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The Battle of Shenhepi can be described as the famous battle of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and at the same time, in this war, the victory of the Northern Wei Dynasty laid the foundation for the future unification of the north.
But what makes people wonder is that the battle of Shenhepi was a battle of winning more with less, and the strength of Houyan was as high as 80,000, while the Northern Wei Dynasty was only 20,000, why was Houyan a defeated country?
Causes of war
Since Emperor Wu of Jin unified the Three Kingdoms that had been formed over the years, he established the Western Jin Dynasty, although Emperor Wu of Jin created the rule of Taikang, but there is no doubt that this was also the early and middle period.
But in the later period, the situation in the Western Jin Dynasty changed, and Emperor Wu of the Jin Dynasty began to take the lead in pleasure, poverty and luxury, which made the Western Jin Dynasty a mess.
Coupled with the fact that the rulers of later generations were young and mediocre, the relatives quickly seized the opportunity to take power, which created the situation of the Eight Kings Rebellion, in which the surrounding ethnic minorities began to march into the north to claim each other's thrones.
People from all over the place began to revolt, among which the Hun Liu Yuan began to attack the Western Jin Dynasty under the name of Shu Han, and in 316, after Liu Yuan's son Liu Cong took over, he launched a full-scale attack on the Western Jin Dynasty.
It didn't take long for Liu Cong to attack Chang'an, and the Western Jin Dynasty was destroyed, but in the following year, Sima Rui established the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
Although in this process, many generals carried out the Northern Expedition, but there is no doubt that they all returned in vain, coupled with the internal chaebol struggle for power in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, which made the Eastern Jin Dynasty weakened for a time.
This made the competition between countries even more intense, most notably the Later Yan and Northern Wei dynasties.
And the founder of Houyan is Murong Trai, at first Murong Trai was still in Qianyan, for Qianyan, Murong Trai has a lot of credit, and has made many achievements.
But all this was seen by Murong Ping, as an auxiliary minister who was named by Emperor Qianyan, he was very eager for power, especially because he couldn't tolerate a little sand in his eyes, not to mention that Murong Chui had too many military exploits, so he began to be dissatisfied with him.
After that, Murong Ping began to plan to get rid of Murong Ping, but Murong Ping had been in the court for a long time and knew very well what kind of person Murong Ping was, so after learning that Murong Ping was going to harm him, he thought that Qianyan couldn't stay anymore.
Without saying a word, he went to the former Qin who defeated him, Fu Jian saw Murong Chui coming and knew that he was a talent, so he let him take an official position.
However, Murong Chui understood that it was a helpless move for him to stay in Qianqin, and coupled with the Battle of Weishui, Qianqin's strength weakened for a while, so he looked for an opportunity to leave Qianqin and start his own entrepreneurial road.
In 384, after Murong Chui and Fu Jian turned against each other, they used the forces they had accumulated over the years to successfully capture the land of Qianyan and establish Houyan.
But I never thought that not long after Murong Chui established Houyan, Tuoba Jue established the Northern Wei Dynasty, in fact, for the initial establishment of the Northern Wei Dynasty, the foundation was obviously not as solid as that of the Later Yan, which also made Murong Chui begin to look at the Northern Wei Dynasty.
Baidu Encyclopedia
Murong Trai believed that his land area was small, and once the surrounding countries launched a war, it would be easy to fall into a passive situation, in order to avoid this situation, Murong Trai decided to lead his troops to attack the Northern Wei Dynasty.
The course of the war
In 395 AD, Murong Chui sent Murong Bao and others to lead an army of 80,000 to march to the Northern Wei Dynasty, and Murong Bao, as the crown prince identified by Murong Chui, was still very young at that time, and it can be said that he had no combat experience.
But what people didn't expect was that Murong Trai handed over all the military power to Murong Bao, which made some ministers in the court feel inappropriate, so before attacking the Northern Wei Dynasty, Gao Hu wrote to suggest that Murong Trai should not send troops easily.
In fact, there are two main reasons why Gao Hu did not let Murong Chui attack the Northern Wei Dynasty, the first is that Murong and Tuoba are in a state of marriage, and in Gao Hu's view, it is obviously not a wise choice to attack a peaceful country.
If it fails to succeed, it will not only damage the country's national strength, but even have a hostile country, which will be extremely unfavorable to the future development of Houyan.
On the other hand, Murong Bao is too young, has no combat experience, and will only act rashly, and the art of war says: "Proud soldiers will be defeated", in Murong Bao's eyes, the Northern Wei Dynasty is weak and easy to be defeated, in this case, Murong Bao will definitely be defeated.
Because of these two points, Gao Hu, a regular servant of the free cavalry, once persuaded Murong Trai, but Murong Trai had already made up his mind, how could he change it, and if there was bad luck in the army, Gao Hu was removed from his official position.
And Tuoba Jue, who was far away in the Northern Wei Dynasty, was a little panicked when he learned about this, after all, the other party Houyan moved out of his family, which shows the determination to destroy the Northern Wei Dynasty.
However, a man named Zhang Gon next to Tuoba Jue was very calm, he did not hurry to explain the situation to Tuoba Jue, Zhang Gon said that although the Northern Wei Dynasty was strong, it could be defeated if it was more proud.
Therefore, at the suggestion of Zhang Gon, Tuoba Jue began to retreat while arranging defensive measures, and wanted to unite the Later Qin army.
After that, Tuoba Jue arranged troops on the south bank of the Yellow River and waited for Houyan to attack, and Tuoba Jue made good use of the terrain and environmental advantages to defeat Houyan for a time.
At this time, Murong Bao was very angry, so he led his army across the Yellow River to attack Tuoba, but Tuoba Jue held the Yellow River very firmly, and the Houyan army could not attack.
In addition, because of Murong Bao's illness, Tuoba Jue took advantage of this and sent people to spread rumors in Murong Bao's camp to cause panic in the Yan army.
Because of this, Murong Lin and Murong Bao began to be suspicious of each other and compete for the throne, which made Murong Bao have an idea to lead the troops to retreat.
End Result
In his opinion, because of too much suspicion in the camp, there was still no good time to attack the Northern Wei Dynasty, so he could only lead the army to retreat.
At this time, after Tuoba learned that Murong Bao had no determination to attack and led the army to retreat, he led 20,000 troops to pursue without saying a word.
Because Tuoba understood that this was a good time to defeat Hou Yan and should not be missed, Murong Bao did not know that Tuoba Jue would cross the Yellow River to pursue.
Zeng Wenwen, The reason for Yan's defeat after the Battle of Shenhepi, 2021
This made the Houyan army surrounded by Tuoba Jue for a time, and Tuoba Jue took advantage of the Houyan army to launch an attack unexpectedly, which was originally stationed in the Houyan army was a little flustered, and they did not expect Tuoba Jue to attack.
As a result, they all took up arms to resist, but unfortunately, without adequate preparation, they were still defeated by Tuoba.
After this war, Hou Yan did not give up, in 396 AD, when he seized the pride of the Northern Wei Dynasty, Murong Chui personally led the army to conquer, and the road was smooth and unimpeded, and Tuoba Jue had to choose to retreat.
And after Murong Chui arrived at Shenhepi, after seeing the results of the defeat in the previous war, coupled with the serious illness, the soldiers had no intention of fighting, so they could only lead the army to withdraw.
Author's point of view
The Battle of Shenhepi was a battle in which the Northern Wei Dynasty won more with less, and in this war, Tuoba Jue made good use of Hou Yan's proud attitude to separate the interior and further defeat the other party.
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