Feng Tang is old, Li Guang is difficult to seal. It is from Wang Bo's ancient famous article "Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion" that he has been repeatedly degraded, and today we do not mention Feng Tang, nor do we say Wang Bo. Only Li Guang, the "flying general" who is difficult to seal, li guang.
Li Guang was a famous general during the Western Han Dynasty, and participated in the Han Dynasty's wars against the Xiongnu more than seventy times. Not only was he tall and slender, but he was also good at riding and shooting, and his quick movements, and his presence at border passes often frightened the Xiongnu, calling him "Flying General". Tang poems describe his heroic spirit, "But let the dragon city fly in the future, do not teach Humadu Yin Mountain", which is a masterpiece that can be described as well known to women and children.
However, although Li Guang was a brave and good warrior, he did not understand strategy and tactics at all, but only won people with courage, and often used himself to be invincible, believing that he was invincible in the world. In small-scale battles, his bravery and unfazed general's arrogance made him famous; in large-scale battles, he repeatedly lost battles, and there was no great achievement to speak of, and he could not be rewarded with a marquis.
In a battle to pursue the Xiongnu, Wei Qing asked Li Guang to attack from the side, but Li Guang, who was very strong and capable, asked zhan to be the vanguard. Wei Qing understands Li Guang's personality, knows that he is usually self-righteous, does not listen to commands, and has no awareness of the overall situation, and his current mentality of rushing to win is even more inevitable that mistakes will occur. So Wei Qing resolutely ordered Li Guang to attack from the flank. However, Li Guang lost his way while leading the army and did not meet Wei Qing's main force in time, causing the Xiongnu to flee. Wei Qing blamed Li Guang, and at this time, Li Guang was also full of guilt, and committed suicide with a knife, and the people mourned in pain after hearing it. In the end, the "Flying General" Li Guang did not get the opportunity to be crowned marquis. Therefore, later generations regarded Li Guang as a representative figure who was talented and could not be displayed, and used "Li Guang is difficult to seal" to express the frustrated people who were unwilling.
In fact, Li Guang was a general in the Wenjing era, not a general in the era of Emperor Wu, and the age factor seems to have been ignored by many people, and Li Guang was more than fifty when the Wu Emperor period and the Xiongnu went to war.
The main problem of the Han army in the early days of facing the Xiongnu was that "the small troops could not fight, and the large troops could not catch up", in fact, the main force did not suffer any losses in the face of the Xiongnu troops, and the strategy of dealing with the Xiongnu in the Wenjing era was mainly to rely on the solid wall to clear the wilderness, sticking to the city and waiting for the large troops to assemble to try to fight a large-scale decisive battle once and for all, but with little effect. In the context of national strategy, Li Guang's main role was to delay the action of the other side by harassing him, and to seize the opportunity of the other side's dispersion to find a way to eat a number of small groups of troops. Under the premise of insisting on defensive counterattack, in fact, the main thing is to add a short surprise special operations play.
Li Guang became famous during the period when he served as a Taishou on the frontier, and his military strategy was already fixed in the Wenjing era. "Li Guang was the leader of the special forces in that period, the Xiongnu had to complete the retreat before the main mobile unit of the Han army completed the reaction, and Li Guang used a small group of elites to carry out a short surprise attack during the time when the Han army was assembled, which could cause a certain counterattack and casualty, so it was paid attention to by the Xiongnu, but obviously this kind of small fight would not cause fatal damage to the Xiongnu army. However, Li Guang obviously does not have the quality of being a commander in the operation of a large corps, and we can understand from the historical data that Li Guang loves soldiers like a son, is considerate of subordinates, and devotes himself to the method of leading troops in small units that he has followed for a long time, which is completely based on personal trust, but this way of fighting in large corps should be devastating for the troops.
Therefore, in the era of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, when the fighting style of the old era such as Li Guang was mainly engaged in cavalry long-distance attacks, li Guang was naturally inevitably backward, and this bad luck was actually a factor of the times, the fact was that in the Wenjing era, the Xiongnu strategy was limited to national strength and major policies must be designed based on defensive counterattacks.
With the current comments, Li Guang is an excellent small-force special warfare commander and a crappy large corps commander, which is not contradictory.