After the Battle of Hanzhong, Liu Beizhi was overjoyed and rewarded his subjects. However, Liu Bei did not take long to be proud, Jingzhou was attacked by Eastern Wu, and Guan Yu was killed. Liu Bei's career was directly hit hardest by his allies. How could Liu Bei, a generation of tyrants, swallow this breath, so he began to plan the Eastern Crusade. Two years after Guan Yu was killed, Liu Bei was ready and launched a major expedition. In July 221, Liu Bei led the generals Wu Ban, Feng Xi, Zhang Nan, Zhao Rong, Liao Hua, and Fu Wei to personally lead tens of thousands of troops to attack Wu. Former allies fought each other, and the battle was extremely fierce.
In this great battle, except for Liu Bei sending Huang Quan to guard against Cao Pi stationed in Jiangbei, the rest of the time was a decisive battle between Liu Bei's army and Eastern Wu, and Cao Pi basically chose to sit on the mountain and watch the tiger fight. In the face of Liu Bei's tens of thousands of troops, Sun Quan, while declaring himself a vassal to Cao Pi, appointed Lu Xun, a young man, as the governor of Eastern Wu, and led Zhu Ran, Pan Zhang, Song Qian, Han Dang, Xu Sheng, Sun Huan and other star lineups to Liu Bei.
The course of this battle is more well documented in history, first Liu Bei's vanguard forces defeated the Wu generals Li Yi and Liu A, and the Wuling region of Jingzhou also joined Liu Bei's Wu lineup under the inducement of Ma Liang. Later, Liu Bei further advanced to the Yiling area. The Wu army led by Lu Xun was defeated and retreated all the way to The Pavilion. However, after that, Lu Xun relied on the terrain and insisted on not retreating. Liu Bei's troops were blocked in the middle of hundreds of miles of mountain roads and forced to camp dozens of times. In the end, Lu Xun attacked Liu Bei, and Liu Bei's troops were almost completely destroyed.
The war ended in a great victory for Eastern Wu. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms also renders this in it, writing about Liu Bei's 750,000 troops defeated by Lu Xun's 50,000 men, and Lu Xun's feat of "burning the camp". However, this description is very unreliable, and it is hard to write a situation in which Liu Beiliu is inferior to the situation, which is a magnificent feat of Eastern Wu winning more with less, misleading the world.
In history, the Battle of Yiling between Liu Bei and Eastern Wu, at least 3 records, can clearly show that this great war is only a balance of strength in terms of troops. The first is the number of troops in Eastern Wu, which is recorded in the "Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms and Lu Xun": "In the first year of Huang Wu, Liu Bei led the masses to the western boundary, and Quan Feng was the governor of Dadu and the false festival, and the governor Zhu Ran, Pan Zhang, Song Qian, Han Dang, Xu Sheng, Xian Yudan, Sun Huan and other 50,000 people refused. This is a clear indication that the number of people involved in the great war in Eastern Wu was 50,000. This is similar to the number in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms".
The other is the number of Liu Bei's troops. In the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, only tens of thousands are mentioned, but there are no exact numbers. However, in the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, Emperor Wen of Wen, there is a side record in the Book of Wei: "Yan Hai, Sun Quan wrote to the book, saying: 'Liu Bei's party has 40,000 people, two or three thousand horses, and when they return from the zi, please sweep it up, and take Kejie as an effect. The emperor said: "The evils of the past Kui Huan, the misfortune of Li Yi, the bird of Ziyang, the change of the Pass, the general of his mighty might, and the miraculous deeds of the qigong, in order to call me my will." ’”
As the attacked party, Sun Quan had already declared himself a vassal to Cao Pi in order to avoid being attacked on both sides. Naturally, Sun Quan's original intention in the letter was not to report on the military situation, but to ask for help. Therefore, Sun Quan was unlikely to exaggerate Liu Bei's troops, on the contrary, it was only possible to exaggerate the troops. Therefore, the figure of Liu Bei's military strength in this record should be relatively reliable. Of course, these 40,000 horses were not all of Liu Bei's troops.
The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms and the Biography of Ma Liang records: "And the Eastern Expedition to Wu, sending Liang into Wuling to recruit the Wuxi Barbarians, the Barbarians were all sealed, and the Xian Ruyi was pointed out." That is to say, in addition to Liu Bei's troops, there was also a force of the Wuxi Barbarians. The exact number of people in this unit is not known at present, but it is an ethnic minority unit entrenched in the Wuling area, and its number cannot be too large. Therefore, Liu Bei's Shu army plus the armed forces of ethnic minorities is estimated to have a total number of about 50,000, which is equivalent to the eastern Wu army.
Therefore, from the historical records, in the Battle of Yiling, Liu Bei's main army was only 40,000 people. Compared with the 50,000 horses in Eastern Wu, the number of people was not dominant. The reason for the early victory was only to rely on Liu Bei's bravery and the high morale of the Shu army. Later, he was blocked by Lu Xun in the narrow mountain path, and even if he joined the later barbarian troops, the troops could not be spread at all. Due to the extreme disadvantage of local troops, Lu Xun was able to defeat Liu Bei. The burning of the company battalion only fueled the offensive, not really killed the enemy. Judging from the historical records, Lu Xun's defeat of Liu Bei is obviously not a victory with less.
Reference Books: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Romance of the Three Kingdoms