Speaking of the Three Kingdoms at the end of the Han Dynasty, this history can be described as well-known to women and children, the "Battle of Yiling" is the last battle of the three major battles at the end of the Han Dynasty, Liu Bei raised the "strength of the whole country" to conquer Wu, but in Yiling was set on fire by Lu Xun and burned down the family foundation that had been painstakingly accumulated for many years. Finally, I left in the White Emperor City with regrets. When the audience heard Liu Bei's defeat, they all sighed.
Liu Bei fought many defeats in his life, but only this time was the most painful, and Liu Bei's defeat finally laid the foundation of the Three Kingdoms. This battle almost lost the family bottom clean, since then Shu Han no longer has the ability to sweep the world, today let's take a look, after the Battle of Yiling, what is left of Shu Han?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" > Shu Han who fell on the altar</h1>
Just as Liu Bei was preparing for the Eastern Expedition against Wu, Zhang Fei, the founding tiger of the Shu Han Dynasty, also fell. When Zhang Fei was preparing to leave, he was killed by his subordinate Fan Jiang Zhang Da. After killing Zhang Fei, Fan Jiang quickly defected to Eastern Wu. Two tiger generals were killed in succession, and both were related to Eastern Wu, which no one could bear, so Liu Bei raised troops from all over Yizhou to attack Eastern Wu.
The "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" says that Liu Bei personally raised an army of 700,000 people, of course, this is a fiction, the fact is that in addition to the important pass garrison can not move, at that time Liu Bei has hollowed out the Yizhou family foundation, barely strong about 60,000 or 70,000 troops, the early 30,000 troops plus the 20,000 people of Sha Moke's Wuxi Barbarians, as the vanguard, slaughtered Xiang Yiling. Sun Quan said in his letter to Cao Pi for help that Liu Bei led more than 40,000 troops, which can also confirm liu Bei's troop strength in the early stages.
It can be said that after the Battle of Xiangfan, Liu Bei's forces had actually reached the situation of left and right, and by the Battle of Yiling, Liu Bei had already taken out all his family foundations.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" Data-track="38" > Battle of Yiling must be fought? </h1>
Later generations of people who look at history often have great sympathy and pity for the Shu Han in this period, and it is also true that a battle of Yiling will almost make the great cause of the unification of the Shu Han die, and from then on, the Shu Han side will basically bid farewell to the unification of Jiuzhou and recreate the ideal of the Yan Han, and can only hold Yizhou alone and wait for the strong enemy in the north to suppress the territory. If Liu Bei hadn't launched the Battle of Yiling, wouldn't it have changed?
The answer, of course, is no, that is, shu Han had extremely serious economic problems at this time. Zhuge Liang has said more than once that "the people are poor and the country is weak", this is not a modest word, but a down-to-earth reality, Shudi specialty is Shu Jin, which was the only product that Shu Han could export at that time, and although Shu land had the reputation of the country of Tianfu, but the population withered, in 221 AD, Shu land only had 200,000 households, more than 900,000 people, of which to support more than 100,000 troops, food shortage is inevitable, Zhuge Liang adopted the method of Shu Jin for grain, but this still can not meet the supply needs of the army, can only use copper money to buy, in modern times, Archaeologists found a large number of Shu copper coins in the tomb of the Eastern Wu general Zhu Ran, which is a good proof.
Although Shu Han experienced the victory of the Battle of Hanzhong, but Cao Cao moved the people of Hanzhong, so Shu Han received Hanzhong in his hand is actually a pile of empty shells, successive wars led to the people's livelihood withering, at this time it is through internal production and external trade to change the shortage of materials, but no one inside farming, external Cao Wei is a sworn enemy, Eastern Wu has just backstabbed himself, trade routes have been interrupted, Shu Han has actually fallen into internal and external troubles at this time.
The pressure of the huge economic crisis is that the Shu Han had to go east to Eastern Wu and transfer the pressure, and if there was no such thing as the Eastern Expedition, the Shu Han army was likely to collapse without a fight. The losses at that time were far greater than the defeat of Yiling.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="39" > the Battle of Yiling, which caused the Shu Han elite to lose</h1>
In June 222, After experiencing several victories in the early Shu Dynasty, Liu Bei gradually formed a confrontation with the Eastern Wu army, and the two armies were unable to hold each other. Liu Bei had lost the best opportunity to use his superior forces to open up the situation, and due to the hot weather, Liu Bei chose to abandon his boat and land on the shore, abandon the plan of advancing by water and going down the river, and camp in the dense forest.
Eastern Wu Luxun seized the opportunity, set fire to the camp, and took advantage of the situation to launch a counterattack. The Shu army first encountered fire, and then encountered the enemy army, and suddenly collapsed, the forward Zhang Nan and Feng Xitong were the first to be attacked, and they were killed one after another, and the leader of the Wuxi barbarian tribe, Sha Moke, was also killed in this battle. The Wu army drummed up its strength and sent down more than forty large camps of the Shu army. The Shu generals Du Lu and Liu Ning, seeing that things were not right, immediately surrendered to the Wu army, Liu Bei saw that the front line had collapsed completely, so he had to choose to retreat and flee to Ma'anshan in the northwest of Yiling to defend, at this time the Shu army was already demoralized, besieged by the Wu army on all sides, and was defeated, with nearly 10,000 dead and wounded. All supplies were lost.
