After Cao Wei lost Xuzhou and Qingzhou in a row, the morale of the Chu army was high, and Zhuge Liang of the Yangzhou Military Region joined Jiang Wei and Wang Ping after occupying Xuzhou, and then Zhuge Liang led Jiang Wei, Deng Ai, and Wang Ping to attack Jizhou. Cao Zhen, the governor of the capital, led Guo Huai, Chen Tai, Tian Yu, Sun Li, Wang Ji and others to defend against Zhuge Liang on the border of Qingzhou and Jizhou.

The hussar general Zhang He and the general Wei Yan converged, attacked Xu Du on both sides, attacked for several days, Xu Du was defended by Sima Yi, Cao Zhang, Man Chong, and others, the city wall was strong, Zhang He and Wei Yan could not break through.

Xiahou Yuan stubbornly guarded the Hangu Pass, although Hu Du had the advantage of troops, it was difficult to break through, and the situation fell into a stalemate. The Chu army successively increased its strength on the third line, and after the first line of Hangu Guan Hudu reached 200,000, the first line of Zhuge Liang Qingzhou and Zhu Ran's army converged, plus the soldiers reinforced by Yangzhou, the troop layout reached 250,000, the first line of Xudu, and the troop layout of Zhang He and Wei Yan's corps reached 180,000. Chu State fought on multiple fronts, the amount of troops reached more than 600,000, and millions of laborers were used to transport grain and grass, and the national strength was consumed very quickly, Ma Hong wanted to quickly decide the winner, whether it was the battle line of Hangu Pass, Xudu or Jizhou, as long as the three lines were broken, the battle situation could be opened, but this continuous war lasted for another month, and there was no good result.

Wei as the defender, Cao Rui has been a large number of border troops to Jizhou reinforcements, the total number of troops invested in the third line reached 450,000, the national mobilization also reached one million, Chu and Wei mobilized the peasants plus the army almost reached three million, you must know that the population of this era is not large, Chu under the control of Ma Hong, although the rapid development in recent years, the people's living standards have improved, but the total population of Chu is only more than 9 million.

In Chinese history, there have been many periods of large-scale population decline, from the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Three Kingdoms, which is a "strengthened version" of this period. During this period, the number of Chinese population declined so much and the people died so badly that it is difficult to find a second era to compare with it in previous generations and future generations. In the entire Eastern Han Dynasty, the most populous period was the reign of Emperor He and Emperor Shun of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the population of China during that period was close to 60 million. However, it was also from this time that China's population began to grow negatively, but the decline was not large. By the time of the reign of Emperor Huan of the Eastern Han Dynasty, in 157 AD, the Eastern Han Dynasty government had checked the household registration of the whole country, and in this "census", China's population was more than 56 million, slightly lower than the peak of nearly 60 million in the era of Emperor Han He, and the decline was not too large. However, after the subsequent Yellow Turban Rebellion and Dong Zhuo's Rebellion, the civil war between the Central Plains and the Central Plains, by the end of the Battle of Chibi in 221 AD, China's population had declined to a shocking level.

The population declined sharply from the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the early Three Kingdoms, and many reasons can naturally be summarized, starting with the nationwide war that began with the Yellow Turban Army uprising. At that time, the Yellow Turban Army uprising adopted the strategy of raising events all over the country at the same time, and as soon as it broke out, it was a "full-scale war", and the war spread to the whole country. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the heroes who appeared were all indifferent to the people's power and killed innocent traitors, and the powerful minister Dong Zhuo adopted a brutal and oppressive ruling policy after taking power, and in order to expand the military strength, he continued to catch strong men, causing a large number of people to flee. Moreover, the northern warlords at that time liked to use the common people as shields, and in wars, they often captured innocent people as "meat shields" to fill the front to block the enemy's attack. The perennial mutual war has also caused a large number of cities and towns to be destroyed, and many once-prosperous prefectures and counties have become no-man's land. And the war from the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Three Kingdoms can be said to be a national cycle, so that the common people have nowhere to escape. During this period, the reason for the population decline, the first to bear the brunt, is the great plague, at first Ma Hong did not understand why the population could drop from 50 million to 10 million, and then he understood, that is, the plague and famine after the war, after the outbreak of the big scene of war, such as Cao Cao and Yuan Shao fought the battle of Guandu, Ma Hong and Cao Cao fought the battle of Huayin, Ma Hong destroyed the battle of Eastern Wu, after the outbreak of these wars, soldiers died, people were displaced, the bodies of dead soldiers could not be disposed of in time, in the winter was fine, If the plague breaks out soon in the summer, if the plague breaks out, it must quickly sweep through one area, and then the people in the area will be infected and affected. Speaking of plague, Ma Hong inquired from historical materials, and the plague recorded in history was a problem faced by the government of the past dynasties since the middle of the Western Han Dynasty. Because of the war with the Xiongnu and the later annexation of the Southern Xiongnu, the "steppe plague" that arose in the northern steppe region was continuously brought to the Central Plains for more than 100 years. China's large-scale plague began with Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty, and the fall of the Western Han Empire was triggered by the peasant uprising in Shandong because of the plague. Moreover, this kind of plague was basically a terminal disease with no way out at the level of Chinese medicine at that time. Even if the Western Han Dynasty perished and the Eastern Han Dynasty changed dynasties, the plague still did not converge, and basically every one or two decades, it would suddenly break out somewhere. This situation, basically throughout the Eastern Han Dynasty, Ma Hong saw this before organizing contemporary medical scholars to run a medical school in Hanzhong, vigorously developing medicine, he did this from the beginning, these years invested a lot of money in the study of drugs, the plague in the south is under control, and Ma Hong chose to fight most of the wars, generally he is the initiator of the war, rarely in the homeland to wage war, of course, once Liu Bei and Cao Cao united in his entire Jingzhou, so Ma Hong controlled Yizhou, Jingzhou is a populous state as a whole.

Since the early middle and early Eastern Han Dynasty, there have been continuous natural disasters. The great invention of Zhang Heng's geodynamic instrument was due to the frequent natural disasters in the Eastern Han Dynasty. In terms of earthquakes alone, the frequency of earthquakes in the middle and late Eastern Han Dynasty is rare in the entire history of China. For example, in the Longxi region of the Eastern Han Dynasty, large-scale earthquakes broke out in the Eastern Han Dynasty and the Emperors, Huan Emperors, Ling Emperors, and Xian Emperors. In the late Eastern Han Dynasty, there were also extremely abnormal large-scale locust plagues and droughts, such as the Eastern Han Dynasty Emperor Huan Emperor to Emperor Ling in the past few decades, the northern large-scale locust plague appeared 5 times, the most serious of which 1, almost affected the entire Central Plains north of the Yangtze River. Such a large-scale locust plague can be compared with several times in the later Chinese history, that is, during the Kaiyuan period of the Tang Dynasty and the end of the Yuan Dynasty. At the same time, in the last 50 years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Yellow River broke four times, and Jingzhou and Jiangdong in the Yangtze River basin had five floods. At the same time, large-scale drought occurred in the grassland areas inhabited by the northern nomads for many years, and the northern ethnic minorities went south to the Central Plains to seek internal attachment in order to escape the disaster.

(To be continued.) )