My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 573 Drawing the sword and looking around at a loss

Liu Bei stationed his troops outside Dasan Pass for three days but failed to find any loopholes.

In the end, they could only leave a record of "visiting here" and then withdraw safely.

This decision also symbolized that the war on the western front between Cao and Liu had finally come to a complete halt.

The specific timeline during this period is roughly as follows: Xiahou Yuan's death occurred in mid-October. Cao Cao's last round of defeat and decision to retreat occurred in late October.

His troops destroyed everything along the way and retreated completely to Dasan Pass, which was already early November. Liu Bei chased to Dasan Pass, which took several days, and it was already mid-month when he finished all this.

By the time Liu Bei retreated to Yangping Pass and Jiameng Pass and went on the defensive, it was already the end of November and the beginning of December when he finished all this.

It can also be seen from Cao and Liu's respective withdrawal and cessation of hostilities timetables that the death of Xiahou Yuan and the collapse of the situation in Hanzhong was only one of the main reasons for the truce between the two sides, but it was not the only reason.

In addition, another minor reason that forced both sides to stop fighting was the heavy snow in the Qinling Mountains in winter, which caused further logistical difficulties.

After all, the battle lasted from April to the end of October. When Cao Cao decided to withdraw his troops, the first snow of the year had already begun to fall in the Qinling Mountains, but it had not yet accumulated and melted as soon as it hit the ground.

But everyone knows that every subsequent snowfall will get heavier and heavier, and will eventually last through the winter, paralyzing all vehicles and baggage.

Such hellish logistical difficulties meant that even if Cao and Liu wanted to regret their retreat, it would be impossible. For at least half a year, there would be no communication between the north and south sides of the Qinling Mountains.

From then on, Cao's army defended Dasan Pass and Chencang City, and Liu Bei's army held Yangping Pass and Jiameng Pass.

As for the mountainous area of three or four hundred miles between Dasan Pass and Yangping Pass, it was completely turned into an uninhabited area, becoming a common logistical nightmare for both Cao and Liu in the future.

When Cao Cao left, he completely destroyed Hechi County and Xiabian County. It was impossible for Liu Bei to spend time and effort to rebuild them and repopulate the area to cultivate land. That would definitely be a waste of time and effort.

Liu Bei's army only had one stronghold left to the west and north of Yangping Pass, which was Dazhong County where Ma Dai had previously cultivated land and raised horses. However, the basin was not large and could only support a few thousand troops and tens of thousands of farmers, so it was impossible for them to do anything big.

……

Liu Bei's army retreated from Dasan Pass and walked for more than ten days on the Chencang Road.

In the Qinling Mountains, ten days is not a long time to walk a mountain road of more than 300 miles, not to mention that the weather was not good and there was snow on the road in the last few days.

It was already the third day of December when Liu Bei returned to Yangping Pass. However, considering that Hanzhong was also short of food, Liu Bei did not stay in Yangping Pass for long.

They only stayed for two days, and when the bad weather improved, they continued to move south. On the eighth day of the first lunar month, they returned to Jiameng Pass, and on the tenth day, they entered Zitong County.

When Zhang Fei and Wei Yan passed by Yangping Pass, they left their troops there to continue guarding the northern border of the western frontier for Liu Bei's camp. However, Zhang Fei and Wei Yan followed Liu Bei back to Zitong to wait for subsequent rewards and meritorious service.

Only Wang Ping, because of his low rank and young age, did not need to participate in the subsequent major discussions. Liu Bei temporarily entrusted him with an important task and gave him full authority to take charge of the defense of the Hanzhong Basin this winter until the beginning of the next spring, when another general would be sent to replace him.

Of course, Wang Ping had made many contributions in this series of battles this year, so he would definitely be promoted. However, because he was a low-ranking official before, even if he was promoted this time, it would not be too high, so there was no need to hold a special meeting to discuss it.

