My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 571 Xiahou Yuan died a worthy death (the battle of Hanzhong is over)
As mentioned earlier, although Liu Biao's army had formed an alliance with Liu Bei's army a year or two ago, they also recognized Liu Bei as the chief of the clan and the leader of the Han royal family.

But up to now, Liu Biao's army has not directly torn its face with Cao's army. Liu Biao has always only shouted slogans and did not actually fight Cao Cao. In order to reap the benefits without attracting hatred and provoke Cao Cao's revenge.

This is the most important factor affecting the aggressiveness of Liu Qi, Huang Zhong and Huo Jun since the outbreak of the Battle of Hanzhong.

Last year, Liu Biao's army stopped after reaching Shangyong and Xicheng, but never attacked Nanxiang County, which was further upstream. It was not because Huang Zhong and Huo Jun were short of troops, but because they were originally fighting under the banner of "attacking Zhang Lu's remnants Shen Yi and Shen Dan".

Therefore, at this moment, Zhuge Liang wanted the Jingzhou army to directly attack the counties actually controlled by Xiahou Yuan. Liu Bei first had to consider whether his allies had the courage to do so.

"It would be best if General Huang's troops could be used in the Battle of Hanzhong. But sir, do you have a way to make Brother Jingsheng and his son not worry about Cao Cao's revenge? They have been hesitant to move forward for more than half a year since they took over Xicheng, and it's not because of their strength."

Liu Bei naturally expressed his concerns.

"My lord, please rest assured about this. First, we can promise great benefits to Master Liu Qi to ensure that he can smoothly take over in the future and stay in power in Jingzhou for a long time, and then provide him with other benefits.

On the other hand, the reason why I advised the lord to let Yide divide his troops to completely block Cao Xiu and Jia Xu's way to Hanzhong is for this step. As long as the Hanzhong Basin is completely closed by our army and the news is cut off from inside and outside, how will Cao know who broke through Nanxiang, Nanzheng and other places in the future?

Moreover, we can offer more specific conditions to Liu Qi. For example, considering their difficulties, we can let General Huang Lao's troops temporarily fly our army's flag to fight Cao's army. In this way, the Jingzhou soldiers can fight without revealing their names and collect our army's rewards in the end.

Of course, as long as they finally achieve results, the lord should not be stingy with the rewards they deserve, and he can find another excuse to report to the emperor and give them promotions. This is also an opportunity for our army and Master Liu Qi to further enhance mutual trust. As long as we make a promise in advance and finally fulfill it strictly, the faction in the Jingzhou army that is friendly to our army will naturally feel more at ease in the future. "

Anyone who has come into contact with financial credit in later generations will easily understand one thing: creditworthiness must be built up through repeated use and fulfillment of obligations each time.

A person who has a lot of savings but doesn't use credit cards will not have a very high credit limit. A person who never makes a fuss will not have a high Sesame Credit score as a person who makes a fuss but always keeps his promises.

Of course, even such a simple principle would not have been understood by many people in the third century AD. Obviously, a person as skilled in divination as Zhuge Liang was not one of them.

So he could seize the opportunity and persuade Liu Bei to take advantage of the situation to build up mutual trust between him and Liu Qi.

Liu Bei thought this through thoroughly and finally had no more worries. He decisively approved the entire plan.

"In this case, I will do as you say, sir. There is no harm in doing it."

After getting permission, Zhuge Liang immediately continued to refine the plan according to his previous ideas and made arrangements on the same day.

……

In the following half month, Liu Bei's army was advancing according to this plan from top to bottom. Everything was in order and completely under Zhuge Liang's control.

Zhang Fei continued to strengthen the siege of Xiahou Yuan while completely connecting the siege camps east of Yangping Pass.

The camps were connected by tunnels, trenches and antlers to ensure that no water could get through. During the siege, the troops had nothing to do anyway, so they could do some work if there was no battle to fight.

