On the Battle of Guandu: The Secret of Cao Cao's Great Victory

Cao Cao's battle of Guandu: The battle of Guandu was a brilliant and classic battle in Cao Cao's life. Before analyzing this battle, let me talk about two other battles, one is the rebellion of the Seven Kings in the Western Han Dynasty, and the other is the battle of Luohu in Li Shimin. It can be said that these two battles belong to two completely opposite forms of attack. For the winner, one is offense and the other is defense. But they all have one thing in common, and that is ". It is precisely because Guandu Station actually has the same characteristics as these two battles. In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the battle of Guandu was that 700,000 Yuan Shao attacked Guandu with 70,000 defenders and fought hard for several months. Because Xu You defected to the enemy and leaked military secrets, his lair was burned down, which led to the total collapse of the army. In the romance, I feel that Xu You's surrender has become a turning point in the whole battle. The problem of food and grass that troubled Cao Cao in the whole story was suddenly miraculously solved, and the battlefield pattern in Hebei was settled at once.

I carefully analyzed the romance and found a problem, that is, Cao Cao's strategic deployment in the battle of Guandu was not like that in the novel at all. There is a huge loophole in the novel, that is, Xu You told Cao Cao that he put forward a plan to send Yuan Shao's cavalry to attack Xuchang, and then attack Cao Cao's main force in Guandu. Hearing this, Cao Cao felt that he still agreed with the plan. I have always had a question: did Cao Cao really put his main force in Guandu? I looked through all kinds of materials and came to the conclusion that Cao Cao didn't put his main force in Guandu at all. If this is true, I think Cao Cao is great. He not only fooled Yuan Shao, but also fooled Luo Guanzhong.

In fact, the essence of this movement is to "grind" the word I just said. Use powerful defenders to fight against the enemy's main force, and then use their own attack power to break it. I remember that there are some enchanted posts called Zhongjun, and it is as difficult to test everyone's military ability as Yuan Shao's, so I don't mind what I want to say. But in the third stage of the whole campaign, the final stage of the battle between the Chinese army and Guandu was exactly the same. When we get back to the topic and look at the problem with doubts, the first problem arises, that is, the problem of military strength. 70,000 to 700,000, I think this figure is only a partial figure. Cao Cao's garrison in Guandu has three teams, the first is Cao Renjun, and the second is Li Dianjun and Zhang Liao Army. This is just in line with Cao Cao's habit of fighting. Put all the three most defensive forces at the core of the whole battlefield. As far as the current establishment is concerned, Cao Cao put two armies and one reorganization division here. Regarding the two columns, it is a bit reminiscent of the Tashan blockade in the Liaoshen campaign. It should not be the Montenegro blockade, because one is a blockade and the other is a delay, while the Guandu blockade should be a delay.

According to the serial number, Cao Cao should have the following forces. First, Cao Cao personally built more than 10,000 troops, and Luoyang lost about 2,000 people after World War I. Later, he collected all the troops from Shandong to form Qingzhou Legion, expanded the original army and divided it into three units, one for Xia Houdun and the other for himself. The total strength of an army was about 30,000 people, and later it entered Luoyang and took over Li Cong. With more than 50,000 Chang 'an soldiers, Cao Cao tripled. At this time, there are Coss, Cao Hong, Hehe, and several legions in Xia. At this time, Cao claimed to be 65,438+10,000, so the data of the battle of Guandu must be problematic. With the elimination of Lu Bu, the defeat of Yuan Shu, the sneak attack on Liu Bei and the incorporation of Zhang Xiu, I'm afraid there should be 450,000 mercenaries of Cao Cao. This data should be the whole of Hebei.

So the battle of Guandu is only a local war.

The second question is which army Cao Cao set fire to the Wu Dynasty, and did it really come from Guandu? As a result, I thought that if Li Dian and his men came from Guandu, they must have come from Guandu, but I found a problem, that is, did Li Dian take advantage of this loophole when the two armies were at loggerheads? And in front of Li Dian is Zhang He and Gao Lan legion. I won't say much about the caution of these two people. It can be said that it is very unlikely that Li Dian will burn his nest in Guandu. So who started the fire? The answer is summer. Cao Cao couldn't get out when he was being watched in Guandu. There are two things that can be explained. Xia's troops are just on the flank of Jun, and have been monitoring the Chunyu Qiong Legion to prevent Chunyu Qiong from attacking Xuchang. Secondly, Xia's rapid promotion after the war shows what Xia did in this battle. So I'm sure it was Xia, not Cao Cao or Li Dian who attacked Wu Chao.

Finally, Cao Cao's strategy in Hebei battlefield. It was mentioned at the beginning. In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Xu You's surrender is considered as the turning point of the whole campaign. Actually, it is illogical for me. Maybe Luo Guanzhong just read the paragraph in Historical Records in which Zhou Yafu burned the hay of the prince of Wu, so he modified it and copied a good battle of Guandu into a replica of the Seven Kingdoms Rebellion. However, it is worth noting that these two battles do have striking similarities, and the losing side has also fallen into the same problem. Just as Xun or his letter to Cao Cao mentioned that he couldn't get in, they all got into this trouble. It is a harbinger of defeat to watch the morale of the troops decrease day by day and the momentum is consumed. During the whole campaign, Coss successfully delayed Yuan Jun's main force and won valuable space for Cao Jun's counterattack.

Through these analyses, it can be said that the battle of Guandu was the core part of the battle of Hebei, and Cao Cao's strategic deployment in the battle was tempered and could not be controlled by a little military secret. He also revealed Cao Cao's military habits, and later his fiasco in Chibi and Hanzhong was due to his flexible strategic habits. People have already seen through you, and it's strange that he is unbeaten.