Today's idiom story of the Three Kingdoms can be found in Chapter 96 of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which took place during the Battle of Shi Ting. Relevant figures are Cao Xiu, Zhou Wei and Lu Xun. The original text is as follows:
(Cao Xiu) I am anxious to ask him. People reported that Zhou Wei led dozens of people and went nowhere. Hugh said regretfully, "I was cheated by the thief!" Even so, it is not enough to be afraid! " So he made General Zhang Pu a pioneer and led thousands of soldiers to fight against Wu Bing. The two sides formed a circle, and Zhang Pu got off the bus and scolded, "The thief has fallen long ago!" Xu Sheng greeted with a horse. After countless battles, the enemy could not resist, so he retreated. Later, he saw Cao Xiu and said that Xu Shengyong was irresistible. Hugh said, "I should defeat it with Indiana Jones." So Pu-yun led twenty thousand troops south to Shi Ting, and Xue Qiao led twenty thousand troops north to Shi Ting. "Tomorrow I will lead a thousand soldiers to battle, but I will pretend to lose and cheat. Before I am lured to Beishan, I will blow the horn, attack on three sides and win a great victory. " The two generals were tricked and each led 20 thousand troops to ambush at night.
Xun called Huan Zhu and Quan Cong to share the payment, saying, "You will each take 30,000 troops, take the Shi Ting Mountain Road to Cao Xiuzhai and set them on fire. I personally led the army to enter from the middle road: I can capture Cao Xiu alive. " At dusk that day, the two generals took orders as planned. At the second watch, Huan Zhu led his troops to Wei Village and was ambushed by Zhang Pu. I didn't know it was Wu Bing, but when he asked, he was beheaded by Huan Zhu. Wei Bing is gone. Huan ordered the rear army to set fire. Quan Yan led an army to Wei Zhai, where he bumped into Xue Qiao array and was killed for a while. Qiao Xue was defeated, and Wei Bing suffered heavy losses and ran back to his village.
According to the plot development of the novel, Zhou Fu, the satrap of Poyang in Soochow, surrendered to Cao Xiu, the governor of Yangzhou Sima. Cao Wei and Cao Xiu believed it and led a great army to Anhui to meet the enemy. Zhou Fu immediately took Cao Xiu's army into the encirclement of Wu Dong, and then took the opportunity to leave. Until now, Cao Xiucai realized that he had been cheated by Zhou Fu to surrender, but he took chances and fought fiercely with Wu Jun. Under the command of Commander-in-Chief Lu Xun, Wu Junbing launched a surprise attack on Cao Xiu's camp in two ways, causing heavy casualties to Cao Xiu. Cao Xiu was ashamed and died soon after returning to Luoyang.
This idiom to be introduced in this article is the deployment made by Cao Xiu to his subordinates after learning about the recruits. Calling it "pretending to lose" means pretending to lose and attracting people to fall for it. This is also an idiom initiated by Luo Guanzhong, the author of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
The battle of Shi Ting mentioned in Romance of the Three Kingdoms did happen in history. However, the introduction of the war in the novel is too brief to show the historical face of the war. In the real history, this war is not only one of the largest wars between Cao Wei and Soochow, but also the most disastrous one between Cao Wei and Soochow. Both sides have more than 200,000 troops.
The cause of this battle was indeed as described in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which was triggered by the false surrender of Zhou Fang, the prefect of Poyang, Soochow. It's just that Zhou Fang didn't come to see him personally in Anhui City, as the novel said, but wrote seven letters in a row, which fooled Cao Xiu. Cao Xiu immediately told Wei Mingdi and Cao Rui about it, and Cao Rui finally mobilized hundreds of troops to attack in four ways. Of these four armies, Cao Xiu is the most powerful one, with 100,000 troops.
According to the biography of the reflection of Lu Xun, Cao Xiu discovered that Zhou Fu's surrender was a false surrender during his March, and Wu Jun was likely to set an ambush on his way forward. But he thought that Wu Jun was too strong to help himself, so he ordered the whole army to move on. Cao Xiu's misjudgment also laid the groundwork for the subsequent fiasco. Under the command of commander-in-chief Lu Xun, Wu Jun launched a fierce attack on Cao Xiu in three directions: left, middle and right. "All three roads are advancing, and the ambush will stop. Because they drove them away and chased the dead to the north, they got more than 10 thousand, rode 20 thousand horses, mules and donkeys, and ran out of military equipment "
After this campaign, the offensive and defensive situation of Cao Wei and Wu Dong in Huainan area changed fundamentally. Before the Battle of Shi Ting, Huainan area was basically in the situation of Cao Wei's main attack and Wu Dong's defense. After Shi Ting's war, the situation in Huainan, Wu Dong was basically stable, and Cao Wei could no longer organize large-scale attacks. The western border of Wu Dong was not only stable, but Wu Dong also became the active party. Since then, Wu Dong took the initiative to attack and repeatedly harassed the Huainan area of Cao Wei, thus turning to the strategic offensive stage.