Part 31: Endorph's Romance of the Three Kingdoms Corner #5 - Cao Cao
In celebration to our victory, Endorph took the time to do a write-up about our favorite crimson warlord!Cao Cao
Cao Cao grew up in an extremely wealthy and influential family. His father was the foster son of one of the emperor's favorite eunuchs, and at the time eunuchs had massive political influence over the emperor and therefore the country at large. As such, he was incredibly well-educated in law and warfare, and made friends with the sons of other powerful families. His closest friends were the Xiahou cousins, Dun and Yuan, though he was also close with Yuan Shao.
Like most generals of his generation, Cao Cao's military career started with minor skirmishes with the Yellow Turban rebels. For his good deeds against the Turbans, and good conduct, Cao Cao was promoted to a colonel and given a military station in the capital. As such, he was in the capital when Dong Zhuo took it over. Dong Zhuo tried to bribe and coerce Cao Cao to join him, but Cao Cao fled the city in disguise. Once he was out of the reach of Dong Zhuo's soldiers, he went through his family's holdings and sold everything he owned in order to raise an army to depose Dong Zhuo. He also recruited many of his old friends and relatives as generals, including the Xiahou cousins.
A band of warlords and nobles, led by his old friend Yuan Shao, had formed a coalition against Dong Zhuo, and so Cao Cao joined up with them. However, of the coalition, only a handful were willing to actually march against Dong Zhuo, fearing the consequences if they failed and open themselves up to attack. Frustrated, Cao Cao tried to march on the capital himself, but lost a skirmish and was forced to retreat before he even caught sight of it.
Cao Cao was left a half-defeated man. He'd spent all his money and possessions on building an army, and he'd lost most of it to Dong Zhuo's forces, and even more had abandoned him after realizing he wasn't going to be able to dislodge Dong Zhuo. Eventually he was left with only a small force. Maybe enough to defeat bandit groups. So he did that.
The Black Mountain bandits were feared throughout Dong commandery, so Cao Cao took them out with his small army. The territory was technically under Yuan Shao's jurisdiction, so Yuan Shao returned the favor and named Cao Cao as the administrator of the commandery. This gave Cao Cao a base to settle down in.
He spent the next few years taking over the territory, building it back up, and establishing it as a livable base of operations, including fighting a few small skirmishes with Yuan Shu. Then, in 196, the emperor, Liu Xie, was fleeing yet another group of idiots that wanted to use him as a political pawn (Dong Zhuo having been killed by Lu Bu at this point) and Cao Cao happened to be near him. He led an army to receive the emperor personally, established a new city as the capital, and brought the emperor under his protection. As such, the emperor became Cao Cao's, and all of Cao Cao's actions carried the authority of the emperor. This is Cao Cao's justification for conquering territory, in much the same way as Liu Bei's claim that he was a descendant of the Han dynasty's founder.
From this point on, Cao Cao became the most powerful warlord in China, almost without question. He defeated Lu Bu, Yuan Shu, Yuan Shao, and Yuan Shao's sons, with only Yuan Shao managing to put up a fight. He even kicked Liu Bei's ass a couple of times, though obviously he didn't finish him off.
He was about to deal with another warlord, Liu Biao, but the man passed away of illness, leaving everything to his son, Liu Zong. Liu Zong, never much of a fighter, immediately surrendered to Cao Cao, and Cao Cao merged Liu Zong's holdings into his own. At this point, Cao Cao controlled much of China. While there were still plenty of minor warlords dotting the lands, plus many far north and far south parts of China under the de-facto control of bandits or indigenous tribes, most of the central areas belonged to Cao Cao. His only serious rival was Sun Quan, to the south.
Sun Quan and Cao Cao were technically in an alliance, but it was less an alliance and more a promise not to get in each other's way. Cao Cao could dominate as much of China as he wanted, so long as he didn't look to the south, and likewise Sun Quan would be allowed to conquer as much of southern China as he wanted, so long as he didn't go too far north. While that arrangement had worked for a time, it was inevitable that it wouldn't last.
So Cao Cao sent Sun Quan a letter.
: “I have received the imperial command to attack all rebels. My standards point to the south, and Liu Zong has bound hands. I command a fleet with eight hundred thousand men, and I am coming to join you, to go hunting in Wu.”Which essentially means: I have no rivals in my territory. I am going to go to your territory. If you do anything to stop me, I am going to wipe you off the face of the planet.
To make a very long story short, Liu Bei, along with some of Liu Biao's loyalists who were dissatisfied with Liu Zong's surrender, joined up with Sun Quan. Zhuge Liang, Lu Su, and Zhou Yu convinced Sun Quan to resist Cao Cao's invasion, instead of surrendering. Huang Gai set many small wooden ships on fire and sailed them directly at Cao Cao's navy, Zhou Yu led a follow-up attack, and Liu Bei didn't do a whole lot. In addition to the devastating first engagement, Cao Cao's army was also suffering from a plague - this is a recurring thing in the Three Kingdoms. Southern Chinese tended not to like the water in northern China and likewise Northerners didn't like the water in the South. Whenever Wei invaded Wu, or Wu invaded Wei, illness would almost always come up.
It was the first major defeat Cao Cao had ever been handed, and while he was able to hold some territory in the south, he was still forced to retreat. Many of his troops and minor officers were left behind and forced to surrender to Liu Bei, inadvertently handing him some of the resources he'd use to finally establish himself as a proper ruler.
