In China's political and military history, there is a kind of father and son, and the son often exists as the failure of the father, such as Liu Chan to Liu Bei, Emperor Yang of Sui to Emperor Wen of Sui, and a little earlier, such as Wu Wangfu to Wu Wang Lu. History is never a rough line, the details are the truth, let's take a look at the details of the father and son of the husband and wife.
As a father, Wu Wang Lu created a very ideal hegemonic situation for Wu State. He reused Wu Zixu and Sun Wu, actively trained the army, established a granary, and after a few years, he began to develop to the north, to be specific, that is, to attack and weaken the state of Chu in the north. From 512 BC to 506 BC, the war between Wu and Chu developed from sporadic border conflicts to a full-scale confrontation of hundreds of thousands of group armies.
Judging from the battles in the past few years, the strategic development intention of Helu has always been towards the north. And the biggest obstacle to going north is the state of Chu, which was finally realized after several years of careful planning. Later, although the Qin state in the northwest sent reinforcements to repel the Wu army, the strategic goal of weakening the enemy in the north was still achieved, and the Chu state was unable to stop the expansion trend of the Wu state for a period of time.
And another country further south, the Yue Kingdom, always plays the role of a sneak attacker. In 505 BC, King Yunchang of Yue took advantage of the battle between Wu and Chu and led his troops to raid the state of Wu. Originally, the ambitious He Lu wanted to move the border north, but when the rescuers of the Qin State went south, Ying, who stayed in the Chu State, was unwilling to go, and he had enough confidence to stop the Qin soldiers. However, in the case of the lack of skills, the Wu army could not concentrate on fighting the Qin state, and He Lu had to give up the existing territory and return to Wu.
Wu wants to upgrade from a small country on the eastern edge to a large country in the Central Plains, and under the guidance of this main strategy, by the way, solve the troublemakers in the south. In 496 B.C., He Lu planned to settle the Yue Kingdom by the way, and the two sides of Wu and Yue fought at Li. In this battle, He Lu paid the price of his life. So his son was sent to the throne.
What everyone can remember is that when He Lu was seriously injured and dying, he instructed his son and husband to take revenge. However, many people have a misunderstanding that He Lu regards Yue Guo as a key strategic opponent. In fact, otherwise, He Lu's original intention must be to ask his son's husband to solve the troublemaker in the south before going north to develop.
In romance and film and television dramas, we only see the husband avenging his father, defeating the Yue Kingdom, and then spending all day drinking and living a life without any sense of security. This perception could not be more wrong. In terms of historical details, Fucha still faithfully implemented his father's strategy of going north, and played it to the extreme. It can be said that the husband made up for his father's political and military regrets very happily, and also beautifully continued his father's political wishes.
Let's see what Fucha did after conquering the Yue Kingdom. He did not spend all his days drinking idle, from 489 BC to 485 BC, he was not idle for a moment, he repeatedly used troops to the Qi State in the north, occupied a large area of Qilu land, and also eliminated a large number of living military forces of the Qi State. For example, in the Battle of Ailing in 486 BC, Fucha caused the Qi state to lose 100,000 elite troops. By 482 B.C., Fucha had achieved the strategic goal that his father had been thinking about day and night: to be on an equal footing with the princes of the Central Plains and bargain. So far, Fucha has perfectly achieved his father's goal. The strategy of going north has not failed, and Wu is already zero away from success.
The reason why Fucha let go of Goujian, the king of Yue, was not that he had no vision, but that most of his mind was spent on going north, and going north exhausted all the strength of Wu, and it couldn't spare too much energy to eliminate Yue again, and going north was the point.
However, a weak nation and state in history has always existed as an unexpected factor, prompting the collapse and demise of some large countries. Yue Guo will always be an unexpected factor for Wu Guo. He Lu died unexpectedly in the battle with the Yue country, to the son's husband, just when the hegemony was within reach, the Yue country jumped out again, this time the trick was devastating, from then on, there was no Wu country in the world.
Heaven arranged the same accident as the end of the father-son plot. In order to go north strategically, Fucha didn't want to fall into the infinite entanglement with Yue Guo, and wanted to solve this unexpected factor later. However, accidents on the stage of history never wait for people, and this is the tragedy of Fucha.