My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 253 Zhuge Jin: No matter what Zhou Yu chooses, we can say he has fallen into a trap

Because Chen Deng was too greedy and too aggressive in "strike the enemy's morale before the decisive battle", he eventually scared away the cautious Zhou Yu.

This unexpected change really made Zhuge Jin spend a lot of time and effort. He had to find another way to deal with the main force of the Sun family navy that had already withdrawn to the south of the Yangtze River.

But no matter what, Liu Bei's army spent very little to kill nearly 10,000 of Sun Ce's 30,000 naval forces, leaving more than 20,000 to escape. This was already a good victory.

Only if it were the Zhuge brothers, they would feel that such results were not enough and they wanted more. If it were any other general of the time, they would definitely be satisfied.

Fortunately, Zhuge Jin was a man who knew how to look forward. There was no need to worry about the enemies who had already escaped, so he could just think of another strategy.

Just two or three days later, several new alternative tricks popped up in his mind, and then he called Guan Yu, Taishi Ci and Chen Deng to sit down and discuss them.

Zhuge Jin came straight to the point and stated his core idea directly: "Zhou Yu will inevitably be held accountable for his defeat this time. Sun Ce may have absolute trust in Zhou Yu, but it is useless. Sun Ce himself cannot make the final decision internally, and many things still need to be discussed with the veterans and former allies left by Sun Jian.

Therefore, we just need to find a way to make Zhou Yu temporarily lose the power to lead the troops, and replace him with someone else, even Sun Ce himself. Then, spread some news that "Zhou Yu was tricked into retreating before, and if he hadn't retreated, he wouldn't have suffered such a big loss."

If you can make your statement more convincing and provide more details, it will surely make the Jiangdong Army lose their patience and fight a decisive battle with us on the water."

Guan Yu, Taishi Ci, and Chen Deng all agreed with Zhuge Jin's first point, as they knew a little about the internal struggles for power and conflicts in Jiangdong. Many of Jiangdong's troops were private soldiers, and in times of war they were temporarily assigned to a governor.

But once they return from a defeat, some units will suffer heavy losses, while others will escape unscathed. The troops that were sacrificed to cover the rear or perform dangerous tasks will surely complain. Other troops will surely make a fuss out of suspicion and fear of being sacrificed next time, and then the governor may have to be replaced.

However, regarding the second half of what Zhuge Jin said, to continue spreading false information and sowing discord, Guan Yu and others were still confused as to how to spread it and had not figured it out yet.

"I wonder what rumors Zi Yu is planning to spread?" Guan Yu was too lazy to think and asked directly.

Zhuge Jin waved his folding fan and said in a tone of inquiry:
"It's very simple. Didn't Zhou Yu believe Yuan Long's threats before and find out that Cao's army really didn't invade Huaibei, so our main force was not tied down. When our main reinforcements arrived, Zhou Yu would be outnumbered and would inevitably be defeated, right?
Then we will deceive them again and make them think that Zhou Yu’s decision was actually a misjudgment.”

Guan Yu and Chen Deng looked at each other in disbelief and asked in unison, "Are you trying to spread the news that Cao's army has invaded Huaibei again? This is impossible."

Chen Deng paused for a moment, and then added: "And now even the Sun family has already known for sure that Yuan and Cao are fighting on the Yellow River, and the fierce battle in Yanjin is in full swing. Time is not on our side, and some news cannot be so inconsistent that it changes every day. The enemy will not believe it."

Zhuge Jin pointed out incisively: "I didn't say that we must use Cao Cao as an excuse again, but we can definitely use Liu Biao and Zhang Xian - Cao Cao did win over Zhang Xian, he definitely did.

So far, there has been no news that the lord has declared war on Zhang Xian. It is probably because Zhang Xian is also waiting and watching, wanting to wait for Liu Biao to send troops to the north to attack Wancheng first, or to wait until the lord is in the middle of a fierce battle with Sun Ce and has no time to take care of him before taking action.

But these are not important. Zhang Xian may take action, and this makes sense. We can create a time difference and say that the main force of the lord has already fought with Zhang Xian, so the thunder in Jiangdong is loud but the rain is small. In another month or so, once all the four counties in southern Jing are conquered and the main force returns to go down the river, the Sun family will be finished!

In this way, we can say that Zhou Yu's retreat this time was a "missing of the last God-given opportunity for the Sun family to defeat our army one by one." Those veteran generals under Sun Ce would be very angry if they didn't jump up and down!"

Guan Yu and Chen Deng suddenly realized.

Yes! The idea is to make Sun Ce think, "If we fight Liu Bei's army this month, we can fight Guan Yu alone. If we fight again two months later, we may have to fight Liu Bei and Guan Yu at the same time, and the enemy will be two or three times stronger than now!"

I gave you an opportunity to use the tactic of adding fuel to the fire and defeating the enemy one by one, but you didn't seize it. If you miss this opportunity, you will never get it again!

With this move, it became an absolute sure-kill situation. No matter if Zhou Yu retreated or not that night in the south of Guangling City, there was no solution.

If you don't retreat, I will force you to fight a decisive battle when your morale is extremely low. If you retreat, I will forge information to make you mistakenly believe that you have fallen into a bigger trap.

……

Zhuge Jin's new round of strategies was quickly implemented.

Liu Bei's army had very good conditions for spreading rumors and sowing discord, because they occupied parts of the south and north of the Yangtze River. They spread rumors and sent spies from Wuhu County in the south of the Yangtze River to Niuzhu, Jurong, and Moling. It was like mercury pouring out of the ground, penetrating every hole.

On the other hand, even before the rumors about Zhuge Jin reached him, Zhou Yu was already having a hard time.

