My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 410: Cao is strong, I am gentle

Cao Cao's decision to "reward instead of punish" Zhang He was conveyed by Guo Jia and delivered to Xiayi County in Pei County by express horse within one day.

Zhang He was already trembling with fear and at a loss because of the series of defeats in the previous few months. After receiving the news sent by Guo Jia, a stone in his heart finally fell to the ground.

"Sikong has been so kind to me. If I ever feel insecure again in the future, I would be unworthy of being a human being!" Zhang He put down the letter and sighed.

Not only did Cao Cao not demote him, but he also promoted him, and his promotion happened to be so fast that it surpassed the progress of later surrendered generals such as Lu Kuang and Jiao Chu.

This would not be difficult to do under normal circumstances. But at this critical juncture in the winter of the fifth year of Jian'an, it was extremely rare and under great pressure.

Because if we were to purely commend his merits, it could be said that Zhang He suffered repeated defeats in the autumn and winter of this year and had no outstanding military achievements.

On the battlefield in Hebei, although Lu Kuang and Jiao Chu were new surrenders, they were lucky and happened to pick on an easy target.

As soon as they came, they caught up with the rapid harvesting stage of Yuan Shang's legacy. So whether it was the number of enemies killed or forced to surrender, or the number and area of counties occupied by horse racing, Lü Kuang, Jiao Chu and others had picked up a lot of credit this year.

However, Cao Cao took into consideration that Zhang He had to take the risk to rescue Chang Xi because he was in danger, but Chang Xi was an ungrateful person who could not be tamed even with high positions and generous salaries, which eventually led to a series of collapses. Therefore, this time he had to promote Zhang He to set a benchmark and wash away the bad reputation of "employing people like piling up firewood, and latecomers are superior".

This is like how companies evaluate sales staff in later generations. You can't just look at a KPI indicator or see who has the most orders. You also have to stand at the boss's level and personally evaluate the difficulty of developing each market, which ones are hard work and which ones are for performance.

If you only look at one indicator, it will only discourage people in the end.

Cao Cao used his absolute authority to set a tone: the generals who resisted Liu Bei on the southern front this year had a harder job than the generals who expanded their territory in Hebei. They resisted harm in difficult times and fought for the country "every time they were defeated", not "every time they were defeated".

Therefore, even if they lost a battle, the court would judge it to be due to insufficient manpower rather than a problem of ability. Even if they lost a battle, they bought time for friendly forces. As long as they fought to the end and did not slack off, they would have made contributions.

The tone of handling the case of Zhang He was certain, which not only appeased Zhang He himself, but also appeased a large number of people who had previously suffered defeat on the southern front.

At the same time, it is natural that Cao Cao will also promote other people to higher positions as long as their previous fighting attitude is good and resolute enough.

For example, Yu Jin, who was transferred from Xiahou Dun to the Ru'nan and Huaibei regions at the last minute, did not actually engage in large-scale battles with Liu Bei's army, but only had some outpost and scout battles. However, Cao Cao also rewarded Yu Jin and promoted him from a general to a general of miscellaneous titles.

For example, Zhao Yan, who defended Huainan with Li Tong and eventually fled and retreated to Huaibei, was also promoted by Cao Cao to be the new governor of Runan, replacing the deceased Li Tong.

Only Guo Jia was not promoted or rewarded, and this was because Guo Jia was responsible for the obvious decision-making error this time - although Zhao Yan was defeated and fled, on the Huainan battlefield, it was not Zhao Yan who fell into the trap, but Li Tong and Cai Yang. Zhao Yan was not responsible for the trap, so as long as he persisted in resisting, he would be promoted.

However, Guo Jia was already in a high position with leadership responsibilities, and he was the person directly responsible for falling into Zhuge Jin's trap.

In addition, he had a good relationship with Cao Cao, so he was not worried about the possibility that Guo Jia would be resentful and lazy. In this case, Cao Cao needed to use Guo Jia as a special case to avoid suspicion, showing that he did not "appoint people based on personal connections, and reward or demote people based on subjective likes and dislikes."

Cao Cao was in charge of such a large court, and it was very difficult for him to employ people equally. Both positive and negative example cases had to be established; neither was indispensable.

After all, before the Battle of Guandu, in the anti-rebellion manifesto that Chen Lin wrote for Yuan Shao, he specifically attacked Cao Cao for "rewarding titles and killings at his will, glorifying the five clans of those he loved and exterminating the three clans of those he hated."

In order to prove that he was not the kind of person Chen Lin wrote about, Cao Cao naturally had to pretend, both positively and negatively.

Guo Jia was a smart man, he knew that even if he wanted to hate someone, he couldn't hate Cao Cao, he had to hate Chen Lin. It was "external public opinion supervision" that forced Cao Cao to do so.

……

Cao Cao arrived in Suiyang and quickly dealt with the issue of the responsibility for the defeat of the generals and counselors on the southern front, which boosted the morale of Cao's army on the southern front and stabilized the people's hearts.

Those who had been worried before were all grateful like Zhang He and were willing to die for him. With the arrival of the first batch of hundreds of thousands of reinforcements, the Cao army's defense line in Huaibei immediately became stable and solid as a rock.

Naturally, this series of events could not be hidden from Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang in Shouchun, nor from Zhuge Jin and Guan Yu in Pengcheng.

After collecting all the latest intelligence from the front, Zhuge Liang also listened to the latest situation of Zhao Yun's stalemate and local conflict with Cao Ren in recent days. After a comprehensive assessment, he advised Liu Bei:

"My lord, Cao Cao has arrived in person, and he has handled the situation very well. The morale of Cao's army has been restored, and the generals who have been defeated many times are relieved. In my opinion, it is better to let Zilong withdraw to Huainan as soon as possible, and withdraw the people of Longkang, Shansang, and Xiaoxian counties to Huainan as much as possible.

