The Entwined Branches Fall
Turn the clock further back, to the early summer of the twentieth year of Jian'an, the year 215. Just as Zhang Lan was marching out to break the Ba tribes, Liu Bei stood inside a storm of his own. Its name was Jing Province.
The year before, the moment Liu Bei took Yi Province in hand, Sun Quan demanded Jing's return. Liu Bei deflected him with a promise that he would truly give the province back once he had secured Xiliang. Sun Quan answered in fury, sending grand administrators into the three commanderies of Changsha, Guiyang, and Lingling, but Guan Yu, who governed Jing, stepped forward and drove every one of them out.
There Sun Quan's rage passed its limit. He named Lü Meng his commander and, with a host of generals at his back, sent an army to seize Changsha and Guiyang, then pressed on toward Lingling, where Hao Pu was stationed. Swift reinforcements from Pan Jun stopped him short.
Liu Bei did not sit still. Taking Zhao Yun and Pang Tong with him, he led a great host of fifty thousand to garrison Gong'an, and Guan Yu too went over to the attack. The instant he received Liu Bei's reinforcements, he marched for Yiyang in Changsha Commandery.
What broke from that march was the Yiyang Standoff.
Across the river the two commanders faced one another: Lu Su and Guan Yu. Each threw up a fortified camp — one that men would call Lu Su's Fort, the other Guan Yu's Shallows — and there they stood opposed.
The arguments of the two camps ran thus. Liu Bei's side claimed that the four commanderies of southern Jing had been taken by their own strength, and that the only land borrowed from Sun Quan was Nan Commandery. Sun Quan answered that Liu Bei had come to rule southern Jing only by the share won at Red Cliffs and beneath Sun Quan's own tacit consent, so that it was no different from a loan.
Even Lu Su, good-natured and a man who prized the alliance with Wu above all else, set himself squarely against Guan Yu. From there the situation could only worsen.
In the original history, Liu Bei heard of Cao Cao's invasion of Hanzhong, took one step back, and an accord was reached. This time the circumstances were different. Because Liu Bei had taken Yi Province nearly half a year early, the Yiyang Standoff broke out early as well, and Zhang Lu, thoroughly frightened, surrendered to Cao Cao all the sooner.
Had Sun Quan not picked a quarrel over Jing Province, Cao Cao would have found it far harder to seize Hanzhong so smoothly.
By the old tale, Cao Cao ought to have contented himself with registering Hanzhong's people and gazing toward Shu, and simply occupied the place. Instead he sent Zhang He at once, and by the time the news reached Liu Bei, Zhang He had already marched.
Word that Senior General Zhang He was driving on Ba Commandery at the head of tens of thousands drained the color from Liu Bei's face, and a short, raw cry tore out of him.
Against just such a day he had stationed Zhang Fei, the trump card he could play after Guan Yu, but the opponent was Cao Cao. Save for the Battle of Red Cliffs, was this not the standing calamity assigned to Liu Bei — the man who had never handed him anything but defeat?
Liu Bei was caught between two choices. Choose Yi Province, yield Jing to Sun Quan, and turn back? Or hold the Yiyang Standoff and pray that Zhang Fei, left behind in Yi, could somehow stop Zhang He's assault on his own?
If only Cao Cao had committed a great host and launched an all-out offensive, Liu Bei could have abandoned Jing without hesitation, held Yi, and set Sun Quan to strike into the gap Cao Cao left behind.
The force Cao Cao had sent was so precisely measured that one might suspect he had aimed for exactly this. It was unmistakably a crisis, and yet it left room for a thought: handle it well, and might they not hold after all?
While Liu Bei fretted so, Pang Tong offered him counsel.
"Does my lord remember Kongming's plan to divide the realm in three?"
"Of course I remember."
"Then why do you hesitate? The worms are clinging to the roots of the peach. Let the plum die in its place."
The peach tree was a figure for Liu Bei's power, borrowed from the Oath of the Peach Garden the three brothers had sworn — and it was also, quite literally, a peach tree. The eleventh of the Thirty-Six Stratagems: Li Dai Tao Jiang. The plum withers in the peach's stead.
The poem from which the name comes praises that beautiful sacrifice, but in the art of war the saying means something colder: throw the plum to the worms as a scapegoat, and let the peach live. The worms were Cao Cao. The plum was Sun Quan's power. In other words, Pang Tong was urging him to put strength behind Sun Quan, keep the peace, and shove Sun Quan from behind into a fight with Cao Cao.
"Hanzhong in enemy hands is a crisis for us, but an opportunity for Sun Quan. If we withdraw to hold Hanzhong, he will surely exploit Cao Cao's absence and aim at Hefei. Then Cao Cao too will find it hard to concentrate on Hanzhong."
