My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 603: One Hundred Thousand Armored Soldiers and One Hundred Skilled Generals

What Liu Bei was always worried about was that in the eyes of the world, his behavior would be similar to that of Cao Cao.

So Zhuge Jin specifically enlightened him, making him realize that his attitude towards both the enemy's high-ranking officers and the common people was completely different from Cao Cao's. Then there was no need to worry too much about the bad reputation.

Liu Bei's originally frowned brows also visibly relaxed a lot.

Zhuge Jin noticed the change in his expression and quickly struck while the iron was hot, taking advantage of the victory and analyzing the details:

"What's more, let's take a step back! As long as the lord is willing to let Liu Zhang live in peace in the future, then the lord can openly announce this declaration of war to the world from the beginning!
We don't need to say that it was to overthrow Liu Zhang, we just need to say "because Liu Zhang was weak and incompetent, the pro-Cao and rebellious people in Yizhou came to power and ruled the country one after another."

Therefore, our army is only punishing Liu Zhang for his "crime of dereliction of duty", asking him to move to another position, and helping him to preserve his reputation in his later years, so that he will not be implicated by the actions of his treacherous subordinates!"

After Zhuge Jin said this, Liu Bei's frown finally relaxed and his knot in his heart was completely resolved.

Liu Bei finally realized that his "revenge" was completely different from Cao Cao's revenge on Tao Qian!
Not only are the motivations different, but even the ultimate goals are different!

He was "punishing the past to prevent future mistakes and curing the disease to save the patient" so that Liu Zhang could contribute more to a position where he could make better use of his talents.

Previously, only ministers who were loyal to the king would use excuses like "clearing the court of emperors". If two princes were fighting each other, they rarely used the banner of "I am helping you correct your mistakes".

Unless there is a rebellion in the neighbor's house, some people will go to help quell the rebellion and get some benefits at the same time. But it is almost uncommon to see a situation where "the owner of the neighbor's house is weak and incompetent and can't manage things, so I go to help him manage things."

But now, Liu Bei cured his brother's illness and saved his life, and finally started the "cleaning up the house" mode.

In this case, even if Liu Zhang admitted his mistake and wanted to hand over the murderer, it would be useless.

Liu Bei could also say, "You are not good enough. You have only one or two people like this, but you have not cleared out the pro-Cao faction within the organization. There must be more pro-Cao remnants. You are too weak to take action against too many people. You must have been manipulated by the treacherous people around you. You'd better let your brother use thundering means to help you with the surgery."

After thoroughly understanding all these principles, Liu Bei finally made the decision:
"Zi Yu's words opened my eyes, like a clear sky after a cloud of fog has been cleared! I have made up my mind, and there is no need to wait for more excuses, nor to worry about how Liu Ji Yu will respond. Anyway, the only way left for our army is to start the war immediately!
On the other hand, our army did not pay much attention to the declaration of war at the beginning, but now we must pay attention to it. We must make our army's purpose clear: we are based on the friendship of the same clan, and we will purge those traitors in Yizhou who have no heart for the Han people, are unwilling to contribute to the rebellion, and only want to live behind closed doors, and restore peace to Yizhou!"

Why did these people refuse to persuade Liu Zhang to provide Liu Bei with military rations, and why did they refuse to lend troops and send the Yizhou army out of Sichuan to fight against the rebellion?
Isn't it just for personal gain, just wanting to live a good life on his own, and not willing to contribute to the country!
Excuses are excuses, and manifestos are manifestos.

Motivation is motivation, goal is goal.

The former is the question of why we should fight, and the latter is the question of "who are we fighting against and who is our real enemy."

The pre-war mobilization of literary drama must ensure that these two approaches are taken simultaneously, without either being weak.

Among the two tubes, Fa Zheng and Pang Tong helped Liu Bei fill in the first tube.

The Zhuge brothers (mainly Zhuge Jin) helped Liu Bei fill in the second tube.

Fits tightly together and is linked together.

Finally, Liu Bei was able to concentrate his time to clean up Yizhou thoroughly before anything happened in Jingzhou and Cao Cao was unable to go south during this one-year window period! This ensured that he would have no more worries!
"Don't worry, my lord. I will take care of the manifesto and explain the purpose of our military expedition in detail." Zhuge Jin accepted the order very straightforwardly and then went to arrange the task on his own.