In need of a win, and with the situation in the south slowly bubbling back down to an uneasy standoff, he turned his attention north. There was a large alliance of petty warlords in the north, led by Ma Su, his son Ma Chao, and Han Sui. Cao Cao, obviously in need of a pick-me-up after his loss to Wu, freestyled on them. He personally led the army against them, crushed them in the first and second engagements, and then set up camp and attempted to 'negotiate' peace. What he actually did was turn them against each other. He would send one warlord a letter with many words blotted out or erased, in order to make it seem like the letter had been altered, held long talks with Ma Chao over nothing, so that when Ma Chao was asked what he had discussed with Cao Cao, Ma Chao had nothing to say, and the others would think he was hiding something, and had forces slowly creep towards each warlord's base of power, in order to make them feel pressure. Eventually, the alliance broke down, with each warlord retreating to defend his own territory. From there, Cao Cao was easily able to roll through and take them all out one at a time, by sheer numbers, without worry of being ambushed or surrounded by one of the others.
The north settled, Cao Cao turned back to the south, invading Wu again. Cao Cao experienced great initial success, but the weather wasn't on his side - a flash flood nearly stranded a large portion of his army in enemy territory, and the season stayed rainy long after. Fearing even more floods, he decided to retreat before he could catch the wrong end of one. He didn't conquer any territory, but at least he didn't lose a ton of his army again.
Four years later, Cao Cao gave it another shot - again, he experienced great success, but weather and Sun Quan's strong fortifications put him in fear of continuing any further. Instead of retreating, he decided to station an army under Xiahou Dun right at the border of Wei and Wu territroy, within just a few days' march of several important fortifications. Under pressure from Xiahou dun, Sun Quan 'surrendered,' though it was a very fragile agreement that basically amounted to what they had before, a promise not to interfere with each other.
Shortly after, Cao Cao died, at the age of 65. I brushed over a lot of his earlier years - the 'defeating Lu Bu, Yuan Shu, and Yuan Shao' part - but that was the part that was the most impressive, so I highly recommend reading more about him. The man was a military genius. Not only that, but he was at the heart of a lot of military innovations that would go on to be used for centuries. Cao Cao was the first Chinese general to put armor on his horses, he was directly responsible for the revival of the Art of War - it had fallen out of favor with the nobles in his time - and innovated cavalry tactics, using them as the spearhead of his offensives. He made minor enemies look like jokes, and made his equals fight for their lives. The only person to give him any serious trouble was Sun Quan, and not to downplay Sun Quan and his generals, but the territory of Wu - hilly, with many lakes and rivers, prone to seasonal flooding - made it a nightmare for a general that favored cavalry like Cao Cao. It was naturally defensible.
As for Cao Cao being the villain of the Three Kingdoms, well. The man could be extreme. Before the Yellow Turban Rebellion, he was a magistrate in Ji'nan, where many wealthy relatives of the Emperor lived. He refused to give them special treatment, and punished them severely for any corruption or lawbreaking that he spotted. Cao Cao was a firm believer in the law, and he carried that belief throughout his life. Plenty of officials accused of crimes were executed in his administration, once he became a ruler in his own right. While obviously that's kind of understandable, it does make it pretty easy to write the guy as a villain, too. To say nothing of the fact that the guy was the most powerful warlord in the Three Kingdoms - it's natural that he be the villain, since Liu Bei was such an underdog. Even if historically, Liu Bei was barely even on Cao Cao's radar for most of his life.
Cao Cao's life was complicated enough that it's hard to summarize, so I'll just end on an excerpt from a statement Cao Cao wrote himself:
quote:
In Ji'nan, I destroyed oppression and drove out evil, and I believe that all the recommendations I made for appointment or promotion were justified. Because of this, however, I made enemies of powerful men. I was afraid I would bring misfortune to my family, and so I pleaded sick and went back home.
I was, at that, time still young. I built a fine house fifty leagues east of Qiao, and I proposed to read books in autumn and summer, and shoot and hunt in winter and spring. That was my plan for twenty years: to wait until the empire was reformed, then come out from retirement to accept some appointment.
But things did not work out that way, and I was called to the capital and appointed Colonel Who Arranges the Army. Again I changed my ideas, and now sought to work for the nation, to destroy rebels and gain some achievement. I would have had the stone tablet at the gate of my tomb inscribed with the words, ‘The former General Who Subdues the West, Marquis Cao of the Han.’ This was my whole ambition.
Then came the trouble with Dong Zhuo, and I raised loyal troops. And later I took over in Yan province; and I destroyed or brought to surrender three hundred thousand Yellow Turbans; and I attacked the rebel Yuan Shu and caused him to die poor and ruined; and I destroyed Yuan Shao and exposed the heads of his two sons; and I also dealt with Liu Biao.
So I have pacified the empire. I am the chief. I have the utmost honor a subject can hold, far beyond my former hopes. Supposing I had not been here, who can say how many men would have claimed the imperial title or how many would have sought to rule as kings?
I may or may not do Sima Yi later, that went on a lot longer than I thought it would and Sima Yi's life would take even longer to describe. Plus a lot of his life is outside the scope of the traditional Three Kingdoms story. If you want the cliffnotes: brilliant general, shrewd politician, kind of a dick to his family, basically 'won' the Three Kingdoms, defeated Zhuge Liang literally five separate times. Hope that all helps.