Sima Yi was the top military strategist of Wei during the Three Kingdoms period. He has repeatedly performed miraculous feats in his life, beheading generals and marquis, and is invincible. One of the most overlooked but far-reaching battles was the Battle of Xiangping against the Liaodong warlord Gongsun Yuan. This battle not only wiped out Gongsun Yuan in one fell swoop, but also completely changed the population map and ethnic composition of the entire Liaodong region. In fact, it was precisely because of this crucial battle that laid the foundation for the later establishment of the Xianbei Murong clan, a great northern clan, in Liaodong, which triggered hundreds of years of great migration and change of nationalities. So, how exactly did Sima Yi win the Battle of Xiangping? Why did he take such extreme measures? What does the Xianbei Murong clan have to do with this war? Let us clear the fog of history one by one and unravel these mysteries of the ages.
The battle situation is stalemate, and there is nothing to be done
According to the "Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms", Gongsun Yuan was attached to Cao Wei that year, and after being rejected, he rebelled against Wei as Wu. Cao Rong ordered a large army to be conquered, and Sima Yi, who was old and brave and galloped on the battlefield, was in charge. At that time, Gongsun Yuan was stationed in Xiangping, and there were two major cities of Xiangping and Liao Tunnel. It stands to reason that Gongsun Yuan could have avoided the real and waited for the Wei army to surround and attack him.
Who would have thought that Gongsun Yuan had no strategy, and he acted clumsily. At the beginning of the war, Gongsun Yuan abruptly gave up the two-wing cooperation strategy of Xiangping and Liao Tunnel, and only defended Xiangping, which made Liao Tunnel useless. Sima Yi immediately saved his worries and concentrated the whole army's firepower to surround Xiangping City. The food and grass inside and outside the city were becoming more and more urgent, and Gongsun Yuan saw that the army's morale was gradually declining, but he did not make any response to the aftermath.
Just when the two sides were coming and going, God had a bad idea. Heavy rains continued for months, and the plains and Zeguo were reduced to a vast sea. The three armies of the Wei army of 100,000 were like wolves in the wilderness, with no shelter. The soldiers huddled in makeshift barracks, starving and starving. The soldiers who used to be vigorous and soaring in the air are now all yellow-skinned and embarrassed, and they even have trouble breathing. Seeing this, an obscure junior officer suggested abandoning the siege and finding another way.
The change of water conservancy has suffered from it
The rain was delayed for a long time, but Sima Yi was resolutely unmoved. He firmly ordered to stay in the camp and survive the wind and rain. This decision has aroused doubts and dissatisfaction among many officers and men. However, Sima Yi has his own considerations for this.
As he said when answering his subordinates, "The Mengda army can be compared with our army for four to one for one year; If you want to make a month, what is the trouble of last year? Therefore, we do not worry about casualties, but only fight with grain and grass. "Gongsun Yuan's army was shot and ran out of food, but the Wei army was constantly replenished. The longer the time drags on, the more beneficial it will be for the Wei army.
Sure enough, after the heavy rain, the grain and grass were naturally abundant. The Wei army pressed forward step by step, cutting off all Gongsun Yuan's reinforcements and rear routes. Although Gongsun Yuan had the defense of Xiangping City, he had completely fallen into a situation of being passively beaten.
At the same time, the long-term hunger and panic made Gongsun Yuanjun's heart gradually lost. Yang Zuo and others, who were originally guarding Gongsun Yuan in the Tiepai Battalion, also gave up on themselves and defected to the Wei army single-handedly. Once upon a time, the Liaodong Army shook China, making Liuhe panic; Now he is a hundred-legged insect, and he is dying.
Faced with such a situation, Gongsun Yuan also saw through the irretrievable defeat. He repeatedly sent envoys such as Xiang Wang Jian, Imperial Historian Liu Fu, and Shizhong Wei Yan to beg the Wei army to open a line and allow it to slowly leave the city. But Sima Yi categorically refused, and issued a document humiliating Gongsun Yuan's past behavior.
"There are five in the military, and Gai said: can fight, defend, go, surrender, and die. Gongsun Yuan, your claim is purely false, how can you stand up to us who are both wise and brave? Today, if you have neither the courage to fight nor the determination to save your life, then accept the righteousness of judgment! ＂
Punish the thieves with drastic measures
Seeing the envoy being beheaded alive, Gongsun Yuan Huo Ran was shocked to realize that this lobbying master, who had once been alone, had no room for maneuver in front of Sima Yi. Surrender is an unattainable extravagant hope, and the only way to survive is to fight to the death.
So Gongsun Yuan decided to lead the army to break through the siege, hoping to break out of the siege of the Wei army. However, Sima Yi had already made a tight deployment in advance, blocking all possible routes to break out. Gongsun Yuan's last fight was just a waste of his precious horsepower and manpower.