Zhuge Jin's writing skills were certainly not good, but he had already had an idea of what aspects he would emphasize in the manifesto.

So when he returned that day, he first wrote a draft outline, and then asked Wang Can, a newly recruited literary worker, to fill in and polish it. Chen Lin was still with Yuan Tan, in Qingzhou, and was nominally Yuan Tan's subordinate, so Liu Bei rarely brought him with him.

There were many top civil officials and counselors in Liu Bei's camp, but there were few literary figures. Fortunately, Liu Bei was popular in Jingzhou during these years, and many talents who were not valued under Liu Biao's rule in northern Jingzhou gradually moved south.

Wang Can was not used much by Liu Biao in history. It was not until Liu Biao died and Liu Cong took over that Wang Can jumped up and down and gained some say. It may be precisely because he was not used by Liu Biao that he persuaded Liu Cong to surrender right away.

In this life, Wang Can found more choices. He was not a steadfast person. After waiting for a while, he finally joined Liu Bei's camp three years ago. After working at the grassroots level for more than a year, he was discovered by Zhuge Jin, who took him in as a literary worker.

At this moment, Wang Can was finally reused by Zhuge Jin. Naturally, he put all his energy into such an important task.

He stayed up all night to explain clearly all of Zhuge Jin's requirements and ensure that the wording of the manifesto was elegant and concise.

Wang Can was very clear that the manifesto he wrote for Situ today would be recorded in history books and quoted in full by future generations, so he must not take it lightly.

……

After Wang Can finished writing the manifesto, the navy of Liu Bei's army that stayed in Zigui County was ready to set sail. In the past month and a half, Liu Bei's army had never relaxed its preparations for war. In order to prepare for Gan Ning's attack along the Yangtze River to attack Liu Zhang's hinterland, Liu Bei successively transferred Lu Yi, Han Dang, Zhou Tai, and Jiang Qin from Yangzhou and Jiaozhou.

Among these generals, except Lu Yi, the others basically surrendered when Sun Ce's forces were destroyed, and they have been there for more than six years.

In the past six years, Han Dang had not had many opportunities to be reused. Although he was a general from the Jiangdong faction, his ancestral home was in Liaoxi. He had slowly honed his naval warfare skills after following Sun Jian, so he was not very proficient. However, his cavalry and horse fighting skills were not bad, and he was considered to have the most comprehensive comprehensive abilities among the three generals.

Han Dang had been deployed in the Xuzhou war zone. In the "First Battle of Xuzhou" between Guan Yu and Xiahou Yuan five years ago, Han Dang followed Guan Yu and Zhang Liao. During the decisive counterattack phase, he led the cavalry to expand the results of the battle. He made considerable contributions and was promoted, and gained the trust of Liu Bei and Guan Yu.

(Note: This is the time when Xiahou Yuan led his troops to invade Donghai County and Liu Bei's army defended and counterattacked. If you have forgotten, you can go back and read the plot around Chapter 350)

After that, Han Dang had no more military achievements. This was because his status in the Sun family was already high, and Guan Yu was not confident in using him too far away, so he basically kept him under his nose. This time, he needed a naval commander, and his official position could not be too high, so he gave him another chance.

The other two generals, Zhou Tai and Jiang Qin, were both former pirates from Chaohu Lake. When they were under the Sun family, their status was not high. It was just right to send them to be subordinates of Gan Ning, who was also a big pirate.

Zhou Tai, Jiang Qin and others have mainly followed Zhou Yu or Chen Dao in the past few years, fighting on the northern battlefield and also making achievements on battlefields along the Bohai Bay.

There were achievements in rescuing Yuan Tan in Bohai County, Jizhou, and in assisting the Liaodong Gongsun family with waterways. Now Xu Sheng was left by Zhou Yu to clear the Three Hans on the Korean Peninsula and guard the local area. Jiang Qin was released and was able to participate in the Yizhou naval battle with Zhou Tai.

As for Lu Yi, who arrived the latest and traveled the farthest this time, there is not much to say.

In this life, Lu Yi had never worked for the Sun family. He had a very good family background and also made a lot of efforts in Liu Bei's process of destroying the Sun family.

