In the twenty-fourth year of Jian'an (219 AD), Guan Yu led an army from Jingzhou to attack Cao Wei and besieged Xiangyang and Fancheng. In this battle, Guan Yu took advantage of the advantage of Tianshi to win successive battles and capture Yu Ban and other wei generals, severely damaging Cao Wei. However, Sun Wu's sneak attack on Jingzhou caused Guan Yu's situation to take a sharp turn for the worse, and under the attack of the two sides, Guan Yu was defeated and fled to Maicheng, eventually dying at the hands of Sun Quan.
An important reason for Guan Yu's failure was that he lacked troops, the Jingzhou guards were empty, and he attacked Wei and Wu. Therefore, Guan Yu was saddled with the insults of greed and arrogance. Guan Yu's personality is flawed, but in the battles of Fancheng and Xiangyang, Guan Yu did not fail to see the problem of insufficient troops. Guan Yu is known as the god of war, and no one is out of the right when marching and fighting, so how can he be so negligent in the deployment of troops?
In fact, as early as the beginning of the war, Guan Yu wrote a letter to Liu Feng, who was located in Shangyong, asking him to immediately send troops and assist himself, at this time, if Liu Feng immediately sent troops, or strengthened the defense of Jingzhou, or went to Fancheng and Xiangyang to support Guan Yu, Guan Yu would not be defeated later. After receiving the order, Liu Feng wanted to send troops to support Guan Yu, but at this time, the persuasion of a person made him change his mind, refused Guan Yu's request, and also ruined Guan Yu's life and Jingzhou in the Shu state.
This person is Meng Da.
Meng Da is Fazheng's fellow countryman and Fazheng's brother in the same party, and the two have a very close relationship. When Dong Zhuo was at war with Han Sui and others, Fa Zheng and Meng Da saw that the world was in chaos and Chang'an was not stable, so they moved their families west to Yizhou and defected to Liu Zhang's men. Unfortunately, Liu Zhang was a faint and incompetent monarch, and neither Fa Zheng nor Meng Da was reused in his place. Therefore, when Fa Zheng and Meng Da were ordered to send envoys to Liu Bei, they all turned to Liu Bei as soon as they were combined. Since then, Meng Da has become a member of Liu Bei's camp.
During Guan Yu's Northern Expedition, Meng Da was stationed at Shangyong with Liu Feng. Guan Yu asked Liu Feng and Meng Da to send troops to help, but Meng Da felt that Guan Yu's war was going well, the situation was very good, and he did not need his support, but shangyong was a place, just attached to himself, and people's hearts were unstable, so he refused to send troops.
When Guan Yu was defeated, he asked Liu Feng and Meng Da for help again, and Meng Da, worried that he would not be able to come out of the battle situation, once again pressed his troops. Without support, Guan Yu was attacked from the abdomen and back, and finally could only defeat Maicheng. A generation of martial gods died tragically in the younger generation, and Meng Da played an important "role" in it.
After Guan Yu's death, Meng Da knew that he could not escape the interference, so he did not stop and surrendered to Cao Wei with his whole family and subordinates. As soon as Cao Pi heard that Meng Da had surrendered, he was overjoyed and immediately gave Meng Da an official position, and also asked him to follow Xiahou Shang and Xu Huang to attack the eastern three counties of the Shu state.
Meng Da wrote a letter to Liu Feng and asked Liu Feng to surrender to Cao Wei with him, but Liu Feng refused. However, it was not thought that after Liu Feng returned to Chengdu, Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang on the one hand vented their resentment that Guan Yu had died in battle and lost Jingzhou, and on the other hand, they were worried that Liu Fengwei would not be able to fall, so they put Liu Feng to death. Liu Feng sighed before dying, "Hate does not use Mencius's words!" (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Biography of Liu Feng)
In fact, Liu Feng did not have to sigh, because Meng Da quickly followed in his footsteps.
