Yuan Shao, the father of Fanghua in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 1214 Misstep
Cao Cao had not been able to rest well for many years because of headaches. Especially when he was woken up late at night, his whole body seemed to be torn apart, and he was in extreme irritability and confusion.

This state of thinking is similar to the situation in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms when Jiang Gan stole the book, fell into Zhou Yu's counter-espionage plan, and returned to Cao's camp late at night to report the news. At that time, Cao Cao was awakened late at night, and when he heard that Cai Mao and Zhang Yun had surrendered secretly, he was furious in his daze and immediately ordered the two to be beheaded.

Of course, at this time Cao Cao quickly woke up from the fear of death, because he suddenly realized that the Jin army had actually reached Yecheng!
Isn’t the battle line still hundreds of miles long?

What are Cao Hong, Cao Zhen, Ma Chao and Yu Jin doing on the periphery?
The defense line built by Cao's army around Yecheng was not just one or two points, but there were generals stationed at every pass. The number of Jin troops attacking now must be as high as tens of thousands, which means that at least one place must have completely collapsed, so so many people were allowed in!
Cao Cao's eyesight was already poor to begin with, and now it was even darker. He was still careless. The Wei army had dug a river in Jizhou and flooded many parts of Wei County. One of the reasons for this was to prevent a surprise attack by the opposing cavalry.

If the Jin army relied solely on its infantry, even if it broke through a pass, it would be difficult for it to reach Yecheng within a few days. This gave the Cao army sufficient time to react and send troops from multiple directions to block the enemy in time.

This is also the reason why Cao Cao had the confidence to allow the Yingchuan faction to eliminate dissidents on a large scale. He gave up on reconciling the contradictions between the two factions and acquiesced in the Yingchuan faction's actions to attack the Jizhou faction. Everything was done to concentrate the power of Yecheng and work together to deal with the powerful enemy, the Jin army.

Fighting for the crown prince at this time would only waste strength in vain, allow the Jin army to gain an advantage, and bring the Cao family into an abyss of no return.

This was not fair to Cao Zhi's faction. They did not deserve the death penalty, but in the face of the survival of the Wei Kingdom and the Cao family, all this was unimportant. Even if Yang Xiu's faction was right, they were ruthlessly abandoned by Cao Cao because of the general trend.

When Yang Xiu understood this, he made up his mind to break off completely with Cao Cao and started to make trouble in the city. Cao Cao had expected this, but he didn't take it seriously, because with the Jizhou gentry in Yecheng, what kind of trouble could they cause in Yecheng, which was heavily guarded?

The developments that began tonight were exactly as Cao Cao had expected. Although there were rebellions at the four gates, they were only a few thousand household slaves. As long as Cao's elite troops were mobilized, they could all be wiped out within an hour.

The only thing that could make Cao Cao marvel was the courage of the Jizhou gentry to rebel, but it was just an admiration.

In Cao Cao's view, the Hebei gentry, represented by the Jizhou gentry, were the biggest hidden danger to Wei's defense of Yecheng. He must eliminate this hidden danger before the decisive battle with the Jin army.

Cao Cao's views on the Hebei gentry were not groundless. When Wang Mang usurped the Han Dynasty and Liu Xiu followed his brother Liu Yan to start an uprising, the Hebei gentry supported them behind the scenes.

At that time, Liu Xiu's elder brother Liu Yan was the leader of the rebel army and had a high prestige in the Green Forest Army. As a result, he was suspected and killed by Emperor Gengshi Liu Xuan. Liu Xiu was forced to set up his own camp and reached an agreement with the Hebei gentry. By marrying Guo Shengtong, he gained the full support of the Hebei gentry.

But after Liu Xiu established the Eastern Han Dynasty, he naturally would not allow any aristocratic families to threaten the imperial rule. So he deposed Guo Shengtong, violating the agreement with the Hebei gentry, and naturally the conditions promised to the Hebei gentry also went down the drain.

