The "Battle of Yiling" was one of the "Three Great Battles" of the Three Kingdoms period, and the other two were the "Battle of Guandu" and the "Battle of Chibi".
Since it is listed in the "three major battles", its war scene must be large-scale. In the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms": Shu Han in this war "700,000 troops were completely destroyed", did Liu Bei really lose so many soldiers and horses?
Liu Bei stills
In 219, Sun Quan took advantage of Guan Yu's attack on Cao Wei to attack Jingzhou with a plan, captured Guan Yu, and made a vendetta between Shu and Wu. After Guan Yu was killed, many people thought that Liu Bei would not avenge Guan Yu, because shu Han was exhausted at that time.
Only Liu Ye, a minister of Cao Wei, insisted that Liu Bei would send troops, and his reason was: "Liu Bei Yu Yu, righteous as a monarch, Enyou father and son." Yu died, not waiting for the revival of the army to repay, Yu
begin
In the end, there is not enough. Out of trust in Liu Bei's character, Liu Ye believed that Liu Bei would definitely send troops. In fact, among Cao Wei's hundreds of ministers, only Liu Ye's judgment was correct.
Guan Yu stills
In order to retake Jingzhou, Liu Bei hated Guan Yuxue and personally led a large army to attack Eastern Wu in 221 AD. Sun Quan was afraid of being attacked by Shu and Wei, so he had to send envoys to ask Liu Bei for peace. Sun Quan could only appoint Lu Xun as the governor of Dadu, and commanded Zhu Ran, Pan Zhang, Han Dang, Xu Sheng, Sun Huan, and other troops totaling 50,000 people to the front line to defend against the Shu army; at the same time, he also sent envoys to Cao Pi to repair themselves to avoid a two-front battle.
At the beginning, the Shu army was full of momentum, the banner was victorious, and the good news was frequent. Eastern Wu's general Lu Xun avoided his attack and was on the defensive. But the Eastern Wu side was panicked and not chaotic, orderly, and replenished.
Therefore, after three months of fighting in the early stages, the Shu army only gained the upper hand in momentum, but did not eliminate any living forces in Eastern Wu.
Lu Xun stills
By the beginning of the summer of 222, Liu Bei's offensive gradually weakened, and the two armies were in a stalemate, at which time Liu Bei of the Shu state personally led the Shu state army to the Camp of Zigui'an, and soon moved to Yiling, and the Eastern Wu army also arrived. The troops of the two sides were massied on a large scale, occupied favorable terrain, lined up troops, and camped for hundreds of miles, opening up the posture. however
Lu Xun, the governor of Eastern Wu, saw that the Shu army was full of vigor and vitality, and for the next two months he kept his troops still, frustrated the Shu army's vigor, and the officers and men of the Shu army could not fight a decisive battle after a long confrontation, resulting in impetuous emotions and unstable military morale.
Sun Quan stills
At this moment, Lu Xun seized the fighter and ordered the Eastern Wu soldiers and horses to use fire to attack and burn Liu Bei's camp, and the scene where Zhuge Liang burned Cao's camp in Chibi was staged in Yiling. Only to see Liu Bei's hundreds of miles of company camp become a sea of fire, and the screams of the officers and men of the Shu army resounded throughout. Lu Xun resolutely ordered the Eastern Wu soldiers and horses to attack in multiple ways, attacking separately, and dividing the Shu army into several pieces.
The Shu army could not take care of each other at the end, and it was chaotic, and soon collapsed into an army. The death of the Shu army and the surrender of the fall almost completely destroyed the army, and only Liu Bei fled back to Shuzhong with dozens of defeated soldiers. Liu Bei's revenge failed, but he was defeated miserably, and he was ashamed and indignant, and after returning home, he could not afford to lie down, and died of illness in the following spring in the White Emperor City.
"Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is a novel, not a canonical history, which has many fictional components and is very different from the real history.
Moreover, in actual combat, the attacking side often bluffs, protects more troops, and deters the other side, which is also a psychological tactic. How many people did Liu Bei's Shu army move in the Battle of Yiling, is it really the 700,000 troops mentioned in the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms"?
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, what was the total population of the country?
According to the Zizhi Tongjian and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms,
At that time, the population of Cao Wei was 5.06 million, Eastern Wu was 2.56 million, Shu Han was 1.28 million, plus some floating population,
Up to about 10 million. According to the ratio of 10:1 at that time, the total military strength of the three kingdoms of Wei, Wu and Shu was only about 1 million. In this way, the 700,000 troops claimed by the Shu State contain a lot of water.
In terms of Eastern Wu:
The Defenders of Guling were about 5,000, the defenders of Gangneung were about 5,500, and the defenders of Shangling were about 5,000. The soldiers and horses of the other generals were about 30,000, the commander Lu Xun had about 10,000 soldiers and horses, and the total strength of Eastern Wu in the Battle of Yiling was about 55,000.
Shu Han:
Zhuge Jin led 3,000 troops to garrison Jiangling, but did not participate in the battle, which was arranged as a strategic reserve department; Huang Quan led a part of the soldiers and horses to monitor the movement of Cao Wei's soldiers and horses, and the strength of the troops was more than 5,000; Feng Xi was the vanguard officer and led the vanguard of the Shu army with about 40,000 people The elite troops of the Shu army led by Liu Bei himself were about 25,000 people; there were about 2,000 ethnic minority troops mobilized by Ma Liang in the Shu army; the Shu army sent troops to attack Eastern Wu, and from the Shu state to Eastern Wu, in order to ensure logistical supplies, there were people left along the road, and there were about 3,000 troops responsible for the defense of the transportation line; the general Zhao Yun led the soldiers and horses to take charge of receiving them in Jiangzhou, with a strength of nearly 3,000 troops. In this way, the total strength of the Shu army was about 80,000, of which Liu Bei invested about 60,000 or 70,000 troops in the main battlefield of Yiling.
After the defeat of the Shu army, Liu Bei only had more than a thousand people left to flee back, and almost the entire army was destroyed, with actual losses of not less than 65,000 people. It can be seen from this that the total destruction of the 700,000 troops recorded in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is false.
However, these 60,000 or 70,000 people were almost all of Liu Bei's family at that time, and most of them were veterans who had experienced hundreds of battles after the "Battle of Hanzhong".
After their total army was destroyed, the military strength of the Shu Han regime was so weak that even the barbarian rebellion near Chengdu could not be controlled.
If it were not for Zhuge Liang's efforts to turn the tide, after the "Battle of Yiling", I am afraid that the entire Shu Han regime would have been destroyed in one fell swoop, and the low national strength of the Shu Han after the war can be seen.
Therefore, in the real history of the "Battle of Yiling", Shu Han certainly did not lose 700,000 troops, but it is certain that this war caused Shu Han to be seriously injured, and in the next few years, he was no longer able to carry out the Northern Expedition to the Central Plains.