In the sixteenth year of Jian'an, Ma Chao led the army to confront Cao Cao under Tongguan, and a big war broke out, this battle can be said to be Ma Chao's highlight battle, in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", Ma Chao not only killed Cao Cao to cut off his beard and abandon his robe, but also single-handedly frustrated Zhang He and others, and Xu Chu did not distinguish between victory and defeat, so that Cao Cao sighed: "The horse does not die, I have no place to be buried." ”
In this battle, Ma Chao seemed to have infinite scenery, but he had fallen behind at the beginning, and the final defeat was just expected.
In the description of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", Ma Chao felt jealous when he saw Xu Chu for the first time. Later, Cao Cao did not talk about martial virtues, and sent Xu Chu to give Ma Chao a war letter, but Ma Chao relied on his high strength, regardless of his identity, fought to the death with Xu Chu, and almost died with him. Fortunately, Pang De and others led the army to cover up the killing in time, and this battle gave the Xiliang army an advantage.
However, it was this battle that made Cao Cao see a good way to break the enemy.
First of all, Ma Chao, as a prince, has a higher status than Xu Chu, Xu Chu is just a general, to put it mildly, even if Xu Chu dies in battle, he will only lose some morale for Cao Cao's army; And Ma Chao, as the commander of the Xiliang Army, if he dies in battle, the Xiliang Army will be leaderless in an instant, and it will collapse at the first touch.
Secondly, it can also be seen from Ma Chao's ability to respond to the battle that Ma Chao is arrogant and arrogant, so he looks down on others, so it can be seen that many of those Xiliang troops were formed together because they were afraid of Ma Chao. Therefore, Cao Cao can prescribe the right medicine, as long as he is specially designed for Ma Chao, it will inevitably make the Xiliang army collapse. Later, Cao Cao did successfully use the counter-intrigue to make Ma Chao and Han Sui kill each other, and he successfully reaped the benefits of the fisherman.
In the end, Ma Chao went to fight with Xu Chu as a general, which meant that he could not look at this battle from the perspective of a commander, and his eyes could only notice the Cao army in front of him, and he could not take into account the overall situation, so Cao Cao asked Xu Chu and others to continue to attract Ma Chao, and secretly sent Xu Huang and Zhu Ling to smuggle across the Yellow River, which made the Xiliang army difficult to take care of and fell into a dilemma.
Therefore, the battle between Ma Chao and Xu Chu seems to be indistinguishable, even if Xu Chu is killed in the end, it can only be a small victory, but for the entire battle, Ma Chao has completely lost, but he doesn't know it yet.