Liu Bei made the decision directly, and appointed Wang Ping as a captain, and he immediately became the captain of Hanzhong County. (Before the Battle of Hanzhong, Wang Ping was only a military commander.)

Considering that Wang Ping had a very low starting point and was not yet 20 years old, he was overjoyed and grateful for the position of captain.

Some of Liu Bei's staff members thought that his decision might be a bit hasty. However, Zhuge Liang and Pang Tong had no objection, so the doubts did not cause any waves in the end.

Zhuge Liang also explained to the doubters privately: "Although Wang Ping is young, he deserves to be promoted to captain for his military exploits in the battles this year. We should not suppress his promotion just because he is young.

Moreover, Wang Ping's strength lies in mountain warfare. Now that the Battle of Hanzhong is completely over, the lord will not seek to cross the Qinling Mountains to fight against Cao Cao in the next few years. Even if he wants to march north in the future, he will take another route.

But we have to leave people to guard Hanzhong, so we generally raise the ranks of the generals who performed well in the Battle of Hanzhong this year and are particularly good at mountain warfare, and then keep them there for a few years, which can be regarded as a fair deal. "

Zhuge Liang's private analysis finally convinced his doubters.

Indeed, if this promotion also means that there will be fewer opportunities to make meritorious contributions in the following years, and one can only defend the territory without making any achievements or mistakes, then it is understandable.

Those generals who were slow to be promoted could also comfort themselves by saying, "I'm just not good at mountain warfare, and I'm not good at making achievements in a place like Yizhou. When the lord opens up a new battlefield, we will catch up."

In this way, everyone can get what they need and have a way out, which is very beneficial to the internal unity of the camp.

It can be said that Liu Bei's ability to employ people was already very familiar and perfect. Perhaps when he made these decisions and set this idea of employing people, he did not think about these principles specifically. Liu Bei could achieve such results as long as he followed his instincts and acted according to his heart.

Zhuge Liang was good at seeing the big picture from the small details and analyzing and explaining things. He could clearly analyze the details and principles of the measures taken by his lord at random. He could also help Liu Bei to clear the minefields secretly and persuade the crowd.

Liu Bei did a good job in many personnel matters. But he was not good at speaking and could not explain what he did well and how he did it. Given his status, he would not explain many of the right decisions he made, nor was he suitable to explain them.

At this time, Zhuge Liang can help him find out the gaps and fill them in, and help explain and bridge the team's cohesion in the right occasion and environment.

After Liu Bei promoted Wang Ping, he also talked to him alone, explained some matters, and told him privately that after the New Year, he would send Wei Yan to take over the defense of Hanzhong County. At that time, Wang Ping would be Wei Yan's deputy.

But now, Wei Yan still has to go south to complete the discussion and process of promotion and reward.

As for Zhang Fei, Liu Bei would definitely not keep him in Hanzhong for a long time to waste his talent. The northern threat to Hanzhong has been greatly reduced in this life. It is enough to keep only Wei Yan and Wang Ping. After Zhang Fei is promoted, he will definitely go to other directions to take on new offensive tasks.

……

After returning to Zitong, Liu Bei announced a generous reward for the three armies and provided all soldiers with wine and meat for three days.

The banquets continued without regard for cost, and no business was discussed for the time being. Everyone just ate and drank well and relaxed thoroughly.

After half a year of fierce fighting, with more than 150,000 people consuming food and horses, the 700,000 to 800,000 dan of grain that Liu Zhang's army had left in Zitong had now been completely eaten up by Liu Bei.

Therefore, the military rations, wine and meat used for the three-day reward had to be transported from the rear.

Fortunately, Zitong County is located on the bank of Zitong River, a tributary of the northern side of the Fu River, so the water transportation conditions are quite good.

All the materials sent to Zitong could be transported by water. First, they went north along the Jialing River from Jiangzhou in Ba County, and then turned into the Fu River at Sanjiangkou in Dianjiang County. Then, they went upstream along the Fu River to Guanghan County, turned into the Zitong River, and were transported to the dock in the south of Zitong County for unloading.