Xiahou Yuan, who was on the other side, also roughly estimated Zhang Fei's intention. After he retreated back to the pass, he considered trying to counterattack, break out, attack at night, and raid the camp. However, all these moves were thwarted by Zhang Fei one by one, and the Cao army also lost thousands of additional combat forces, so he had to give up in the end.

After strengthening the siege of Xiahou Yuan, Zhang Fei was able to save a small part of his troops and have them march north under the command of Wei Yan to block the southern entrance of the Baoxiade Road.

Finally, one day in mid-August, Wei Yan fought another battle with Cao Xiu at the entrance of Nangu Valley. Everything went as planned, and Cao Xiu and Jia Xu were completely driven back into the valley.

In order to stop Wei Yan's pursuit, Cao Xiu even had to burn down a section of the plank road. The fire spread and destroyed more than ten miles of wooden road.

You should know that Baoxiadao is the plank road that Liu Bang burned when he entered Hanzhong in order to show weakness to Xiang Yu. Later, when Liu Bang was about to leave Hanzhong for the Northern Expedition, he listened to Han Xin's strategy of "openly repairing the plank road and secretly crossing Chencang" and repaired this plank road.

Now, Cao Xiu was defeated by Wei Yan and a section of the plank road was burned down, which completely cut off the communication between Cao's army and the Hanzhong Basin. Xiahou Yuan was now doomed.

Moreover, burning the plank road would bring about a series of chain reactions, which would greatly boost the morale of the anti-Cao coalition forces and undermine the morale of the remaining Cao troops in the Hanzhong Basin.

After Wei Yan burned the plank road, Zhang Fei naturally made a big fuss about this good news and spread it everywhere.

Although he could not spare enough troops to immediately capture the counties of Hanzhong, he could send out small scouts to fight psychological warfare between the counties. They did not attack the city, but spread the word to the Cao army that was defending the city: "Xiahou Yuan has been surrounded, Cao Xiu was defeated and burned the plank road, you have no way to retreat, and the only way to survive is surrender."

In addition, Zhang Fei also sent messengers to Xicheng County to contact Liu Qi and Huang Zhong according to Zhuge Liang's plan, and relayed all the conditions offered by Zhuge Liang, from winning over the interests to explaining the righteousness.

At first, Liu Qi was naturally afraid of causing trouble and fearing retaliation from Cao's army, so he hesitated for a moment.

But later, it was heard that Cao Xiu was badly beaten and burned the plank road when he fled. It was impossible for Cao's army to know what happened in Hanzhong. This factor eventually prompted Liu Qi to take advantage of the opportunity.

Anyway, he has already been beaten to a pulp, so why not try to get some? If he does, he can also prove his loyalty to Uncle Xuande and get better treatment from his uncle in the future, so why not?
Liu Qi followed Zhuge Liang's instructions and asked Huang Zhong to lead a part of the troops to attack Nanxiang County and other places to cooperate with Zhang Fei in the battle. At the same time, he asked Huo Jun to leave the other half of the troops to guard Shangyong counties.

Huang Zhong did not raise the flag of the Jingzhou army, but temporarily disguised himself as Liu Bei's army and took the lead in attacking Nanxiang County in late August.

The regular Cao army garrison in Nanxiang County consisted of no more than 2,000 men, as well as some temporarily recruited militiamen.

The city of Nanxiang County was not very strong. Even compared with other city gates in Hanzhong area, Nanxiang County was far inferior to Nanzheng, Yangping Pass and Chenggu County. It was only slightly better than Mianyang and the like.

After Huang Zhong's army arrived, they joined forces with the 3,000 troops under Zhang Fei who were responsible for leading the way and coordinating the troops. They focused on attacking the enemy's heart, widely spreading the message that "Cao's army in Hanzhong is trapped in a jar" while building siege weapons.

