History of Three Kingdoms 8
Scramble for the Emperor
In July 196 A.D., Emperor Xian of Han(the last Emperor of Eastern Han) finally returned to Loyang(洛阳) from Chang'an(长安) after a long and arduous journey.
Due to his achievements in guarding the Emperor, Yang Feng (杨奉former yellow turban and Dong Zhuo's general)was appointed as the General of Chariots&cavalry and stationed in Jiang County(梁县), while Han Xian (韩暹former yellow turban general)was appointed as the General-in-Chief, and Dong Cheng (a general ffrom Dong Zhuo's group)as the General of Guards, and together they were in charge of guarding the Imperial Palace.
At this time, the court of the Eastern Han could be said to exist in name only, and the three powerful figures, Yang Feng and Han Xian, were both from the peasant rebellion, and Dong Cheng was just a former vassal of Niu Fu(Dong Zhuo's son in law).
To put it bluntly, the three of them together are not as powerful as Li Jue and Guo Si(Niu Fu's subordinate).
The rest of the courtiers were also mostly made up, some even have no official seal, or carved with an awl, family members are also lost most , They were all dressed in rags and looked yellow and skinny, and the Han court looked pathetic.
These years from Dong Zhuo to Wang Yun(王允), from Wang Yun to Li Jue（李傕）, and then from Li Jue to Han Xian, the people who hold the power in the court can really be said to more and more worse.
And don't look at Dong Cheng's background is not high, the strength is less than the level of a small warlord, but this person is an ambitious guy.
Soon he was in conflict with Han Xian, of course, the level of Han Xian was really too low-grade, have no experiencethe politic, elying on his achievements in guarding the emperor,he began to be proud of it, holding the power to mess up the government.
So Dong Cheng came up with "a good idea", which was to secretly recruit Cao Cao(曹操), the Provincial governor of Yanzhou(兖州), to come to the court to serve the emperor.
A month later, Cao Cao, in the name of paying tribute, came to Luoyang with his troops, and Han Xian was frightened to leave the city and fled to Yang Feng in Liang County.
Cao Cao wanted to move Emperor Xian to his base in Xu County(许县present day Xuchang City), but expected that Yang Feng and Han Xian would not agree, once he took a tough approach, it was inevitable that a fierce battle would break out, and at this time, Yang Feng had a lot of troops, and under his command, there was also such a mighty general as Xu Huang(徐晃).
So under the scheming of Dong Zhao(董昭a smart strategist of Cao Cao), Cao Cao temporarily moved Emperor Xian to Luyang(鲁阳) under the pretext that there was a lack of food in the capital for the convenience of transporting food, while continuously sending emissaries to Yang Feng with gifts to paralyse him.
Seeing that Luyang was closer to his base in Lang county, Yang Feng did agree and let his guard down.
In September 196 AD, Emperor Xian of Han's carriage, guarded by Cao Cao, drove out of the city of Luoyang and travelled southwards, and halfway they suddenly sped eastwards towards Xu County.
Yang Feng came to his senses and sent troops from Liang County to intercept Emperor Xian, but it was too late, and the Eastern Han officially moved its capital to Xu County and set up the capital as Xudu(du means capital).
Cao Cao was rewarded with the position of the General-in-Chief and the title of nobility as the Marquis of Wuping(武平侯) for his work in moving the capital and protecting the emperor, and he took control of the imperial government, since then he began his brilliant career of holding the emperor hostage and ordering the warlords.
Yang Feng and Han Xian saw that the situation had been settled, so they led their troops to Dingling(定陵) to loot and harass, but the troops of Cao held fast and ignored them, so they had to withdraw their troops after venting their anger.
It is no wonder that Yang Feng and Han Xian, the two wrongdoers will lose their minds, do not forget that they were the ones who snatched the Emperor Xian from the hands of Li Jue, Guo Si, and after several fierce battles, losing soldiers and generals, only to guard the Emperor Xian all the way back to Luoyang. In the end, everything came to nothing, making a gift for Cao Cao.
This also fully illustrates that the so-called “holding the Emperor hostage to command the warlords” is actually not a creative idea by Cao Cao, but the key lies in the political level of the person who executes it, Cao Cao is neither the first to do so, nor is he considered the strongest in terms of military strength.
After all, this is a technical work, operating properly, you can naturally be like a tiger with wings, gain both fame and fortune, operating poorly, will be like Dong Zhuo, Li Jue, Han Xian, and others, losing their reputation and died for nothing.
Cao Cao soon settled his internal affairs, and led his troops to attack Liang County, where Yang Feng and Han Xian were defeated.
