"The blue-faced Dou Erdun steals the imperial horse, the red-faced Guan Gongzhan Changsha, the yellow-faced Dianwei, the white-faced Cao Cao, the black-faced Zhang Fei..."
Cao Cao, as a prominent figure in the Three Kingdoms period, blackmailed tianzi to order the princes, making him bear the insults of eternity, just like the rap face lyrics at the beginning, but is this really the case?
Ugly Cao Cao
Cao Cao's constant ugliness is actually closely related to a book, which is Luo Guanzhong's "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", which although it is listed among the four famous works in China, belongs to the category of novels and has great changes to history.
In the concept of the ancients, orthodoxy was particularly important. Whether a new dynasty can gain a foothold and whether a dynasty can endure is inseparable from orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is about whether the heavens agree with the regime and whether it is destined for it.
The book is also known for its easy to understand, so that the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" quickly spread in civil society, and Cao Cao's image was also influenced by this book, becoming today's treacherous and suspicious Cao A-concealer. So, what is the true image of Cao Cao?
The Tyrant of The Chaos
Cao Cao's father, Cao Song, was the adopted son of cao Teng, a famous eunuch of the Eastern Han Dynasty, who served four generations of Han emperors and had a temporary tilt of power. By the time of Emperor Huan of Han, Cao Song had inherited Cao Teng's marquisate and served as a lieutenant.
In his youth, Cao Cao was astute, but extremely debauched and unruly, and was a typical clumsy disciple. However, Cao Cao was quite accomplished in military affairs, and not only copied many ancient martial arts strategies, but even annotated famous works such as Sun Tzu's Art of War.
In 174, Cao Cao was promoted to filial piety and entered Luoyang as an official. However, Cao Cao's involvement in the world was still shallow, and he offended many prominent figures of the dynasty, and was therefore excluded from the center of power.
It was not until 184 AD that Cao Cao ushered in the first major turning point in his life.
Due to the corruption of the Eastern Han court, coupled with the fact that it was in the year of the great drought, the tax revenue did not fall but increased, and people joined the Yellow Turban Army at the corner of the corner on the verge of desperation, and challenged the Eastern Han court.
Faced with the proliferation of the Yellow Turban Army, Cao Cao was ordered to be made a knight lieutenant, and he joined forces with Emperor Fusong and others to attack the Yellow Turban Army in Yingchuan. As a result, the government army, which had been defeated repeatedly, won a great victory, beheaded more than 10,000 enemies, and Cao Cao became famous in the first battle.
In 189 AD, the Han Ling Emperor died, the crown prince Liu Wei ascended the throne, and Empress He bowed to the government. As Empress He's brother, He Jin took the opportunity to kill the eunuchs, but was killed instead, and the Eastern Han Dynasty once again fell into the hands of eunuchs.
Under the banner of killing eunuchs, Dong Zhuo led an army into Luoyang. After solving the eunuchs, he even took care of the young emperor Liu Wei as well, and set up Chen Liu as the emperor of Han, taking the opportunity to control the imperial government.
Dong Zhuo committed the following crimes and was scolded by the people of the world. Faced with the dust of the Heavenly Son, Cao Cao took the opportunity to raise an army on the grounds of King Qin, recruited a large number of loyal soldiers, and Cao Cao's power became more and more powerful.
In 192, Cao Cao again defeated the Yellow Turban Army and occupied Yanzhou. After Emperor Xian of Han returned to Luoyang, Cao Cao served as Sikong (司空), a military general on horseback, and took over power.
The Battle of Guandu in 199 AD made Cao Cao's name resound throughout the Shenzhou Continent again.
The Battle of Guandu was the first peak duel of the Three Kingdoms period, and the side involved in the battle was the Fourth Emperor and the Third Duke, yuan Shao, the super overlord of Qingyou and Ji sizhou. On the other hand, it was Cao Cao, who was sitting in the four prefectures of Yanyu and Xu.
The two stood out in the turbulent situation at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and after eliminating the local forces that were entrenched around them, the two had direct territorial contact.
Cao Cao, with guan Yu's help, attacked Yan Liang and beheaded Wen Ugly, causing Yuan Shao to lose the general one after another. Later, Yuan Shao's adviser Xu You rebelled and helped Cao Cao sneak into Wuchao, where Yuan Shao's grain was located. As a result, Cao Cao defeated Yuan Shao's army of 110,000 with 20,000 troops.
Although Yuan Shao fled back to the base camp with the remaining 800 cavalry, he was devastated and died soon after, and Cao Cao also took advantage of the situation to unify the entire northern region.
In the second year after the initial pacification of the north, Cao Cao personally led 150,000 water troops, plus Liu Biao's 80,000 people, totaling more than 200,000 troops to the south. This also ushered in the second peak showdown of the Three Kingdoms period - the Battle of Chibi.
In the face of Cao Cao's tiger gaze, Sun Quan in the south formally reached an alliance with Liu Beifang, with Zhou Yu's 30,000 elite sailors as the main force and Liu Bei's 20,000 troops as the assist to resist Cao's army.
Although Cao's army had the advantage in numbers, because most of the soldiers on Cao Cao's side were northerners, they came to the south for the first time and participated in water battles, and there was a situation of water and soil dissatisfaction.
In order to alleviate this situation, Cao Cao used iron chains to connect the warships, which greatly reduced the shaking of the ships and made the ships fight on the ground.
To Cao Cao's surprise, Zhou Yu made a little trick and used a fire to completely burn Cao Cao's mighty strategy of dominating the world.
After the Battle of Chibi, Cao Cao did not go south until his death in 220 AD.
Selling shoes with incense
During his lifetime, Cao Cao pacified the north, suppressed the Xiongnu, and surrendered Xianbei, even though he was defeated at the Battle of Chibi, this did not affect the evaluation of his military genius, and In addition, Cao Cao was also quite accomplished in literature.
In addition to writing poems such as "GuanCang Hai", "Short Song Line", and "Turtle Although Shou", Cao Cao also left behind four dictionaries of "dividing incense and selling shoes".
At the end of his life, Cao Cao did something that made future generations praise him for a thousand years. He reversed the previous practice of the emperor's thick burial and accompanying burial, emphasized frugal burial, opposed the burial of concubines, and made arrangements for concubines afterwards.
According to Cao Cao's will, after his death, the concubines could decide to stay. Those who are willing to leave may choose to remarry someone else, and no one may obstruct them. Those who were willing to stay continued to live in Tongquetai and learned to make a living making tapes and shoes, which became the origin of the sale of incense in later generations.
Cao Cao's approach is the last bit of love for his wife, and it is also an affirmation of the status of women. This act was beyond the limits of that era, a feat, and a reputation for Cao Cao.
But on the back of Cao Cao's adulterous male, there is a disgraceful side. In his life, in addition to the pursuit of power, Cao Cao was also extremely persistent about his wife.
He first seized Zhang Xiu's widow, and as a result, Zhang Xiu rebelled, and his eldest son, Ai, was killed in battle; then he and Guan Yu snatched Qin Yilu's wife Lady Du, causing Guan Yu to resent her; and then, he married He Jin's daughter-in-law, Lady Yin.
In addition, the lieutenant of Touching Gold created by Cao Cao also made posterity criticize. In order to make up for the lack of military salaries, Cao Cao actually set up a lieutenant who specialized in tomb robbery.
In the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, there is a sentence that evaluates Cao Cao, calling it: the tyrant of the chaotic world, the able minister of ruling the world. The tyrant of the chaotic world is obvious to everyone, but in the Taiping Dynasty, will Cao Cao really keep his duty and become a capable subject?