In order to allow the troops to get food locally, Liu Bei did not even station the army in Zitong County, but directly camped along the north bank of Zitong River in the south of the city. The military camp was directly next to the dock, so that as soon as the grain ships in the river unloaded, they could directly pull the grain into the military camp for consumption.

But even so, Liu Bei brought back 100,000 people to Zitong, and the cost of food for people and horses was still terrifying.

Liu Bei still owes the promised monetary rewards after defeating Cao, the promised compensation for Wei Yan's troops for seizing Nanzheng County, and the reward for Huang Zhong's troops who assisted in the war, and has not yet paid them in full.

Therefore, Liu Bei could not continue to rest easy in Zitong. After a short stay and dealing with rewards, he should disperse his troops as soon as possible and return to the grain-producing areas to get food.

Those soldiers who should be retired due to injuries or illnesses should also be resettled as soon as possible and transferred to military settlements. It is already the twelfth lunar month, and if they are not settled in more than a month, it will be difficult for these military settlements to start the spring farming production on time next year.

It seems that the internal pressure faced by Liu Bei was still very huge, and the myriad of issues were extremely complicated. After the three-day banquet, Liu Bei seemed to have figured out the issues a little bit.

On the morning of the fourth day, he changed his previous idle and lazy state, and summoned his core civil and military staff in high spirits to start discussing business.

Perhaps because he had rested sufficiently, Liu Bei's thoughts seemed clear, and he immediately raised several important issues:

"The army is spending thousands of gold coins and countless grains every day. An army of 100,000 cannot stay in Zitong for long. There are several issues that need to be discussed urgently. After they are resolved, we should consider what to do next.

First of all, how should we reward the generals and military officers who have made contributions? Please speak freely and don't worry. I will also tell you the truth. In the past few years, all the generals and officials of our army have "great power but low official titles".

After all, since the Yidaizhao, our army no longer accepts edicts from the Xudu court, and regards them as forged edicts representing the will of Cao. Now, six or seven years have passed, and I still only have the titles of General of Chariots and Cavalry, Minister of the Imperial Clan, and Marquis of Wuchang, and I canonize officials in the name of General of Chariots and Cavalry.

Now we have officially defeated Cao Cao, and it is a great victory, a victory that may reverse the situation of strength and weakness in the world! In my opinion, the titles of generals with various miscellaneous titles are no longer enough to highlight the merits of those veteran generals with the most outstanding merits in our army.

The contributions of Ziyu, Kongming, Shiyuan and a group of civil officials in planning and assisting are not worth the mere positions of the Chief Clerk or the Assistant General of the Chariot and Cavalry Mansion. In my opinion, we should report to the Emperor and honor the generals with the high positions of the Four Expeditions and Four Towns or even the Four Directions Generals, and promote the officials with the positions of the court officials. Only in this way can we justify our actions, rally the people's hearts, and continue the great cause of suppressing the rebellion! "

Liu Bei felt that there were many problems that needed to be solved urgently, but the most crucial one was not money and rewards, but righteousness and reputation.

He felt that this war symbolized the reversal of the world's strength and weakness. Having made such a great contribution, he should take the opportunity to completely solve the problem of "the subordinates are too low-ranking" that has accumulated over the past few years.

It is normal for him to have such thoughts and such a keen sense of smell.

Because historically, he also began to consider "completely abandoning the official system previously granted to him by Liu Xie's court" after the Battle of Hanzhong, and completely starting a new official system. For this reason, he sent an envoy to return the "Left General Seal" that he had held for nearly 20 years, and then asked for the title of Grand Marshal and King of Hanzhong.

(Note: The original text of "The Records of the Three Kingdoms. Shu Shu. The Biography of the First Lord" is "... considering the ancient style and according to expediency, your Highness, the Grand Marshal and the King of Hanzhong... respectfully submits to the post office to return the seals and ribbons of the Left General and the Marquis of Yichengting that were borrowed from you.")
In this world, the story and impact of the Battle of Hanzhong are quite different from the original history. First of all, the battle was moved forward by twelve years, and secondly, the changes in the strength comparison between the two sides are also very different from the same period in history.

