Mencius said: People will insult themselves and then people will insult them, the family will destroy themselves and then people will destroy them, and the country will cut itself down and then people will cut it down. The monarchs of the Cheng and Han dynasties practiced this famous saying of Mencius with practical actions, committing their own death, and then dying at the hands of their opponents.

At that time, the main enemy of the Eastern Jin Dynasty was not Cheng Han, but Later Zhao in the north. In the sound of Xiao Xiao's war horses of the Hu clan's iron horse, the dream of the Northern Expedition was ruthlessly trampled on again and again and crushed into dust. Recovering their homeland has become an eternal topic for the monarchs and ministers of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and it has also become an eternal pain in their hearts.

For the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Hou Zhao was still an invincible existence. Huan Wen's strength did not allow him to make contributions to the Northern Expedition, and the civil strife of Cheng Han became a breakthrough for Huan Wen to be awarded for meritorious service to expand his strength and realize his ambition to level the world, and the Western Expedition to Cheng Han was also the foundation of his Northern Expedition to the Central Plains.

The generals and officers under Huan Wen did not approve at first, and guarded the anointed place, embraced their wives and concubines, and enjoyed delicious ....... For such a thing as going out to fight, there is no difficulty to create difficulties, not to mention, it is destined to be a journey of life and death, victory is gratifying, defeat is death without a place to be buried. Not everyone's mind is stirred with the same dreams as Huan Wen.

Among the many generals and officers under Huan Wen, only Yuan Qiao, the prime minister of Jiangxia, believed that it was entirely possible to win the victory of the Western Expedition to Cheng Han for four reasons: first, compared with Later Zhao, Cheng Han's strength was relatively weak, and it should be easy first and then difficult, and attack first; Second, Li Shi is brutal, centrifugal up and down, although Shu is steep, but the war preparation is not repaired, but it can be won in a battle; Third, the land of Sichuan and Shu, with a solid household registration, abundant products, and located in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, has an extremely important strategic position, and winning Chenghan can strengthen our strength; Fourth, Shi Hu will not act rashly, even if he intends to invade, the armies along the river are enough to resist, and there is no need to worry about the future.

Yuan Qiao's analysis strengthened Huan Wen's confidence in the westward expedition, and in November 346, after Huan Wen, the general of Anxi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, submitted a note to the Eastern Jin Dynasty court to conquer the Han Dynasty in the west, he paid homage to Yuan Qiao and appointed Yuan Qiao as the vanguard, leading more than 10,000 elite soldiers to the west to conquer the Han Dynasty. When the Huan Wen army set out, the central government in Jiankang had not yet received the report of the Huan Wen expedition to the west.

The ministers who could sit and talk all day did not dare to imagine what kind of courage Huan Wen had to raise the army to the west, only an army of 10,000 people, a thousand miles away, and no backup. The terrain of Sichuan and Shu is difficult and dangerous, and the logistics grain and grass cannot be guaranteed; Moreover, the northern Shihu may take advantage of the weakness to attack Jingzhou at any time. Huan Wen's desperate style of play made the elegant people who had eaten too much five stones break out in a cold sweat, and they couldn't even talk about metaphysics happily, and the court was deeply worried.

Liu Xuan, who once thought that Huan Wen "cannot be made upstream", affirmed this action: Huan Wen was a gambler and would not do anything that he was not sure of, so this time he would be able to succeed in cutting Shu, but after destroying Shu, the imperial court would not be able to control Huan Wen, whose strength was rapidly expanding.

According to the later development of the situation, Huan Wen was once again in Liu Yi's words!

Huan Wen is not sure that he can win, Cheng Han is an unknown world, full of variables, although he may succeed in a battle, but he may also be defeated and die. After marching through the Three Gorges, Huan Wen saw that the river was turbulent and the cliffs on both sides of the river were hanging, so he sighed to the world: "If you are a loyal minister, you must not be a filial son, how about it?" ”

Since ancient times, loyalty and filial piety have been in dilemma, when they are in danger, at the juncture of life and death, most of the people who have been loyal ministers have no chance to go home to be filial sons.

As soon as Huan Wen closed his mouth lamenting that he couldn't be a filial son, a female monkey jumped up from the river bank and crashed into the bow of Huan Wen's boat. After investigation, it turned out that a soldier caught a baby monkey, and the mother monkey cried and followed for more than 100 miles on the shore, and after there was no hope of rescuing the baby monkey, she was hit and killed. There is a good thing, the soldier dissects the belly of the female monkey and finds that the intestines in the belly are all broken into inches. Huan Wen then ordered the soldier who caught the monkey to be severely punished.

