After the Battle of Chibi-Jiangling (later referred to as the Battle of Chibi), Sun Quan became Cao Cao's main enemy, and the two fought for a long time in the area from Hefei to Misu, and many wars broke out.

The first is the first battle of Hefei provoked by Sun Quan after his victory in the Battle of Chibi, although Sun Quan took the opportunity to expand, but after seeing that there was no chance, he had retreated before Cao Cao's reinforcements arrived.

[Cao Cao vs Sun Quan]

After the Battle of Red Cliffs, Sun Quan had become the biggest obstacle Cao Cao faced, and Cao Cao was Sun Quan's primary and formidable enemy.

At that time, Sun Quan was an ally Liu Bei to the east, and the weak Jiaozhou was to the south, and only Cao Cao in the north put the greatest pressure on him, so after Cao Cao's defeat at Chibi, Sun Quan immediately waved his army north while Zhou Yu was advancing westward, trying to conquer Hefei and expand his power to Xuzhou east of Cao Cao.

Also for Cao Cao, at that time, the Gongsun Kang of Liaodong was not ambitious, the threat could be ignored, the princes of Guanzhong were also within the control, Zhang Lu of Hanzhong could not threaten Cao Cao because of the obstruction of Guanzhong, Liu Zhang had begun to express submission when Cao Cao went south, Liu Bei had just stood firm in Jingzhou, only the Jiangdong group could have a direct threat to Cao Cao, and then Zhou Yu captured Jiangling on the western front, Buqi went south to control Jiaozhou, and the Jiangdong group developed extremely rapidly in a short period of time, Therefore, Cao Cao immediately sent troops to attack Misu after stabilizing the rear, in an attempt to suppress Sun Quan's forces.

The two sides fought from the thirteenth year of Jian'an (208) to the twenty-second year of Jian'an (217), and the war ended for nearly ten years.

From the thirteenth year of Jian'an to the following year (208-209), Sun Quan sent troops to attack Hefei for the first time, and Cao Cao also sent Zhang Xi (a said to open his mouth) to support, but before Cao Cao's reinforcements arrived, Sun Quan had already withdrawn.

In the fourteenth year of Jian'an (209), Cao Cao personally led his troops to Hefei, crusaded against Yangzhou thieves Chen Lan, Mei Cheng and others, and appointed Yangzhou County magistrates, leaving Zhang Liao, Lejin and Li Dian to garrison Hefei, and then retreated.

In the eighteenth year of Jian'an (213), Cao Cao personally led his troops to crusade against Sun Quan, attacked Misu, achieved certain results, and then retreated.

In the nineteenth year of Jian'an (214), Sun Quan attacked Wancheng to the north and conquered it.

In the twentieth year of Jian'an (215), Sun Quan sent troops to attack Hefei again, but he was attacked by Zhang Liao when he retreated, but fortunately he was desperately protected by Ling Tong.

In the twenty-first year of Jian'an (216), Cao Cao came to Juchao and attacked Misu again, and the following year, Sun Quan asked for peace, and Cao Cao retreated.

During this time, the two strongest princes of the time had many confrontations, winning and losing each other, but with the rapid rise of Liu Bei's group, the situation changed, and the war between Cao Cao and Sun Quan came to an end.

【Battle of Hefei】

After the Battle of Chibi, Sun Quan's group developed to the west, south and north, the west was led by Zhou Yu to attack Jiangling, and later also tried to crusade against Yizhou, the south annexed Jiaozhou to further expand the territory, and the north was led by Sun Quan himself, trying to conquer Hefei and expand his power to the north of the Yangtze River.

In the thirteenth year of Jian'an (208), Sun Quan personally led a large army to besiege Hefei, and also sent Zhang Zhao to attack Dangtu County in Jiujiang County. Zhang Zhao's troops were unfavorable, and Sun Quan attacked Hefei for more than a month (more than 100 days), but failed to break the city.

The reason why Hefei City was able to resist the attack of Sun Quan's army in history has a lot to do with Liu Fu, who succeeded him as the Yangzhou Assassin after Yan Xiang's death, when the whole territory of Yangzhou was basically occupied by Sun, and there were Mei Gan, Lei Xu, Chen Lan and other separatist forces in the area that could be controlled, Cao Cao also faced Yuan Shao's large-scale attack, unable to support Yangzhou, Liu Fu came to Yangzhou in such a situation.

