Chapter 36 6. Endurance

After defeating Guan Yu, Sun Quan occupied Jingzhou, making the situation of the Three Kingdoms enter a relatively stable period again.At that time, Cao Cao settled in the north, Liu Bei settled in Western Shu, and Sun Quan established a firm foothold in the southern part of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River from Jingzhou to the mouth of the Yangtze River. Liu Bei, who lost Guan Yu and lost Jingzhou, launched the Battle of Yiling in order to avenge his hatred.In the previous chapter, we said that in the battle of Yiling, the heartbeat lost to the unmoving, and Liu Bei, who was eager to attack, lost to Lu Xun, who endured the humiliation.

At the beginning of the Battle of Yiling, Lu Xun was not well-known, and the subordinates he led were either veteran generals with military exploits or relatives. These people did not take Lu Xun seriously at all, let alone listen to his command.Once Lu Xun held a meeting, and when all the generals had arrived, he put his hand on his sword and said, Liu Bei is a famous hero in the world, even Cao Cao is afraid of him, now the lord has entrusted us with such a heavy responsibility, we should unite Arise, cheer up, and face this formidable enemy.I am a scholar, and my lord sent me to be the coach, not because of my ability, but because I can endure humiliation.Now, I ask everyone to order and prohibit, please do it yourself.

This passage is the origin of the idiom "bear the burden of humiliation", and the words "bear the burden of humiliation" are also a true portrayal of Lu Xun's dedication in his life. People are often influenced to think that Lu Xun is much smaller than the other three governors of Soochow, Zhou Yu, Lu Su, and Lu Meng, in terms of ability and influence, but this is not the case.In "Three Kingdoms", Chen Shou only wrote a joint biography for Zhou Yu, Lu Su, and Lu Meng, but wrote a separate biography for Lu Xun.This is not Chen Shou's partiality. In the middle and late period of the Three Kingdoms period, Lu Xun became a general with all-round talents in civil and military affairs, and his military and political skills were unparalleled.It's just that his fortune is bad, he has been neglected for a long time, and his historical status and achievements have not been fairly evaluated.

Lu Xun (183-245), courtesy name Boyan, formerly known as Lu Yi, was born in Huating, Wu County, which is today in Jiading, Shanghai.Lu Xun was born in the Lu family of the four noble families "Gu, Lu, Zhu, and Zhang" in Wujun. His father Lu Jun was the captain of Jiujiang County in the Eastern Han Dynasty.Due to the premature death of his parents, Lu Xun had to be fostered at the home of his uncle Lu Kang, the prefect of Lujiang. Lu Kang took great care of him and cultivated him deliberately. In addition to letting him devote himself to learning, he also let him accompany him when he traveled, so as to cultivate Lu Xun's ability to deal with the world.Lu Xun lived up to expectations and was very intelligent. What's more rare is that he was mature and prudent at a young age, which won people's praise.

In 203 AD, 20-year-old Lu Xun was recommended to enter the Sun Quan shogunate.At that time, Sun Ce had just died, and Sun Quan wanted to cultivate his confidantes and win over the great clans in Jiangdong. Naturally, he attached great importance to Lu Xun and appointed him as the Shi Cao Lingshi. The Lu family in Wujun is a Confucian family in Jiangdong. It has been on the political stage since the early Eastern Han Dynasty, and the family power reached its peak during the Sun Wu period. It has survived the Jin and Southern Dynasties.As a member of this family, Lu Xun was deeply influenced by Confucianism, and upheld the orthodox concept of "benevolence" in government. The core of his philosophy of governing the country was to persuade farmers to strengthen the foundation and cherish the power of the people.

Based on this idea, Lu Xun told Sun Quan that if he wanted to develop his strength, the most urgent task was to stabilize Jiangdong.How to stabilize Jiangdong? The first task is to subjugate local forces, so that local elite forces can be absorbed into the army, and farmers can be arranged to engage in production, thereby developing the economy and accumulating national strength.These suggestions came at the right time like timely rain for Sun Quan, who was trying to stabilize the regime, so he appointed Lu Xun as the captain of Haichang Tuntian and concurrently the county magistrate of Haichang.