"Then how much ought we to yield him?"
"Give him Xiakou in Jiangxia, which my lord now holds, and take full dominion of Nan Commandery in exchange. Offer, besides, to cede the lands he has already occupied, and Sun Quan will not refuse."
Liu Bei's side was not alone in understanding that when the lips are gone, the teeth grow cold. Sun Quan too knew he could not stand against Cao Cao by himself. Above all, military authority now rested with Lu Su, who set a high value on the alliance with Wu. However much Sun Quan might chafe in private, Lu Su's persuasion would win him over in the end.
Liu Bei nodded, and still he could not hide his disappointment.
"It may be the best course. It galls me all the same. Were it not for Sun Quan, even Hanzhong would have lain within our reach..."
By the logic of their positions, it was territory that could not be held. Sun Quan meant to have Jing, and though Liu Bei had taken Yi Province, Sun Quan's strength was still the greater. Worse, an alliance was indispensable if they were to face a foe as strong as Cao Cao, and so Jing was fated to be divided. The head understood. The hollowness in the heart was another matter.
"My lord, land is a secondary thing. Even if we lose it now, we need only take it back someday. So take what matters more."
"What matters more?"
Pang Tong smiled faintly.
"The hearts of the people."
The Yiyang Standoff came to an end.
When Sun Quan read the terms Liu Bei's side had offered first, a shade of displeasure crossed his face. Even so, with Lu Su — first man of the army since Zhou Yu's death — pressing hard for the accord, the two sides met. The agreement was carried out almost entirely as Pang Tong had said. Nan Commandery and Jiangxia were exchanged in full, and Liu Bei recognized Sun Quan's right to the portions of Jing he had occupied. A few counties changed hands besides, but that was only to draw a more practical border, and it carried no great weight.
The answer from Jing had come faster than expected, and Sun Quan had not found as much profit in the venture as he might have liked; still, there had been a harvest of sorts, and he withdrew with a promise of another day. Liu Bei too knew this was no time to quarrel with Sun Quan, but a time to fix his strength on Hanzhong, and the cession went forward swiftly.
And so Changsha and Guiyang passed into Sun Quan's hands.
His officials, driven off by Guan Yu and now returned, held their heads stiff and high and took possession of the commandery offices. Before long their faces had turned a full half-circle.
"Have you fellows heard?"
"Heard what?"
"Didn't Young Lady Xian stop Lady Sun from running wild? They say this whole invasion out of the Sun clan is payback for that."
"Ah, I heard it too. They came in while Young Lady Xian was busy fighting Cao Cao, didn't they?"
"Bah. Call them heroes of Red Cliffs or whatever you like — they're still the Sun clan, aren't they? That Sun Ce, back in the day, was just as violent, wasn't he?"
In truth Sun Quan had already pressed his claim to Jing Province before Zhang Lan ever set out for Baxi, but the common people had neither the means nor the interest to know such fine inner workings. Agitation is like that. A lie is easy to spread, and exceedingly hard to set right.
And to the people of Jing, Liu Bei was a tolerably good lord. A ruler who held the people's hearts in high regard, he had governed with benevolence, and his administration was well in order. Beyond that practical face of things, he was a deeply familiar presence to them. An image works that way: once it is taken in, it does not readily change. Nor was it Liu Bei alone. Zhang Lan too was famous in Jing.
The tales of Young Lady Xian had spread through the province like a piece of oral folklore, and the story of a pretty girl scolding the wicked villains who oppressed them was, for the common people, no mere story. Liu Bei and Zhang Lan were known to them as the weak and the good; Sun Quan and Lady Sun, as the strong and the bad. Call it the underdog's charm. It is hardly a thing that belongs only to the twenty-first century.
Of course, the class that truly held power in this age was not the simple common folk but the great clans. Yet the people too paid the taxes, became the soldiers, and formed the public mood. Where their hearts turned away, no amount of cooperation from the great clans could keep efficiency from suffering.
Hearing of it, Lu Su muttered in hollow dismay.
"In the end, this too is nothing but a stopgap."
Whether it was Sun Quan or Liu Bei, they would contend once more for dominion over this Jing. The rumors Liu Bei had loosed as he departed were groundwork laid against that future. The bond had been twisted from the start. They had tied the severed cord back together with a clumsy knot, but the binding was only slack. The next time it came undone, they would cast the old cord aside and join themselves with a new one.
And so the alliance of Liu Bei and Sun Quan, keeping nothing but its outer shell, began to crumble from within — steadily, and yet swiftly.