When guan Yu is mentioned, everyone in the world can't help but think of the general who was captured in the forbidden world, flooded the Seventh Army, and temporarily threatened Huaxia.
It is also inevitable to sigh that such a prestigious generation of tigers will carelessly lose Jingzhou, defeat Maicheng, be cornered, and defeated soldiers.
However, was Guan Yu's loss of Jingzhou really caused by his carelessness alone? This seems to have become a common understanding since about two hundred years after Guan Yu's death.
However, the occurrence of any historical event is definitely not simply based on the will of anyone, and there must be internal and external objective conditions that support the outbreak of such an event.
After the excavation of Wu Jian in Changsha, we once again confirmed from the 21 characters in the bamboo jane that Guan Yu's death was not just careless.
First, before and after the defeat
In 219 AD, Guan Yu's Northern Expedition to Xiangfan, lian lian, besieged Cao Ren, flooded the Forbidden Seventh Army, and beheaded Pound.
For a moment, Cao Cao was forced to even move the capital, pulled his body in his sixties, dragged his brother Xiahou Huan of the same ethnic group, gathered the strength of half the country, and tried to go south to intercept Guan Yu.
Guan Yu and Cao Cao's side of the killing sky was dark, and Sun Quan's side was not idle.
Sun Quan's monarch has always been the most pragmatic of the three kingdoms, which side can benefit the state of Wu, he leaned on which side, after Guan Yu and Sun Quan tore their faces, Sun Quan naturally hooked up with Cao Cao, and Wei and Wu used each other in order to jointly defeat Guan Yu.
When Guan Yu was breaking through the bamboo, the crisis also quietly appeared in the rear.
The main force went north, the rear was empty, and the soldiers were taboo.
Then there was Lü Mengbai crossing the river and coming to guan yu's rear, so that Guan Yu's territory was lost like an avalanche overnight, and Guan Yu, who was at the front line, had no intention of fighting again, and finally defeated Maicheng, ending up with a defeated soldier.
We often attribute Guan Yu's defeat to the emptiness in the rear and the improper use of personnel, using Mi Fang and Fu Shiren to surrender the enemy without a fight, so that Nan County fell into the hands of Sun Quan.
In fact, the loss of Nan County and Public Security was not the real reason for the fall of the entire Jingzhou line, but after the fall of Nan County and Gong'an, it actually triggered a series of tsunami-like chain reactions, and the 7 counties and 119 yi in jingzhou were all looking forward to the wind.
And when Guan Yu lost his base and decided to lead his army south to fight sun quan to retake Jingzhou, the number of troops along the way became smaller and smaller, and tens of thousands of troops collapsed in a few days, and finally they were outnumbered and killed in Sun Quan's ambush.
We can't help but wonder why the defection of Mi Fang and Fu Shiren would cause the consequences of surrendering to the enemy throughout Jingzhou, and why Guan Yu's soldiers scattered in all directions in the process of trying to retake Jingzhou.
The excavation of Wu Jian in Changsha has made people more deeply aware of the real situation in Jingzhou at that time, and provided us with a new perspective of interpretation.
Still
Second, the excavation of Wu Jian in the Walking Horse Building
During the Three Kingdoms period, Changsha belonged to the ancient Jingzhou territory, as a famous historical and cultural city in China, it often excavated many cultural relics and historical materials of great historical research value in archaeological work.
In November 1996, a busy construction site near Wuyi Square in Changsha was about to build a foreign-invested commercial building.
The ancient city of Changsha has not actually migrated since the Qin and Han dynasties, and although the new city has been expanding on the site of the old city, the approximate location of its city center has always been in the area of Wuyi Square.
On the 17th, archaeologists who were engaged in excavation work at the site made an unexpected discovery when they passed by the reservoir being excavated at the site, and a wooden plank with words appeared in the silt excavated from the reservoir.
The written artifacts were an extremely important discovery in archaeological research, and the archaeologists hurriedly reported to their superiors and immediately stopped the construction of the area.
After a closer look, the archaeological team found that this was a relic of the Wu kingdom during the Three Kingdoms period.
