A week ago, u/Aidamis asked a question that I didn't have time to give a full answer to: "Was the Battle of Leyte Gulf unwinnable for the Japanese side?"

The answer depends on what you consider "winning." If the Japanese had succeeded with Operation Shō-Gō, it still would have meant the loss of nearly all of the IJN'S carriers, battleships and cruisers and its functional end as any sort of serious fighting force.

The goal was to set "a wolf among the chickens" by managing to get one or more battleships into the massed landing forces off Leyte, thus causing massive destruction of the troop transports, landing craft, and supplies arrayed there. This goal, while unlikely, was very nearly reached when Admiral Takeo Kurita's Center Force managed to sail unopposed through the San Bernardino Strait, then head towards the invasion force. This led to the Battle off Samar, the Agony of Taffy 3, and the astounding case of mistaken identity that caused Center Force to turn around and leave with victory within the IJN's grasp.

But let's change that one boneheaded decision by Kurita into the opposite result. Center Force steamrolls Taffy-3, the other two Taffy elements, and breaks out towards the Allied invasion forces. It would then have to deal with Admiral Jesse Olendorf's Fire Support Group, six battleships (including five refloated/repaired Pearl Harbor survivors) and four heavy cruisers along with light cruisers and destroyers.

While Center Force made its way unopposed through the San Bernardino Strait, Olendorf's ships "crossed the T" of the IJN's Southern Force under Admiral Shoji Nishimura and, without suffering any casualties to Japanese fire, destroyed it.

This has lead to quite a bit of polite discussion as to whether the Fire Support Group, primarily armed with high explosive rounds for its bombardment role, had much in the way of armor piercing rounds left to deal with Kurita's Center Force. For the sake of this discussion, we'll say instead that the previous night's curbstomping of Southern Force somehow left Olendorf's ships out of position to face Kurita, a very unlikely but not completely impossible result.

This would allow Yamato, Nagato, Kongo and Haruna, along with six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and 15 destroyers to complete the assignment of savaging the Allied landing force and winning the day. The US 6th Army is either trapped ashore, dead amongst the sunken transports, or away from the carnage waiting to act as reinforcements. Whatever the situation for the Americans, the Imperial Japanese Navy had won an astounding victory. The invasion of the Philippines is over just as it was getting underway. The name Takeo Kurita would join Isoruku Yamamoto and Heihachiro Togo as glorious figures in Japanese Naval history and tradition.

Then Admiral William Halsey, played for a sucker by the Japanese plan, which saw him packing up TF38... five fleet carriers, five light carriers, six modern battleships, eight cruisers and 41 destroyers... and go galloping after the IJN's Northern Force, which was exactly what they hoped he'd do. Northern Force's four carriers (Zuikaku and three light carriers) were to be a red cape dangled in front of Halsey's bull, hoping that he'd find the opportunity too tasty to ignore.

Those four carriers were nothing but a decoy... they had 100 planes total between them... and Halsey fell for it. While *Zuikaku * and two CVLs were sunk and the third crippled, essentially ending the IJN as a carrier navy, this distraction had let Kurita succeed in his mission.

But now the butcher's bill came due. Hslsey's fleet had between 600 and 1000 planes between them, and they all launched as soon as they got within range of Center Force...

...and at this point, we'll lower the curtain on the scene, the result in no doubt whatsoever. So the IJN had wrecked the invasion of the Philippines. Any way you look at it, it's a huge victory.

But one that makes no difference to the war as a whole. The IJN is destroyed as a serious fighting force. . The losses suffered by the US, while grim in both men and ships, are replaceable soon enough. They may not return to the Philippines... it was a question as to whether an invasion was required in the first place... but what happens to the rest of the Pacific War? Maybe it extends into 1946. The Americans have a new rally cry ("Remember the Philippines!"). Maybe Japan surrenders after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Japan's strategy of making the Allies bleed to get better terms at the negotiating table was never going to work. Even an American public, rapidly tiring of the war, wouldn't cotton to that.

Japan still loses the war. More people die than really occurred. Worst case scenario, Japan as a country is occupied longer, and perhaps is never really allowed any freedom for much longer. It becomes the puppet state of the US that the Soviets always said they were.

So Japan wins at Leyte at the cost of the IJN. It then loses the Pacific War in a manner that ends up worse for the nation in the long run.

So is that a victory?

Edit: this is one of those best case/worst case scenarios. For this to have played out this way would require everything to go right for the Japanese, and everything to go wrong for the Allies.

It's telling that this scenario only required one order correctly given... Kurita's calling for an organized attack on Taffy-3 as opposed to the "every ship for itself"-style command given... and Olendorf's battleships to be in the wrong place, or out of/low on shells... for the Battle to possibly turn out this way.

The IJN got the luck they needed. They simply peed the battle down their leg.

I am shamelessly going to post an old answer of mine here, because it's one I really like.

Six years ago, /u/Elm11 asked "What did a naval blockade look like in the age of sail?"

Great question! So as we start, we should define two major roles for a blockading fleet during the Age of Sail (and even into later conflicts):

1. to keep enemy ships of war bottled up in a port

2. to prevent trade from flowing to or from a port, or a whole nation

The first of those examples is what many people think of when they think of a blockade, and it's the most obvious job of a squadron, but the second is arguably as important for wars that stretch out over a long period of time.

If we were to imagine a modal blockade, we might want to look at the blockade of Brest starting in the Seven Years War, and specifically at the events of 1759, because that was a major French port that the British had to blockade in that war and in the wars of the French revolution and Napoleonic era.

A blockading fleet had to accomplish two goals: it had to watch the entries into a port to prevent ships from leaving (or entering) it, and it had to present enough of a threat to pose a credible threat to the ships that the enemy fleet could amass if it tried to break out of a port. The blockading fleet then had to be comprised of ships that were heavy enough to stand in the line of battle (in the British context, ships of 74 guns or larger) as well as smaller ships that were nimble enough to work in near the port but that could flee any credible threats the enemy could mount to attempt to beat them off (usually frigates). In most cases, then, the fleet would be divided between an inshore and an offshore squadron, with ships in between (frigates or smaller ships) to relay signals between the two fleets.