The Hebei gentry held a grudge against this for hundreds of years, and finally waited for the opportunity of the Factions and Persecutions during the reigns of Emperors Huan and Ling.

The Han court's restrictions on the party-based aristocracy aroused rebellion among the aristocrats throughout the world. The form of their resistance was the Yellow Turban Rebellion, which was pushed by the aristocrats behind the scenes.

The Yellow Turban Rebellion was not a purely peasant uprising. There were many aristocratic families behind it, and the pattern and process of this uprising were almost identical to those when Liu Xiu came to power.

Zhang Jue himself was born in Julu, Jizhou. He discovered that the most important territories of the Taiping Dao were the three states of Jizhou, Qingzhou and Youzhou. In just a few years, he had hundreds of thousands of followers. In the Han Dynasty, where the aristocratic families firmly controlled the villages and towns, no one would believe that there was no aristocratic family plotting behind the scenes.

Moreover, Zhang Jue's Yellow Turban Rebellion was entirely within the Jizhou region centered on Hebei from beginning to end. The Jizhou gentry had been harboring a grudge against Liu Xiu for breach of contract for hundreds of years, so Zhang Jue received considerable support.

The Yellow Turban Rebellion, on the one hand, represented the oppressed people's dissatisfaction with the Han court, and on the other hand, it also represented the desire of the Hebei gentry to return to the stage and repeat their support for Liu Xiu. The one who saw this most clearly was Yuan Shao.

After he escaped from Luoyang, he went straight to Jizhou, where he hit it off with the local gentry. With the help of the Jizhou nobles, he took Jizhou from Han Fu without bloodshed, just like Liu Bei riding alone into Jingzhou.

The reason for this is that, on the one hand, Yuan Shao and Liu Biao did demonstrate extraordinary abilities, and on the other hand, the local gentry saw the prospects and value of cooperating with them, and the two sides hit it off immediately.

After Yuan Shao obtained Jizhou, he naturally gave corresponding rewards to the Jizhou gentry, but there were also conflicts between the Jizhou gentry and the foreign gentry. Yuan Shao had learned from the past and did not dare to take drastic measures, so he let them fight each other. This undoubtedly affected many strategic decisions. This was certainly due to Yuan Shao's personality, but he also had his own difficulties and ideas. His ultimate goal was to rely on the gentry and establish a dynasty with the gentry landlords as the ruling body.

In some ways, the path that Yuan Shao took was a reversal of the path that Liu Bang took when he established the Western Han Dynasty. Since Liu Bang insisted on the absoluteness of imperial power, he suffered backlash and ended up compromising after Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing.

Liu Xiu also tried to consolidate the imperial power, but his methods were not as good as Liu Bang's. Many of his policies had problems, which led to a complete rift between the emperor and the gentry during the Huan and Ling periods. This allowed the gentry to take advantage of the peasant uprising to cause trouble. This is the class limitation of the peasant uprising.

But this is also a historical necessity. Human development cannot skip this stage. As imperial power becomes secularized, it is inevitable to merge with the gentry. I don't know whether Yuan Shao had already understood this or it was an accident, but from the very beginning, he chose the coexistence of imperial power and the gentry.

But Cao Cao was different. At the beginning of his rebellion, he obviously wanted to emulate Liu Bang, so he used extremely drastic means to suppress the local gentry in Yanzhou. However, his approach was extremely immature at that time. The consequence of killing Bian Rang was that the Yanzhou gentry collectively betrayed Cao Cao, which dealt a heavy blow to Cao Cao.

Finally, with the support of dried human flesh and Yuan Shao's military supplies, Cao Cao overcame this difficulty and learned to compromise with the gentry. So he began to adopt relatively gentle means, that is, using foreign gentry to suppress local gentry.

In terms of its manifestation, it is to use the Yingchuan faction to deal with the local gentry and eradicate the local stubborn forces. When the world is finally gained, the number of gentry families will be greatly reduced, thus preventing the occurrence of phenomena like the rebellion of the Jizhou gentry and the threat to the rule of the dynasty.