After all, he wasted his troops and lost many soldiers this time. The only thing he deserves praise for is that "although he was defeated, the loss of troops was not too great", but since ancient times, no general has been pardoned for cutting losses.

Even if you fight hard and suffer even greater losses, at least you have achieved some results, which makes it easier to shirk responsibility after the battle. Sun Ce certainly did not blame Zhou Yu. After Zhou Yu was defeated, the two had a frank talk.

Zhou Yu also frankly told Sun Ce that he thought that withdrawing the troops was the best option under the circumstances: "Bofu, it's not that I'm afraid of fighting. I fell into Chen Deng's trap before I decided to send troops!
We mistakenly thought that Guangling was empty and Liu Bei's troops in Xuzhou were all gathered in Huaibei, so we attacked Guangling. But Guangling was not empty at all.

Secondly, we had too high expectations for the siege vehicle given by Cao Cao, and we thought we were fully prepared before we dared to start. In the end, it turned out that the siege vehicle was similar in appearance but not in spirit, and there were great hidden dangers - of course, after this battle, I roughly figured out where the hidden dangers were, and I will definitely be able to improve it in the next month or so.

If we are still worried, we can give it a few more months and practice and try it out ourselves to see how we can destroy this siege vehicle and whether it can be repaired by using all the means we can think of.

The defeat in this battle was doomed when we sent out the troops. We were too isolated from the news, and all the contacts with other princes outside were cut off by Liu Bei. As long as Liu Bei wanted to hide it from us, he might even delay the news for several months! "

After listening to Zhou Yu's complaints, Sun Ce also took this issue seriously.

The information blockade was too bad. Although Liu Bei couldn't block it permanently, he could definitely make a time difference. Some things Liu Bei wanted Sun Ce to know could be spread as soon as possible, and some things he didn't want him to know could be blocked for two more months. This was too fatal for strategic misjudgment.

The key point is that even though Sun Ce knew this, he still had no solution.

……

Sun Ce himself could forgive Zhou Yu, and he also knew that "it was not his fault".

But the same may not be true for other people around Sun Ce.

During the first five days after Zhou Yu withdrew his troops, the Jiangdong Army was shrouded in a strange atmosphere of subtle resentment, but no one spoke first.

It was not until the eighth day of April, six days after the defeat and retreat, that Zhu Zhi, the prefect of Wu County, who was in Wu County, sent a letter.

The content of the letter, on the one hand, reported to Sun Ce the combat readiness of Wujun's troops, and at the same time expressed concern about the defeat in Guangling the day before, and asked whether Wujun needed to send follow-up troops to Dantu for reinforcement.

Zhu Zhi's letter did not mean to hold Zhou Yu accountable. He just expressed his concern because Zhu Zhi was in the rear and did not understand the situation.

However, Zhu Zhi's letter became the fuse for accountability. Many people who originally did not have high enough status or were too embarrassed to speak up, all came out after Zhu Zhi opened the door.

The most representative of them is Xu Kun, the prefect of Danyang and Sun Jian’s cousin.

Xu Kun can also be considered a top veteran. After all, before Sun Ce took office as the "Mr. of Yangzhou", the three prefects with real power under him were Xu Kun, the prefect of Danyang, Zhu Zhi, the prefect of Wujun, and Sun Ce himself, the prefect of Kuaiji.

Now that Sun Ce was nominally promoted, the governor of Kuaiji became his uncle Wu Jing. However, Wu Jing was old and not in good health, and Sun Ce also considered that if his uncle became seriously ill, he would have to let his second brother Sun Quan take over as governor of Kuaiji.

If Sun Quan was too young to win the support of the people, he could only ask Gu Yong, the top figure of the Wuhui family, to serve as the county magistrate for Sun Quan and give him actual power in order to appease the people of Kuaiji.

This is going a bit far-fetched. In a nutshell, Xu Kun, who has now jumped out to question Zhou Yu, is definitely a powerful elder in the Sun family.

After Zhu Zhi wrote to express his concern about the defeat, Xu Kun took the opportunity to find Sun Ce and strongly pointed out Zhou Yu's mistake in retreating his troops, and also involved Cheng Pu and Huang Gai.

Huang Gai originally did not want to bring Zhou Yu down, but when Cheng Pu found him, he just wanted him to tell the truth and serve as a witness for everyone, so Huang Gai could not refuse.

After all, he was the deputy general in the Battle of Guangling, and Huang Gai witnessed many of Zhou Yu's decisions personally.

After the three generals met Sun Ce, Xu Kun said straight to the point: "My lord! Recently, we have heard reports from many scouts that although Cao Cao was held back by Yuan Shao and did not attack Liu Bei personally, he is actually very cunning and has laid many ambushes.

Liu Biao of Jingzhou planned to take Nanyang as his territory and marched north to Wancheng. Zhang Xian of Changsha, like his lord, was persuaded by Cao Cao to become the governor of Jingzhou. He called Liu Biao a traitor who betrayed the imperial court, raised an army to occupy southern Jingzhou, and attacked Liu Biao.

Liu Bei of Jiangxia immediately sent his main force to attack Changsha in the south, competing with Liu Biao for the opportunity to quell the rebellion. It seems that he also fought with Liu Biao just to grab territory! In this way, Gongjin's retreat this time was actually a trick of Zhuge Jin! When Chen Deng threatened, he was really just bluffing to scare him!

If our army had made a desperate move, we could have taken advantage of the fact that the enemy only had 20,000 or 30,000 soldiers and defeated them one by one! If we dragged on until Liu Bei finished fighting Changsha and turned back to the east, how could we fight! My lord, please understand Zhou Yu’s mistake of wasting the opportunity to fight! Correct military discipline!”

(End of this chapter)