and Hanzhong sent troops to attack the Central Plains was problematic, because it could not achieve the effect of achieving local superiority. The two directions are too far apart to cooperate with each other, and it is easy to be broken by each other. If one fails, the other will shake the hearts of the army.
Reference: "Three Kingdoms"
(Statement: The content text is original, unauthorized may not be reproduced, some of the pictures come from the network, if there is infringement, please contact to inform the deletion, thank you!) ）