After a series of rescue excavations, about 140,000 pieces of wood were finally found, which are called Jian Mu, which is a kind of document archive used to record.
Walking Horse Building Wu Jian was a form of archive used by the local government agency of Sun Wu at that time to record, and it has been underground for more than 1,700 years and has reappeared in the human world.
Judging from the current research, these bamboo briefs record the taxation, household registration, and judicial situations of the counties under the Jingzhou region of the Wu state at that time, and this excavation is of great significance for the study of the history of the Eastern Wu period of the Three Kingdoms.
Third, infer the root cause
The information in Wu Jian in the Walking Horse Building shows that after 229 AD, the Shu army withdrew from Changsha, which coincided with the time recorded in the historical records that Sun Wu killed Guan Yu and forced the Shu army to retreat, and also confirmed the authenticity of the historical records.
"The number of upper, middle and lower products is thin. Seven of its households are superior, and its one hundred and nineteen households are inferior. "This is a passage of text found on the bamboo strip.
Experts can roughly know the following information through research, at that time the people in Jingzhou City were divided into three categories, corresponding to the upper, middle and lower three products, of which the upper product means the rich household, and the lower product is the ordinary poor people.
After in-depth study of the relevant bamboo information, it was found that during the period when Guan Yu was in Jingzhou, the number of poor households in the Jingzhou area accounted for about 82% of the total number of households, and the gap between the amount of property between the rich and the poor was extremely large, and the gap between the rich and the poor was extremely serious.
What is even more severe is that when Guan Yu was still in control of Jingzhou, although there were contradictions between the rich and the poor, the well water did not violate the river water, and in the same year that Guan Yu sent troops to conquer Cao Wei, a serious conflict broke out between the upper and lower products.
It can be seen that when Guan Yu was in charge of Jingzhou, it was too peaceful on the surface, but in fact, it had already surged undercurrents, and the internal social contradictions in Jingzhou were already quite fierce at that time.
Jingzhou's internal problems were so severe, but Guan Yu still wanted to lead the army to conquest, which naturally left a security risk and brought opportunities to Sun Wu and Cao Wei.
We know that Jingzhou was actually Liu Biao's territory at the beginning, and when Jian'an was thirteen years old, Cao Cao raised an army to march south to unify the country, at this time Liu Biao was already dead, and Liu Biao's second son Liu Qi surrendered to Cao Cao.
After the Battle of Chibi, Liu Qi became the Pastor of Jingzhou, but Liu Qi fell ill and died soon after, and Liu Bei was elected by a crowd to become the Pastor of Jingzhou.
However, after Liu Bei took Liu Qi's place, in fact, he and the Jingzhou water army and courtiers under the former Liu Biao had already had some contradictions, after all, during Liu Biao's lifetime, these people always believed that Liu Bei had the intention of stealing Jingzhou.
This means that in fact, Liu Bei Guanyu's ruling foundation in Jingzhou is not deep.
This also laid the groundwork for the defection of the Jingzhou army later, as evidenced by the contents of Wu Jian on the Horse Building: "The military officials, Dongyang Li, increase Ding ten thousand." Twenty-four years after Jian'an, Qiu, defected. ”
The meaning of this sentence is that in Dongyang, Guan Yu recruited 10,000 troops in Jingzhou, but by the time Jian'an was twenty-four years old, that is, the year of Guan Yu's Northern Expedition, all of these locally recruited soldiers defected.
Comprehensive judgment, after Guan Yu's Northern Expedition, the internal problems of Jingzhou gave Sun Wu the opportunity to exert himself, first of all, the generals stationed in Jingzhou had a certain old gap with Guan Yu, and the people inside Jingzhou were not stable and were always ready for conflict.
Therefore, after Lü Meng and his army secretly crossed the river, there was not even a fierce battle, and only Yu Tuan was sent as a lobbyist to persuade him, and Fu Shiren, Mi Fang, and other generals all surrendered.
Moreover, after Lü Meng secretly attacked Jingzhou, he treated the local people with courtesy, did not commit any crimes, gave all kinds of pensions, and stabilized the people's hearts, and the local people did not resist at all.
