In 263 AD, the State of Wei launched the Battle of Shu to end the three kingdoms. Sima Zhao sent an army of 180,000 troops, and the soldiers took Shu in three ways.
After the loss of Hanzhong, the Shu general Jiang Wei immediately retreated to the Sword Pavilion and fought against the Wei army. In order to break the stalemate, Wei smuggled Deng Ai and his elite troops to Yinping and miraculously appeared in the Chengdu Plain.
In the final stage of the war, Zhuge Liang's eldest son Zhuge Zhan led tens of thousands of troops to fight with Deng Ai at Mianzhu Pass. As a result, he and his son Zhuge Shang were all killed in battle, and used their lives to draw a crippled end to the Shu Han regime. Subsequently, Liu Chan led the people to surrender, and shu Han perished.
Zhuge Zhan was the son of Zhuge Liang, it was impossible to know anything about the art of war, and he had several times the strength of the Wei army, and he occupied dangerous points and waited for work, so why did he end up with the defeat and death of the soldiers? Below, we briefly analyze one or two.
First, the pre-war situation
In 263 AD, the Battle of Shu launched by Wei was almost a one-sided war. There are two reasons for this:
1. In terms of national strength, Shu Han and Cao Wei have been separated by more than one level.
In terms of land area, Cao Wei divided the world into two, occupying nine prefectures such as Qing, Xu, Yan, and Yu among the thirteen states of the Eastern Han Dynasty, while the Shu Han Dynasty only benefited one prefecture.
Kyushu, owned by Cao Wei, was also the most densely populated place at that time. According to statistics, the total population of Cao Wei at that time was about 4.5 million people, while the Shu Han only had a population of more than 900,000.
Factors that are strongly related to land and population are also economics. "The soldiers and horses have not moved, the grain and grass have gone first", without economy, how can we talk about war?
The Shu Han economy had a single structure, agriculture was barely self-sufficient, and only Shu Jin could bring "foreign exchange" income. At the end of the Shu Han Dynasty, due to years of conquest and the darkness of the imperial government, the imperial court could not come up with enough money to support the war on the front line.
As early as the "Longzhong Confrontation", Zhuge Liang proposed to Liu Bei: Cao Cao is strong, and he must not contend with the front, and if he fights, he must wait until the world changes.
However, as the decades passed, the gap in national strength between Shu and Wei became wider and wider, and the possibility of a Shu war against Wei became smaller and smaller.
2. In terms of talent, Shu Han faced the embarrassing situation of being a small number of soldiers.
In the late Shu Han Dynasty, due to the control of the land area and population, the number of Shu troops was basically maintained at more than 100,000, except for the troops that needed to guard various places, the mobile force that could really be taken out was only tens of thousands of people, and it was simply too much to deal with the Wei army.
Moreover, in the late Shu Han Dynasty, there were few outstanding talents among the local people in Yizhou. It turned out that the Jingxiang talents brought by Liu Bei had almost all withered away, although there were a few good generals who surrendered by chance, which was also a drop in the bucket. Therefore, we also usually use the phrase "there is no general in Shu, Liao hua is a pioneer" to describe the talent dilemma of Shu Han in this period.
Second, the course of the war
In August 263, 180,000 Wei soldiers divided into three routes to cut down Shu. The Middle East Route Army was led by Zhong Hui and directly took Hanzhong; the Western Route Army, led by Deng Ai, attacked Puzhong; and the Middle Route Army, led by Zhuge Xu, cut off Jiang Wei's return road.
Faced with the pressure of the large soldiers, Jiang Wei resolutely retreated and retreated back to the Sword Pavilion. With the Sword Pavilion Heavenly Danger, he organized a tight defense, and the Wei army attacked many times, but could not be overcome, and entered a stalemate with the Shu army. However, due to the difficulty of the Shu Road and the difficult supply of grain and grass for the Wei army, the generals already had a proposal to withdraw their troops.
At the critical moment, Deng Ai stood up and took the initiative to put forward the plan of "smuggling Yin Ping". He led a crack army of more than 10,000 people, through the inaccessible cliffs, difficult to bypass the Sword Pavilion, and unexpectedly appeared under Jiangyou City. As a result, Jiangyou Taishou Ma Mi surrendered, and Deng Ai smoothly entered the Chengdu Plain.