Because these ships were, after all, sailing ships, the duty of the fleet becomes more difficult because of the winds and current conditions that could be experienced in a particular area. Broadly speaking, winds that would allow for ships to leave a port would tend to blow the blockading fleet offshore, while winds that kept ships in a port would blow the blockading fleet onshore (which is one reason why clumsier ships would be kept offshore, so as not to be wrecked). Obviously, close attention to the weather and watching out for storms was a major responsibility of ships on the blockading fleet. Additionally, blockading fleets still used up the same amounts of victuals (food, water, etc.) and naval stores (sails, spars, cordage, tar, gunpowder and shot for practice, etc.) as a fleet under sail would, so plans for supplying the fleet were crucial. Most admirals attempted to keep enough ships on station so that one or two could always be rotating back to a friendly port to re-provision and bring out mail and news.

Looking specifically at Brest, the dangers and opportunities of blockade become clear. In the 1750s, the dockyards of Breast were on the Penfield river, which issues into a large, enclosed harbor. The harbor reaches the sea through a narrow channel, the Goulet, which runs nearly directly east and west through high ground. There are two anchorages outside the Goulet, Berthaume Bay and Camaret Bay, which are both further protected from the Atlantic with reefs, rocks and islands, and there are three passages to the ocean from those anchorages. The Iroise is to the west, and is scattered with rocks; the Four passage to the north leads to the Channel but it is narrow and beset with a very fast tide-race, and to the south is the Raz de Sein, a very narrow passage through a set of reefs with a rock right in the middle of the northern end of the passage.

The tides flow through those passages at varying rates: the Goulet at 3 knots (nautical miles per hour), the Four at 4.5 knots and the Raz du Sein at 7 knots. The distance from the Goulet to the Raz is 25 miles, so unless a fleet had very exact timing it is nearly impossible to make the trip from the ocean into the harbor or vice versa except with exact timing, which means that ships had to anchor in one of the bays (Berthaume or Camaret) to wait for a tidal change.

This both complicated and simplified the task for the British. There was no one point in the sea from which to watch all three passages except for close in to the Goulet, but there was also no high ground at the western end of the Goulet for watchers to see a blockade fleet further offshore. The winds in the region generally blow from the southwest, which means that it was possible for the French to enter the Goulet most of the year, but leaving required an easterly or northerly wind, which meant the French usually used the Raz de Sein more than the other channels both for entering and leaving.

The French also used the Raz because, in the days before latitude was easy to find, ships usually approached a port by finding a landfall at a line of longitude (an east-west parallel) then "running down" that line until they saw a landmark. For the French, the simplest landfall was to Belle Isle (southwest of the Goulet) and then bearing up on the port tack to Brest or the starboard tack to Rochefort or Bordeaux.

An armchair admiral, then, would assume the best place to put a blockading fleet was to the southwest of Brest, near Belle Isle. The problem with that, though, is that any westerly gale would give the British a lee shore to the east which they would have to escape by heading to the southeast, into the Bay of Biscay and away from home. The British fleet in fact had to be kept to the west or northwest of Ushant, so that in case of westerlies they could seek refuge in one of the Channel ports (usually Torbay in Devon). The unfortunate fact of that is that a fleet in that spot can't keep track of the Raz, so the offshore fleet would have to be stationed there with an inshore squadron able to pass messages to the offshore fleet and sound an alarm if the French tried to break out.

This is exactly what British admiral Sir Edward Hawke did in 1759: the bulk of his fleet lay off the northwest of Ushant, with two small ships of the line under Augustus Hervey anchored off the Black Rocks at the Iroise watching the Goulet. His ships were often blown off station, but a westerly wind usually meant that the French were bottled up in port even as the British ships were blown off blockade.

The reason for keeping the French fleet in port was that the French, growing desperate at their losses in the Americas, had decided in 1758 upon an invasion of Britain. The invasion fleet was assembling in Vannes, in the southwest of France, while the battle fleet was at Brest (at the time, there were only sketchy land communications with Brest -- it relied on coastal shipping for nearly everything, and an army couldn't assemble there). The fleet would have to break out of Brest, sail to Vannes to pick up the transports, and then evade the British fleet to land troops somewhere in Britain, which was a tall order.

The French were increasingly desperate to break out of port as 1759 drew to a close, and when a westerly gale blew Hawke off station in November, the French acted. The same day that the storm died down and Hawke left Torbay, the French left Brest. They were blown far to the west before they could come about and head for Vannes, and had trouble with the fleet because many of its men were inexperienced at sea after being bottled up in port. They sailed for Quiberon Bay, where the transports waited, with the British fleet on their heels, and made it almost there before sighting the British fleet. The French gambled that the British would not follow them into Quiberon Bay, because the British lacked charts of the area, but Hawke attacked at once and the French fleet fled. The British caught up with the tail end of the French fleet just as the van was entering the bay, and at that point the wind backed and headed the French, as well as kicking up an extremely rough sea.

The battle was a disaster for the French; the Thesee sank attempting to open its lower gunports (the ship flooded) and the Superbe sank after two broadsides from Hawke's flagship. One French ship was captured; three were trapped in the Vilaine river with their guns thrown overboard to lighten ship; and six were wrecked or sunk. Two British ships were also driven ashore and wrecked, but their crews were rescued.

Quiberon Bay is one of the more dramatic and unusual battles of the Age of Sail, but the British fleet would again blockade Brest during the Napoleonic period. The blockade, in fact, became so routine that the British would often fish inshore of the Goulet, or anchor in one of the bays to dry sails or practice shifting topsails or lowering boats, to the infinite annoyance of the French.

In one of my favorite stories, Sir Sidney Smith even sailed his frigate into the Goulet by night, "hailing French ships in his faultless French to ask for news, and returning without detection with the latest information." (Rodger, Command of the Ocean pp. 433). Granted, that was in 1795 and not during a period of close blockade, but it does emphasize the Royal Navy's attitude toward the French.

Hopefully this is helpful -- let me know if you have follow ups.

Edit: Thanks for the gold, kind internet stranger! My first Reddit gold!

I'll take the opportunity to link a recent answer of mine and draw emphasis on the conclusions I drew there.

Here, u/EnclavedMicrostate raised a question which gave me the opportunity to elaborate on Mughal logistics in the 17th century : Wikipedia claims that the Mughal ruler Akbar assembled some 400,000 troops for the Battle of Tukaroi. What were the logistics like for the Mughals at this time, that this army – or one large enough to be exaggerated to 400,000 – could be maintained in the field?