The son misses his parents and sighs with the dilemma of "loyalty and filial piety", but his parents miss their children, but they can "break their hearts and intestines".

In March 347, the Huan Wen army arrived at Pengmo in Shudi, and on the question of dividing the troops to advance or joining forces to strike a blow, Huan Wen once again adopted Yuan Qiao's suggestion of "joining forces to win the victory in a war", concentrated his forces, and smashed Chengdu with the momentum of breaking the cauldron and sinking the boat.

Li Shi immediately sent troops to meet the battle after learning the news. However, coincidentally, Zan Jian, the former general of the Cheng Han Dynasty who came to meet him, actually went a different path with Huan Wen, and the two armies passed by without meeting and engaged. The Cheng Han army that attacked Pengmo was also defeated by Huanwen's remaining troops, and, after learning the news of Huanwen's approach to Chengdu, Zhan Jian's army lost all fighting spirit and quickly dispersed. The Jin army was like a bamboo, winning three battles and three victories, and quickly reached the Zé Bridge outside Chengdu.

The Jin army, which was outnumbered and lonely, fell into passivity at the beginning of the war, the forward was frustrated, Gong Hu died in battle, and the bow and arrow of the Cheng Han army even shot in front of the mount of the Jin army commander Huan Wen. The Jin army was frightened, everyone thought of retreating, and Huan Wen, who was frightened, also issued an order for Ming Jin to withdraw his troops.

However, the drummer who was ordered to sing the gold was panicked and dramatically beat the war drum (in ancient times, the two armies fought and there was a special person responsible for beating the drum and beating the gold. Drumming is a march, and Mingjin is a retreat. Here the Jin army thought of retreating, and should sing gold, but the official beat the drum). For a while, the drums sounded loudly, and the forward general Yuan Qiao took the opportunity to supervise the army to fight, and the Jin army, which was on the verge of collapse, had no way to retreat, so he had to fight desperately, and finally broke into the Han army and won the victory in the Battle of Zhenqiao.

If the lone army of the Western Expedition fails in this battle, the war between Huan Wen and Cheng Han will become long, and even face the situation that the main force of Cheng Han and local armies will attack in groups, and it is likely that the story of Huan Wen will come to an abrupt end under the city of Chengdu. Of course, the story before this will be skipped by the historians, who cares to write about a general who failed and died on his first expedition?

Ko'er, Katsuyuki!

Huan Wen took advantage of the victory to pursue, burned the gate of Chengdu, Li Shi, who had lost all his fighting spirit, abandoned the city overnight and fled to Jiameng Pass (now southwest of Guangyuan, Sichuan), and then asked Huan Wen to surrender, and the Cheng Han Empire perished.

Let's analyze the reasons for the demise of Cheng Han,

First, internal factors.

Although the Li Teh brothers fought a war of peasant uprising to establish political power, they still relied on the support of the six county families (Yan, Zhao, Ren, Yang, Li, and Shangguan) to fight the world. In addition, Li Xiong also reused the powerful and powerful of the Di tribe and courteously treated Xishan Fan Changsheng to establish the legitimacy of his regime religiously. However, starting from Li Xiong, the members of the Li family were reused and held military power and government power, and other family members were excluded from the power center, which naturally caused the dissatisfaction of the six county clans and the local natives, and they were separated from each other.

After Li Shou ascended the throne, a major change of blood was carried out within the regime, and the six county clans were completely excluded, and they also offended the local Tu clan led by Gong Zhuang. The Cheng Han Dynasty was a regime established by ethnic minorities, and there was already an ethnic gap between it and the Han people, and after squeezing out the big families, it could not be supported by the ordinary Han people.

After Li Shi ascended the throne, the people rebelled and left, civil strife was numerous, the national strength was greatly reduced, the strength of the Cheng Han army was damaged, and the soldiers had no fighting spirit. Therefore, it only took four months for the Jin army to attack Chengdu and destroy the Han Dynasty.

Second, external factors

Due to Huan Wen's governance of Jingzhou, Corporal Lixian, appeased the popularity of Jingzhou, a large number of talents were put into his command, and the scholars represented by the old department of the Yu clan in Jingzhou were also attached to him, and the backbone of Huan Wen's western expedition were all the old departments of the Yu family, such as Sima Wuji, Yuan Qiao, etc. were all people of this group, which was the foundation of Huan Wen's success.

