As the saying goes, "a good man three gangs", those who become big things must have help, no matter how strong a person's ability and quality, most need the help of others, the cause will succeed. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Dong Zhuo was able to stand at the peak of the world, and as a tyrant of the moment, he was also inseparable from the full support of many subordinates. At its peak, there was no doubt that Lü Bu ranked first in terms of force, but there was no doubt about the command of the whole army and the ability to command the battlefield, and there were many people who ranked before Lü Bu. The protagonist of our story today is Xu Rong, a handsome and talented fierce man who has been forgotten or even deviated by the novel.
The head of Dong Zhuo's Five Tiger Generals
Dong Zhuo was able to hold power alone, and its core was the military strength under his command, known as Lü Bu, Guo Feng, Li Dai and Hua Xiong, but Dong Zhuo's five tiger generals did not have them, because the rank was not enough. Dong Zhuo's five major lieutenants will be Xu Rong, Niu Fu, Hu Yun, Duan Sheng, and Dong Yue, and Li Dai and others are only lieutenants, and their rank is one notch lower.
Although these five people are not famous in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, they are all first-class fierce men at that time in history, and among the five, the strongest one is Xu Rong.
Xu Rong is on Dong Zhuo's side and is a special presence. He and Dong Zhuo were not fellow countrymen, nor were they from Dong Zhuo's western Liang army. Xu Rong was a native of Xuanju County, Liaodong Province, born in the forbidden army of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and was able to rank among the Five Tiger Generals, but could be reused by his own ability.
To say more here, Xu Rong and Gongsun Du were fellow countrymen, that is, he recommended Gongsun Du to Dong Zhuo as the Taishou of Liaodong, laying the foundation for Gongsun Du to be able to divide Liaodong later.
How powerful is Xu Rong?
Sun Jian and Cao Cao, the two bravest cattle men in the crusade against Dong Zhuo, were all defeated under him without exception, and they were defeated so badly that almost the entire army was destroyed, and history was almost rewritten by him, just by virtue of this record, Xu Rong was the number one fierce man in the early years of the eastern Han Dynasty.
However, in the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", Xu Ronggang appeared on the face, and after several times of exchanging horses with Xiahou Huan, he was beheaded under the horse, and was described as a third-rate military general.
Two major battles established the status of a famous coach
The Battle of Xingyang narrowly killed Cao Cao
In the first year of the Han Dynasty (190 AD), the princes of various places elected Yuan Shao, the Taishou of Bohai, as their ally, and the battle against Dong Zhuo was officially launched. At first, the momentum was huge, which frightened Dong Zhuo, but when the coalition forces successively conquered the two passes of Fenshui and Hu prison, Dong Zhuo had no choice but to abandon Luoyang and retreat to Chang'an. However, the hearts of the princes of all walks of life were uneven, and each of them made an abacus and began to stagnate.
An enraged Cao Cao took the initiative to ask for help, leading thousands of soldiers and horses under his command to pull out Chenggao, planning to form a pinch attack with Yuan Shao's Hanoi army and Yuan Shu's Nanyang army against Dong Zhuo. Dong Zhuo's side sent Xu Rong to lead an army to Xingyang, and the two sides eventually fought a fierce battle on the bank of the Fenshui River east of Xingyang.
Xingyang was an important stronghold of Dong Zhuo's eastern defensive line, at that time Dong Zhuo took Luoyang as the center and laid out three lines of defense, Xingyang had important strategic value, and it was easy to defend and difficult to attack, so Xu Rong chose the main battle here.
Xu Rong did not take advantage of Xingyang's easy defense and difficult to attack, and adopted a defensive strategy, but instead took advantage of the gap between Cao Cao's unstable foothold and the lack of complete defensive deployment, took the initiative to attack, and gave full play to the mobile advantage of his Liangzhou Iron Horse, and launched a surprise attack on Cao Cao.
Unexpectedly, this raid war became a war of annihilation. As a result of the battle, Cao Cao not only failed to defeat Xu Rong, but also lost his own troops, his subordinates Wei Zi and Bao Tao were killed one after another, and Cao Cao himself was seriously wounded. If it were not for his cousin Cao Hong giving up his mount in time and letting Cao Cao escape at night, Xingyang would have almost become Cao Cao's burial place.
The Zizhi Tongjian records: "Entering xingyang and the water, Yu Zhuo's general Xuan Xuan Xu Rong fought with him, and the soldiers were defeated, and they were hit by the flow of arrows, and the horses they rode were created." ”
After this battle, Cao Cao was seriously injured and left the coalition army to recruit troops in the east, and the princes of all walks of life were even more afraid of Dong Zhuo when they saw this, and the entire operation to woo Dong came to a standstill.