After he came to power, he established public security measures in the state capital, adopted a strategy of appeasing Lei Xu and other forces in southern Hefei, began to concentrate all Confucian students, built schools, expanded tuntian, and built and managed Shaobi, Kepi, Qimenyan, Wutang and other water-blocking earth weirs to irrigate rice fields, so that grain could grow, and the government and the people had reserves. He also built fortifications on the city, stored a large number of rolling wood and stones, compiled thousands of collars of grass, and increased the accumulation of several thousand dendrobium fish fat and oil as preparations for battle defense.

In the thirteenth year of Jian'an (208), Liu Fu died, and Sun Quan's troops may also have something to do with it, but although Liu Furen is gone, the defensive measures he left behind have not changed. It is recorded that at the end of the fight, it was just in time for the rain to fall, and the walls were almost collapsing. The soldiers defending the city covered the city walls with straw mats, lit fish fat at night to illuminate the outside of the city, and observed the enemy's movements and took corresponding defensive measures. Sun Quan's army was finally forced to retreat due to heavy losses. As a result, the officials and people in Yangzhou missed Liu Fu even more, believing that Liu Fu's defense strategy was even better than Dong Anyu, who guarded Jinyang in the Spring and Autumn Period.

At that time, Cao Cao had already returned to the north, so he sent Zhang Xi to rescue Hefei. However, the defenders of Hefei waited for more than a month and still did not see the reinforcements arrive, Jiang Ji secretly told the Yangzhou Assassin History, falsely claiming to have obtained Zhang Xi's letter, and 40,000 cavalry had arrived in Yanlou, and the master should be sent to meet Zhang Xi's reinforcements. That is, he wrote a letter to send three envoys to tell them the news to the city guards, one entered the city, and the other two were captured by the enemy.

This battle kicked off the nearly ten years of competition between Sun Quan and Cao Cao in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and the two major groups of Cao Wei and Eastern Wu fought for more than half a century.

【The timing of the Battle of Hefei】

Regarding the time of Sun Quan's first attack on Hefei, there are different time records in the "Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms", among which the time recorded in the "Wudi Ji" is before the Battle of Chibi, and the record in "The Biography of Lord Wu" is after the Battle of Chibi.

In the "Emperor Wu Ji", its time is recorded as "December, Sun Quan is preparing for the attack on Hefei." Gong requisitioned from Jiangling, went to Baqiu, and sent Zhang □ to rescue Hefei. The right to hear □ is to go. Gong to Chibi, and prepare for war"

In "The Biography of Lord Wu", "Bei, Yu and others chased back to Nanjun, and Cao Gong returned to the north, leaving Cao Ren and Xu Huang in Jiangling...... Quan Zi led the crowd to surround Hefei"

On the eve of the Battle of Chibi, Cao Cao did not leave much time for the Sun-Liu alliance after going south to capture Jingzhou, and they could only try their best to resist in the face of the strong Cao Cao, so Sun Quan was able to establish an alliance with Liu Bei in time at that time, and it was already good to prepare for the confrontation against Cao Cao, and there was no other time and strength to send troops to attack Hefei again.

In terms of troops, Sun Quan gave Zhou Yu 20,000 or 30,000 troops to fight against Cao Cao at that time, not because Sun Quan didn't want to give more, but because Sun Quan hadn't had time to gather more troops, so Sun Quan didn't have enough troops to go north before the Battle of Chibi, and it was too late for him to protect himself at that time.

This can be seen from the "Biography of Jiang Biao", when Zhou Yu asked Sun Quan to ask for 50,000 troops to fight against Cao Cao, Sun Quan replied like this: "50,000 soldiers are difficult to fight, 30,000 people have been selected, and the ship's food and war equipment are all in place. That is, Zhou Yu led only the advance troops at the beginning, but later he didn't expect Cao Cao to be vulnerable, and it was enough to beat him the first troops, so Sun Quan took the opportunity to capture Hefei with the troops gathered behind, but it didn't succeed.

On the whole, I agree with the evaluation of this matter in "Sun Sheng's Similarities and Differences": "According to Wu Zhi (Note 1), Liu Bei first broke the public army, and then attacked Hefei, and this record Yunquan attacked Hefei first, and then there was the matter of Chibi. The two are different, Wu Zhiwei is. ”

Note 1: Wu Zhi here refers to "Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Wu Zhi"

ps: I've been pulled to play cards lately, I'm sorry