Five days later, Huang Zhong's troops relied on small ladders, battering rams and flying ladders to break through the demoralized Nanxiang. At that time, the defenders were already panic-stricken, and after the Jingzhou soldiers climbed up to the top of the city and engaged in hand-to-hand combat, Cao's army collapsed and surrendered.

Once Nanxiang County was broken, the throat through which the Jingzhou troops poured into the Hanzhong Basin was opened.

Huang Zhong led his troops into the plains like mercury pouring out of the ground, and divided and conquered the counties. In just half a month, he conquered all the counties except the county seat of Nanzheng.

Then, as time entered September, Zhang Fei sent Wei Yan to lead several thousand soldiers, and together with Huang Zhong, they attacked Nanzheng, the last major city of Cao's army. There were still five or six thousand Cao's soldiers in Nanzheng, which was the strongest among all the counties. But because the external aid had been completely cut off, Nanzheng was destined to be impossible to defend.

After several attempts, the attackers found that the enemy was still fighting desperately. In order to reduce casualties, Wei Yan and Huang Zhong decided to build a Ge Gongche before attacking the city.

The Ge Gongche is certainly the top siege weapon of this era, and is of great help to the troops in climbing the city walls and fighting, but the price is that it takes more time to destroy the enemy's outer positions so that the Ge Gongche can be successfully pushed to the base of the city wall.

At the same time, building the car itself takes more time, at least twice as long as building a ladder.

After more than twenty days of preparation, Wei Yan and Huang Zhong, who had mastered the basics, finally captured Nanzheng at a relatively small cost.

At the last moment, the remaining soldiers and officials in the city seemed to choose to occupy the treasury and negotiate with Wei Yan in order to save their lives and avoid bloody revenge by Liu Bei's army, hoping that Wei Yan would not kill them in exchange for not setting fire to the warehouse.

In order to get the remaining grain, Wei Yan agreed to this request on his own initiative.

Although this also led to the troops being quite dissatisfied after the bloody battle and breaking the city, because they suffered so many casualties but were unable to make some fortune, even Liu Bei's army would find it difficult to convince them, not to mention that Huang Zhong's Jingzhou army also participated in the battle this time.

In order to solve the urgent problem, Wei Yan had to announce a high reward on his own initiative, saying that his lord had agreed to it before the battle, and that after the victory of this battle, the whole army would receive a heavy reward, which would definitely exceed the looting after breaking the city. This stabilized the morale of the army.

Afterwards, Wei Yan quickly reported his promise made on his own initiative to Liu Bei in the rear by carrier pigeon.

When Liu Bei heard that the siege troops had saved the remaining one month's worth of grain in Nanzheng County, he immediately approved the reward to the soldiers, especially to Huang Zhong's troops from Jingzhou who came to help. Liu Bei promised to give Shu brocade to each of them.

As for the shortfall in rewards caused by not robbing after breaking into the city, Liu Bei himself was unable to take it out at the moment and could only pass it on to Liu Zhang.

In the past two months, he has written countless letters to Liu Zhang, asking Liu Zhang to raise Shu brocade, copper coins, gold and silver to reward, encourage and provide relief to the soldiers who fought against Cao.

As for how Liu Zhang will deal with it later, that is another matter.

……

Liu Bei's army successfully persuaded the Jingzhou army to help in the battle, and within a month and a half, they captured the entire Hanzhong.

As the wheel of history turned into October of the eleventh year of Jian'an, Xiahou Yuan's last moment finally arrived.

Xiahou Yuan managed to save food by distributing grain in small quantities inside Yangping Pass. However, his soldiers were already in despair - not many people could really hold out until the food was completely eaten up when external aid was cut off. Most people with weak wills would collapse before they ran out of food.

After all, they had held out for two months. If Cao Cao could come to rescue them, he would have done so long ago. But no one would rescue them if they waited any longer.

In fact, Cao Cao had also tried to rescue them during these two months.

In order to protect Xiahou Yuan, he also launched several rounds of attacks against Liu Bei and Gan Ning along the Chencang Road.