Therefore, in the naval army of the Battle of Yizhou this time, Lu Yi's level of trust was definitely the second highest in the entire army, second only to the commander Gan Ning.

In the past few years, he had been following Bu Zhi in Jiaozhou to clean up the coastal areas, suppress the locals, and gradually govern Jiaozhou. Although this achievement is not brilliant, it is also real and helpful for accumulating experience and personal growth.

Plus, Lu Yi is still very young. He was only eighteen years old when he participated in the war to destroy Sun. Now, after six or seven years, he is only twenty-four or twenty-five, so he has plenty of opportunities to be promoted.

Moreover, during the years he was in Jiaozhou, he cooperated with Bu Zhi and launched several expeditions. Unfortunately, they only achieved tactical victories and obtained some looting and spoils, but failed to expand much territory.

So far, the entire territory of Jiaozhou has not been completely occupied by Liu Bei's army. During the years when Bu Zhi was in charge of Jiaozhou, he only infiltrated and controlled some areas in the Yongjiang River area, the western tributary of the Pearl River, and cleared out the remnants of Shi Xie in the Guangxi region in later generations.

However, after Shi Xie's clan retreated to Jiaozhi County, which is the Vietnam region in later generations, Liu Bei's army did not have enough energy and time to launch a long expedition to completely deal with them. They could only leave them alone and wait until the Central Plains was unified in the future to subdue them.

The main reason was that the transportation conditions of that era were too poor. In later generations, the mountainous areas between Guangxi and Vietnam were impossible to travel by land. Even if people were sent there, the deaths and injuries from tropical diseases would definitely make the expeditionary forces lose more than they gained.

Bu Zhi had also thought about expeditions in recent years, but they were all by sea. He asked Lu Yi to lead the fleet to the mouth of the Red River where Longbian County, the capital of Jiaozhi County, was located. Lu Yi did so. Every time the Han fleet attacked along the coastline, Shi Xie's army collapsed and immediately fled inland, abandoning the coast. Lu Yi could not find the enemy, so he could only rob a lot of property and people and then return.

Lu Yi could not go too far into the Red River, so after Shi Xie gave up the coast, the Han army, which relied entirely on ships at sea, could not be used. Finally, Bu Zhi and Lu Yi discussed together and decided that it would be better to wait until Yizhou was pacified in the future, and maybe even Nanzhong, and then attack from Nanzhong and Nanhai, and attack from the upper and lower reaches of the Red River to ensure that Jiaozhi County was completely captured and the Shi family had no way to escape.

In fact, the idea of Bu Zhi and Lu Yi is also deeply in line with geography. When my country and Vietnam went to war in later generations, they also relied on Guangxi and Yunnan to attack from both sides, one along the Red River and the other along the sea upstream, to completely encircle and clear the North Vietnam Plain.

Since there was nothing to do on the southern front, Liu Bei did not want to waste talents, so he included Lu Yi in the dispatch of naval generals to Sichuan. After the transfer order arrived in Nanhai County, Lu Yi rushed there without stopping.

Because it was too far to come back from Jiaozhou, Lu Yi just arrived in Zigui a few days ago. However, as a military officer, he was only responsible for giving Gan Ning advice and did not have to lead the troops himself, so there was no problem of "arriving late and not being able to get used to each other, which would easily lead to the soldiers not knowing the generals and the generals not knowing the soldiers".

……

The main generals of the water reinforcements were all ready for the attack, and Wang Can also helped Zhuge Jin write a declaration of war.

Early in the morning of October 18, Liu Bei held a ceremony to swear in his troops to go to war on the bank of the Yangtze River south of Zigui County.

Liu Bei personally rode a horse and carried a sword, inspected the attacking fleet, and gave words of encouragement to Lu Yi, Han Dang, Zhou Tai, and Jiang Qin one by one.

After they arrive in Jiangzhou, they must fully support Gan Ning and make new achievements.

The morale of the generals was high, and they accepted the order without hesitation. After drinking the oath-taking wine, everyone boarded their boats, set sail upstream, and anchored.

Thousands of trackers on the shore also pulled the tow ropes with all their might, helping the fleet to pass through the turbulent waters of the Three Gorges and gradually move away.

(End of this chapter)