But no matter what, before the battle started, the size of the troops between Cao and Liu was about 500,000 to 300,000.

Liu Bei led more than 100,000 troops into Sichuan to fight. The bloody battle lasted for more than half a year, and the number of troops directly under his command lost was about 20,000 to 30,000.

These 20,000 to 30,000 people do not mean that many died in the battle. They also include those who became disabled after being injured, and those who lost their combat effectiveness due to illness and had to retire (some soldiers were already old and found it difficult to recover from injuries and illnesses, so they also retired).

Considering the scale and duration of the battle, the number of 20,000 to 30,000 people killed or permanently disabled is completely normal.

However, Liu Bei's army completely devoured Wu Yi's army in the Battle of Hanzhong, which brought in 20,000 reinforcements. Later, Ma Chao joined Liu Bei's army and got 4,000 Xiliang cavalry. Later, Zhang Fei defeated Pang De in the first battle with the advantage of surprise attack with new equipment, and captured more than 10,000 Xiliang prisoners, who were handed over to Ma Chao for reorganization.

Although some of Wu Yi and Ma Chao's troops were lost in the fighting over the past six months, even after deducting the losses, the remaining combat-ready troops were enough to make up for more than half of the losses of Liu Bei's own troops.

After this kind of hedging, the permanent casualties of Liu Bei's army were actually controlled to a scale of several thousand people.

But this is not all, because Liu Bei achieved a complete victory in the Battle of Hanzhong. He also annihilated and forced to surrender many of Cao Cao's troops, captured many prisoners, and accepted the surrender of part of Cao's army.

If all these are counted, there are more than 10,000 surrendered troops of Xiahou Yuan and Cao Xiu in the Hanzhong Basin alone. In addition, in the previous battle of Chencang Road, 40,000 direct troops of Cao Cao were annihilated and more than 10,000 prisoners were captured.

If all the captures and surrenders of Cao were taken into account, and the secondary losses after the prisoners defected and those who retired due to injuries and illnesses were deducted, Zhuge Liang finally helped Liu Bei to calculate the accounts, and the total increase in our army's combat-capable soldiers still reached a size of about 30,000.

In other words, if we take the final account, Liu Bei's army had 300,000 soldiers in the first half of this year. After the Battle of Hanzhong, the total force did not decrease but increased, expanding to about 330,000.

Half of the extra troops were from Ma Chao and Wu Yi's army, and the other half were surrendered troops from Cao's army.

On the other side, Cao Cao claimed to have 500,000 soldiers before the war.

After more than half a year of fighting, the 20,000 troops that Xiahou Yuan had originally placed in the Hanzhong Basin were completely wiped out, and of the 30,000 reinforcements Cao Xiu had sent into the Hanzhong Basin, only a few thousand escaped back to Guanzhong, and the remaining 20,000 were gone. These two parts alone resulted in the disappearance of 40,000 to 50,000 Cao troops.

Cao Cao himself suffered the greatest defeat in the Chencang Road, in which he lost 30,000 to 40,000 men. After Xiahou Yuan died, he was defeated by Zhang Fei before retreating, in which he lost more than 10,000 men. Adding the scattered losses in the battles in between, Cao's army lost 50,000 men in the Chencang Road battlefield in half a year.

In Hanzhong Basin and Chencang Road, Cao's army lost a total of 100,000 troops - not counting the more than 20,000 Xiliang troops sent away by Pang De. Fortunately, these Xiliang troops were not counted in Cao Cao's account before the war. They were taken from Ma Teng before Cao Cao started the war, so they did not need to be deducted from Cao Cao's 500,000 troops.

