As the saying goes, abolishing the long and young is the way to take chaos. During the Three Kingdoms period, there were two tyrants who eventually led to the demise of the foundation because of their actions of abolishing the long and establishing the young. The two tyrants were Liu Biao and Yuan Shao.
Liu Biao, because of his preference for his younger son Liu Chun, handed over the lord of Jingzhou to Liu Chun, which eventually led to the destruction of the foundation. And Yuan Shao also ruined the Jiangshan that he had worked hard to find and fight for because of the abolition of Chang Liyou.
Yuan Shao had three sons, namely the eldest son Yuan Tan, the second son Yuan Xi, and the third son Yuan Shang. According to the convention, the eldest son, Yuan Tan, was the first heir of natural righteousness. However, Yuan Shao's favorite is his youngest son Yuan Shang. There are two main reasons: on the one hand, Yuan Shangchang and Yuan Shao are "very similar", and their looks and personalities and talents are extremely similar, so they are deeply loved by Yuan Shao. On the other hand, Yuan Shao's favorite wife, Liu Shi, also loved Yuan Shang, love Wu and Wuxia, and Yuan Shao was even more fond of Yuan Shang.
In order to cultivate Yuan Shang as a "legal" successor, the extremely clever Yuan Shao came up with a brilliant method: to pass Yuan Tan over to his dead brother, and to call it a beautiful name: help his brother inherit his incense and let his successor be followed. After Yuan Tan became a "stepson", his inheritance rights were directly deprived. At the same time, in order to prevent yu Ran, Yuan Shao also appointed Yuan Tan as the Assassin of Qingzhou, and at the same time, appointed his second son Yuan Xi as the Assassin of Youzhou. Only the youngest son, Yuan Shang, remained alone in Jizhou.
In 200 AD, the Battle of Guandu broke out in Yuan Cao's clique, with Yuan Tan as the main force and following Yuan Shao on his expedition, and eventually Yuan Shao was defeated because he insisted on going his own way. Two years later, Yuan Shao died of grief and depression. However, because his death was so sudden, he did not directly advertise who would be the heir. This left a hidden danger for his son's infighting.
The succession dispute, of course, unfolded between Yuan Tan and Yuan Shang. Yuan Tan has the unique innate advantage of the eldest son, and is also supported by heavy figures led by Xin Ping and Guo Tu. However, the youngest son, Yuan Shang, had the acquired advantage of sitting in Jizhou, which was the only one who was respected, and was supported by the important ministers of the dynasty headed by Feng Ji and ZhenBei.
The relationship between Feng Ji and Yuan Tan has always been good, of course, they do not want Yuan Tan to succeed to the throne, so as soon as Yuan Shao died, they immediately supported Yuan Shang to succeed to the throne. In this way, Yuan Shang, the "Leng touqing", became the new head of the Yuan Group.
Of course, yuan tan, the "big brother", was not willing, and he came up with a good idea, on the one hand, he called himself a che riding general and expressed his dissatisfaction with Yuan Shang with practical actions, on the other hand, he mobilized his army to Liyang and made a pretend cao cao appearance, but took the opportunity to "ask Yuan Shang for troops".
Of course, Yuan Shang knew his brother's evil intentions, but he could not refuse his brother's kindness, so he came up with a compromise method, on the one hand, he sent an army of old, weak, sick and disabled children to support Yuan Tan, and on the other hand, he also sent his confidant Feng Ji to Yuan Tan's barracks, called helping the army, which was actually supervision.
Yuan Tan is also not a fuel-saving lamp, but also came to a two-pronged move, on the one hand, continue to write a letter to request more troops, on the other hand, look for "spy" Feng Ji's pigtails everywhere, and later directly sent Feng Ji to the guillotine on the charge of "false accusations".
Just when the two brothers Yuan Tan and Yuan Shang were engaged in a "gentle" internal force competition. Cao Cao could not sit still, and when yuan Shao died just four months after his death, he led a large army north across the Yellow River, aiming directly at the influential figure Yuan Tan. As soon as Yuan Tan saw that the situation was critical, he immediately asked Yuan Shang for help. Yuan Shang felt that Cao Cao was his confidante, so he put aside the secret struggle between his brothers and worked together to help Yuan Tan in Liyang. And let his other confidants try to match the town to guard the city.