The Battle of Liangdong defeated Sun Jian
Xu Rong's victory gave Dong Zhuo enough time to lay out the battle line to resist the alliance's attack. Not long after, Dong Zhuo sent Xu Rong to lead an army to support Hu Yun against the General Sun Jian of Dong Gan, and the real fear of Dong Zhuo in the Eighteenth Route Alliance was Sun Jian's soldiers and horses, and Dong Zhuo also wanted to form a family with Sun Jian.
In February of the second year of Chuping (191), Sun Jian led the Yuzhou army to Liangdong, preparing to attack Luoyang, and the Battle of Liangdong was an encounter, which was a higher test of the general's ability.
Xu Rong once again sacrificed his tactical magic weapon, which was very simple, just like when he defeated Cao Cao, once again using the mechanical power and assault power of his cavalry to seize the fighter and attack the enemy army that was moving and the army was slack.
During the whole battle, Xu Rong first deliberately retreated, and then seized Sun Jian's "Moving Tun Liangdong" brigade while the men and horses were in the middle of moving, and launched a surprise attack, the result was that Xu Rong won another big victory, Yingchuan Taishou Li Min was captured, Sun Jian was defeated, and fled with dozens of cavalry.
The Battle is described in the Later Han Shu Dong Zhuo Biography: "Sun Jian, the Taishou of Changsha, also led the various armies of Yuzhou to seek Zhuo. Zhuo Xian sent Xu Rong and Li Meng out of the raid. Rong Yu was strong in Liang, and the battle broke jian, and captured Yingchuan Taishou Li Min, cooking. ”
In the "Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, Sun Jian's Biography", it is recorded: "Jian moved to the east of Tun Liang, greatly attacked by the Zhuo army, and Jian and dozens of horses broke out of the siege. ”
Xu Rong was worried about ambush troops and did not dare to pursue, which enabled Sun Jian to escape from danger.
Known as the "Fierce Tiger of Jiangdong", the brave and invincible Sun Jian and Cao Cao, who was good at military strategy, were defeated at the hands of Xu Rong, and the two major battles were enough to establish xu Rong's status as a famous general or even a famous marshal.
The Battle of Xinfeng was eventually killed on the battlefield
In the second year (192) after Xu Rong defeated Sun Jian, Wang Yun conspired with Lü Bu and took advantage of Dong Zhuo's entry into the hajj to kill him, and after Dong Zhuo's death, Xu Rong and others surrendered to Wang Yun, which can be regarded as on the side of the Eastern Han court and the Han Xiandi.
Wang Yun did not heed Lü Bu's advice and killed the rest of Dong Zhuo's subordinates. He adopted the policy of "only condemning the evil and never blaming the blame", but he did not issue an edict of forgiveness for others in the name of Emperor Xian of Han, and his attitude was extremely imprudent. Eventually, Dong Zhuo's former western Liang troops Li Dai and Guo Feng rebelled at the instigation of Jia Xu, and after Wang Yun heard the news, he hastily sent Hu Yi and Xu Rong to send troops to Xinfeng (新丰; northeast of present-day Lintong, Shaanxi) to organize the defense of Chang'an.
This time Xu Rong did not continue the glory of that year, at this time, because the imperial court had just killed Dong Zhuo to quell the civil unrest, Wang Yun Lübu was again disorganized with the marshal, and he could not effectively resist the fight in a hurry, on the contrary, the place was the Liangzhou Iron Horse that fought to the death, even if Xu Rong was brave and fierce, it was impossible to overturn the plate.
In the end, under the defeat of Hu Yun, Xu Rong faced the attack of the Western Liang Tiger Division and Hu Yun, and was outnumbered, and died in the rebellion in the battle of the battlefield. For the generals, the death of the battlefield Isaac Is a kind of home.
For this battle, in the "Spring and Autumn of Kyushu" written by Sima Biao of the Western Jin Dynasty, Hu Yun did not turn against him, in fact, he had secretly become an undercover agent before the war, and when Wang Yun sent Hu Yun and Xu Rong to meet the battle, it was Xu Rong who was the main hu yun as his deputy.
Li Dai and Guo Feng attacked Chang'an, lü Bu fled without defeat to the emperor, and Wang Yun was executed.
Finally the Historian says:
In terms of Xu Rong's ability and achievements, the history books can also be passed on independently, and the reason why he has been forgotten by history and deviated by novels, I think there are three reasons: First, he has always fought for the imperial court, and whoever is in power can give orders, and he will listen to whom, giving people the feeling of grass on the wall; The second is bad luck, with whom who collapsed, from He Jin to Dong Zhuo to Wang Yun, the result of the choice of bosses have failed; Third, the time to perform on stage was too short, from the victory over Cao Cao, the defeat of Sun Jian to the final death in battle.
In the chaotic world where you sang about my debut, he became a thousand bones in a thousand bones. The great river went east, the waves ran out, and his story was thus lost in the smoke and clouds of history.