Speaking of Hefei? This third-tier provincial capital city is now booming. Nearly a thousand and eight years ago, it was a sparsely populated fortress town with frequent wars. There are no dangerous mountains, rivers, or smog-filled jungles. During the Three Kingdoms era, the Central Plains regime successfully withstood five large-scale attacks by the Soochow troops at a very small cost.

As the saying goes, to defend the river, you must defend the Huaihe River, and if you want to advance into the Central Plains, you must also use the Huaihe River Basin as a springboard. Therefore, the area between the Jianghuai River and the Huaihe River was often a hot spot for the northern and southern regimes, always leading to conflict between the armies of both sides. Therefore, a large number of towns of great strategic value emerged. Hefei in the early days was one of them.

Why did Sun Quan fail to capture Hefei during his four personal expeditions, and was almost captured alive by the Wei army

Why did Sun Quan fail to capture Hefei during his four personal expeditions, and was almost captured alive by the Wei army

p>

Figure 1 The geographical location of Hefei

Contrary to the inherent impression, most of the Jianghuai important towns in our memory are concentrated in the northern Jiangsu area today, and many classic battles in ancient times were also in the northern Jiangsu area. break out.

However, the Three Kingdoms era was different. Before the Grand Canal was opened, the main communication route between the north and the south was not a waterway starting from Yangzhou and ending in Zhuojun. Instead, it was a land route from the Central Plains to the south of the Yangtze River. Therefore, the land towns Hefei's strategic value was highlighted at that time.

After the Battle of Chibi, Cao Cao's strategy for Jiangnan changed from offensive to defensive, and Sun Quan hoped to use the remaining power of the victory to extend his front to the north of Hefei.

This strategy is correct in both the short and long term.

Therefore, it was only in line with the interests of Soochow at that time to seize land to the north and create more strategic depth for Jianye, the capital.

While Sun Quan sent Zhou Yu to attack Jingzhou to expand the results and contain Cao's army, he personally led the army to advance into Hefei. Hefei is a fortified city carefully built by Cao Cao, and it is also the administrative seat of Yangzhou. It has sufficient food and grass. In this battle, the Wu army's shortcomings of not being good at hard-fought land battles were fully exposed: Sun Quan attacked Hefei with more troops and surrounded Hefei for more than a month. As a result, he was unable to leave for more than a month. He sent Zhang Zhao to attack the small town of Dangtu, but Zhao's troops were disadvantaged. Jiang Ji, the defender of the city, falsely reported that reinforcements were coming with a false shot, and Sun Quan was so frightened that he immediately retreated. The first Northern Expedition under a good situation ended hastily like this. The number one and two figures in Soochow failed to conquer Hefei.

In the 18th year of Jian'an, Cao Cao, a martyr in his twilight years but still ambitious, personally led an army of 400,000 to attack Soochow. The two sides fought fiercely at Ruxukou, Chaohu, south of Hefei. Water warfare is Soochow's specialty. At the same time, the spring rain rose and Cao's army was defeated and left.

At the same time, Liu Bei captured Yizhou. Cao Cao concluded that the next step was Hanzhong, so he concentrated his troops to surprise Zhang Lu in Hanzhong first. Cao Liu's battle for Hanzhong began immediately. Sun Quan once again sensed an opportunity and immediately organized his troops to march north to Hefei again.