OBSERVATIONS :

The Mughal army on the march was an unwieldy animal. Many aspects of military discipline and organisation, such as regiments, batallions, Quartermasters, and supply trains were not standardised or were entirely absent from the Mughal army's paraphernalia. Yet, for 100 years, this military machine dominated the landscape, winning pitched battled in spectacular fashion, besieging seemingly unassailable fortresses and keeping in check the local magnates and neighbouring powers of it's time. Many elements of the Mughal army of Akbar and his successors were not a heritage of his steppe roots, but rather the result of an integrative process which occured during the reign of Akbar and was sustained during the successive reigns thereafter. The banjaras, were more than merely grain and supplies facilitators, they were a social institution, whose presence was recognised and given due credit as early as the reign of Alauddin Khilji in the 13th and early 14th century. With the advent of the Mughals the banjaras merely attached themselves to the latest players in the North Indian military landscape. But this player turned out to be far more successful than it's predecessors. And the banjaras themselves found their life and property necessarily protected by the Mughals, whom they provided such valuable sustenance.

One is however inevitably bound to ask themselves, seeing as the size of their armies and their logistical necessities required/at the very least could do well to develop a more thoroughly organised and standardised supply system, why is it that the same did not emerge in the Mughal military? There can be more than one answers, to this question :

A) The priorities and the military culture of the North Indian nobility was one of extravagance and overwhelming the enemy and one's own forces with the spectacular splendour and awe of one's military might and visage. This, although usually considered a trivial point, is rather reflective of Mughal military thinking. To take as an example, the great bombards of the Mughals, were often so cumbersome and unwieldy that they reduced the marching pace and radius of Mughal armies. Their carriages were poorly constructed and they could not be brought to bear upon an enemy on a tight schedule or given a deadline. So, quality Turkoman horses which could ideally march upto around 25 kms a day, followed the vanguard of an artillery which suffered 5.4 kms instead. Yet, it was these bombards which were given priority in order of battle and often, funds were spent to accentuate and stylize their appearance. While the infantryman of the Mughal army subsisted on subsistence wages, the cannons, would be decorated with silver and gold.

B) The economics at play. The North Indian military labour market was one which was nigh saturated. This meant that potential soldiers and especially infantrymen, were cheap. This meant that desertion was not a major concern for the Mughal general or Emperor, since labour was available, almost always, at cheap rates. Furthermore, the Mughals and their contemporaries and successors, were notorious for arrears in payments. The Mughal noble and founder of the Hyderabad state, Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I, was known to "never without pay for more than three months". Such a statement, recorded as a point of merit, can only mean, that 3 months was the least number of months for which pay was usually witheld! Another example exists in Mahadji Scindia, whose soldiers in North India, deserted by the bushel, before his encounter with the Rajput army at Lalsot.

To put it simply the Mughal army, like the Mughal state, was a product of it's environment, it's society and economy. And the many curious aspects of this military force, including those related to it's logistics, are similarly a product of these factors.

Let's use this opportunity to repost one of my first answers, question by a now-deleted user:

The 1987 Japanese game "1942", has the player pilot an American fighter shooting thousands of Japanese enemies. How did Japan view WWII at that time?

...

After WWII, Japan had a strong turn towards anti-militarism, not in the least because their 1946 constitution has "Renunciation of War" enshrined in their Article 9:

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

Plenty of other factors played in, including but not limited to

• a fairly conscious attempt to reset 1945 post-war as "the hour zero"

• an attitude of blaming the military leaders rather than the civilians (encouraged by the Allies but not exclusively their idea)

• an emerging group of pacifist intellectuals (starting in the late 1940s) who collected writings of soldiers into best-selling books

• a general fear of entrapment during the Cold War (the Japanese considered US policy to be too aggressive and worried about there being another conflict)

There was of course attempted pushback, especially when the Allied occupation ended in 1952, but at least up through the 1980s, the anti-militarism was sustained. Additionally, for the young, detachment; consider Emperor Hirohito, revered when he first came to power, the hinge of Japanese surrender in WWII; a survey in a newspaper poll of the mid-1980s found 70% of Japanese people in their 20s had no feelings one way or the other about him.

If the above can be summarized at all -- and please note encompassing the entirety of a culture with a phrase is a rough approximation, and there was a far-left and far-right in Japan at this time -- it would be "blame the war itself"; essentially blaming both themselves for the war and the "American war machine" at the same time.

A strong representative of this would be Nakazawa Keiji's Barefoot Gen from 1973, which is set starting in Hiroshima during the last months of WWII. There is (as you might expect from the setting) strong condemnation of the Americans, including a post-war scene where American soldiers are harvesting organs from corpses, but there's also clear context blaming the Japanese government.

The first Barefoot Gen movie came out in 1983, a year before we get to the Capcom story. Here's the scene of the atomic bomb being dropped. (Be forewarned, the scene is very graphic.)

...

1942 (the arcade version by Capcom, designed by Yoshiki Okamoto, 1984) was originally meant to be a sci-fi battle game. Some of the developers (including the CEO of Capcom, Kenzo Tsujimoto) went to see a movie entitled Zerosen Moyu (you can watch a trailer here) about two men who join the Japanese air force right before WWII. (It was based off a series by Kunio Yanagida which started being serialized in 1977.)

The story followed the Zero plane but is told from the perspective from the man who doesn't qualify as a pilot and joins the ground crew. It became the team's new inspiration.

It's not recorded why the perspective was from the American side (where the objective is to wipe out vast numbers of Japanese planes), but I'm hoping the story I've given leading to this has given a strong case how they could have considered such a thing; when the "war itself" becomes a tragedy rather than individual sides, it's possible to see from an opposing perspective. (What I have not found any evidence for was the theory that this was an accommodation for the international market; while sales were initially a slow burn -- according to the interview, this was because it was released the same time as IREM's hit Kung-Fu Master -- it did well in both the US and Japan.)

...

To dip a toe very briefly in present time for context, a recent (2015) Gallup International survey asked "Would you fight for your country?" 64 countries were surveyed. Japan scored at the very bottom of all countries, at 11%.

...

Sources:

Berger, T. (1993). From Sword to Chrysanthemum: Japan's Culture of Anti-militarism. International Security, 17(4), 119-150. doi:10.2307/2539024

Berry, M., & Sawada, C. (Eds.). (2017). Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia. University of Hawaii Press.