As a result, the two brothers could not defeat Cao Cao by combining, so they had to hold the city firmly. After a few months, the brothers abandoned Liyang and retreated to the base camp of Yecheng.
Cao Cao took advantage of the victory to pursue and chased straight to the outskirts of Yecheng. At this time, Guo Jia, the first strategist under Cao Cao, stood up and had something to say, and he put forward the idea of suspending the attack, on the grounds of 9 words: brothers are on the wall, and foreign insults are insulted. That is to say, if we attack in a hurry now, the Yuan brothers will unite, even if they are half the work, it will be difficult to defeat them for a while and a half. If they do not attack, the Yuan brothers will inevitably have infighting in order to compete for the position of successor, so it is better to postpone the attack and reap the benefits of the fisherman.
Guo Jia's 9 words broke the mystery and true meaning of defeating Yuan Tan's Yuan Shang brothers. Cao Cao obeyed Guo Jia's good plan and only sent his general Jia Xin to garrison Liyang, while he himself led a large army back to Xudu. Sure enough, after Cao Jun left, the Yuan brothers immediately turned against each other.
Yuan Tan asked Yuan Shang for more troops to capture the lost Liyang. Yuan Shang's answer this time was very straightforward, 8 words: no soldiers, one death.
The brothers completely tore their faces. At this time, Guo Tu and Xin Ping, two cattlemen under Yuan Tan, because of the discord between Su and Trial Match, came out to stir up the fire and instigated Yuan Tan to attack Yuan Shang and Trial Match.
Yuan Tan was a simple-minded man, and in a fit of rage, he led an army to attack Yuan Shang. As a result, the Yuan brothers conducted the first true love confrontation outside the gate of Yecheng City. As a result, Yuan Shang, who occupied the heavens and places, won a complete victory, and Yuan Tan had to retreat to Nanpi. Subsequently, Wang Xiu of Qingzhou led an army to support Yuan Tan, who was overwhelmed again and launched an attack on Yuan Shang.
Yuan Shang launched a psychological war at this time, and as Yuan Shao's legal heir, he informed the soldiers and civilians of The four prefectures of Jizhou, Qingzhou, Hezhou, and Youzhou, accusing Yuan Tan of committing a crime and rebelling against him, calling on everyone to intercept it together. As a result, Yuan Tan's forces sent Liu Tan to be the first to rebel against Yuan Tan and submit to Yuan Shang. Subsequently, the cities of Qingzhou responded one after another, breaking away from Yuan Tan and submitting to Yuan Shang.
As a result, the Yuan brothers once again carried out a great decisive battle, and Yuan Tan, who was alone and alone, was once again defeated and forced to flee to Pingyuan County. Yuan Shang then led a large army to surround the plains and attacked day and night.
Seeing that Pingyuan County was in danger, Yuan Tan made a move of jumping the wall with a dog, 5 words: Ask Cao Cao for help!
Ignoring the opposition of his generals, Yuan Tan sent Xin Ping's younger brother Xin Bi to cao cao for help. At the same time, in order to show his sincerity, he also took the initiative to marry his daughter to Cao Cao's twentieth son Cao Zhen in order to make an alliance with him.
And this is Cao Cao's intention, Cao Cao, who had long been sharpening his sword and waiting to clean up the mess, received Yuan Tan's request for help, agreed to the alliance, and immediately led a large army to march, and after he lifted the siege of the plains, he turned his horse's head and killed Yecheng.
As a result, Yecheng could not withstand the onslaught of the Cao army and soon fell. Yuan Shang had no choice but to flee to Youzhou. Later, after Youzhou was attacked by Cao's army, Yuan Shang fled into Liaodong, only to be booby-trapped and killed by Gongsun Kang, who beheaded Yuan Shang and presented it to Cao Cao.
At this point, Yuan Tan, with the help of Cao Cao, finally got rid of Yuan Shang. However, he paid a heavy price for his act of luring the wolf into the house, and Cao Cao quickly found a reason to cut off Yuan Tan's head as well.
In short, yuan tan yuan shang brothers because of too heavy selfishness, the enemy is current, actually led the wolf into the room, and finally he lost the political assets left by Yuan Shao, and it is reasonable that both were eliminated.