【Extinguishing the Yellow Turban and Building the Qingzhou Army】

After Cao Cao became the pastor of Yanzhou, the first thing he did was to join forces with Bao Xin and others to eliminate the Yellow Turban Army entrenched in Yanzhou.

Cao Cao believed that although the Yellow Turban Army was powerful, most of them were born in poverty and were not proficient in strategy, and they would inevitably be proud and underestimate the enemy after the victory of Liu Dai, the assassin of Yanzhou. Cao Cao then set up a surprise army to meet the Yellow Turban Army in Shouzhang, Cao Cao and Bao Xin were the first to arrive on the battlefield, and at this time the other troops had not yet arrived, but the Yellow Turban Army was already approaching.

Cao Cao was forced to engage in a fierce battle with the superior enemy, and Cao Cao himself was discovered by the Yellow Turban Army and could not escape. In order to rescue Cao Cao, Bao Xin fought desperately and fought a way out for Cao Cao, but unfortunately Bao Xin himself did not escape, and he died at the age of forty-one. Later, other troops from Yanzhou gradually arrived, and the Yellow Turban Army slowly fell apart, and was finally defeated by Cao Cao.

After this battle, Cao Cao offered a reward to find Bao Xin's body, but unfortunately he did not find it. Everyone then carved the appearance of Bao Xin with wood, and Cao Cao shed tears to sacrifice him.

This winter, the form became more and more unfavorable for the Yellow Turbans. Although the Yellow Turban Army claims to be one million, but most of them are women and children, the elderly, and young children, of which only about thirty percent of the young and strong, they are mobile to fight, and the consumption required is numerous, and in the case of not being able to defeat Cao Cao, the Yellow Turban Army has been unable to maintain its consumption, and the leaders of the Yellow Turban Army do not have much ability, and they began to surrender to Cao Cao as a last resort.

After Cao Cao incorporated this group of Yellow Turban Army, he received more than 300,000 soldiers, with a total population of about one million. He reorganized the elite of them into an army, known as the Qingzhou soldiers.

【Battle of the First Peace】

After the crusade against Dong Zhuo, the two brothers Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu formed an alliance to confront each other, Yuan Shao and Cao Cao joined forces, and Yuan Shu also joined forces with Gongsun Zan and Tao Qian.

At the end of the third year of Chuping (192) and the beginning of the fourth year of Chuping (193), Yuan Shu was cut off by Liu Biao after sending Sun Jian to defeat Liu Biao, on the one hand, out of helplessness, on the other hand, in order to further restrain Yuan Shao's development, he asked Gongsun Zhan for help. Gongsun Zan sent Liu Beitun to Gaotang, passed through the Tun Plain alone, and united with Tao Qian to send troops to dry, forming an encirclement of Yuan Shao's Jizhou.

In addition, Yuan Shu himself also joined forces with the Yanzhou assassin Shi Jinshang appointed by the imperial court to attack Yanzhou, and Yuan Shu marched to Chen Liutun to Fengqiu, and also received the help of the remnants of the Black Mountain thieves and the Xiongnu Yu Fuluo and others.

Cao Cao also marched to Juancheng and joined forces with Yuan Shao. At that time, Juancheng was relatively close to Jizhou, and it was easy to get Yuan Shao's support, and Juancheng became Cao Cao's base camp in Yanzhou.

In this way, Gongsun Zan of Youzhou and Qingerzhou, Tao Qian of Xuzhou, and Yuan Shu of Nanyang formed a triangular offensive posture against Yuan Shao of Jizhou and Cao Cao of Yanzhou.

Compared with the previous battles such as the boundary bridge between Sun Jianfa and Liu Biao and Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zhan, this time it is a comprehensive duel between the two camps of Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu, and whoever wins and who loses will determine the direction of the world in the future.

In order to deal with the joint attacks of Yuan Shu, Gongsun Zhan, and Tao Qian, Yuan Shao and Cao Cao took advantage of the fact that they were too far away from each other to cooperate in time, and the two joined forces to break them one by one.

The combined forces of Yuan Shao and Cao Cao first swept away the threat of Gongsun Zan and Tao Qian to Jizhou, and successively repelled Liu Bei, Shan Jing, and Tao Qian.

Subsequently, the combined forces of Yuan and Cao entered Yanzhou and fought a major battle with Yuan Shu.

Yuan Shu sent Liu Shen to garrison Kuangting, Cao Cao led his troops to attack Liu Shen, Yuan Shu led troops to rescue, the two sides fought fiercely in Kuangting, and Cao Cao won a complete victory. Yuan Shu was defeated and had to retreat to Fengqiu, Cao Cao led his army to surround it, and Yuan Shu fled to Xiangyi. Cao Cao continued to chase Taishou and defeated Yuan Shu again by opening the canal to irrigate the city. Yuan Shu fled to Ningling, but Cao Cao still did not give up, and Yuan Shu finally had to flee to Jiujiang. In the summer of the same year, Cao Cao collected his troops and stationed them in Dingtao County.

