The Scholars of Shen Zhou

How do you think Sun Quan knows that Wei Yan is rebelious and ambitious? What did Wei YAn do to prove his ambition and disloyalty?
Do you think Wei Yan is rebelious?

dengai wrote:How do you think Sun Quan knows that Wei Yan is rebelious and ambitious? What did Wei YAn do to prove his ambition and disloyalty?
Do you think Wei Yan is rebelious?

First off, Sun Quan was a very wise and knowledgable person, and proved to be very accurate at reading someones abilities. Second, I believe Luo Guan Zhong made the Sun Quan predicting Wei Yan's betrayel up.

Wei Yan wanted to keep marching into Wei after Zhuge Liang's death, and this met with disapproval by Yang Yi and Jiang Wei. Letters were sent to the capital at Cheng Du by both parties, Wei Yan burned a plank road, preventing retreat, etc. etc. Honestly, I don't think Wei Yan betrayed Shu, it was Yang Yi and Jiang Wei betraying Wei Yan.

And I'm pretty sure there is a thread about Wei Yan's loyalty.

he burned the plank road to try and prevent retreat from a campaign that even the lowest ranking officer at that point knew was doomed to failure. He chose to kill everyone rather than try and save resources and that's not a betrayal of all Shu had given him?

White Horse General wrote:he burned the plank road to try and prevent retreat from a campaign that even the lowest ranking officer at that point knew was doomed to failure. He chose to kill everyone rather than try and save resources and that's not a betrayal of all Shu had given him?

I don't see how the campaign was doomed to failure. Zhuge Liang was a good strategist, but Shu had a few that were just as good. Wei Yan, in my opinion, was just as good, if not better. Wei Yan provided a srategy that most likely would have caused a specific campaign to end in victory, but was ignored by Zhuge, and the campaign was defeated. Let me provide a quote about the death of Wei Yan and Zhuge Liang's last campaign.

It could be that Zhuge Liang expected Wei Yan to turn over to Wei, but the only source of such an accusation was Yang Yi, who was passed up for the succession of Zhuge Liang’s position. Thus the charges on Wei Yan become suspect and readers of the historical accords may feel that Wei Yan was treated unfairly. (Source: The Moss Roberts commentary of SGYY [Kongming and the Northern Campaigns]).

Stedfel wrote: I don't see how the campaign was doomed to failure. Zhuge Liang was a good strategist, but Shu had a few that were just as good. Wei Yan, in my opinion, was just as good, if not better. Wei Yan provided a srategy that most likely would have caused a specific campaign to end in victory, but was ignored by Zhuge, and the campaign was defeated. Let me provide a quote about the death of Wei Yan and Zhuge Liang's last campaign.

Shu was smaller, had less resources, less soldiers. They were basically riding on the brilliance of Zhuge Liang for any hope of defeating Wei; Shu did not have anyone else that was nearly as capable as Kongming was. By the by I've said it before and I'll say it again Wei Yan's plan for defeating Wei was the most god awful plan ever concieved. Sure it sounded nice, but all it would have accomplished was getting the Shu forces completely surrounded and at a loss of any chance to escape; which is exactly why Kongming rejected it; they were fighting the Empire of Wei, not some small group of people inexperienced to warfare as Wei Yan for some reason seemed to think they were.

The problem with Zhuge Liang's plan was that the march was to a heavily guarded location, which anyone familiar with the Art of War would have avoided. Wei Yan's plan was to attack the lightly guarded Chang An, which would have gained Shu a perfect base to attack Hong Nong, and then int Luo Yang itself. All in all, Wei Yan's plan was much better than Zhuge Liangs.

Wei Yan was a member of Zhuge Liang’s inner circle of friends and plays a prominent role in the northern campaigns. Wenchang urges Kongming to strike Chang An directly, however the cautious Kongming decided to maneuver through Longyou instead and did not succeed in capturing any cities. Later many people thought that perhaps Wei Yan’s plan had merit.

As I said, it would have left them open to being surrounded and cut off. Hence is why, as your quote titled him, the more cautious Kongming chose to ignore it. Kongming's course was basically designed to steadily gain ground so they always had a way out in case they needed in. Which was brilliant since supply problems basically forced them to make use of it.

White Horse General wrote:As I said, it would have left them open to being surrounded and cut off. Hence is why, as your quote titled him, the more cautious Kongming chose to ignore it. Kongming's course was basically designed to steadily gain ground so they always had a way out in case they needed in. Which was brilliant since supply problems basically forced them to make use of it.

It was Zhuge Liang's cautiousness that cost them the campaign. It was that slow movement that allowed Wei to get there Generals to the front line. Even if they had succeeded, that would have left the Shu army open to an attack from both Hong Nong and Chang An, a relatively stupid maneuver. Chang An was in a direct path with Han Zhong, so supply routes were safe for the most part. By taking Chang An, they would have had a very secure position close to the Capital of Han China.

Wei Yan's plan was a fool's plan.Plain and simple.More than likely it would have ended up getting him killed.
I don't care how lightly defended Chang An was or how quickly he could attack it,once they lock those gates he's going nowhere.

Chang An had something like two moats and was fortified by the Latter Han to be the primary fort against Qiang attacks after Liangzhou seceded.Not to mention that reinforcements can come from the Wei wall,so Wei Yan will never succeed with a siege.

And it still would not have changed the fact that Shu was outnumbered and outresourced. The big picture is even if Wei Yan's plan worked ( which I still say had no chance apart from trapping Shu's army ) what good would it have done? Rather than Wei's forces setting up to meet Kongming, as what happened, it would have been Shu going to meet the Wei Forces at their cities. A few defenders in a walled city can hold off a large host of attackers; but this would have been a case of a larger numbers of defenders than attackers.

They had a better chance of fighting them out on the field ( Kongming ) than attacking their cities directly ( Wei Yan ).