In terms of military strategy, Huan Wen adopted the advice of the strategist Yuan Qiao, covered up his unpreparedness, ran a long distance, concentrated superior forces, bypassed the main force of Cheng Han, and attacked Chengdu. Under the devastating attack of the Jin army, Cheng Han soon collapsed.

Huan Wen's lone army went deep, and after thousands of miles of battle, he broke the enemy in a battle, destroyed the Cheng Han established by the Li clan of the Di tribe, and captured Li Shi, the emperor of the Cheng Han Dynasty. Such a victory was unprecedented since the founding of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and greatly boosted the morale of the people of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the opposition.

The victory of the Western Expedition had a certain element of chance, if it wasn't for the fork in the road between Zan Jian and Huan Wen, who came to meet him, and if it weren't for the drummer who should have sounded the ......drums of war, Huan Wen would have suffered a crushing defeat.

Despite this, Huan Wen's decisiveness in plotting against the Han, the timely adoption of Yuan Qiao's opinions, and his pioneering and calm spirit at the critical moment fully demonstrated Huan Wen's military talent. However, Huan Wen's gambling success laid the groundwork for his later defeat in the Northern Expedition, and the victory caused him to ignore the tactical flaws in this operation.

Too many accidental factors make us believe in the accident of success, but before Huan Wen, there were many people in the Eastern Jin Dynasty who defended Jingzhou, and only Huan Wen destroyed the enemy country in a war.

In fact, we can fully understand it this way: in order to achieve the purpose of the surprise attack, Huan Wen deliberately avoided Zan Jian, who came to meet him, and at the time of the life and death of the Battle of Zhenqiao, Huan Wen promptly ordered the beating of war drums to motivate the morale of the whole army ........

As the commander-in-chief, Huan Wen must understand that with a force of only 10,000 people, a lone army thousands of miles deep into the hinterland of the enemy country, once defeated, it means destruction, where there is a way out.

After the destruction of the Han Dynasty, Huan Wen on the one hand "narrated the success or failure of the past and the present, and the survival and death of the talent", buying people's hearts in Shudi; On the one hand, he killed the rebel generals by forceful means. Huan Wen's policy was still relatively successful, although after Huan Wen returned to the division, there was a rebellion in Shudi, but the overall situation was under control. Two years later, the land of Sichuan and Shu was completely stable.

After the war, Huan Wen met a small official beside Zhuge Liang, the prime minister of Shu Han, when he was alive, and he was already an old man in his hundred years old at this time. Huan Wen asked: "Who is comparing Prime Minister Zhuge today?" He replied: "When Zhuge is here, he doesn't feel different, and since he has not been public, he has not seen his comparison." "Zhuge Liang didn't think it was great when he was alive, and he didn't find out until he died that he had never seen anyone who could compare to him.

This is the official history's evaluation of Zhuge Liang, the prime minister of the Shu Han Dynasty and the Han Dynasty, and if you think about it carefully, I don't think it is any worse than the description in the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" that is "wise and close to the demon".

Huan Wen only stayed in Shu for more than 30 days before hurrying back to Jingzhou, and the elimination of Cheng Han was only a milestone on his way forward. In Huan Wen's eyes, the main enemy is in the north, and recovering the Central Plains is his ultimate ideal. Of course, when he left, he took Li Shi's beautiful sister back to his home, and was accidentally discovered by Sima Xingnan......

In 348, Huan Wen, who had the merit of destroying the country and opening up the territory, ushered in the imperial court's reward for himself: the general of Zhengxi, the Kaifu Yi and the three divisions, and the Duke of Linhe County, became famous for a while, and shocked the government and the opposition. In fact, it was originally planned to reward Huan Wen with Yuzhang County, but the ministers in the court disagreed: "If Wen Fuping Heluo, how will he be rewarded?" "So it changed.

The reward for Huan Wen and the action to suppress Huan Wen are carried out at the same time.

The Western Expedition to the Han Dynasty was an important turning point in Huanwen's political career, and the victory gave him the confidence and strength of the Northern Expedition to the Central Plains; The reward of the high-ranking officials gave him the political status of the autocratic state; The tactical approach of marching alone gave him similar combat experience, but the enemy was different, and the victory or defeat was different, which laid the groundwork for the later failure of the Northern Expedition.