Burgess, J. (27 April 1986). Emperor Hirohito as Demigod and Living History. The Washington Post.

Gallup International (7 May 2015). WIN/Gallup International’s global survey shows three in five willing to fight for their country.

Gamest Magazine (April 1987). Interview with Kenzo Tsujimoto.

Gluck, C. (1990). The Idea of Showa. Daedalus, 119(3), 1-26. Retrieved May 23, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/20025314

Izumikawa, Y. (2010). Explaining Japanese Antimilitarism: Normative and Realist Constraints on Japan's Security Policy. International Security, 35(2), 123-160. Retrieved May 23, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/40981245

Koshiro, Y. (2001). Japan's World and World War II. Diplomatic History, 25(3), 425-441. Retrieved May 23, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/24914126

Saaler, S., & Szpilman, C. W. (Eds.). (2018). Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese History. Routledge.

For reasons, I decided an old answer of mine might be worth revisiting. One of the better I've done, if I might toot my own horn, nevertheless there were a few places I skimmed over and gave short shrift to. Not in a way that, in my opinion, weakened it as it was fairly well structured to begin with, but nevertheless, some people really just need things spelled out thrice... So I did a few revisions, added a few more sources, and expanded on a few more aspects of the controversy surrounding the allegations of US biowarfare in Korea. The additions mainly are focused on why the archival sources are considered reliable, and how they interweave with other available evidence from China itself.

Claims of biological and chemical warfare being committed by the US in Korea do rear up occasionally, and stem from several accusations leveled during the conflict by the USSR, China, and North Korea. At various points this included small pox, plague, cholera, anthrax, meningitis, and encephalitis, to name some of the materials alleged at various points, with the allegations tied into US spoils from the Japanese bioweapons program during WWII.

These weren’t minor either. The claims included thousands of aerial attacks over several months in North Korea and China. One such report, from Tianjin, reads as follows:

June 9, 1952. Insects were first discovered at 12 noon near the pier at the Tanggu Workers Union Hall. At 12:40 p.m., insects were discovered at the New Harbor Works Department, and at 1:30, in Beitang town. Insects were spread over an area of 2,002,400 square meters in New Harbor, and for over twenty Chinese miles [approximately ten kilometers] along the shore at Beitang. Insect elimination was carried out under the direction of the Tianjin Municipal Disinfection Team [xiaodu dui, literally, Poison Eradication Team]. Masses organized to assist in catching insects included 1,586 townspeople, 300 soldiers, and 3,150 workers. Individual insects were collected and then burned, boiled, or buried. Insect species included inchworms, snout moths, wasps, aphids, butterflies ... giant mosquitoes, etc. Samples of the insects were sent to the Central Laboratory in Beijing, where they were found to be infected with typhoid bacilli, dysentery bacilli, and paratyphoid.

The accusations were carried to the highest levels, thrown about in the United Nations, where the US of course denied them. International representatives were brought in to produce reports, which on the face supported the allegations, but were based almost entirely on testimony, having done essentially no field study or actual investigation of the area for evidence of the supposed biological material. Almost none, in fact, spoke Chinese or had any familiarity with the country, and the commissioners evidenced an incredible amount of credulity in admitting how staged much of what they were presented looked yet not drawing much doubt. As a Swedish commissioner noted, “We accepted the word of the Chinese scientists.”

In the end, this meant that nothing concrete was ever proven, and belief or dismissal over the next few decades likely said more about ones predisposition than anything else, as there was never any real solid proof of the accusations, but plenty of people were of course happy to ignore the American denials. In the Eastern Bloc press, it was an occasional refrain for decades as a reminder of Western perfidy - and of course remains the official stance of North Korea and China to my awareness. Some notable works accepted the allegations in the interim, some simply left the issue as “open”, and others rejected them for various reasons. A not untypical description of the “did they or didn’t they” reads like this piece from John Gittings in 1975:

The fact is that there is no a priori reason why the United States should not have contemplated, or actually used, germ weapons in Korea. There may be practical reasons of a technical nature why their use might be militarily counter-productive though this has not been seriously argued. After all chemical weapons are only slightly more easy to control than bacteriological weapons; both suffer from the military disadvantage that the "contaminated" area may spread to involve one's own troops. Nor - as I have demonstrated above - can American use of germ warfare be ruled out, by those who have used the argument in the past, on the grounds that the US would have been restrained by humanitarian considerations. Both sorts of weapons have been "morally outlawed" by the world community; both are anti-personnel devices which do not discriminate between military and civilian targets.

For all but the most fervent believers though, the matter finally closed in the late 1990s, when documents from the Soviet archives surfaced which provided fairly clear evidence that the accusations were knowingly made on false information as part of a smear campaign, initially published in a Japanese newspaper after being obtained by a journalist. Memos passed between the North Koreans, Chinese, and Soviets in 1952 and '53 - principally sent to Beria - make clear reference to falsifying evidence, including preparing false areas of exposure in advance of the Commissions arrival, and then, to ensure they wouldn’t discover the ruse:

The Koreans stated that the Americans had supposedly repeatedly exposed several areas of their country to plague and cholera. To prove these facts, the North Koreans, with the assistance of our advisers, created false areas of exposure. In June-July 1952, a delegation of specialists in bacteriology from the World Peace Council arrived in North Korea. Two false areas of exposure were prepared. In connection with this, the Koreans insisted on obtaining cholera bacteria from corpses, which they would get from China. During the period of the work of the delegation, which included academician N. Zhukov, who was an agent of the MGB, an unworkable situation was created for them, with the help of our advisers, in order to frighten them and force them to leave. In this connection, under the leadership of Lt. Petrov, adviser to the Engineering Department of the KPA, explosions were set off near the place where the delegation was staying and while they were in Pyongyang false air raise alarms were sounded.

Other documents detail the assistance of Soviet advisors in helping North Korean medical personnel write up the allegations, and even details proposals by the North Korean MVD proposing to use prisoners slated for execution as stand-ins, purposefully infecting them with plague to have the necessary dead bodies for the ruse.

It also makes clear that many involved in pressing the claims likely were in the dark about the entire process, with one memo noting only in Spring of 1953 that Foreign Minister Vyshinsky might have been informed by the Soviet Embassy in North Korea that the bioweapon allegations were false, and, relatedly suggesting that the USSR should now back away from such claims. Further memos to the Chinese accuse Mao of ‘misleading’ the USSR in no uncertain terms:

For Mao Zedong: The Soviet Government and the Central Committee of the CPSU were misled. The spread in the press of information about the use by the Americans of bacteriological weapons in Korea was based on false information. The accusations again the Americans were fictitious.

