Chapter 31 6. Tunnel warfare and thunderbolt cars

In August of the fifth year of Jian'an (200), the main force of Yuan's army advanced to the front line of Guandu. Yuan's army piled up mounds of sand and soil, spread out in an east-west direction in front of Cao Ying, and stretched for tens of miles. Based on this, he built a camp.In order to fight against Yuan Jun, Cao Cao also divided his troops to build camps, but in this way, the problem of insufficient troops became more prominent. "Three Kingdoms" believes that Yuan Shao has more than 100,000 troops, Cao Cao has less than 10,000, and the wounded account for two to three tenths of the troops on the front line at Guandu at this time.This is obviously inaccurate. The number of Yuan Jun is estimated to be about the same, but the number of Cao Jun is obviously underestimated.

Pei Songzhi also disagreed with the statement in "Three Kingdoms". He believed that Cao Cao had 5,000 troops when he raised his troops. In the battle of breaking the Yellow Turban, more than 300,000 soldiers were collected and surrendered. Even if they were constantly attrition in the battle, they would not be so few. There is absolutely no possibility of victory with thousands of troops against more than 100,000 enemy troops. Pei Songzhi made a further detailed analysis. He believes that there are at least three reasons why the records in "Three Kingdoms" are inaccurate: First, the camps built by Yuan Shao stretched for tens of miles from east to west, and Cao Cao's ability to divide the camps shows that although Cao's troops were small, The second is that if Yuan Shao's army is more than ten times that of Cao's army, Yuan Shao should adopt the method of siege instead of the two armies facing each other now, allowing Cao's army to advance and retreat freely, and succeed every time; It is recorded that Cao Jun once murdered 70,000 to 80,000 people in Yuan Jun, and it is impossible to complete the murder of 70,000 to 80,000 people with thousands of people (80,000 people ran away, which cannot be restrained by 8,000 people, and all Shaozhi surrendered Just kill it, how can you control it).

But Pei Songzhi's analysis also has problems. Like many others, he often confuses the total strength of Yuan and Cao's armies with the strength they put into the front line of Guandu. These are actually two concepts. Counting Yuan Jun's military strength can't just count their military strength on the front line at Guandu. Yuan Shao's sons Yuan Tan, Yuan Xi, Yuan Shang, and his nephew Gao Gan still have a lot of troops, not within the range of 110,000 to 20,000.And when calculating Cao Jun’s troops on the front line at Guandu, we can’t include all the troops in various places. If the total strength of Cao Jun is about 100,000, it would be good if they can use one-third of the troops on the Guandu front line. “Cao Tong District” There are dozens of counties and hundreds of counties that need to be defended.

Cao Cao received the Yellow Turbans and dropped 300,000 soldiers. As mentioned earlier, this is only an imaginary number, and at most one-tenth of them can actually be incorporated into combat troops.For another example, it is not very likely that Cao Jun would kill Yuan Jun with 70,000 or 80,000 soldiers, and this point will be analyzed later. Pei Songzhi's conclusion is generally reasonable. The strength of Cao Jun's troops in the frontal battle is obviously underestimated. Cao Jun's strength here should be around 20,000 to 30,000 or even more. However, Cao's army was still at a disadvantage. After the confrontation between the two armies was completed, Cao Cao ordered his troops to attack, but they were unsuccessful (the joint battle was unfavorable).

One day in September, there was a solar eclipse. As an abnormal astronomical phenomenon, a solar eclipse was regarded as a bad omen in ancient times, and it was also regarded as a warning from heaven to mankind.In Xu County, Xiandi Liu Xie issued an edict as usual, requiring the minister to write a special report on the gains and losses of the government (shangfengshi), and it can be said that everything is said (extravagant).Liu Xiexie currently issued an edict to the central and local governments to recommend talents. The standard is people with outstanding filial piety (the most filial people).

This move by Liu Xie may not have been inspired by Cao Cao. Firstly, Cao Cao, who was on the front line at Guandu, should not have the heart to think about these things at this time. Second, in terms of talent, Cao Cao advocated putting talent first, and later put forward the "only talent" approach. The concept of employing people is not the same as the traditional view of employing people with filial piety as the first. The front line of Guandu, which is only one or two hundred miles away from Xu County, also saw the solar eclipse.For war, a solar eclipse also indicates bad luck. Usually, when a solar eclipse occurs, both sides in the war must stop, so solar eclipses sometimes play an unexpected role in truce.

The most famous case occurred on the Iranian Plateau between the seventh and sixth centuries BC. At that time, the Kingdom of Medes and the Kingdom of Lydia fought fiercely along the Harus River. The war was protracted and lasted for five years.One day, when the two armies were fighting, a total solar eclipse occurred suddenly, and the sun was completely engulfed in an instant, as if night fell. The soldiers were stunned by the sight before them and stopped fighting.Although the sun came out again soon and everything returned to normal, both warring parties believed that this was a warning from the heavens dissatisfied with the war, so they decided not to fight anymore. A war that had been fought for five years came to an end because of a solar eclipse. , This incident is recorded in the book "History of the Hippo Wars" by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus.