Haichang suffered from drought for years. Lu Xun opened the barn to help the poor, and organized farmers to save themselves by production. This eased the disaster and won the support of the people. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, many peasants took refuge in powerful families in order to evade taxes and became dependent people.In order to resist the government and protect their vested interests, the powerful clans organized the dependents into an armed force. They formed a whole by themselves and became a hidden danger to the local government. They were called "bandits" by the government.

At that time, there were two such armed forces in Wujun, Kuaiji, and Danyang. One was Pan Lin of Kuaiji, and the other was Feizhan of Danyang.Lu Xun asked Sun Quan to recruit soldiers and cut them off. Sun Quan agreed to his request and appointed him as the right commander under the account to quell the chaos. Pan Lin and Fei Zhan each took a group of men and horses to make Zhanshan their king, and ran wildly in the countryside. Seeing that Lu Xun was young and had few people, they didn't take him seriously.Lu Xun took advantage of his opponent's paralyzed mentality, while secretly recruiting troops, while stepping up reconnaissance of the two forces.Knowing that Pan Lin didn't have many minions, he personally led his troops deep into the forest, and a sudden attack cut off Pan Lin's strength.

With the support of Cao Cao, Feizhan had a lot of manpower, and he joined forces with the Shanyue people, so Lu Xun adopted a strategy of outsmarting.He first ascertained the terrain, and led his troops to sneak into Feizhan's base camp in the middle of the night, beating drums, shouting, and waving flags all around, creating a formation of thousands of troops.Fei Zhan was in a panic, so he had to separate his troops to fight. Unexpectedly, this move was in the hands of Lu Xun. Instead of entanglement with the incoming army, Lu Xun directly captured Fei Zhan's cottage, and Fei Zhan, who had lost his old nest, committed suicide.

Lu Xun ordered the residents of Shanyue to migrate to the plains, incorporated them into household registration, let them farm and receive taxes, and selected strong ones from them to join the army, increasing his team to more than 10,000 like a snowball. However, Chunyu Shi, the prefect of Kuaiji, went to the table at this time to tell Lu Xun that "taking the people in vain is what worries me."After Lu Xun knew about this, he spoke good words for Chunyu Shi instead.Sun Quan asked, he sued you, why are you still speaking for him?Lu Xun replied that Chunyu Shi sued me for the good of the local people, and if I slander him again, it will be bad.Sun Quan admired Lu Xun's demeanor from the bottom of his heart, and married Sun Ce's daughter to him.

