My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 344 Talent is something that cannot be hidden
"Keep talking."

Liu Rong was very pleased with the "two goals" proposed by Wei Qing.

——In later generations, there was a similar, systematic system of thought!
That is: whether it is war or trade - even if an individual is doing something specific, he should pursue more ambitious goals as much as possible while ensuring that the basic goals are achieved.

For example, in an exam, you must first ensure that you pass;

On this basis, try to strive for a score of 80, 90 or even higher.

Another example is a business, you must first ensure that you do not lose money and maintain and operate your business;
Then try to seek a profit of 10%, 20%, or even 30% to 50%.

Or, an online game.

If your opponent takes down your top tower, you have to take down their bottom tower to exchange.

If your opponent takes the Rift Herald, you have to kill the dragon to exchange resources;
Your opponents are playing mahjong in the top lane, and three of them are beating up your top laner. You have to use four of them to bully their bottom lane!
After completing these basic goals, you must also strive to achieve goals that are more difficult and have higher returns.

For example, single kill in the opposite position;

For example, taking down the big dragon;

Another example is winning a team battle and achieving ultimate victory.

The same principle applies to war.

Let’s take the Hetao-Mayi Battle as an example.

As the main general on the Mayi battlefield, regardless of whether you, Cheng Buzhi, can hold back the main force of Shanyu Ting - at least you cannot lose Mayi, right?

The same goes for Hetao - regardless of whether we can really capture Hetao, at the very least, we can't let the news leak out before we cross the river, allowing the Huns to block their army on the east bank of the river, preventing them from even crossing the river, right?
This is a basic goal that is easy to accomplish and must be accomplished.

Or rather, a set goal.

On this basis, the Mayi battlefield tried to hold back the main force of the Shanyu court, and the Hetao battlefield tried to completely take over Hetao and truly incorporate Hetao into the territory of the Han Dynasty. This is what Wei Qing called: the second goal.

The second goal here is more of a 'dream' or a lofty ideal than a goal.

After all, before the war began, no one, whether from the grassland or the Han Dynasty, thought that the Han Dynasty could really take over Hetao, or that they could really hold the main force of the Xiongnu Chanyu court in Daibei with the help of a city.

With these "two goals", or an established goal plus an ideological and theoretical support of a lofty ideal, Wei Qing's views on the Battle of Pingcheng are actually clear at a glance.

"Modun wanted to test our Han family and Emperor Taizu Gao - perhaps he did not expect that Emperor Taizu Gao would lead the army in person, allowing Maodun to test us so closely and directly."

"But Maodun's second goal must have included 'if there is an opportunity, then kill or capture a Han general alive to test the Han reaction'."

"It was just that Emperor Taizu Gao led the army in person, and just as Maodun had planned, he jumped into the siege of Baideng;"

"This is why Maodun changed his second goal of 'trapping or capturing a Han general' to: trapping or capturing the Han emperor!"

···
"For the Huns, this kind of situation is actually very common."

"——For example, in the fourteenth year of Emperor Taizong Xiaowen's reign, Laoshang Chanyu probably had similar ideas and went to the borderland of Chao to try his luck."

"If you are unlucky, then complete the first goal: attack the Han border, plunder people and supplies, and intimidate our Han family."

"If I'm lucky, I'll try to accomplish my second goal: to penetrate the heartland of the Han Dynasty and destabilize the Han Dynasty's ancestral temple and the country to the greatest extent possible."

"The result is obvious - Lao Shang Shanyu has basically achieved this second goal."

In fact, when Wei Qing said this, Liu Rong had already given full marks to this dialogue - or rather, this dialogue between the monarch and his minister.

A general who can put forward "a set goal and a lofty ideal" is enough to make Liu Rong take notice of him.

Especially this general, he is just over ten years old!
Ten years old!!!

Just one year ago, this young man was just a slave-born son who lived in his biological father's home but was not accepted by his family at all!
If Cheng Buzhi, Zhidu, or even Li Ji, Luan Bu and other veterans put forward such views, Liu Rong would nod with a smile: As expected of veterans, they really have something.
If it was a young general in his twenties or thirties, Liu Rong would most likely give him a thumbs up: the general is extremely talented and has a bright future.

But when a teenager who was just over ten years old and had just completed the transformation from a slave to a male official, from a "shepherd slave" to a "male official", proposed such a profound philosophy, Liu Rong could only say...

As expected of you!
The Marquis of Changping!!!

It took a lot of effort to suppress the corners of his mouth that were curling up wildly, and Liu Rong finally managed to maintain a calm and composed look.

He took a deep breath and waved his hand casually, signaling Wei Qing to continue speaking.

Wei Qing nodded slightly, and then said confidently: "In fact, this point can be roughly seen from the subsequent development of the entire battle."

"——In fact, regardless of whether Emperor Taizu Gao was trapped in the siege of Baideng, the goal and purpose of our Han family in that battle never changed."

"Even if Emperor Taizu Gao was besieged at Baideng, our Han family would eventually clear out the border area controlled by Han Wangxin, Dai Xiang Chen Xi, and even Yan Wang Lu Wan."