A later memo in turn saw Mao passing the blame down to military commanders in Korea.

While the exact genesis of organization and execution remains murky, the evidence is clear enough that North Korea and China concocted the evidence for the accusations, with at the very least the assistance and awarenesses by the Soviet Union. And given the limited extent of the memos, which only offer part of the picture, Soviet involvement may very well have been deeper and their later protests merely putting on a show to avoid potential fallout, as some commentators note that they find it unbelievable North Korea or China would have acted without explicit authorization from Stalin at that point in time.

This still hasn’t entirely stopped the accusations. In 1999, a year after the publication of the memos, North Korea reiterated their accusations against the United States at the United Nations, and books have continued to be published which assert the truth of the matter, although generally just repeating the same old canards and innuendos without engaging with any of the real counter-evidence.
While it is true that the documents were not published by the archives themselves, and instead were copies provided to a Japanese newspaper, this is often used in an effort to try and cast far more doubt on them than is warranted. Rather than some spurious piece of questionable material smuggled out of questionable origin, the source is quite well established, with the documents provided by a Russian researcher who had access to the Soviet Presidential Archive, where the documents originated from, and the existence of the documents was confirmed by multiple former Soviet officials living in Moscow, even if not by the government itself at that time, although the Russian government never denied their veracity. Topic experts of course also provided rigorous analysis, summed up ably by Kathryn Weatherby:

Their style and form do not raise suspicion. The specifics of persons, dates and events are consistent with evidence available from a wide array of other sources. As is apparent from the translations below, their contents are so complex and interwoven that it would have been extremely difficult to forge them. In short, the sources are credible.

⅓

I once wrote a post on the logistics of the Taiping Heavenly Army during an earlier Military History feature, so it seemed pertinent to repost it on this occasion:

Military Logistics of the Taiping Heavenly Army

As with last Floating Feature, I’d like to thank a fellow mod, this time /u/Gankom, for suggesting this topic.

As a preamble, I’d like to be indulgent for a moment and include a quote from a somewhat obscure novel by Jules Verne from 1879, titled The Tribulations of a Chinaman in China (Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine). The nineteenth novel in the Voyages Extraordinaires (and hence written after Journey to the Centre of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days), this piece is set against the backdrop of the post-Taiping period in the Lower Yangtze area, and is the story of one Kin-Fo, a rich young man bored with life who decides, after the failure of a major overseas investment, to take out a life insurance policy and arrange his death, with the payout going to his mentor, Wang (whom he hires as his own assassin), and to his fiancée. Hijinks ensue involving various parties, including bodyguards from the insurance company and a group of ex-Taiping bandits, until Kin-Fo finds out that the whole thing was a setup by Wang to teach him about the value of life, and all live happily ever after (the failure of Kin-Fo’s investment turns out to have been part of a contrived stock manipulation scheme, and he is now utterly loaded). The character of Wang is introduced specifically as an ex-Taiping, lying low after the defeat of the Taiping cause at the hands of the Qing loyalists and British intervention forces, and as part of his description of Wang, Verne has this to say about the Taiping:

The Tai-ping, the declared enemies of the Tartars, having strongly organized for rebellion, wished to replace the ancient dynasty of the Ming. They formed four distinct bands; the first under a black banner, appointed to kill; the second under a red banner, to set fire; the third under a yellow banner, to pillage and rob; and the fourth, under a white banner, were commissioned to provision the other three.

Verne is quite obviously broadly incorrect. But he seems to have genuinely done at least a modicum of research – he just seems to have conflated various elements together. The grouping of units under particular coloured banners (yellow, red, blue, white, black) is a feature of early Taiping military ordinances, the mistaken association of the Taiping with Ming revivalism was not an uncommon contemporary perception (see my answer on the Japanese response to the Taiping for more); and the use of a black flag specifically to signify ‘no quarter’ is attested in Augustus Lindley’s account of the Taiping, in particular his description of Taiping military arrangements. Much as I’d like to dissect Verne’s version of the Taiping, though, here I mainly want to highlight the third and fourth banners in the quoted passage: pillage and provisioning (which, of course, can be considered two sides of the same coin).

The term ‘logistics’, of course, can cover a whole slew of various activities, many of which could be considered entire spheres of activity in themselves – can, for example, military medicine fall under ‘logistics’? For the purposes of this writeup I’m mainly going to look at three main sub-areas, specifically as regards materiel (supplies and weapons): acquisition, distribution and transport.

Before getting into that, though, a brief overview of Taiping campaigns will be a useful guide to understanding certain logistical measures. Overall, we can distinguish the overall trends of the Taiping Civil War as follows:

1. 1851-52: The Taiping remain within a core base area in Guangxi, centred on Guiping and latterly Yongan.
2. 1852-53: The Taiping vacate Yongan and advance rapidly on the Yangtze, failing to take Changsha but successfully storming (among other places) Wuchang, Hankou, Hanyang, Anqing and Nanjing, but leave no garrisons until after establishing their capital at Nanjing (renamed Tianjing, the ‘Heavenly Capital’).
3. 1853-59: Based in Nanjing, most Taiping activity is focussed on consolidating the Lower Yangtze region as far as Qing loyalist troops (Mainly Zeng Guofan’s Hunan Army and Hu Linyi’s Hubei Army) will allow. The eastward limit seems to be Yangzhou, while the westward limit is Wuchang (lost permanently after 1855).
4. 1859-62: The Taiping lose ground in the west but manage to press eastward, taking most of Jiangsu except Shanghai, taking all of Jiangxi, and large parts of northern Zhejiang including the treaty port at Ningbo.
5. 1862-64: The establishment of new provincial militia forces under Li Hongzhang (Anhui Army, fighting in Jiangsu) and Zuo Zongtang (Chu (a.k.a. New Hunan) Army, fighting in Zhejiang), combined with an Anglo-French intervention campaign, causes the Taiping to be pushed back in the east as well; Nanjing falls to Zeng in July 1864.
6. 1864-68: Mopping-up campaigns against Taiping remnants largely concluded by 1866, but Taiping remnants remain at large as members of the Nian rebels in northern China until 1868.