Although Lu Xun performed well in the early activities, his reputation was not very famous. It was not until the end of Jian'an, in the battle of Jiangling where Wu and Shu competed for Jingzhou, that he stood out and made his first appearance on the big stage of the Three Kingdoms.One of the reasons Lu Meng recommended Lu Xun at the beginning was that he believed that Lu Xun was a person with "profound meaning" and "a heavy burden of talent". That is to say, Lu Xun's ideas and thinking were profound and far-reaching, and his talent was enough to take on this important task. Sure enough, after Lu Xun took office, he gave full play to his literary talents and wrote a letter to Guan Yu showing his weakness. This dispelled Guan Yu's last guard and sent the rear defenders to the front line, leaving Jiangling empty. Give Soochow an opportunity to take advantage of. If the Battle of Jiangling was a joint performance between Lu Xun and Lu Meng, then the Battle of Yiling was Lu Xun's solo dance. At the beginning of the Yiling Battle, Lu Xun did not have any advantage.Lu Xun's scholar paid homage to the general. Although Sun Quan tried his best to reject all opinions, he could not convince Lu Xun's heroic generals. Moreover, when Lu Xun attacked Jingzhou, he inevitably slaughtered and was regarded as a brutal invader by the people of Jingzhou.Liu Beigang ascended the throne, and he regarded himself as orthodox in the Han Dynasty. He commanded the soldiers of the whole country to conquer and kill his brothers and enemies with the rank of ninety-five.Hearing that Liu Bei was coming, the people of Jingzhou came to greet him one after another, and the Wuling and other barbarian tribes who were suppressed by Sun Wu also took the opportunity to join forces with Liu Bei.The situation is very serious for Lu Xun. However, Lu Xun overcame these difficulties by relying on his outstanding wisdom and military ability. First, he used his sword to suppress the disobedient generals with a speech, and then he just stood firm and did not fight, bit by bit killing the morale of the Shu army.During the more than half a year in the army, Lu Xun's army discipline was strict and he did not commit any crimes against the common people. He gradually won the hearts of the people. Wu's death.However, the Shu Han suffered a great loss in China's power in this disastrous defeat, and has since lost the strength to recover the Central Plains. The battle of Yiling was not the result of the biased will of God as Liu Bei lamented, but the end of the confrontation between people.Liu Bei showed his courage for a while, but the follow-up was weak, but Lu Xun endured the humiliation. With terrible and respectable tenacity and wisdom, he tilted the balance of the unbalanced situation to his side little by little, and finally won the weight of opportunity and jumped out. , a hit. After returning to his division from Yiling, Sun Quan worshiped Lu Xun as the general of the auxiliary country, led Jingzhou as herdsman, and was granted the title of Marquis of Jiangling.Later, when Lu Xun defeated Cao Xiu in Wancheng, Sun Quan rewarded him a lot and gave him a lot of rare treasures.In the first year of Huanglong, Lu Xun was worshiped as a general and protector of the right; in the seventh year of Chiwu, he was promoted to prime minister. Although Lu Xun was famous for his military talents, he was also a Confucian scholar. He often called himself a scholar, and his political policy was also based on Confucian benevolence and righteousness. He believed that the laws at that time were too severe and the taxes were too heavy, so he persuaded Sun Quan to lighten the tax and lighten the tax, and punish him with leniency.However, after reading Lu Xun's memorial, Sun Quan put it on the shelf and did not adopt it. In terms of military strategy, Lu Xun has always advocated based on Jiangdong and does not support Sun Quan's military expansion policy.In the second year of Huanglong, Sun Quan wanted to conquer Yizhou, but Lu Xun wrote a letter against it, thinking that it was a waste of money and people; in the second year of Jiahe, Sun Quan wanted to attack Gongsun Yuan, but Lu Xun dissuaded him. These differences gradually led to a gap between the monarch and his subjects, and the dispute between the princes completely destroyed the righteousness of the monarch and his subjects.In his old age, Sun Quan became obsessed, listened to slander, and tried his best to support the fourth son Lu Wangba, intending to dethrone the prince Sun He.Lu Xun repeatedly wrote to Sun Quan, bitterly admonishing Sun Quan not to abolish the elders and establish the younger ones, causing the country to be unstable.He also asked to return to Jiankang (Lu Xun had been a shepherd in Jingzhou for a long time and was stationed in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River) to state his views in person to Sun Quan. However, Sun Quan not only refused Lu Xun's request to return to Beijing, but also sent Lu Xun's nephews Gu Tan, Gu Cheng, and Yao Xin into exile for the crime of "attaching to the prince".The crown prince Fu Wucan of the capital only communicated with Lu Xun a few letters before he was imprisoned and died.What's more, Sun Quan repeatedly sent envoys to scold Lu Xun, saying that he should not interfere in the family affairs of Sun Quan's selection of the crown prince. Lu Xun, who endured humiliation all his life, finally failed to stand up in the face of a series of political blows. In the end, he became sick with grief and anger, and died of hatred and vomiting blood. He was 63 years old at the time.When Lu Xun died, the family had no money left. The eldest son Lu Yan died early, and the second son Lu Kangxijue.Lu Kang also had the talent of a general. He used to be the great Sima and was the most famous general in the later period of Wu State.Lu Kang's son, Lu Ji, was a famous writer and calligrapher in the Western Jin Dynasty. He and his younger brother Lu Yun were also called "Er Lu". In the case of serious disagreements with the lord Sun Quan in the concept of governing the country, Lu Xun chose to fight resolutely many times, so that he paid the price of his life.This kind of behavior seems to go against his consistent character of forbearance and humility. In fact, it is a manifestation of his lifelong endurance and defense of the Confucian political ideas and orthodox concepts he insisted on.This is the insistence of a devout Confucian scholar, and it is also the essence of loyalty and righteousness of Confucian scholars during the Han and Wei dynasties. As for whether it is right or wrong, it can only be judged by future generations.