"We have also successively recovered the Yanmen area north of Mayi, the Yunzhong County north of Shang County, and so on."

···
"All of this actually shows that in that battle, our Han family was the strategic winner."

"But the victory of our Han family was overshadowed by the siege of Baideng - even completely overshadowed!"

"Everyone in the world only knows about the Battle of Pingcheng between the Han and Xiongnu, and the siege of Baideng by our Han Emperor Taizu Gao."

"But I didn't know that in that battle, my Han family won an undoubted victory."

Wei Qing's remarks were rarely shocking, but rather consistent with mainstream thinking.

Maybe it sounds ridiculous.

Han-Xiongnu Pingcheng Battle?

Won?

Hey!
You're so nervous about winning, right?
——The emperor was surrounded and almost "founded a country and died for his country", and he still has the nerve to say that he won?
The people of Guanzhong: Thousands of the elite troops of the Northern Army were frozen to death, frostbitten or disabled on Mount Baideng. Even their organization was frozen to pieces. How could they still win?
Don’t you care about your shame?
But in fact, from the progress of the entire battle, as well as the changes in the borders and actual control areas between the Han and Xiongnu before and after the war, it is not difficult to see this point. ——Before the Battle of Pingcheng, Mayi was undoubtedly the front line of the Han Dynasty!

Moreover, Mayi at that time was just like Yunzhong City today - a solitary nail protruding from the actual control line of the northern border of the Han Dynasty, hanging hundreds of miles outside the border line!

The reason why Han Wangxin's request to "move the capital to Mayi" was recognized by Emperor Taizu Gao and the court in Chang'an at that time was because the importance of Mayi at that time was no less than that of Yunzhong City today.

Han Wangxin moved the capital to Mayi, and as a vassal and the capital of the country, he took charge of Mayi, which pushed the northern border of the Han Dynasty to Mayi.
Before King Xin of Han moved the capital to Mayi, the area of ​​hundreds of miles from Jinyang to Mayi was actually the honorary territory of the Han Dynasty.

On the map, the Han Dynasty controlled the entire Dai Kingdom today, with Mayi as the front line and the Dai capital Jinyang - or the Han capital Jinyang at that time - as the rear command center.

But in fact, the Han Dynasty was simply unable to defend Mayi.

If a war really broke out, Mayi would be lost in a flash, and Loufan could only close the city gates to protect itself.
The Hun army could easily advance into the heartland of Dai State and even appear within a hundred miles of Jinyang City.

As for Mayi, and Wuzhousai to the north of Mayi - today's Yanmen County, and even Yunzhong further north, there was no way they could even think about it.

It was precisely for this reason that Han Wangxin's proposal to "move the capital to Mayi to guard the border" was approved by the court in Chang'an and did not arouse anyone's suspicion.

Because the benefits of doing so are too obvious;
To the extent that the entire court in Chang'an was blinded by the huge benefits of "achieving actual control over Mayi", and even to the point of being blinded by the greed, no one realized that Han Wangxin's move was full of evil intentions.

At the beginning of the battle, Han Wangxin surrendered in Mayi, which was really infuriating to hear.
Han Wangxin's defection caught the northern border of Han off guard and caused considerable trouble to the northern defense line.

But from the perspective of actual strategic gains and losses, Han Wangxin's surrender to the Hu and his switching sides in the middle of a battle are more infuriating, and the actual blow to the Han family is mainly concentrated in terms of political prestige.

As for the reason, it is also easy to understand.

——The Han family had almost never controlled Mayi!
Before King Xin of Han moved the capital to Mayi, the area actually controlled by the Han Dynasty did not include Mayi and Loufan, that is, the line of the Zhao Great Wall!
Therefore, Han Wangxin's defection seemed to cause the Han Dynasty to lose control of Mayi and Loufan, and pushed the front line into the heartland of Dai State.
But the actual situation is that everything has returned to the situation before Han Wangxin moved the capital to Mayi, when the Han Dynasty used Jinyang as a fulcrum to hold up the northern defense line of Dai.

If we have to say what losses Han Wangxin caused to the Han Dynasty, it was that Han Wangxin, with the tens of thousands of soldiers and horses that joined the Han Dynasty, caused the Han Dynasty to lose tens of thousands of armed forces and the Xiongnu to gain tens of thousands of troops on their books.

Apart from that, there is nothing else.

After Han Wangxin defected and thus completely triggered the Pingcheng Campaign between the Han and the Xiongnu, until Emperor Taizu Liu Bang was trapped in the Battle of Baideng, the entire northern defense line of the Han Dynasty was actually slowly pushed outward.

——Han Wangxin defected, Mayi and Loufan were lost, and the Han-Xiongnu border control line returned to its original state;

When Emperor Taizu Liu Bang led the army in person and confronted Maodun Chanyu's main force, he won battle after battle and drove the Huns towards the defense line of Mayi like sheep.

Of course, the Battle of Baideng made the entire Han Dynasty tense, and even terrified and dumbfounded!