Unfortunately, the terrain of Chencang Road was destined to make whoever attacked suffer. Liu Bei used Xiahou Yuan as bait, and used moderately flexible defense to occasionally give Cao Cao a little hope, but in fact he was constantly bleeding Cao Cao.

What made Cao's army even more desperate was that starting from mid-August, the last trump card left by Liu Bei before the war was completely revealed - that was Ma Chao, who had been defeated by Cao Cao and retreated to Da Zhong, where he pretended to be dead to rest.

Liu Bei did not want to use Ma Chao's card easily unless the situation was reversed. Because Liu Bei did not want to be known as someone who used the newly surrendered people as cannon fodder, nor did he want to be accused of "forcing Ma Chao to kill his own father and son".

However, as the war progressed to the middle of August, Cao Cao had begun to show signs of decline, and Xiahou Yuan's demise was imminent. Cao Cao's main force was in Chencang Road, and his reliance on food transportation from the rear was becoming increasingly strained.

At this time, Liu Bei finally released Ma Chao, who had volunteered to fight, and let him fight a favorable battle to regain some ground.

Ma Chao's more than 10,000 troops did not take action on the frontal battlefield. Instead, they moved from Dazhong to Qishan Road and operated in the area of Xiabian. Then, they attacked Cao's grain route in Hechi County from west to east from Xiabian.

Whenever Cao Cao's main force turned back and headed straight for Hechi County to fight Ma Chao, Liu Bei would order Gan Ning to launch a counterattack against Cao Cao in the direction of Yangping Pass, holding on to Cao Cao tightly, causing Cao Cao to worry about the collapse of his rear army and thus not daring to send too many troops.

As long as Cao Cao's troops were small in number and might not be able to defeat Ma Chao, he could only defend Hechi and protect a few limited key nodes on the grain route.

However, Ma Chao's troops had a large number of cavalrymen who came and went like the wind. Once Cao's army adopted a conservative stance, Ma Chao would bypass the areas where Cao's troops were heavily concentrated and specifically pick points in the Hechi Basin where Cao's food supply routes were weak to annoy Cao Cao.

After Ma Chao burned several batches of Cao Cao's grain transported from Chencang, Cao Cao finally became exhausted and his attempt to defeat Liu Bei and rescue Xiahou Yuan along the Chencang Road was completely defeated.

One day in mid-October, Xiahou Yuan in Yangping Pass had about half a month's worth of food left, but he noticed that a large number of soldiers had recently fled in despair and left the camp to surrender to the enemy. He finally realized that if he continued to hold on, he would not receive any reinforcements and his troops would simply disintegrate on their own.

Xiahou Yuan, who did not want to wait for death and betrayal, finally decided to take a gamble and gather the approximately 17,000 to 18,000 Cao soldiers he could still mobilize for a final and desperate breakout.

Unfortunately, he was defeated by Zhang Fei in a fair fight two months ago. Now his military strength has been reduced by several times, morale is still low, and food and military supplies are still in short supply. There is no hope for this fight of trapped beasts.

Xiahou Yuan's last battle was unremarkable.

The only thing worth mentioning during this period was Xiahou Yuan's courage to never surrender.

Xiahou Yuan, like Zhao Kuo who was surrounded and out of food during the Battle of Changping, chose to lead the charge and personally command the cavalry to break out. As a result, he was attacked by Zhang Fei during the breakout.

Xiahou Yuan personally fought and killed dozens of people, and then, like Zhao Kuo, he was shot by several crossbow arrows. Because Zhang Fei lacked cavalry, he eventually blocked the way with layers of steel halberd soldiers and surrounded and killed the seriously injured Xiahou Yuan.

With the death of Xiahou Yuan in battle, the remaining more than 10,000 Cao troops all collapsed. With no way to escape in the encirclement, they surrendered to Zhang Fei.

(End of this chapter)