After this battle, Liu Biao recovered Nanyang, Jin Shang left with Yuan Shu, and the Black Mountain Army and the Southern Xiongnu were almost beaten out of Yanzhou.

Since this war mainly took place during the early peace period of Emperor Xian, I personally call it the "Battle of Chuping".

The Battle of Chuping also ended with a complete victory for Yuan Shao and Cao Cao, after this battle, the Yuan Shu camp could no longer compete with the Yuan Shao camp, and the relationship between Gongsun Zhan, Tao Qian and Yuan Shu also began to break down, and was basically suppressed by Yuan Shao and Cao Cao after that, while Yuan Shao and Cao Cao both ushered in the golden period of their respective developments.

In this war, Yuan Shao and Cao Cao had just become Shangzhou pastors, and their foothold was not stable, and the timing of Yuan Shu's provocation of the war had to be said to be just right, but compared to the close proximity of Yuan and Cao, Yuan Shu, Gongsun Zhan, and Tao Qian were too scattered among each other.

At that time, Yuan Shu was separated from Yanzhou (Yuzhou) in Nanyang and Tao Qian's Xuzhou, and there was a distance between Yanzhou and Hebei in Youzhou, the base camp of Gongsun Zhan. In contrast, Tao Qian and Gongsun Zhan, who conquered Qingzhou, were barely bordering, but Tao Qian still needed to borrow Qingzhou (Yanzhou) to fight Yuan Shao, which made the tripartite joint operation a huge difficulty.

On the other hand, Yuan Shu and others also had problems in liaison, after Yuan Shu asked Gongsun Chan for help, the troops of Liu Bei, Shan Jing and Tao Qian under Gongsun Chan were already in place as early as the end of the third year of Chuping (192), but Yuan Shu did not send troops to attack Cao Cao until the beginning of the fourth year of Chuping (193). Whether this was due to a problem with the envoy on the way, or whether Yuan Shu himself was late or Gongsun Zhan was early, or whether the two sides had only agreed on an approximate time, or whether there was something else, we don't know.

But it is undeniable that this gave Yuan Shao and Cao Cao the opportunity to break through one by one, so that the Yuan Shu camp, whose overall strength was still above the strength of Yuan Shao and Cao Cao, was inferior to the Yuan Cao coalition army on their respective battlefields, and could only fight alone, and was finally repelled by Yuan Shao and Cao Cao one by one, and Yuan Shu and others had to swallow the fruits of defeat.

Of course, Gongsun Zhan himself did not do his best in this war is also a very important reason, after Sun Jian's death, Gongsun Zhan in Yuan Shu's camp is already the last powerful general. If Gongsun Zhan personally led the troops to fight at that time, even if he couldn't take Yuan Shao's Jizhou, but it was more than enough to block it for a period of time under the attack of Yuan Cao's coalition army, and it could fully support Yuan Shu to send troops to Yanzhou, if Tao Qian divided his troops to attack together at that time, Yuan Shao and Cao Cao couldn't take care of each other, then it was unknown who would win and who would lose in this war!

In this war, the focus of Yuan Shao and Cao Cao's attacks was very clear. For the combined forces of Gongsun Zan and Tao Qian, who took the initiative to invade Jizhou, Yuan Shao and Cao Cao only repelled them, but for the Yuan Shu army, the core contact point of the Yuan Shu camp, the Yuan Cao coalition army was completely fighting to the death, and forced Yuan Shu to the Yangzhou area, forcing him to leave the sphere of influence of Yuan Shao and Cao Cao.

In this way, Yuan Shu, Tao Qian, and Gongsun Zhan could no longer form a joint force, and the threat to Yuan Shao and Cao Cao was greatly reduced.

In this battle, Yuan Shu's camp was almost scattered, laying a solid foundation for Yuan Shao and Cao Cao's future victories.

ps: The main basis for the alliance between Yuan Shao and Cao Cao is "Yuan Shu and Shao have a gap" in the "Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms" Emperor Wu, and the technique asks for help from Gongsun Zhan, and Zan makes Liu Beitun Gaotang, and passes through the Tun Plain alone, and Tao Qiantun is dry to force Shao. Taizu and Shao will fight, and they will both be broken. "And Dong Er, Yuan Liu, and Yuan Shu's biography" led the army into Chen Liu. Taizu and Shao attacked together, and the army was broken. ”