After Being reused in Cao Wei Mengda, Cao Pi merged the three counties of Fangling, Shangyong, and Xicheng into a new city, and appointed MengDa as the taishou of the new city. During this period, Meng Da was entrusted with heavy responsibilities, in the southwest he held the power of the three counties, and in the court he was friendly with Xiahou Shang, with his back to a large tree for shade.
However, with the death of Xiahou Shang, Meng Da became more and more embarrassed in the court, and the people who spoke for him died almost completely, and as a rebel general of the Shu state, he was entrusted with the difficult task of directly facing the Shu state. Whether it was Cao Wei's decision to attack the Shu state or the Shu state's decision to go north, Meng Da was the first to bear the brunt. As time went on, Meng Da became more and more uneasy.
When Zhuge Liang learned of this, he had a plan, and he wrote a letter to Meng Da to persuade Meng Da to surrender. Meng Da replied that he was willing to return to Shu Han. Fei Shi was not happy to hear about this, and he rebuked Meng Da to Zhuge Cheng Xiang, saying: "Meng Da boy, in the past Zhenwei was disloyal, and then betrayed the ancestors, repeating people, He Zu and Shu Evil! Zhuge Liang just laughed and said nothing, he persuaded Meng Da to of course have his own deep consideration. If Meng Da really surrendered to himself, then the three counties of Xincheng would return to the hands of the Shu Kingdom, if Meng Da planned to be capricious, anyway, his reply was also in his own hands, and when the time came to send this letter to Sima Yi, he could watch the two of them lose and be injured.
Unfortunately, Zhuge Liang did not expect that something had gone wrong inside Meng Da.
Meng Da's plan to submit to Zhuge Liang was not kept secret, but was learned by Wei Xingtai shou Shenyi. Shen Yi had always been at odds with Meng Da, so he leaked the matter to Sima Yi. When Sima Yi learned of this, he immediately wrote a letter to Meng Da: "The general abandoned Liu Bei in the past, and he was in charge of the state, and the general of the State Committee took the post of frontier and the general of the general tushu. The Shu people are stupid and wise, and they can't help but cut their teeth to the general. Zhuge Liang wanted to break with each other, but there was no way out of suffering. What Mo Zhi said is not a small thing, but it is light and light and makes it revealed, which is easy to know. (Book of Jin)
Meng Da looked at it and began to hesitate again, but what he didn't know was that Sima Yi had already secretly dispatched troops to attack him. Meng Da foolishly thought that Sima Yi's army would take thirty days even if it came, and as a result, Sima Yi was killed in only eight days. Meng Da was unable to organize resistance in a panic, and sixteen days later Shangyong City was destroyed, and Meng Da was beheaded by Sima Yi.
There is also a conspiracy theory about Meng Da's death, that is, Zhuge Liang wants to borrow a knife to kill people. When Meng Da attacked Fangling, he killed Zhuge Liang's brother-in-law, Qu Qi, so Zhuge Liang deliberately leaked the matter to Sima Yi and asked Sima Yi to kill Meng Da.
However, this statement does not conform to historical facts, nor does it conform to Zhuge Liang's character. Zhuge Liang had a broad mind, and when Meng Da attacked Fangling, he was doing things for Liu Bei, so it was not Zhuge Liang's style to hate Meng Da and kill people with a knife. What's more, Meng Da was concerned about the success of the Northern Expedition, and it was much more beneficial for him to submit him to the Shu state than to die at the hands of Sima Yi. Therefore, Zhuge Liang should not have deliberately leaked the matter of Meng Da's attachment to himself to Sima Yi.
Although Meng Da's death was directly caused by Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi, in the final analysis, it was caused by his own capriciousness. In the era of great chaos in the world, each of them was their master, and there was nothing wrong with choosing a good tree to live in, but Meng Da did not save Guan Yu in the Battle of Fancheng, and then repeatedly back and forth between Wei and Shu, stirring up the storm of the Three Kingdoms, which was his own death.
Resources:
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Book of Jin