This time Cao Cao saw the solar eclipse and did the opposite, taking advantage of the enemy's mentality that the solar eclipse was not suitable for combat, and launched a surprise attack on Yuan Jun.However, due to being unable to break through the mounds piled up by Yuan Jun, Cao Jun was defeated and returned. The two sides fell into a difficult confrontation, and in order to win, they thought of many ways. Yuan Shao ordered an earthen mountain to be piled up outside Cao's camp, and a tall watchtower (high oar) was set up, and he shot arrows at Cao's camp by virtue of his air supremacy.Cao Ying was exposed to the range of the enemy's archers, and the people in the camp wanted to walk back and forth, but they could only move forward with their shields covered.

In order to deal with the archers at high places, Cao Jun improved the catapult carts used for attacking the city to make them have a longer range and greater power. The watchtowers were knocked down one after another, and Yuan Jun's archers didn't dare to come to the earth mountain easily. Seeing that the archers were unable to exert their power, Yuan Shao called in engineers and started tunneling in the direction of Cao Ying.Yuan Shao is very good at this job, and finally defeated Gongsun Zan and conquered Yi Jing with tunnel warfare, but he didn't know that Cao Cao was also very good at it.At the beginning, Cao Cao was almost wiped out in front of Zhang Xiu's Anzhong defense line. In the end, the engineers and soldiers dug a tunnel in surprise to escape.

Therefore, Cao Cao had long been prepared for Yuan Jun's good tricks. His countermeasure was to dig a long and deep trench horizontally in the camp by tunneling tunnels, and Yuan Jun's tunnels were exposed when they dug here. The two sides battled wits and courage, tried their best, and fought extremely hard. The confrontation lasted for a long time, and the logistical problems were quickly exposed. It was Cao Cao who felt the pressure first. It seems that Cao Jun's food supply is not enough, which is a serious problem.Once the soldiers cannot be fed, no matter how good the ideological and political work is, the troops will not be able to fight. What's more, the morale of the Cao army is already a problem, and soldiers defected from time to time. .

Before and after this, Xu Ta's assassination incident also occurred, which made Cao Cao even more worried. Xu He's deeds are unknown, only that he is Cao Cao's personal bodyguard. Xu He and several others conspired to assassinate Cao Cao, but they did not dare to do it when they saw the warrior Xu Chu often accompanying Cao Cao.One day, taking advantage of Xu Chu's off-duty (waiting for Chuxiu the next day), Xu Ta and others entered Cao Cao's headquarters with a knife in their arms. By coincidence, when Xu Chu returned to his dormitory, he always felt that something had happened (Chu Zhi Xiashe was moved), so he came back to have a look.Unbeknownst to Xu Ta, when he entered Cao Cao's big tent and saw Xu Chu, he was shocked and his face changed suddenly. Xu Chu noticed it and immediately killed Xu Ta. The assassination of Xu Ta was one of the many murders that Cao Cao encountered in his life, and it was also the strangest one.Just based on Xu Ta's strange expression, Xu Chu judged that Xu Ta had a different intention and shot him dead. Of course, he must have done an inspection afterwards. As long as Xu Ta had a knife in his arms, it was not an unjust case. But why did Xu him murder Cao Cao?Is there a political group behind Dong Cheng, or is it an undercover agent sent by Yuan Shao?All of these cannot be verified because the principal culprit is dead.However, the Xu Ta incident occurred at the most tense moment of the confrontation at Guandu, and it would also have a certain impact on Cao Cao's psychology. Faced with this severe situation, Cao Cao had the idea of ​​retreating back to Xu County. For this reason, he wrote a letter to Xun in the rear, asking for his opinion.Xun quickly wrote back, he did not agree with Cao Cao's idea, Xun analyzed: "Although there is very little military rations now, it is not as it was when Chu and Han fought for victory in Xingyang and Chenggao. At that time, Liu Bang and Xiang Yu were very difficult, but they were unwilling to retreat first, because the momentum of the side that retreated first would inevitably be hit. Now we It has been several months since we blocked Yuan Jun's attack with a small number of people, choking his throat so that he could not move forward, now is the critical moment, the situation is bound to change, and we will definitely be able to wait for a chance to win by surprise." Cao Cao thought what Xun said was reasonable, so he asked Jia Xu again, who said, "Mr. Cao, you are more wise than Yuan Shao, more courageous than Yuan Shao, better than Yuan Shao in employing people, and better in decision-making than Yuan Shao. The decisive victory is caused by too much consideration of the problem, and we should seize the opportunity to fight hard, and the overall situation will be determined." Neither Xun nor Jia Xu advocated retreating, believing that the situation had reached a critical moment, and what was needed now was a chance to win by surprise.It's just that such an opportunity is rare, can it appear? At this moment, a mysterious visitor appeared in Cao Ying, as if specially arranged by the heavens, and brought Cao Cao the long-awaited decisive opportunity.