In the spring of the second year of Jianxing (253 AD), Zhuge Ke did not listen to advice and acted arbitrarily, personally leading a large army to launch a huge Northern Expedition. This move and his various performances have seriously affected the good public image that has just been established. Especially after the Eastern Wu army suffered a crushing defeat in the new city of Hefei, Zhuge Ke's image in Eastern Wu instantly fell to the extreme, and eventually brought himself the disaster of killing and exterminating the clan.
According to the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms and the Biography of Zhuge Ke, the Eastern Wu army besieged the new city for several months without taking the city, and the soldiers were exhausted, and because of the severe plague that broke out in the Tianhe Army, "the drainage was swollen, most of the sick were sick, and the casualties were devastated." Every day, the military camps and subordinates truthfully reported the number of new patients to the Supreme Commander Zhuge Ke, but he believed that this was a treacherous means used by his subordinates to refuse to go to war, so he issued a harsh order, and then lied about the epidemic and refused to kill those who went to war.
Although no one dared to speak, his arbitrary behavior made the generals and soldiers under his subordinates have no intention of continuing to fight, and there was a phenomenon of resentment and passive sabotage in the barracks. Therefore, Eastern Wu's 200,000-strong army faced a city with only 3,000 people stationed, and after more than a hundred days of attack, it did not take down.
Zhuge Ke only felt his mistake in the Northern Expedition after encountering difficulties in the new city, and he also began to become restless and "angry". The general Zhu Yi had some opinions about his command, but after saying a few indignant words, he was deprived of military power by Zhuge Ke. The capital lieutenant Cai Lin had several times offered to destroy the city without being used, and finally he was discouraged and defected to Cao Wei. After the Wei general learned the inside story of the Eastern Wu army, he reorganized the soldiers and horses and launched an offensive, and Zhuge Ke had no choice but to issue an order for the entire army to retreat.
When the Eastern Wu army retreated, the wounded and sick soldiers in the army fell in groups on both sides of the road, "or the servant pits, or the slight gain, the survival of the wrath, the size of the cry." The miserable situation was shocking, and Zhuge Ke's performance was very indifferent, as if all this had nothing to do with him. In the face of the fiasco of the Battle of Xincheng, he not only did not reflect on himself, but also continued to act arbitrarily and arbitrarily, preparing to reorganize the soldiers and horses again, and as a result, "the people were disappointed and complained."
Sun Jun, who had long been voyeurizing on his position, took the opportunity to kill Zhuge Ke and kill the three tribes of Zhuge Ke at this time. The most bizarre thing here is that the description of Zhuge Ke before and after his beheading in the historical data is very strange and full of mysterious colors, and there have even been five supernatural phenomena in this.
According to the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms and the Biography of Zhuge Ke, Sun Jun conspired with Emperor Sun Liang to set up a banquet for Zhuge Ke to drink, and prepared to get rid of him at the banquet. On the night of the invitation, Zhuge Ke was extremely energetic, lying on the bed tossing and turning, but could not sleep. When he got up early the next morning to wash up, he smelled a fishy smell in the water and the clothes on his body, and he changed several sets of clothes in succession, which made him very unhappy.
When he was finished washing and preparing to enter the palace, just out of the house, he was bitten by the dog at home and dragged by the clothes and dragged to let him go, Zhuge Ke felt that there was something strange, so he returned to the house again, stopped for a while and went out again, and as a result, he was bitten by the dog at home. Zhuge Ke was puzzled for half a day, and finally asked for his life to get rid of the dog, get in the car and set off.
On the way into the palace, Zhuge Ke inadvertently recalled several things that had happened before. The first was that during his preparation for the Northern Expedition, a man dressed in filial piety entered his office, and Zhuge Ke ordered someone to ask why, and this person himself did not know what was going on, so he came in wearing filial piety. And the soldiers guarding outside the gate at that time did not see how this person came in; the second was that during his expedition, the top beams and pillars of the Chinese army camp were broken from the middle for no reason; the third was that when he withdrew from the defeat of the Xincheng soldiers, first there was a white air mass enveloping his warship, and then when he came ashore and sat on the car, this white air mass enveloped his car.
Zhuge Ke linked these five strange things, feeling that this time entering the palace was not a good omen, so he was very vigilant, and when he entered the palace for the banquet, not only did he not leave his body with his sword, but he also lied that he was unwell and could only drink the medicinal liquor he had brought. But even this did not save his life, and he was killed by Sun Jun's soldiers who had ambushed him in advance in the middle of the banquet.
At the time of Zhuge Ke's beheading, there is an even more incredible record. According to the Note in the Book of Search for Gods, after Zhuge Ke was beheaded in the palace, his wife suddenly smelled a strong smell of blood on the maid at home, so she asked the maid what was wrong. The maid stared blankly ahead, and after a while she suddenly took off, her head touched the roof beam of the room and hung in mid-air, clenching her fist and gritting her teeth, saying, "Zhuge Gong was killed by Sun Jun!" At this time, everyone in the family knew that Zhuge Ke had been killed.
Of course, all these strange and mysterious records are not credible, and we should just have fun looking at them. However, in another passage of historical records, we can see the mystery of Zhuge Ke's murder. According to the "Wu Calendar", when Sun Jun planted an ambush in the palace to prepare to kill Zhuge Ke, Zhang Yue and Zhu En, two ministers, felt that the stakes were very high, so they secretly told Zhuge Ke and advised him not to enter the palace. On the way to the palace, Zhuge Ke met the assistant minister Teng Yin and told him about this matter, and Teng Yin also advised him not to enter the palace and return quickly. But Zhuge Ke did not listen, and said, "How can Junzi be evil!" Through this record, we can see that the reason why Zhuge Ke was beheaded by Sun Jun in the palace had a lot to do with his personality defects of being self-conscious and uninhabited.
Reference book: Romance of the Three Kingdoms