In this way, although our army did not control the land and county town of Qiaodi, we were able to gain the people, which was quite a gain. In my estimation, in the next few years, our army will have a long-term stalemate between Pengcheng, Qiaodi and Shouchun. This will not be the primary breakthrough direction of our army, and the battle line will be stable for a long time.

Leaving the Qiaodi salient to Cao Cao would just occupy more of Cao Cao's troops and money, and tie him down here, preventing him from using it for other purposes. After all, Pengcheng, Xiaopei, and Shouchun, which our army occupied, all had geographical advantages such as mountains and rivers to rely on, and were relatively easy to defend and difficult to attack.

Cao's army is stationed on a salient part of the plain. If they want to hold on to it, they have to station at least twice as many troops as us. In this way, we can occupy 30,000 troops on each of the southern and northern wings, which can at least contain Cao Cao's more than 100,000 troops. We will have less pressure on other fronts and can find another breakthrough point. "

Liu Bei was very satisfied with the rhythm and issued an order on the spot, allowing Zhao Yun to retreat immediately without any lingering feelings.

Liu Bei obeyed Zhuge Liang's orders. Zhuge Liang's explanation this time was a bit long-winded and redundant, but he had to say it in advance because it involved "we voluntarily give up a small occupied area before the enemy attacks."

Any retreat will make people unhappy. If the reasons are not explained thoroughly, people will always regret it in the future, thinking "If I had known I would not have done that."

After talking it out, Liu Bei was still a little confused about the specific implementation, so he asked two more questions to be safe:
"It is certainly a good thing to evacuate the civilians. But our army has always supported the Han Dynasty with righteousness, and we cannot do things like Cao Cao did, forcing the civilians to retreat. We must also pay attention to the method of retreat and not disturb the civilians too much."

If Cao's army wanted to relocate the population, they would definitely do it regardless of the consequences and use any means. Cao Cao had done this many times in history without worrying about his reputation.

For example, after he conquered Hanzhong from Zhang Lu, he fought the Battle of Hanzhong with Liu Bei. In the end, he was defeated by Liu Bei and wanted to retreat, so he took most of the population of Hanzhong with him, which was said to be nearly 200,000 people. As a result, the population of Hanzhong dropped from 200,000 to 300,000 to less than 50,000. Liu Bei had the right place but not the right people. This also laid the hidden danger for the lack of forward bases for the Northern Expedition in the following years and the lack of food in the Hanzhong Basin.

In history, Cao Cao fought against Sun Quan many times and repeatedly moved the people of Huainan to Huaibei, trying to create a no-man's land on the border with Sun Quan. However, because Cao Cao had a bad reputation in this regard, a considerable number of people along the north of the Yangtze River in Huainan took a boat to cross the Yangtze River and took the initiative to flee to Sun Quan.

For this, Cao Cao even admitted his mistake to the ministers who advised him - but this admission was not necessarily because he felt he was morally wrong, but simply because he admitted his mistake for the bad result and felt that it benefited Sun Quan.

Liu Bei's army would definitely not use any of these tough measures, which would test Zhuge Liang's political wisdom.

Fortunately, what kind of person is Zhuge Liang? This kind of question is not difficult for him. In history, Zhuge Liang also relocated people many times. For example, when the Northern Expedition failed, he also thought about moving the people of Longxi back to Hanzhong to cultivate the land. Although all this has not happened yet, Zhuge Liang has been discussing with his elder brother for many years, and he has also developed some political wisdom in this regard.

After repeated consideration, Zhuge Liang quickly came up with his own complete plan:

"My lord, if you want to avoid disturbing the people and not forcing them, I have two strategies that can serve as a supplement. However, they can only serve as a supplement. It is impossible to persuade all the people in the three counties to move away. We can only move most of them. Some people will definitely stay and want to stay under Cao Cao's rule. This is inevitable. If you want to move everyone away, you can only use force since ancient times."

Upon hearing this, Liu Bei immediately gave Zhuge Liang a reassurance: "Sir, just say whatever you want. I will be satisfied if I can move half of them. What if I can leave some for Cao Cao?"

Zhuge Liang: "First, I see that Qiao is the hometown of Cao Cao's ancestors. Many of the local tyrants and powerful families have complicated in-laws with the Cao and Xiahou families. Cao Cao's grandfather Cao Teng was named Marquis of Feiting. He was a demon together with Zuo Gang and Xu Huang. He was greedy and rampant, and harmed the people.

Feiting was not far to the north of Shansang County, and the title of Marquis of Feiting was later passed down to Cao Song, Cao Cao's father. They were deeply rooted in the local area.

If we don't want to hurt the common people, we can pick out a few lawless tyrants who have close ties with the Cao family and make an example of them to frighten the rest. Then the other people will inevitably be shaken and want to go to that paradise.

After the implementation of this strategy, I have a second strategy to match it, which is to spread the rumor that Cao Cao was furious when he heard that the local tyrants in the three counties who had close ties with the Cao family were brought to justice and executed.

Moreover, Cao Cao, knowing that our army intended to relocate the local people, decided to relocate the people of the three counties, even Qi County, to avoid being harassed and plundered by our navy every year in the future. In the future, only Fuli, Zhuyi, and Gaixia will be the front line, and he would rather abandon the Huaibei territory to the east and south, and let it become a deserted borderland. "

(End of this chapter)