Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi, as two important figures in the Three Kingdoms period, their strength was equal, they faced each other many times, but neither of them could defeat the other, basically maintaining a stalemate situation. Some people will say that Sima Yi is better, after all, he is the ultimate victor. But in the end, Zhuge Liang was not defeated by Sima Yi, but was crushed by his own illness. If Zhuge Liang was in good health and not sick, then the next confrontation was really difficult to say.
But even if Sima Yi was eventually recorded in history as a victor, in the eyes of later generations, everyone obviously liked Zhuge Liang more, and he has always been praised mostly, and it is still the case. The evaluation of Sima Yi was mixed, but the praise was rare, and most of the voices were criticism and cursing of him. Why do two people of equal strength have such a very different evaluation? Where was Sima Yi,losing to Zhuge Liang?
In fact, in military performance, Sima Yi did not lose to Zhuge Liang. When Meng Da was preparing to rebel against Wei, Sima Yide took three measures at the first time, one was to write to Meng Da to explain Wei's favor to him, the second was to send troops quickly, and the third was to send a letter to Tianzi to inform him of his plan to send troops. In this way, Sima Yi took Meng Da with lightning speed and quelled the rebellion.
The most able to show Sima Yi's military talent is actually the battle with Zhuge Liang, in the face of Zhuge Liang's many door-to-door provocations, Sima Yi can think of countermeasures to deal with. When Zhuge Liang led an army of 100,000 men on the Fifth Northern Expedition to Weishui, Sima Yi, in order to protect liangtian, led his troops across Weishui to fight Zhuge Liang. When Zhuge Liang wanted to make a quick decision, Sima Yi knew that the shortage of grain and grass was Zhuge Liang's biggest key, so he was impatient to find him for a decisive battle. Sima Yi then adopted a strategy of not being able to hold out and consume the Shu army in order to achieve the goal of winning without a fight. In the end, Zhuge Liang, who had a huge momentum, was dragged down by Sima Yi.
Therefore, it is enough to see that Sima Yi's talent is very strong, not worse than Zhuge Liang at all. So why is in the eyes of the world, Sima Yi's evaluation is inferior to Zhuge Liang's? Where did you lose to Zhuge Liang? It's actually very simple, just two words: loyalty!
During the Three Kingdoms period, one of the points of examining whether a person can be reused is to see whether the person is loyal or not. Zhuge Liang not only expressed his loyalty to the Liu clique in words, but also interpreted his loyalty to Liu Bei and Liu Chan with practical actions. During Liu Bei's lifetime, Zhuge Liang contributed his wisdom and talents to the development of Shu Han and helped Liu Bei take Jingzhou into Xichuan.
By the time Liu Chan succeeded to the throne, any decision zhuge liang made was for the development of Shu Han, although he had some authority at that time, but he never used his authority to do anything to benefit himself, and his continuous northern expedition was to hope to continuously consume the Wei state in order to narrow the gap between Shu and Wei. It can be said that he worked hard for Shu Han all his life, and did not even leave anything for posterity, so that when Liu Chan checked Zhuge Liang's property, he found that he only had a few acres of thin fields and a few mulberry trees under his name.
Sima Yi's performance was completely different, although he was capable, but he was not without loyalty to the Cao Wei clique. Leaving aside whether he was ambitious from the beginning, at least one thing is certain that in the later period, he had covetousness for the Cao Wei regime. Otherwise, it would not have secretly trained 3,000 dead soldiers for no reason, and it should be known that this is the manifestation of the heart of disobedience, and once discovered by the Son of Heaven, it will definitely be dealt with as a crime of rebellion. However, Sima Yi chose to take the risk and eventually killed Cao Shuang and usurped Cao Wei's power.
However, Sima Yi's series of moves were not recognized by people. Because in ancient times, loyalty and filial piety have always been advocated, and although Sima Yi laid a new political power for the Sima family, it always gave people a feeling of unscrupulous means. His victory was a bit opportunistic, rather than relying on his own little efforts. Even his reputation is not as good as Cao Cao's, although Cao Cao is known as a traitor, but his Jiangshan is at least hard fought by himself. Sima Yi, on the other hand, was a bit treacherous, directly plundering the fruits in the hands of others and taking them for himself. Therefore, it is not surprising that Sima Yi has been criticized by people for thousands of years.