After this bloody battle, Gongsun Yuan's power was not much left. Under the defeat of the remnants, Xiangping City began to fall into a roar and cry. The women hugged the children and were terrified; The strong men were frightened by the tragedy of the massacre of the city.
At this urgent moment, a team of Wei troops bravely entered and opened the gate of Xiangping City. What followed was a relentless encirclement and reprisals.
"Kill! Kill all the men over the age of fifteen! Slaughter them all! A Wei leader roared and waved his sword to greet the crowd. They also deliberately left Gongsun Yuan's cronies, and finally Ling Chi.
In this way, a brutal massacre was staged in Xiangping City. Under the Jin Ge Iron Horse, blood flooded the entire Liaodong Plain. When the demons were gone, Sima Yi ordered the corpses to be piled up into a temporary mound, indicating the complete victory of the Wei army.
In the face of such an unspeakable tragedy, the Liaodong Army that once upon a time shook the Central Plains has now been completely destroyed. Sima Yi did not leave any of the Gongsun Yuan's family, relatives and friends, and soldiers behind, and killed them all. Such a tragic wrist is really beyond common sense. However, this is also the most eye-popping scene of this battle of Xiangping.
Unparalleled decision-making
Just when people thought that the incident had come to an end, Sima Yi showed an even more astonishing hand. In the second year after the end of the massacre, he personally visited Liaodong and made a decision that shocked everyone in the world: to move all the Han people in Liaodong out of the country!
This move can be described as earth-shattering and crying ghosts. No one has ever been so ruthless, so resolute, so ruthless. But Sima Yi has his own considerations and determination.
"Over the years, the dragons and snakes of the Gongsun clan have been mixed, and the customs of Liaodong have been corrupted for a long time. Although we have removed its branches and leaves, the hole of the tree still exists, and the remnants of sin are still there. In order to prevent future troubles, the only way to do this is to completely cleanse this land! ＂
As a result, Sima Yi recruited a large number of officials and sergeants and launched a huge "land exchange" operation in Liaodong. They drove the Han people from house to house, killing all of them, including old and young, women and children.
Pity the Han people who have lived here for generations, they should have been drunk in this land full of hometown warmth for a long time. But now, they have to leave their hometowns, uproot, support the old and the young, and move from east to west. The journey was hard, the trek was difficult, and the suffering was unspeakable.
At the same time, Sima Yi dispatched a large number of Hu immigrants from the other end. These fierce nomads have been longing for this pasture for a long time, and now they have finally fulfilled their wish and have been able to take root here.
In this way, the familiar hot land of Liaodong was hollowed out overnight, and the bloodline of the original Han people came to an end; The imprint of the Hu people began to germinate, take root, and sprout again here......
A year later, when Sima Yi inspected again, there was no trace of the Han Chinese. Liaodong is now an unfamiliar territory, full of people of different races shouting and shouting, which makes people feel quite strange and incomprehensible.
Hidden dangers that affect hundreds of years have emerged
Although Sima Yi's approach completely solved the urgent needs of the moment, he did not expect that this practice of sacrificing the near and far would cause a catastrophe hundreds of years later.
According to historical records, among the nomads who were moved into Liaodong that year, they included the Xianbei Murong clan, which later became a household name. At first, these northern nomads were only sojourners in the barren lands of Mobei, and no one cared about them. But it was these unknown alien races that rose rapidly over the centuries to become a well-deserved power.
It can be said that Sima Yi's single-handedness led to fundamental changes in the population and ethnic composition of the entire Liaodong, and also laid the root of the later great ethnic change. In fact, it was with this opportunity that the Murong clan was able to gain a foothold in Liaodong and gradually multiply on this fertile soil. They soon occupied this fertile capital region, and defeated all powerful enemies one by one, unifying the entire Liaodong.
More importantly, once the Xianbei Murong clan established itself in Liaodong and stationed here, the Central Plains Dynasty then had to compete with them for a long time. By the fifth and sixth centuries, the territory controlled by the Xianbei people in Liaodong had spread throughout northern China, and the rulers of the Southern Song Dynasty could only hope for it. Finally, in 494 AD, the Xianbei people returned triumphantly, overthrew the Southern Dynasty in one fell swoop, and established the Northern Wei Dynasty, which was named "the most powerful" by later generations.
For hundreds of years, Chinese civilization was dominated by foreign peoples, and it was not until 581 AD that Han Chinese orthodoxy was restored. It can be described as a great change of nationality with far-reaching impact. And the root of all this can be traced back to Sima Yi's decision hundreds of years ago.
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Sima Yi was eloquent and strategic, wise and brave, and famous. However, it was his extreme skill after defeating Gongsun Yuan that caused a national catastrophe that lasted for hundreds of years, which is really suffocating. But in any case, this story hidden in the depths of history will eventually be remembered and remembered by future generations.