This writeup focusses on periods 2 through 5, as the first and last periods are, comparatively speaking, poorly documented, especially as regards the internal documentation necessary to produce a picture of logistical arrangements.

I. Acquisition and Storage

For the first two years of the revolt, the Taiping lacked access to major economic bases. Their military resources thus had to be obtained through looting. To give just one example, the breakout from Yongan in 1852 was enabled through the acquisition of gunpowder supplies from nearby towns, according to the confessional statement of Taiping general Li Xiucheng in 1864:

We captured more than ten loads of powder and thus obtained ammunition, without which we would not have been able to get out of this encirclement, because we were besieged in Yongan without a scrap of powder.

However, the settling down of the Taiping and their new ability to established fixed depots somewhat altered how resources would be obtained. The Land System of the Heavenly Dynasty, the Taiping ‘manifesto’ issued in early 1854, specified that all food, money and such would be pooled in ‘sacred treasuries’, from which disbursements could be made as necessary. While this centralised system of collection and redistribution may well have been an ideal rather than a reality for civil administration, it did, in the end, appear to have been implemented for military purposes, albeit on a grand scale and perhaps in a manner not quite as utopian and beneficent as suggested in the Land System. Our first indication of the use of a local-scale collection and redistribution system comes from a proclamation issued some time in 1853:

The rice of the farming people of the world and the capital of the merchants all belong to the Heavenly Father. All must be turned over to the sacred treasury; every adult will be allowed one picul, and every child five pecks [of rice] for food.

The implication perhaps being that the remainder would be either stored, relocated to a higher-level storage centre, or used for the war effort.

With a fixed capital and a more positional strategy taking hold, the acquisition of supplies now could be done on a much larger scale, as more time could be devoted to it, and because the establishment of permanent depots allowed porters and ships to offload at them and go back to a collection point, rather than the army moving with all it could carry. Two order templates and one edict, likely produced in late 1853 or early 1854, give a clear indication of the simple scale of Taiping resource acquisition at this stage:

I order you, […], to ride in the Left Third Water Battalion, comprising thirteen hundred vessels. Select and lead your troops, and proceed to the regions of Nanchang in Jiangsi and Wuchang in Hubei. There, gather provisions for delivery to the Heavenly Capital. Do not disobey this or make a mistake.

You, official […], and brother […], employ eighteen hundred vessels and frighten the [Manchu] demons from Huangzhou and Hanyang. The provisions of rice which you gather must be delivered quickly and completely to the Heavenly Capital by boat. Be certain not to disobey this or make a mistake. It is necessary to be resourceful. The provisions must not be seized by the demons.

…North of the Yangtze River, the several places of Huang-p’o, [Huanggang?], and De’an [in Hubei] have been able to frighten the demons away and deliver twenty-three thousand piculs [approx. 1400 metric tonnes] of rice. All of it has been delivered and accepted. This is sufficient to display your resourcefulness and ability.

The fact that the Taiping were still taking grain from areas along the Yangtze they had already been suggests that they had not been able to empty the state granaries entirely before reaching the limits of their transport capacity, even if we grant that a harvest season had happened in between (given, of course, the likely disruption of that initial Taiping campaign on agricultural activity.)

So this is fresh for me, and a bit off the cuff, but a glimpse into the wonderful world of local military history that I have talked a bit about before.

My local military history research has focused on two different time periods: The First World War and the American Revolution. Research into each of these conflicts brings with it its own unique set of challenges, but are both equally as rewarding.

What I have essentially been doing is researching, at a very granular level, the men from my hometown (and surrounding region) who served in these two conflicts. Doing so has opened windows into the very interesting societies and communities from which these men came from. Most notably, are the varied connections that can be found at this level between people, the social links that bonded individuals and families together and the micro level human stories that emerge from such granular research.

One interesting individual comes from the Revolutionary War. Frederick Brewster was 16 in 1779 when he was first drafted for service in the Connecticut militia that year. According to his pension record and other surviving militia papers, he served a couple of months with a composite company from the area at Fort Griswold in Groton, Connecticut. The next two years saw him serve three more times, twice as a substitute. The first time he served as a substitute, it was for a member of the Hazen family. Later on, in September 1781 he served again as a substitute for a man named Joshua Kirkland (or Kirtland depending on the source). They were drafting men for Militia service then as on September 6th, Benedict Arnold had attacked New London and Groton. However, it seems that two months militia service would interfere with Kirkland’s marriage to Lydia Hazen on September 11th. Brewster would live out the rest of his life here, and these few military sources give an indication that he was trusted and well acquainted with the Hazen family, a connection that would otherwise have been unknown and lost if not for his pension record.

Similarly, a militiaman who served at the Battle of Saratoga (the 2nd Battle, at any rate) was Ezekiel Waterman Jr. Waterman was 48 at the time and was from a wealthy local family with many ties. He himself was well off financially. On October 25th, 1777 he deserted the militia Regiment and seemingly headed for home. Burgoyne’s army had already surrendered, so he likely felt that he had nothing to gain from hanging around Albany in the pouring rain. He was a family man with responsibilities, and only a couple days earlier 14 men of his company had been sent home. For this, his only punishment was likely a fine which he could absorb handily. It would not be the first fine he absorbed. Waterman shows up in a recent biography of Benedict Arnold, The Tragedy of Benedict Arnold: An American Life, when the author Joyce Lee Malcom was describing where Arnold grew up. Waterman had sworn during church in the early 1770s, and was given a fine of £10. Unsaid by the book’s author, is that Waterman was Benedict Arnold’s second cousin, as they shared a great-grandfather (Arnold’s mother, Hannah, was from the Waterman family). Both Arnold and Waterman were at Saratoga in 1777, just in very different circumstances.

This research on Revolutionary War veterans is very personal, and sometimes very scattered due to a paucity of sources, which are only further hampered by issues of class and race – the wealthy white residents of the area are generally more likely to have left a written trace, but there are some exceptions such as soldier’s pension applications – especially those from 1818-1831 which required an applicant to showcase financial need.

With the First World War, on the other hand, there are many more sources available, and even photographs! While this sort of research is still granular, as I am looking at individuals, I am able to say a lot more about the “big picture”. The Town of Colchester, for instance has slightly surprising demographics. Of the 79 men drafted (or very early on, volunteered) for service in any branch, 23 were Jewish – that is 29%. Overall, 68 men from Colchester served in the Army or Marines, with 22 of the town’s Jewish veterans being in the Army or Marine Corps – or 32%.