It is as if the dominoes of Jingzhou have been overthrown, and the territory of Jingzhou has surrendered to the enemy.
Wu Jian shang recorded: "Yu makes people smell with Meng, Yu ren returns, privately hears the news, Xian knows that the door is unharmed, and sees that it is too usual, so Yu Shi has no fighting heart." ”
That is to say, after Lü Meng's sneak attack on Jingzhou, Guan Yu sent his subordinates to question Lü Meng, and after the subordinates returned, they communicated with each other privately, knowing that most of the soldiers' families were safe and sound, and then they all lost their fighting spirit.
There is a relevant record in the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, "The first lord left Zhuge Liang, Guan Yu and others in Jingzhou, and sent tens of thousands of infantry into Yizhou. ”
Liu Bei let Guan Yu, Zhuge Liang, and others hold Jingzhou, and he himself led tens of thousands of sharp soldiers into Yizhou.
Therefore, Guan Yu's large-scale conscription before the Northern Expedition was mostly the local militia of Jingzhou, which was a major transportation route and a place of four wars, and all the forces had ruled in Jingzhou for a period of time.
These forces come and go, and the people are not really loyal to them, just pray that they will not harm others, after all, in a chaotic world, the desire of the small people in the city is nothing more than to be able to live in peace and have a place to live.
Looking back, most of Guan Yu's soldiers were local soldiers in Jingzhou, and most of his family members were in Jingzhou.
Due to the actual sharp internal contradictions in Jingzhou at that time, and the constant conflicts between the people's upper and lower products, Lü Meng saw this opportunity to comfort the people of all sides in time after entering Jingzhou, which won the hearts of the people, and the city of Jingzhou fell in all directions.
In Guan Yu's army, these native Jingzhou soldiers were reluctant to abandon their wives and children to travel a long way to engage in the Northern Expedition, and when they heard that Lü Meng was so good to his relatives, they naturally had no morale and ran back to Jingzhou City.
Lü Meng's clever means cleverly alleviated Jingzhou's internal problems at the opportunity, which made Guan Yu, who was not deeply rooted in Jingzhou, directly become an outsider in Jingzhou after Lü Meng entered the city.
History has never been shifted by the will of the individual, and the defection of Mi Fang and Fu Shiren was only the last straw that crushed Jingzhou, and the people's livelihood problems that had already intensified within it may be the fundamental reason for Guan Yu's loss of Jingzhou.
Fourth, the embarrassment caused by Guan Yu's death to Shu Han
Guan Yu's loss of Jingzhou was a huge blow to the Shu kingdom, and it can even be said that Guan Yu's death can be called a sign of the transformation of the Shu kingdom from prosperity to decline.
In the "Longzhong Pair", it can be seen that Zhuge Liang's pre-planning for shu Han, "external knot Sun Quan" and "internal repair and sorting", waiting for "changes in the world" from Jingzhou and Yizhou to send troops to attack the Wei state.
What Guan Yu was supposed to do was "internal revision of political science" and "external marriage of Sun Quan".
However, judging from the increasingly intensifying internal contradictions in Jingzhou, Guan Yu did not achieve "internal revision of political reasoning", and judging from Sun Quan's joint attack on Jingzhou with Cao Cao, sun Quan did not get along well.
The development of events was not satisfactory, although Liu Bei occupied Yizhou, Guan Yu lost Jingzhou, thus making the first step planned in the "Longzhong Pair" "crossing Jingyi" directly aborted.
Guan Yu's death left Liu Bei with a mess, and Shu Han eventually found no way out and still embarked on the road of destruction.
Conclusion
Guan Yu's loss of Jingzhou is by no means just due to "carelessness", "losing Jingzhou" is the trend of the times, even if Lü Meng has not carried out the operation of crossing the river to sneak attack, Jingzhou is afraid that it will change owners due to various riots, and Jingzhou is still "difficult to escape".
bibliography:
"Sorting and Researching the Number Of Households in Wu Jian of the Walking Horse Building——— and On Sun Wu's Household Equality System", China Economic History, 2016.5