Manga Discussion The Ravages of Time - Explanation of the Military tactics and Wars

[Hako Sama]

JIA XU VS LU BU​

First, we have the current scenario:

After Dong Zhuo burned down the entire city of Luoyang, he moved to Chang'An, where he and his assistant Li Ru were murdered by his adopted son, Lu Bu. After Lu Bu took power, he accused Li Ru of killing Dong Zhuo, some generals remained on Lu Bu's side and others, already suspicious of his previous actions, accused him of actually killing Dong Zhuo and not Li Ru, two of those who fought against Lu Bu were:

Niu Fu, Dong Zhuo's son-in-law.

And the former military advisor of Dong Zhuo, Jia Xu, also one of the 8 Genius Military Advisors.

Niu Fu had sixty thousand soldiers: Fifty thousand divided into 8 camps outside Chang'an and ten thousand in the main camp..

Main Camp
​

Lu Bu had 3 camps, the author did not specify how many soldiers they had, but they were overwhelmingly stronger and bigger than the 8 camps of Niu Fu, Lu Bu also had troops from Ma Teng of Guang Zhou, so the rear of the main camp was quite vulnerable..

And Lu Bu had troops from Han Sui of Jincheng, so Niu Fu's 8 camps had a very vulnerable flank..

Back to the Lu Bu's 3 camps, the commander of the third camp was one of the Lu Bu's generals, Li Su.:

Using only a tenth of Niu Fu's sixty thousand soldiers, Jia Xu defeated Li Su in only 5 days and sent his head to Chang'an..

Li Su's death was very unexpected, considering that he was quite well known, so it forced Lu Bu to act sooner than he expected, and he contacted his spy, who was someone very close to Niu Fu, to kill Niu Fu and bring his head to Chang'an. Jia Xu already knew who the spy in the camp was, and promised Niu Fu that he would also defeat Lu Bu in 5 days, but he needed a catalyst, which was Niu Fu's life.
Niu Fu, as someone very loyal to his master, accepted to give his life to avenge his master (Here, Jia Xu couldn't tell Niu Fu about the spy that the plan would work perfectly, but as a sign of respect and friendship, Jia Xu decided to reveal it to Niu Fu, knowing his very loyal and pure personality that he would accept to give his life to avenge his master).

Before Niu Fu's murder, Jia Xu ordered the whole army to stand still and do nothing, but after a few days, all the high morale from Li Su's defeat was getting smaller and smaller, to the point that the generals were getting impatient with Jia Xu's strategy, which also caused the 7th and 8th to revolt against Niu Fu and switch to Lu Bu's side.
After Niu Fu's death, his army's morale went downhill, and Lu Bu ordered his entire army to attack Niu Fu's other 5 camps. To lower Niu Fu's army morale even more, Lu Bu exposed Niu Fu's head on a spike to all of Niu Fu's army, which also raised Lu Bu's army morale and made Niu Fu's army retreat very quickly. By late that night, Lu Bu had conquered all the other camps, leaving only Niu Fu's main camp.

Before talking the main part of this battle, let's see how our eyes usually react to ambient with darkness:

"The Cones detect colours very well, Rods are great for movement detection and monochromatic vision. You also have more rods in your eye.
Under normal light conditions, your eye relies mainly on the cones for your vision and the rods take a back seat (except for peripheral vision)
When you operate at night, the first thing you’ll do (say if you get dropped out of a vehicle) is spend about 30 minutes standing to, allowing your eye to adjust to the low light conditions. As you sit in the dark, your eye “turns off” the cones, and starts relying on the rods. Your vision goes very monochromatic. Any ambient light, whether it be, the stars, the moon will be picked up by your eye, allowing you to see quite well. It’s only on a completely moonless night, with heavy cloud cover obscuring stars, that you’ll struggle to see."​

Considering that our eyes are more sensitive to light under these conditions, when Lu Bu finally arrived near Niu Fu's main camp, he saw scouts with torches not only in front of the army, but also on the flanks and in the rear.

Lu Bu also noted that the area where he and his army were located was very unstable and dangerous terrain; such terrain makes it impossible to escape with horses, let alone humans.

The scouts began to use the torches to signal the angle of the arrows based on the location of Lu Bu's army, using the light of the torch as a reference.
And since our eyes are more sensitive under these conditions, it was quite easy to follow.
Then... this happened:

​

Since they were at night, it was almost impossible to see the arrows until they were very close to you, also because of the bad terrain, not even with the horses was it possible to avoid the arrows, not only that, but also:

Jia Xu waited for the wind to get stronger, so that the arrows would really get faster and stronger.

This was Jia Xu's checkmate.
He used Niu Fu's death to increase Lu Bu's greed, not only that, but the retreat of his entire army made it look like Niu Fu's army was collapsing, but everything was a fake, he calculated the terrain leading to the main camp, he calculated the wind, and even used the night to disrupt Lu Bu's army's sense.
A perfect strategy! A truly terrifying Maneuver of Darkness Technique that annihilated Lu Bu's army!