According to historical records, Liu Bei escaped into the White Emperor's City alone and was spared. However, his generals did not have such good luck, Fu Wei led his troops as a large army behind the palace, in order to cover Liu Bei's retreat, the entire army was destroyed, no one was spared, and Fu Wei fought and died. Huang Quan, on the defensive position in jiangbei, watched Liu Bei's army being burned to the camp, but because there were no boats and boats, he could not cross the river to support, and the rear road was cut off, so he had no choice but to surrender to Cao Wei. Ma Liang, who was Liu Beijun's clerical staff officer, was also intercepted and killed by Sun Wu's general Bu Qi during the retreat. In the end, the only army that could completely escape back to Yizhou was Xiang Pet.
According to the "Fu Zi", Liu Bei's army was wiped out in total of more than 80,000 before and after this battle. If Cao Wei hadn't wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to attack Eastern Wu by fishing in muddy waters at this time, I am afraid that the entire Shu Han Dynasty would have been more fierce.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="40" > the military strength of the Shu Han during the Bai Dituo period</h1>
After the Battle of Yiling, Liu Bei fled all the way to the White Emperor City, still in his heart, and the Eastern Wu army outside the city could be killed at any time. However, Lu Xun was worried that Cao Wei would take advantage of the fact that the Eastern Wu army was outside and the troops were empty to carry out a sneak attack, after all, in the road of sneak attack, Eastern Wu was an expert, and naturally would be wary of a hand. On the other hand, as Liu Bei gathered the remnants of the army, Zhao Yun led the army to arrive. At this time, the Eastern Wu army could no longer eat Shu Han in one bite, so it retreated.
Although the main force of the Shu army was devastated and the elite was lost, when Liu Bei returned to the White Emperor City, he still gathered a large number of routs, and a total of 20,000 to 30,000 remnants were recovered before and after, plus Zhao Yun led the reserve of Jiangzhou to kill about 10,000 people and horses, in addition, the Brazilian Taishou Yan Zhi in various counties, recruiting more than 5,000 township heroes are also marching to the White Emperor City, although it is impossible to repel the Eastern Wu army, but the defense of the White Emperor City is no problem.
Coupled with Wei Yan and Ma Chao in Hanzhong, there were at least tens of thousands of people, and this part of the people and horses guarding Hanzhong was related to the safety of Chengdu and absolutely could not move, which was also the reason why Cao Wei failed to take advantage of Sun Liuhuo and invade Hanzhong again. In addition, Chengdu also has princes Liu Chan and Zhuge Liang, and to ensure that the capital is not lost, there must be more than 10,000 people and horses.
Therefore, after the Battle of Yiling, the Shu army has already lost most of it, but it still has the strength of a battle
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="41" > the internal and foreign affairs of the Shu Han Dynasty after the Battle of Yiling</h1>
A country's national strength is nothing more than economic, military, diplomatic, the first two for Shu Han, basically from scratch, after the Battle of Yiling, Shu Han's threat to Eastern Wu has basically disappeared, Eastern Wu can not focus on the shu Han export. Coupled with the difficulty of invading Shu lands, Cao Wei focused his strategic objectives on Eastern Wu. It can be said that although the Shu Han defeated in the Battle of Yiling, it was a very good gain in alleviating external pressure. Just after Liu Bei retreated to the White Emperor's City, Sun Quan immediately sent people to seek peace, and the Wu-Shu alliance was re-established, and since then the relationship between the two sides has been very stable, and emissaries have been sent to each other many times. This also provided a relatively stable political environment for Zhuge Liang to leave Qishan.
At the same time, the weakness of Shu Han also made its true enemy Cao Wei lose its vigilance, and after the Battle of Yiling, Cao Pi raised a three-way army to cut down Wu, and the defense of the Guanlong area was lax, which allowed Zhuge Liang to achieve good results for the first time out of Qishan.
In addition, of course, there are also bad points, that is, after the defeat of Yiling, the internal emptiness of Shu Han, due to the death of the leader of the Wuxi tribe, Sha Moke, the rebellion of various ethnic minorities against Shu Han, coupled with the collusion of officials of the South Central Hao clan, finally led to the rebellion in South Central, which led to the later Zhuge Liang Seven Capture Meng.
In general, the defeat of Yiling was a disastrous defeat for Shu Han, not only the death and rout of a large number of soldiers, but also the death or capture of a large number of middle-level officials, coupled with the successive deaths of The Shu Han elder military general Wen Chen, Shu Han had reached the point where no one could use it, which led to the fact that Ma Mo, who was commented by Liu Bei as "not able to entrust major matters", later became a street pavilion guard. A large number of talent gaps, follow-up weakness, so that later Zhuge Liang had to use a large number of people in lower positions, which also caused the situation of Facing the Imperial Power directly, leaving a foreshadowing for the factional struggle in the late Shu Han Dynasty, and also leaving the saying that "there is no general in Shu, Liao Hua is the vanguard".
It can be said that after the Battle of Yiling, all kinds of remedies taken by the Shu and Han sides were only in vain. It was only a matter of time before Shu Han and Eastern Wu were destroyed, because after that, Shu Han was completely reduced to a divided regime, no longer had the strength to unify the world, and could only complete self-preservation by allying with Eastern Wu, and strengthened its internal cohesion through continuous Northern Expeditions, so as to maintain internal division, which was the most serious consequence of the Battle of Yiling.