Moreover, Pang De did not send away all the Xiliang vassal troops after all. In the end, Yang Qiu led several thousand Xiliang remnants and retreated to continue working for Cao Cao. So if you take the overall account, Cao Cao was able to recover nearly 10,000 troops.

All in all, Cao Cao lost 100,000 troops and gained 10,000 new soldiers. After the war, his total force was about 410,000.

Therefore, the final account of the war on the Western Front that lasted for so long was to compare the total military strength between Cao and Liu.
It went from 500,000 to 300,000, to 410,000 to 330,000.

Before the outbreak of the Yizhou War, Liu Bei had only 60% of the number of troops as Cao Cao.

After the battle, Liu Bei's military force had increased to 80% of Cao Cao's.

At this time, taking into account the weapons and equipment advantages and productivity advantages of Liu Bei's camp, the paper combat effectiveness of both sides can be said to be basically the same.

If Liu Bei can successfully merge the territories of Liu Zhang and Liu Biao in the future, then his total military strength can even be equal to that of Cao Cao, or even slightly surpass it. And the population under Liu Bei's rule can also increase from 60% of that under Cao Cao's rule to 80%.

In other words, the Battle of Hanzhong, which lasted for eight months, and the Battle of Yizhou, which lasted for more than a year, had made many of Liu Bei's civil and military officials feel that "the strength of our camp is no less than that of Cao Cao."

With this mentality, if these generals are expected to continue to do things with a bunch of titles that are only generals of miscellaneous ranks at most, they will definitely be unwilling and will be eager to make progress.

The mentality of Liu Bei's civil servants will also change. Everyone will feel
"The things we actually handle are more important and more powerful than those civil servants under Cao Cao, and our actual authority is also greater.

Why can the civil servants under Cao Cao occupy the positions of the Nine Ministers, the Secretariat, and the Palace Attendants? But the highest position we can hold is the Chief Clerk of the General of Chariots and Cavalry? At most, we can also serve as a governor of a local state. "

Liu Bei had to promise a future to his subordinates who were eager to make progress.

The problem of having too much power but a low position cannot be dragged on indefinitely.

Unfortunately, the situation he faced was more complicated than that of the same period in history. In history, when he won the Battle of Hanzhong, Cao Cao had already proclaimed himself Duke of Wei and King of Wei, and had committed the great crime of killing Empress Fu. Therefore, Liu Bei could declare himself the King of Hanzhong without any psychological burden, and formally held the ceremony of conferring the title of King of Hanzhong.

Now, the Battle of Hanzhong took place so many years earlier, so the bad things Cao Cao had time to do were much less than those in the Battle of Hanzhong in history.

At least Cao Cao had only framed a minister, Zhao Wen, and became the prime minister himself. The three major crimes of being the Duke of Wei, the King of Wei, and killing the queen had not yet happened.

Of course, strictly speaking from a legal point of view, Liu Bei's desire to be the King of Hanzhong was different from Cao Cao's desire to be the King of Wei, because the "Law of the Ancestors" and "White Horse Alliance" of the Han Dynasty originally stipulated that "only those with the surname Liu could be crowned kings."

Cao Cao wanted to be king, which was definitely a great rebellion. Liu Bei's surname was Liu, and he was a relative of the Han Dynasty. In this life, he was given the position of "Zong Bo". He was originally the highest-ranking person in the royal family, but his bloodline with the emperor was a little distant.

He wanted to be the King of Hanzhong, but there was no legal rebellion. It was just that he was too immodest and too daring to be the first in the world, which would be quite detrimental to his reputation.

As for the identity of "Grand Sima" mentioned in the historical petition of persuasion to ascend the throne, there was no obstacle or taboo at all.

If Liu Bei wanted someone to recommend him as Grand Marshal, he could do so at any time.

With so many complicated considerations piled up together, Liu Bei had to consider carefully. He asked Zhuge brothers, Pang Tong, and other key staff members to work together to come up with a win-win solution that would allow everyone to be promoted legally and reasonably.

(End of this chapter)