The Wei army was close at hand, and the people in Chengdu were panicked. Liu Chan hastily made the following decisions: first, Zhuge Zhan, the eldest son of Zhuge Liang, led an army to resist Deng Ai; second, he summoned troops from all over the country to rescue Chengdu; and third, he asked Wu Guo for help.
Liu Chan's three moves can not be said to be unwise, if implemented properly, Shu Han can completely eat Deng Ai and turn the crisis into safety. After receiving the order, Shu Han's troops in Padang immediately marched to Chengdu, and the ally Wu Guo also dispatched troops to reinforce Chengdu, and his veteran general Ding Feng also took the initiative to attack the Wei state of Shouchun to alleviate the military pressure on Shu Han.
However, the mistake actually occurred first to Zhuge Liang's eldest son Zhuge Zhan.
First of all, the prestige of the Zhuge family in the Shu Han Dynasty is extremely high, and Zhuge Zhan's horse can indeed play a role in boosting morale and rallying people's hearts. However, Zhuge Zhan had been in the center of the Chengdu imperial court for a long time and had no actual combat experience in leading troops to fight. His opponent, Deng Ai, is a battlefield veteran who has repeatedly defeated Jiang Wei, and has courage and strategy.
Moreover, although Zhuge Zhan led tens of thousands of people, he was much more numerous than Deng Ai. However, Deng Ai commanded the elite of the Wei army, and Zhuge Zhan brought the city defense army of Chengdu plus some temporarily recruited soldiers, and the real combat effectiveness between wei and Shu was too different.
In the era of cold weapons, a well-disciplined and well-trained elite army can completely defeat a rabble who are several times larger than themselves. Although the combat effectiveness of the Shu army was poor, this was also the last force that Liu Chan could come up with that could fight.
Zhuge Zhan's forward troops initially encountered Deng Ai at Fucheng, and as a result, as soon as they engaged, they were defeated and defeated by Deng Ai.
Zhuge Zhan originally wanted to fight a quick battle and make a quick decision, so he did not adopt the advice of his subordinates to stick to no war, but the reality in front of him made him begin to face up to the gap in combat effectiveness between the two sides.
Therefore, Zhuge Zhan abandoned Fucheng and retreated to the last barrier in Chengdu, Mianzhu Pass.
Zhuge Zhan retreated to Mianzhu Pass, which was a wise move. Judging from the situation at that time, Deng Ai was alone and deep, and logistics supply was a big problem. And if the Shu army can hold out, wait for the arrival of the Qinwang troops everywhere, and then join forces, they will be able to surround and annihilate Deng Ai.
And the old treacherous and cunning Deng Ai, Deng Ran would not sit idly by and watch this result happen, he used the "Radical General Method" to persuade Zhuge Zhan to surrender, saying: "If he descends, he will be the evil king of Lang."
The Ancestral Home of the Zhuge Family was Langya, Shandong, so Deng Ai used Houlu, a high-ranking official of the "Evil King of Lang", to trick Zhuge Zhan into surrendering.
Of course, he knew that Zhuge Zhan would not surrender, but would only be provoked. As a result, Zhuge Zhan angrily beheaded Deng Ai's emissaries and took the initiative to go out to fight the Wei army.
The Battle of Mianzhu Pass was very tragic and tragic, and although the Wei army had superior combat effectiveness, they were almost eaten by the Shu army at first because of the disparity in strength. At the critical moment, Deng Ai assumed a posture of breaking the cauldron and pretending to behead his cowardly son Deng Zhong, but the morale of the Wei army was greatly boosted, and he counterattacked with all his strength and broke the Shu army. In the fierce battle, Zhuge Zhan and his son Zhuge Shang and other major Shu Han generals were all killed.
In the Battle of Mianzhu Pass, although the Shu army was defeated, it was still not to the point of exhaustion, at this time there were still defenders in Chengdu, the Qinwang army in various places was on the way to Chengdu, and Jiang Wei was still stubbornly guarding the Sword Pavilion to contain the main force of the Wei army of Zhong Hui.
However, the Battle of Mianzhu Pass was a battle that broke the hearts of the Shu Han army. It was precisely because Zhuge Zhan enjoyed a high degree of influence in the Shu Han Dynasty, the death of their father and son in battle aggravated the panic of the people of Chengdu.
Therefore, Liu Chanjunchen in Chengdu also lost the fighting spirit to continue to resist.
Therefore, Zhuge Zhan was actually the key figure who decided the demise of shu Han, and like his father's most powerful assistant Ma Mo, he was defeated in the four words of "talking about soldiers on paper".