But the final result was: Emperor Taizu Liu Bang underestimated the enemy and advanced rashly, falling into a trap and being trapped in the siege of Baideng. Maodun Chanyu surrounded Baideng but was unable to completely shrink the encirclement - he could only surround it, but was unable to inflict any actual military blow to Liu Bang's vanguard within the encirclement.

Later post-war statistics also indirectly confirmed that during the Battle of Baideng, which was recorded in history, there was no fierce military conflict between the two sides.

——During the Siege of Baideng, from the time Liu Bang was trapped to the time reinforcements arrived to rescue him, during the seven days before and after, the total number of deaths and injuries of Liu Bang's vanguard troops was no more than a few hundred.

Taking into account that at that time, Maodun Chanyu had hundreds of thousands of soldiers and horses, and Liu Bang's vanguard also had more than 20,000 people, most of whom were the elite of the imperial guards: the Northern Army, it is impossible to conclude that the casualties of these hundreds of people were basically caused by the Huns' bows and arrows at the foot of the mountain.

On the contrary, it was the bitter winter of that year and the extremely cold weather in the mountains that caused the Han soldiers trapped in Baideng to freeze to death or suffer frostbite, and even thousands of them starved to death.

After generals such as Guan Ying and Zhou Bo led the main force of the Han army to Baideng and made an attempt to encircle Maodun's main force from the outside in order to force Maodun to retreat, the direction of the war completely turned in a direction favorable to the Han Dynasty.

Liu Bang's vanguard was at Baideng, and Maodun surrounded it with hundreds of thousands of troops, but he could not defeat Liu Bang's vanguard in a short time.

The main force of the Han army, which pretended to encircle and surround Maodun's army from the outside and trapped it in a larger area, also had a total of 200,000 troops!
As the first true "founding monarch" in the history of nomadic peoples, Maodun certainly understood the advantages of the Xiongnu cavalry. He did not confront the Han army's infantry clusters head-on, but instead maneuvered and fought back in the open plains.

Therefore, knowing that he could not swallow the duck that was already in his mouth, Mount Baideng, and that if he did not leave, he would be surrounded and the fate of the entire grassland nomadic nation would be ruined, Maodun had no choice but to choose to retreat.

It wouldn't matter if they didn't retreat, but if they did, the entire Han-Xiongnu border would be in chaos.

——The main force of Chanyu Ting retreated, and Han Wangxin, who was originally fighting in the battle as a vanguard, immediately became the target of public criticism!
In desperation, Han Wangxin had to give up the attack on Han territory and followed Maodun Chanyu to flee towards the grassland.
On the way to escape, she passed by Tuidang City and gave birth to a prince of King Han. King Han Xin then took the name of Tuidang City and named him: Han Tuidang.

——It is undoubtedly Han Tuidang, the current Marquis of Han Gonggao.

Maodun Chanyu retreated, Han Wangxin fled, and Dai Xiang Chen Xi had to hide behind the scenes again and wait for the opportunity.

A few years later, Dai Xiang Chen Xi and Yan Wang Lu Wan rebelled one after another, and all of them ended up miserably - Chen Xi died tragically, and Yan Wang Lu Wan defected to the Xiongnu and became the Xiongnu Donghu King Lu.

After the Siege of Baideng, that is, in the second half of the Battle of Pingcheng, the Han Dynasty directly pushed the front line back, achieved actual control over the entire Yanmen County, and recaptured the important strategic fulcrum outside the north wall: Yunzhong.

At the same time, the Battle of Pingcheng almost exposed all the hidden dangers in the northern border of the Han Dynasty - all the hostile forces in secret were eliminated one by one by Emperor Taizu Liu Bang, ensuring the relative stability of the northern border of the Han Dynasty for the next few decades.

From these aspects, it can be seen that in the Han-Xiongnu Pingcheng Battle, neither side was able to gain any advantage from the other, and both sides gained and lost.

——The Xiongnu Chanyu Maodun surrounded the Han emperor and became the recognized "living god of war" by the nomadic people of the grassland!
The Han Dynasty used this war to completely stabilize the northern border, thus freeing up Liu Bang to concentrate on dealing with the princes of different surnames in Guandong to avoid bringing disaster to his descendants.

After understanding the entire process of the battle, looking back at Wei Qing's view of the "two goals", it is not difficult to understand why Liu Rong agreed with this statement so much.

——For the Xiongnu, the Battle of Pingcheng was to ensure that they could seize things and people, while also trying to undermine the political prestige of the Han Dynasty and slow down the process of stabilizing the Han regime;

For the Han Dynasty, it means striving to completely consolidate the northern wall while ensuring that the border is not lost and the northern border is not in chaos.

In a sense, both sides have achieved their 'two goals'.

But since the Han Dynasty also achieved its goal, the Xiongnu's "two goals" seemed somewhat...

"Wei Zhonglang, you are extremely talented."

After a long time, Liu Rongru murmured softly, then leaned gently on the back of the rocking chair and closed his eyes slightly.

But he still said something intriguing: "In the early years, the late Emperor Xiaojing once said to others: The prince is extremely talented. Given time, he may become a great leader of the Han family."

"After today's discussion, I feel that Wei Zhonglang is also extremely talented."

···
"Zhonglang, encourage yourself."

(End of this chapter)