After losing their foothold, the two men had to flee to join Yuan Shu, while Xu Huang also took the opportunity to break away from Yang Feng and submit to Cao Cao.
A year later Yuan Shu proclaimed himself emperor in Shouchun(寿春), and he dispatched his general Zhang Xun(张勋) to unite his troops with Yang Feng and Han Xian to attack Lyu Bu(吕布) in Xuzhou(徐州).
After all, both Lyu Bu and Yang Feng had been in Dong Zhuo's group, so Lyu Bu wrote a letter to solicit Yang Feng and Han Xian, urging them that instead of attacking Xuzhou, they should join forces to fight Zhang Xun together and promising to give the two of them all of the captured military funds after victory.
The unprincipled Yang Feng and Han Xian were so happy that they immediately rebelled in the battlefield and turned around to attack Zhang Xun, who was defeated and almost completely destroyed, and Yuan Shu's strength suffered a serious blow.
Yang Feng and Han Xian have been under Lyu Bu's command since then, but the funny thing is that their IQs together can't beat Lyu Bu's. Lyu Bu soon came up with a bad idea and instructed them to go to Xiaopei(小沛)to rob Liu Bei's wheat for military food.
They didn't expect Liu Bei to be even more ruthless, Liu Bei set up a dinner party , killing Yang Feng at the banquet, and directly annexing the two men's forces, Han Xian escaped by chance, and was killed on his way to escape.
Now we can review the end of the characters in Dong Zhuo's group.
In 192 AD, Dong Zhuo was executed by Lyu Bu and his younger brother Dong Min(董旻) was killed at the same time. In the same year, Li Su(李肃) was beheaded by Lyu Bu for losing a battle,and Dong Yue(董越) was inexplicably killed by Niu Fu.
Dong Zhuo's son-in-law, Niu Fu, however, was killed by his cronies while on the run. Soon after, Li Jue, Guo Si, and others were forced to rebel by Wang Yun, Xu Rong(徐荣) died in the chaos while fighting the rebels, and Hu Zhen(胡轸) chose to surrender, and died of illness a month later.
In 195 A.D., due to disputes over factions, Li Jue sent someone to assassinate the powerful general Fan Chou(樊稠) at a banquet, then the Li-Guo Rebellion broke out, Emperor Xian fled east, and all the people along the way had their own agenda, repeatedly fighting in a melee, and the drama changed so quickly and reversed so strangely that it was staggering.
Yang Ding(杨定) first jointed Yang Feng and Dong Cheng, who had nothing to do, to attack Duan Wei(段煨), and then was defeated by Guo Si, who arrived, while Yang Ding fled to Jing Zhou, where he died at the hands of Liu Biao(刘表). At the same time, Jia Xu(贾诩) also broke away from Li Jue and defected to Duan Wei's army.
In 196 A.D., Emperor Xian returned to Loyang. Zhang Ji(张济), who was desperate because of the lack of food, had the idea of hitting Liu Biao, and was killed by an arrow in the battle of attacking Rangcheng(穰城).
After Zhang Ji's death, his nephew Zhang Xiu(张绣) took over the army and joined forces with Liu Biao to garrison in Wancheng(宛城), protecting Liu Biao from the enemies in the north. Jia Xu also left Duanwei to join Zhang Xiu.
A year later Guo Si was killed by his own subordinates, while Yang Feng and Han Xian were both lured to death by Liu Bei.
In 198 AD, Cao Cao ordered Duan Wei to crusade Li Jue in the name of the Emperor. Li Jue was beheaded and his whole clan was exterminated.
In the first month of 200 A.D., Dong Cheng, who was very ambitious, made his old mistake again. He failed to kill Cao Cao by secretly transmitting the Clothes-Belt-Edict, instead he was killed by Cao Cao, and the powerful Dong Zhuo clique was annihilated with Dong Cheng's death.
At this time, we were surprised to find that in the chaotic world, except for Dong Cheng, who was lucky to live for one more year, and the two sophisticates, Jia Xu and Duan Wei, the most enduring man under Dong Zhuo was actually Lyu Bu.
In this farce, Dong Zhuo directed himself to film the first season of Game of Thrones, which was then inexplicably made into a hilarious drama by this group of unreliable subordinates.
Compared to veterans like Cao Cao and Liu Bei, Lyu Bu was like a naive kid in politics.
But compared with Niu Fu, Li Jue, Yang Feng, a group of short-sighted, profit-oriented guys, Lyu Bu's political vision or self-preservation ability, are a big step higher, wasn't this funny?