In 5 days, Jia Xu defeated Li Su, in more 5 Days, Jia Xu defeated Lu Bu and conquered Chang'an, all this... using only a tenth of Niu Fu's army.​

 

[Yo Tan Wa]

Hoping to see more threads like this @Hako Sama

 

[Hako Sama]

So, the next one I am going to talk about is Cao Cao's campaign against Xuzhou, which is probably one of the most brutal wars in Chinese history, because of the huge amount of innocent people that were killed during this war.
It will be divided into two parts, the first will be an introduction and the siege of Tanxian, and the second part will be about the battle in the mountains.

First, Cao Cao needed a reason to attack Xuzhou, and one of the Eight Geniuses, Guo Jia, suggested that Cao Cao use his father's death as a reason, accusing Tao Qian, the governor of Xuzhou, of killing his father and stealing his wealth.

Cao Cao's campaign against Tao Qian began when his army, under the command of Guo Jia, destroyed Sishui, one of Tao Qian's cities, killing more than ten thousand civilians.

In addition to the massacre, Guo Jia burned all of Xuzhou's farmland and blocked the flow of the Si River, severely limiting the supply of food and water to the cities. Guo Jia deliberately spread the false rumor of killing more than one hundred thousand civilians and soldiers to other cities of Tao Qian, causing a very chaotic scenario of civilians from other cities fleeing to Xuzhou's capital, Pengcheng. Guo Jia, seeing the chaos, ordered Cao Cao's army to stop attacking Pengcheng and retreat for 3 months, which was a very wise move because Pengcheng would be very loaded with refugees, reducing the amount of food and water supply to nothing. And within 3 months, Guo Jia not only conquered Pengcheng, but also 10 other cities without any casualties.

"Destroy one city to scare ten into submission, a dark tactic"

One of Tao Qian's cities that was still fighting Cao Cao's army was Tan County, a very important city. It was under the command of Chen Deng, but the man who controlled the military strategy was no one else:

Zhao Yun, the leader of the Handicapped Warriors, under the orders of Sima Yi.

Even though Cao Cao was an ally of the Sima clan, the Simas had a very deep business relationship with Xuzhou, which forced them to fight against Cao Cao.

Zhao Yun's strategy was to loosen the wall's defenses a bit to lure the siege towers and the enemy general to the walls of the city, not only to kill one of their generals, but also:

To trap them, using catapults to destroy not only the siege towers, but also many soldiers attracted to the catapult's range.

Also, since there were many debris and corpses piled up in front of the walls, it would not be possible to break through Tan's walls with siege towers, considering that Tan County is surrounded by unstable terrain, so it would only be possible to enter through the front gate where the debris and corpses were piled up.

As for the next battle, we need to understand where Tan County is:

Guo Jia used a Long Snake Formation to invade Tan County at night.
For Kingdom readers, this formation is similar to Ri Haku's snake formation:

It's a formation that literally simulates a snake; if you attack the tail, the head will bite you, if you attack the head, the tail will attack you, if you attack the middle, both the tail and the head will attack you.
Ri Haku surrounded Mou Bu's army with this formation, but since Ri Haku is a very weak and brainless general, he still managed to lose to Mou Bu's usual drill brainless formation.
Anyway, back to RoT, Guo Jia's snake formation is conceptually different from Ri Haku's, as he uses it not for battle, but for high maneuverability, focusing almost entirely on getting close to the Tan County front gate walls as quickly as possible, using the darkness of the night as an advantage.

And it worked quite well, because by the time Zhao Yun realized Guo Jia's strategy of attacking at night, they were already out of range of the catapult and archer, very close to the walls, and started another battle.

Zhao Yun couldn't stay in Tan County for too long because he had received the news that Xiaopei was sending rations to Tan County through the mountain route, and considering how important the rations were, Zhao Yun and the 2nd Regiment of the Tan County Army left Tan County through the East Gate to secure the rations route from Guo Jia's army.

However, Guo Jia already knew this route and used a false messenger to trick the Xiaopei army into thinking that Zhao Yun and the 2nd Regiment were the enemies attacking the rations, causing them to attack their own allies.

As for Guo Jia's checkmate, he surrounded all the other 3 gates of Tan County with fire, not only the fire, but Guo Jia calculated in which time the wind would blow more strongly towards Tan County, making the smoke from the fire envelop the entire Tan County, forcing them to choose either to die of suffocation or try to escape, but the only way to escape was through the front gate where Guo Jia's army was attacking, so it's either die or die.

As for the 2nd part, we will finally have Lu Bu making a move, moving to attack Cao Cao's territory, taking advantage of this moment of fragility where Cao Cao's main forces were in Xuzhou, and also Liu Bei finally making a move as well, supplying Xuzhou against Cao Cao's army.
The key point of this war will be the mountains behind Tan County, as it's a perfect strategic location to camp, supply with ration and even deploy an army, so whoever takes this mountain will be with the most advantage to either attack or defend Tan County.
The 2nd part is the most complex and confusing part of this war, so it'll take a while to explain everything.

 

[AverageNamiEnjoyer]

Good