This was surprising to me, and upon doing more research it led me to the interesting discovery that during the early part of the 20th century, there was an organization which wanted to “Americanize” recent Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe by training them to become farmers. Colchester proved to be an opportune location for this organization. Its main economic bedrock, a local factory, closed in the early 1890s and with it went other businesses. Younger people sought to move out of town for better economic prospects, and to not necessarily take over their parent’s farms. This meant that there were enough cheap farms that this organization could help Jewish immigrants it enticed get mortgages and training to farm. As a result, many Jewish families moved to Colchester, and there was a very vibrant Jewish community through the 1950s (although even then there were complaints from local Jewish residents that it hadn’t been the same as it was in the 1920s and 30s!). There is in fact still a local Jewish community in Colchester, although the demographics have shifted a lot and they are no longer ~30%-50% of the town’s population as in the 1910s.

Through this, one of the many aspects of the American Expeditionary Force in the First World War is revealed. It was filled with many immigrants and first generation Americans. Colchester is no exception. 8 of the 30 men who went overseas to France from Colchester were Jewish, or 26%. Seven of those 30 became casualties: three were wounded, two died from disease, one who died in an accident, and one who was killed in action. Of those seven casualties, three were immigrants, and three were Jewish.

The only man KIA was Private Samuel Buchalter, who immigrated to the United States from what is now Belarus with his parents when he was a child. Samuel was an infantryman in Company D, 26th Infantry Regiment 1st Division, and was killed during the Battle of Cantigny in May 1918. A comrade later recorded that on the day he was killed, Buchalter had an “omen he would be killed”. While after getting into the lines it seems that some of Buchalter’s fears had dissipated, he was killed by a shell. His Platoon Sergeant, Edward Nesterowicz, was knocked down in the same blast (not the first that day) and was also later killed by a shell. Before either of them had been killed, Private Emil Vanker from Detroit was also killed by shellfire. Buchalter was born in the Russian Empire. Nesterowicz was ethnically Polish and was born in Austria-Hungary. Vanker was the only one of the three who was born in the United States, but his parents had been from Belgium. The three would initially be buried in the same shell hole. And after the war each individual was repatriated. Vanker is buried in Detroit, Buchalter in Colchester, and while Nesterowicz’s body was repatriated to Poland, the location seems to be unknown.

So what is the point? Why tell you about Colchester, Samuel Buchalter, Edward Netwerowicz, Emil Vanker, and the Jewish demographics of Colchester’s AEF contingent? It’s because the American Expeditionary Force represented the demographics and makeup of the greater American population, and not always equally. By studying places like Colchester, and the immigrant experience in a place like Eastern Connecticut, one can glean much of the human experience during the First World War in the United States. It can tell you about these human connections, and the ways that surface level looks at any area can be deceiving. Even in this primarily rural, and overwhelmingly white and Christian region, there were many kinds of people who had a wide range of experiences during the First World War. Often, no matter the time period, the experiences of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in this region are written out of the story and it's important to be able to highlight those who weren't white, anglo-saxon protestants.

I did a basic write-up about Martello towers for my friend in Dublin, Ireland. I reproduce it here.

Yesterday I wrote about a museum housed in a restored Martello tower^(*). These circular towers are an important part of Irish, and Dublin, history.

Martello towers were built between 1805 and 1812 as defensive forts against possible invasion by Emperor Napoleon. They were modeled on a Corsican fort (Torra di Mortella/Tour de Mortella) that the British tried and failed to break into in 1794.

A total of 103 were built along the Kent, Sussex, and Essex coasts in England; and the east coast of Ireland. 50 towers were built in Ireland alone, mostly concentrated on Dublin Bay.

The towers could withstand cannon fire: built of brick - 13 ft/3.96m thick on the seaward side - they stood up to 40 ft/12.19m high and were equipped with a rotating cannon on the roof. To guard against easy access by the enemy, the entrance was 10-20 off the ground. There were slits in the walls for musket fire and sometimes a moat to further protect the fortification.

Some had rainwater collection systems to provide drinking water, and a single tower housed 15-25 men: up to 24 for a garrison and 1 officer. Their quarters were on the upper of the main floors, the lower main floor held the powder store and supplies, and the lowest floor contained the food store and water tank.

With the development and increase of hand-held firearms throughout the rest of the 19th century, Martello towers gradually became obsolete. Today, some are in ruins while others have been restored and/or converted.

21 of these towers still stand today in County Dublin, many of which have been restored and converted into luxury homes, museums, and guest houses.

Of course there's a blog abt the Irish Martello towers. Dublin-specific locations: North Coast and South Coast .

^(* There is a museum called Ye Olde Hurdy Gurdy Museum of Vintage Radio in Howth, Dublin. It's dedicated to the history of vintage radios, gramophones, TVs, telephones and related items collected by one Pat Herbert over 40 years. In 2003, his collection found a home in a restored Martello Tower in Howth.)

^(The name comes from a remark made by Prime Minister Sean Lernass - he was touring Radio Eireann in the 60s and he referred to it as "the old hurdy-gurdy". Fitting.)

^(Addendum: Speaking of the museum: in my research into Martello towers, I found the site:) ^(Ye Olde Hurdy-Gurdy)

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So two years ago, I wrote about what might be termed formation marching or formation contests in the three kingdoms. The novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms takes the idea of eight gates into feats of wonder that links Shu-Han strategists. Liu Bei's first proper adviser in Xu Shu against the bumbling Cao Ren then his (initially reluctant) replacement Zhuge Liang against the only man who can stop him Sima Yi then Zhuge Liang's apprentice and the last hero of Shu-Han against his rival Deng Ai and Sima Wang.

It is a way of asserting the intellectual superiority of the Shu-Han commanders as their opponents blunder into the traps or admit their inferiority of knowledge, it shows the skill of command as their men become perfectly arranged in evolving formations without collapsing. While the Wei commanders, skilled or hapless, find themselves outwitted and their troops surrounded, lost and in deep trouble.

As the thread mentions, the idea is borrowed by the 2007 film Red Cliffs. A film about one of the most iconic battles of the era where Cao Cao, future King of Wei, Liu Bei the future Shu-Han Emperor and Sun Quan the future Emperor of Wu all have forces committed to a (mostly) naval campaign. This, being a naval campaign, is not one the novel uses for it but it looks spectacular on screen as people shift and surround the cavalry.

