The general tone of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is "praise Liu and demote Cao", so Luo Guanzhong added a lot of black spots to Cao Cao, such as Cao Cao's famous saying: I would rather teach me to betray the people of the world than teach the people of the world to betray me. This sentence was added to Cao Cao by Luo Guanzhong, which showed Cao Cao's treacherous and selfish side, and also caused Cao Cao to bear a thousand years of infamy. Many people in history have a high evaluation of Cao Cao, but the public evaluation of Cao Cao is very low. This is because Luo Guanzhong added a lot of dark history to Cao Cao in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so the image of Cao Cao among the people is very poor.
In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Cao Cao killed many innocent people. For example, in Chapter 17, Cao Cao’s army was complaining due to lack of food. In order to divert the conflict, Cao Cao falsely accused the grain transport officer Wang Jie of embezzling grain. So he was killed to resolve the soldiers' grievances. During the Battle of Chibi, Cao Cao had a feast on the Yangtze River and composed a poem. Liu Fu, the governor of Yangzhou, pointed out that there were ominous words in his poem, so Cao Cao stabbed him to death while drunk.
Cao Cao was afraid that someone would assassinate him while he was sleeping, so he committed a murder in his dream, which resulted in one of his followers being killed by him for no reason... These things have never happened in history. Luo Guanzhong deliberately added it in order to portray Cao Cao as a selfish, suspicious, cruel and murderous traitor.
Cao Cao in history was not a particularly "white" person. If he, like Yue Fei, Wen Tianxiang and others, was a loyal minister and a capable minister who cared about the people and the country, even if future generations wanted to blackmail him, they would still be Just like Qin Hui's black transformation of Yue Fei, it is also full of loopholes and difficult to achieve. Cao Cao has a lot of black history in history, even uglier than the black history added by Luo Guanzhong to darken him in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. 1. Cao Cao frequently massacred cities
Cao Cao was a very talented and strategic hero. He fought for more than 30 years in his life. Among the heroes who competed for the world with him at the same time, except for a few people such as Liu Bei and Sun Quan, all others were defeated by Cao Cao. were destroyed, but Cao Cao left many black spots in these wars. During his campaigns, he massacred cities several times.
In the fourth year of Chuping, Cao Cao defeated Tao Qian and massacred Xuzhou; in the second year of Xingping, Cao Cao defeated Zhang Miao and massacred Yongcheng; in the third year of Jian'an, Cao Cao led troops to conquer Lu Bu, and he massacred Pengcheng of Xuzhou; in the ninth year of Jian'an, Cao Cao led troops to conquer Lu Bu. In the year of Jian'an, Cao Cao led his troops to attack Yuan Shang, and he massacred Yecheng; in the twelfth year of Jian'an, Cao Cao led his troops to attack Wuwan and massacred Liucheng. In addition to Cao Cao himself, his subordinates Xia Houyuan and others also had experience in massacre.
The most criminal thing in history is the massacre of a city, because it will cause the death of a large number of civilians and is an inhumane thing. Therefore, the massacre of a city done by Cao Cao in history is far worse than the killing of grain transport officials. One or two people like Wang Wei were much more sinful and ugly, so Cao Cao had a lot of dark history.
What is even more ridiculous is that Cao Cao also wrote a poem: "White bones are exposed in the wild, and there are no roosters crowing for thousands of miles. There are hundreds of people who have left one thing, and the thought of it will break people's hearts." This poem describes the tragedy caused by years of war, with bones everywhere and not a single commoner visible for thousands of miles. Years of war have led to a sharp decline in the world's population, but Cao Cao forgot that many of these tragedies were caused by him, especially After he conquered Xuzhou, because his father Cao Song was killed by Xuzhou Mu Tao Qian, so in order to take revenge, he massacred tens of thousands of people in Xuzhou, which was simply inhumane. 2. Extensive construction work and labor for the people
After Cao Cao captured Ye City, he built three very grand and spectacular buildings, namely the Tongque Tower, the Golden Tiger Tower and the Bingjing Tower. After the completion, Cao Cao, Cao Zhi, and Cao Pi , Wang Can, Liu Zhen, Chen Lin and others often wrote lyrics and poems in Tongque Terrace, leaving many exquisite poems. Tongque Terrace is also the birthplace of Jian'an literature, but everyone has overlooked that behind Tongque Terrace and so on , filled with the blood and tears of the people.
In the fifth year of Jian'an, Yuan Shao and Cao Cao had a decisive battle in Chibi. In the end, Yuan Shao lost to Cao Cao. So after his death, a civil war broke out between his two sons, which benefited Cao Cao. He killed Yuan Shang and Yuan Tan one after another, and took over Hebei. However, in the process, Cao Cao did many things that harmed the people.
When Cao Cao attacked Yuan Shang, he flooded the city of Ye by breaking the embankment, causing more than half of the people in the city to be killed or injured. After breaking the city, he allowed his men to massacre the city, causing a large number of innocent people to be killed. Before Cao Cao captured Yecheng, droughts and locust plagues occurred continuously in Hebei, which made the people very miserable. Coupled with Cao Cao's evil deeds, the people in Hebei were "starved at the same time, the country had no warehouses, and there was no food for transportation."
When Cao Cao attacked Yuan Tan, because it was winter, he forced the people in the surrounding areas to do ice-cutting corvee, which made the people miserable. Due to Cao Cao's various evil deeds, when Yuan Shang was defeated and fled to Wuhuan, more than 100,000 people also fled to Wuhuan with him. It can be seen that the people did not want to live under Cao Cao's rule. However, after Cao Cao obtained Hebei, he still exempted the people in Hebei from taxes for one year.
But not long after, Cao Cao began to carry out construction projects again. He built the Tongque Tower, the Golden Tiger Tower and the Bingjing Tower. These three construction projects were very large, so Cao Cao recruited many people to participate in their construction. At the same time, the construction of Santai in Yecheng also required a lot of money, which had to be plundered from the people. Therefore, the construction of Santai in Yecheng put a heavy burden on the people, and the people were miserable. 3. Rough relocation and loss of popular support
In ancient times, fighting wars and engaging in production mainly relied on people, so whoever had more people under his command would be stronger.
When Cao Cao was fighting everywhere, every time he occupied a place, if he could not control it, Cao Cao would force the people in the area to move to areas under his control. This could increase the population of Cao Cao's men and give Cao Cao more opportunities. Sufficient troops and taxes.
Cao Cao's move will also weaken the strength of his opponents, so this policy is beneficial to Cao Cao, but it is a disaster for the people. When people are used to living in one place, they are unwilling to leave their hometown and go to other places. Especially when they move, they cannot take their houses, fields, etc. with them. People are reluctant to move. In order to get the people to move, Cao Cao adopted very violent methods. A large number of people were killed because they were unwilling to move or resisted Cao Cao.
Cao Cao's massacre of cities, large-scale construction projects, and use of violent means to force people to relocate made him gradually lose the support of the people. When Guan Yu attacked Fancheng, Cao Wei's entire country was shocked after seven armies were flooded, and many people surrendered to Guan Yu. This was a manifestation of Cao Cao's unpopularity. Cao Cao had a huge advantage and had many soldiers and generals, but his failure to unify the world had a lot to do with his unpopularity.