Why did Liu Chan let Zhuge Zhan go to meet the enemy during the Battle of Mianzhu?

The Battle of Mianzhu was the last battle before the demise of the Shu Han Dynasty. Before that, the 140,000 main force of Wei Zhenxi General Zhong Hui's expedition to Shu was blocked by Jiang Wei in the sword pavilion, and he had already planned to retreat. , and once Zhong Hui retreats, it will mean the failure of Wei's battle against Shu.

But what I didn’t expect was that Deng Ai, who initially strongly opposed the attack on Shu (the general Deng Ai thought that Shu had no provocation and repeatedly raised objections) led 20,000 soldiers to bypass the sword pavilion and marched from Yinpingwu. They marched 700 miles from the human area and invaded the hinterland of the Shu Han Dynasty.

Deng Ai sneaked into Yinping, completely changing the stalemate between the Wei and Shu armies.

Due to the surrender of Jiangyou guard Ma Miao, the Yizhou Plain was wide open. The main force of the Shu Han led by Jiang Wei was thousands of miles away and could not quickly return reinforcements. Therefore, the key to whether the Shu Han can turn the crisis around lies in whether the remaining troops in Chengdu can defeat Deng Ai.

According to the "Book of Jin: Chronicles of Emperor Wen": "There are 90,000 Shu warriors, and no less than 40,000 are stationed in Chengdu and Beita County." Although the Chengdu garrison is not an elite in hundreds of battles, in terms of quantity The Wei army, which still outnumbers Deng Ai, can still fight.

But in the selection of generals in the Shu Han Dynasty, Liu Chan rejected the request of Annan general Huo Yi to lead troops, and instead chose the strategist general Zhuge Zhan. Zhuge Zhan is the son of Zhuge Liang. In the Shu Han regime, he successively served as Cavalry Captain, Yulin Zhonglang General, Shangshu Pushe, Military Advisor General, and Xingdu Guard General. However, these official positions have no practical meaning other than representing Zhuge Zhan's higher rank. Experience in leading troops.

The opponent Zhuge Zhan will face is Deng Ai, who has been fighting with Jiang Wei on the front line for many years and has rich combat experience. Liu Chan insisted on letting Zhuge Zhan, who had never led an army, go to meet the enemy, which indeed brought "bad consequences".

In the winter of the sixth year of Jingyao (AD 263), after Zhuge Zhan led tens of thousands of troops to Fu County, he did not follow the advice of Shangshu Lang Huang Chong to seize the critical position. As a result, he was overtaken by Deng Ai, and Zhuge Zhan was forced to Retreat to Mianzhu.

In the battle of Mianzhu, Zhuge Zhan abandoned the fortified city and chose to fight outside the city. As a result, the entire army was wiped out. The heads of Zhuge Zhan and Zhuge Shang were cut off by Deng Ai to claim credit. Chengdu's last line of defense was lost. , Liu Chan surrendered.

Under the premise that Jiang Wei's main force is still there, and there are more Chengdu defenders than Deng Ai's Wei army, the collapse of the Shuhan defense system seems to be mainly due to Zhuge Zhan's indecision and improper military decision-making.

However, just 86 years after the fall of the Shu Han Dynasty, the historian Chang Xu of the Eastern Jin Dynasty accidentally obtained long-secret historical facts from Shu when he was writing "Huayang Guozhi".

Before Zhuge Zhan sent troops, more than 10,000 of the 40,000 defenders left in Chengdu were led by Liao Hua and Zhang Yi to reinforce Tazhong and Yang'an Pass. When the exhausted Yizhou people heard about the Wei army's attack, they "ran into the mountains and fields" one after another, unwilling to fight for the Shu Han. Qiao Zhou, the representative of the Yizhou native faction, strongly advocated that the end was over.

In this case, Liu Chan abandoned his veteran generals and put all his chips on Zhuge Zhan, who had never led an army before. His real intention was to use Zhuge Liang's prestige in governing Shu during his lifetime. Reunite the already scattered public sentiment.

In fact, in the first battle of Mianzhu, faced with the elite Wei army who came unexpectedly and out of danger, the improvised Shu Han garrison did indeed explode with astonishing combat effectiveness under the leadership of Zhuge Zhan. History records: " Ai sent his son Hui Tang Ting, Hou Zhong and others out to his right, and Sima Shi Zuan and others out to his left. Zhong and Zuan were not successful in the battle, so they retreated and said: "The thieves can't be attacked." Zhuge Zhan once defeated the Wei army and planned to retreat, so Deng Ai had to threaten to kill the prime minister and urge the Wei army to fight to the death. In the end, Zhuge Zhan, who had no combat experience, failed to persist until the end.

As soon as Zhuge Zhan died, the Shu Han soldiers immediately "all dispersed", which is enough to show that nearly 30 years after Zhuge Liang's death, the Zhuge family still has great appeal in Shu.

Another incident recorded in "Huayang Guozhi" also supports this point again:

After Zhuge Zhan died, his head was chopped off by Deng Ai, but his body was mysterious Missing. Soon, rumors began to spread in Shu that "Zhuge Zhan and Deng Ai fought in Mianzhu, and he died and was lost, or he fled deep into the sea." Five years after Zhuge Zhan died in the battle, a soldier named Wang Fu was found to have similar appearance. Zhuge Zhan, claiming to be the protector of Zhuge, raised troops in Linqiong, and actually got a response from the soldiers of the former Shu Han Dynasty (Zhan's personal soldiers said they were rich and looked like Zhan, so the wealth was false).

From the initial understatement of "this is the nephew of the Xiahou family" to winning the sincere surrender of the surrendered general Xiahou Ba, to later insisting on appointing Zhuge Zhan as commander, Liu Chan was not the fatuous and incompetent person he thought he was, but instead Very regal. It is a pity that the national power of Shu Han is far from comparable to that of Cao Wei, and the demise of Shu Han is inevitable.