This idea was actually ahead of its time compared to others. However, only Yuan Xi, who knew the history of later generations, knew that Cao Cao's approach was doomed to fail, because in the following thousand years, with the improvement of the feudal system, a stable form was formed, which was an era in which the emperor and the literati ruled the world together.

After Cao Cao's death, the Wei Kingdom adopted the Nine-Rank System. Later, in the Jin Dynasty, the king and Ma shared the world. The gentry in the Sui and Tang Dynasties developed further and monopolized the court. Even in the Song and Ming Dynasties, when the gentry became landlords, they still shared governance with the imperial power. The emperor was in the court and the landlords were in the countryside, and they did not interfere with each other.

This was a necessary stage in the development of feudal society. Cao Cao did not have this knowledge, so he chose to take action against the Jizhou gentry at this time in order to eliminate this hidden danger. Moreover, in Cao Cao's view, the Jizhou gentry were completely untrustworthy.

There is another reason for this, which is that Cao Cao began to lose control of the Tianping Dao.

The Taiping Dao originated in Jizhou. In order to obtain this power, Cao Cao took great pains and adopted many means. He started planning when he was an official. The obscene sacrifices he destroyed avoided the Taoist temples worshipped by the Taiping Dao, so he was regarded as a saint by the Tianping Dao and thus gained the support of the Taiping Dao.

But the next variable was Yuan Xi, who gained the support of Yang Feng's Black Mountain Army and dug out Cao Cao's roots in the Taiping Dao. In addition, the Qingzhou Army was almost completely destroyed in many battles, and public opinion began to reverse.

This was actually a miscalculation on Cao Cao's part. Cao Cao's attitude towards certain unstable forces was to use them and discard them, and the Qingzhou Army was naturally among them. Cao Cao would not allow such forces to exist after he established the dynasty.

But Cao Cao acted too hastily. By the time he discovered that Yuan Xi's influence in the Tianping Dao surpassed his own, it was already too late. Moreover, he no longer had the power to contend with him. More importantly, Yuan Xi was born into the Yuan family, which was the party that the Jizhou gentry had bet on. Although the Jizhou gentry had temporarily surrendered to him, who could say that they would not turn against him in the future like they did in the Yellow Turban Rebellion?
Therefore, after considering various factors, Cao Cao tacitly agreed or even hinted at the Yingchuan faction to start a campaign against the Jizhou gentry by attacking Cao Zhi's four friends. Since Yang Xiu and the other four friends were not from Jizhou, using this as an excuse would make the Jizhou gentry complacent.

When the Cui family headed by Cui Yan was arrested, Cao Cao also felt that this move was too hasty and was afraid that it would overly stimulate the Jizhou gentry, so he ordered them to be released. Otherwise, how could a Madam Bian persuade him?

But Cao Cao did not expect that Yang Xiu saw through his intention and knew that this was a way of boiling a frog in warm water, so he took advantage of the murder of the girl from the Cui family and immediately contacted the Jizhou gentry to start an uprising, thus intensifying the conflict and causing it to break out ahead of time.

But in fact, all these things were within Cao Cao's control and expectation so far. What really broke Cao Cao's defense was that the Jin army broke through Cao's defense line and approached Yecheng.

You know, in addition to the tens of thousands of people defending Yecheng, there were nearly 100,000 Cao troops on the periphery, which was more than the number of Jin troops. How did they get here?
Only at this moment did Cao Cao realize that he had underestimated the Jin army's advisers. They had been holding back for several months in the counterattack, probably just to prepare for today's surprise attack. Moreover, the timing was chosen too well, with attacks from both inside and outside the city, which was definitely a premeditated plan!
Cao Cao knew that this was a life-or-death situation. He forced himself to open his eyes despite the headache. Although the scenery in front of him was still blurry, he still tried to pretend that nothing had happened and shouted to Xiahou Dun: "Come here, tell all the generals in the city to go out and mobilize their soldiers to defend the four gates!"

"Give me my armor. I want to personally command from the top of the city wall!"

(End of this chapter)