Because I regret not going into this at the time, it is perhaps one of the worst battles for any side to attempt to pull off such complexity but can also be used to show why, even in normal circumstances, this was not an idea that historical commanders of the time tried.

Armies of the Time

The collapse of the Han in 190 and the fighting of regional warlords had led to a loss of control, someone who could bring their people and troops (of whatever quality) was to be welcomed. Local leaders who had the resources and local clout to sway people behind them and keep them loyal to you, local defence groups, bandits or rebels who might be swayed over. But those figures might not yet be so inclined to follow the central regime but the local leader or he is family.

Equipment was not a guarantee, Lu Meng by a bit of drilling and dressing his men smartly got a promotion in 200 under Sun Quan. As a sign of Yuan Shao's power as Cao Cao's side tried to big up their victory over him in 200, it was said Yuan Shao had enough full armour to equip a 10th of his 100,000 force at Guandu.

Armies could be a mass of uncoordinated bodies with the key figures being officers and their loyal companions, acting as bodyguards and the nucleus of the army. If one couldn't get oneself an advantage before the battle, quick surprises and brave warriors trying to break the lines and lead to a collapse of the other rabble were the order of the day. Once an army was routed, it was very difficult to get them back under control.

Formations were not unknown, officers did train their soldiers and once a firmer administrative control, troops raised could be trained but he was still relying on officers with their handpicked companions to provide important leadership in the fray, to set an example as a spear to drive forward troops who were not always well equipped nor well trained.

Alas, the kind of officers who put themselves in harm's way at the front, bring fore of personality and braver to inspire others was not always meek, shy, cooperative figures. One challenge for a ruler and any commander was trying to keep various egos from not spilling over into a major problem that undercut the army. Keeping them loyal and agreeing to a simple plan could be a challenge enough.

The kind of grand training and coordination required for swirling changing troops who know where to go in precise complex detail, is questionable even in times of peace. the Later Han relied on local levies and troops reinforced, if need be, by mercenaries from nearby people and a small professional army. None of the civil war factions reached the administrative and resource power of the collapsed dynasty, trying to pull off something so complex with the disparate uncoordinated troops and not entirely reliable officers would have been a recipe for chaos and defeat.

Cao Cao

The controller of the Han Emperor was leading a large force south. A man who, via agriculture reforms, use of the unhappy Emperor, considerable military skill and some major strokes of luck, had risen from a junior warlord to the most powerful leader in China. He had taken advantage of the death of the Governor of Jing Liu Biao to seize control, via the surrender of Biao's son and successor Liu Zong, and now in the winter of 208 sought to take out old rival Liu Bei and pressure Sun Quan into submission.

His claims of 800,000 fleet hadn't worked in pushing the surrender but with said to be 250,000 force (though even that might be inflated), he was still wielding an unusually sizeable force. However opponents had spotted flaws, Liu Bei's adviser Zhuge Liang and Sun Quan's chief commander Zhou Yu argued to Sun Quan that Cao Cao's army had marched a long way across Jing with the cavalry having been racing to chase Liu Bei's flight south (over 74 miles in a day at one point), and would be exhausted. Both pointed to their lack of experience in river warfare (though had trained for river warfare in the north in Ye) but Zhou Yu also mentioned lack of experience in the marshland's climates would likely lead to illness (Cao Cao's forces would be hit with a major epidemic which he would blame for the defeat).

Cao Cao had seized control of Liu Biao's naval forces in Jiangling, and his conquest of Jing was said to provide him with 60-70,000 soldiers including that naval force that would at least provide naval experience. Zhou Yu questioned how Cao Cao's exhausted main army could hope to keep these new soldiers under control while Zhuge Liang questioned their loyalty. While some of Liu Biao's court, particularly figures in the more northern regions, had been sympathetic to Cao Cao (or were quite willing to become sympathetic), not all in Jing were going to have been similarly amiable. Liu Biao was a popular governor who had provided stable rule while Cao Cao had been in conflict on and off with Liu Biao since 197. Liu Biao had turned his support to a more independent southern strategy, suddenly being under northern control under a regime they had fought may not have been met with rejoicing unconfined.

So one part of an unusually large army was exhausted and quickly fell sick, fighting on land and in a manner they were unused to. The other sizeable part of the army had newly surrendered and though more experienced, their loyalty at this point was in doubt. Probably not the ideal time for complicated ideas like creating a mystifying maze of confusion

If that is a one-off, what about normal times? Cao Cao did have a degree of central control including agricultural garrisons and military families, while initially relying on leaders and their personal followers, he eventually would be able to move commanders away from their troops but sometimes with an eye on the need to be careful. Troops could be loyal to their local leader who looked after them and a personal following could be in the thousands. Long-time follower Li Dian, who had inherited troops, was able to bring over ten thousand personal followers to help populate Cao Cao's capital of Ye.

The Qingzhou troops, former Turbans from Qing province who had negotiated service in 192 after conflict with Cao Cao as the new Governor of Yan, seem to have negotiated hereditary positions within their own ranks and were still, though less visible after their unreliable service in the 190s, noted on Cao Cao's death in 220 of making a demonstration and having to be quickly mollified with plundering rights.

Even then, there were limits, attempts to reinforce the newly conquered Hanzhong in 215 would be hampered when troops from the newly conquered Liang province refused to go and only some diplomatic work and reinforcements of more reliable troops from elsewhere prevented a full-scale mutiny. Plans were changed regarding what to do with the troops and their followers, it was a reminder that even when Cao Cao controlled most of the land, the local interests of the troops and their leaders were still a factor.

What of Cao Cao's officers? That very year, Cao Cao had to send Zhao Yan to key garrisons encircling the imperial capital as three of his most senior commanders Zhang Liao, Yu Jin and Yue Jin were at odds. Zhao Yan had to try to soothe things and coordinate their plans. A few years previously in 203, Cao Cao had "won" against the Yuan siblings when he took a city in Ji province and then pulled back. Cao Cao's memorials that year include remarking it was time to bring back punishment for failure and suggesting his officers had not fought and when they did fight they had not fought well.

As a reminder: Please do not post top-level questions in this thread.

It is not a Megathread for questions on the topic. It is specifically intended for users to share interesting pieces of history on the topic at question. If you have questions, submit them as normal.