During the Warring States period, the Xiongnu coveted the rich lands of China and repeatedly violated the borders of the Zhao state. But there was one person who never allowed them to go beyond the thunder pool, and beat them to the point of being frightened. After the enemy army pressed the border, it was also he who refused to resist the enemy outside the gate of the country, and he was Li Mu, one of the "four famous generals of the Warring States".
Li Mu was born into a family of eunuchs of the State of Zhao. His father and grandfather both held important positions in the Zhao kingdom. Li Mu was also heavily valued by the King of Zhao, and the town guarded the northern border of the Zhao state. Because the Zhao state was in the north of the Central Plains, the north of the Zhao state was the place where the Xiongnu inhabited.
The Xiongnu peeped into the wealth of the Central Plains and often harassed the northern borders of the Zhao state. When Li Mu took office, he treated the local soldiers with great kindness. Not only did he regularly reward the soldiers, but he also taught them to ride horses and shoot arrows. It also stipulated that if the Xiongnu attacked, they would immediately return to the camp and hold on, and kill those who went out to fight without authorization.
For several years, Li Mu had lost no man, horse, or material in his hands. However, Li Mu's insistence was considered timid by the Xiongnu. Even Zhao Guo's own people thought so. In particular, King Zhao was very dissatisfied with Li Mu's approach and ordered Li Mu to take the initiative to attack, but Li Mu remained the same.
Angered by Li Mu's actions, King Zhao withdrew Li Mu from the front line and sent someone else to lead the army in his place. In the following year, every time the Xiongnu attacked, the Zhao State would take the initiative to attack. But each time the losses were heavy, not only the soldiers had many casualties, but the people on the border could not graze their cattle and cultivate.
King Zhao had no choice but to order Li Mu to go to the border again. But Li Mu was sick at home and couldn't go out behind closed doors. Later, King Zhao personally went to invite Li Mu, and Li Mu told King Zhao that if he wanted to command the soldiers himself, he could only do as he had before he dared to obey the order, and King Zhao gladly agreed.
When Li Mu arrived at the border, he still managed the army according to the original method, and the Xiongnu found nothing for several consecutive years. But Li Mu is not just blindly defensive. He selected 150,000 elite soldiers for secret training and equipped them with sophisticated equipment. When the time was ripe, Li Mu began to deploy a counterattack against the Xiongnu.
Li Mu first asked people to carry a large number of livestock to graze everywhere, attracting a small group of Xiongnu troops to come. When the Xiongnu troops arrived, Li Mu fled in defeat and let the Xiongnu taste some sweetness. After the Xiongnu Shan Yu learned of this, he thought that the Zhao army was vulnerable, and indeed led a large army to attack the Zhao state.
Li Mu laid many ambushes on the way of the Xiongnu attack. After the Xiongnu entered the encirclement, the Zhao army rushed out from both flanks and surrounded the Huns. The Xiongnu people were shocked, and suddenly they were distraught, and they were defeated by the Zhao army. In this battle, Li Mu killed more than 100,000 enemies, destroyed the ragged, defeated Dong hu, collected Lin Hu, and the Xiongnu Shan Yu fled. For decades after that, the Xiongnu did not dare to go south.
In 234 BC, the Qin army launched a large-scale attack on the State of Zhao, seizing several cities and pools in a row, killing more than 100,000 Zhao troops, and pointing directly at handan, the capital of the State of Zhao. King Zhao was horrified and hurriedly transferred Li Mu, who was guarding the frontier, back to block the pace of the Qin army's attack.
Li Mu led the elite troops on the border and confronted the Qin army in Yi'an with the local forces of the Zhao state. Li Mu still adopted the defensive counterattack strategy that he was good at, and he could not hold out. The generals of the Qin army were well aware that the Qin army was attacking from afar, and the army's supply was inconvenient. He wanted to use the method of luring the snake out of the hole to lead the army to attack Feixia and force Li Mu to send troops to rescue him, thus annihilating the Zhao army.
However, Li Mu had already seen through Qin Jun's plan, and even if his subordinates intervened, he still could not stick to it. When the main force of the Qin army reached Feixia, Li Mu took advantage of the emptiness of the Qin army's base camp to lead the army to capture the Qin army camp and capture the Qin army.
The main force of the Qin army heard about this and hurriedly retreated. However, Li Mu had already anticipated the enemy's opportunity and ambushed his troops along the way. The remaining troops were on the front, making it look like they were going to fight the Qin army to the death. The Qin army was indeed successful, and when the two armies clashed, the ambush troops came out from the flanks, and suddenly broke the Qin army. And Li Mu also fought because of this, and he was given the title of Wu Anjun.
In 232 BC, the Qin army divided into two routes and invaded the Zhao state again. Li Mu felt that there were Zhangshui and zhao great walls in the south as a support that was not easy to break through, so he adopted the strategy of "defending the south and attacking the north". Concentrate your forces on a fierce attack on the Qin army in the north. Li Mu personally supervised the battle, the morale of the Zhao army was high, and the Qin army in the north was defeated. When the Qin army in the south heard about this, it felt that it was difficult to win, so it hastily withdrew its troops.
In 229 BC, the Zhao state was weakened by successive natural and man-made disasters. The King of Qin then sent the general Wang Qi to lead an army to attack the State of Zhao. Wang Qi knew very well that Li Mu of the Zhao Kingdom was good at using troops, and if Li Mu did not get rid of it for a day, Zhao Guo could not be breached for a day. Immediately, he made a speech to the King of Qin and used the counter-plot to get rid of Li Mu.
Qin Guo spent a lot of money to bribe Guo Kai, who had framed Lianpo, and asked him to spread a message saying that Li Mu intended to rebel. King Zhao was dumbfounded, and indeed listened to the rumors and sent people to secretly hunt down and kill Li Mu. Only three months after Li Mu's death, Wang Qi attacked the capital of the Zhao state and captured the king of Zhao.
Li Mu bowed to the Zhao state all his life, drove the Xiongnu in the north, blocked the Qin army in the south, and rongma never tasted defeat in his life. The hateful person eventually died under the rumors of the villain, which could not help but make people sigh. As the old saying goes, maxima is always there, but Bole is not always there.