Romance of the Three Kingdoms (novel)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

** Banquets were incredibly common, though. For example, when Guan Yu joined Cao Cao, Cao threw banquets once every ''three days'' in order to win him over. The only reason they seem dangerous to us is that [[Law of Conservation of Detail|we usually only hear about the ones where something bad happens.]]

*** Also, banquets were commonly political. It would be politically bad manners to decline them.

** It's hard not to bask in the glory of a million man army and believe that you can rest safely in the safety of numbers and experience.

** He also basically made the same mistake Napoleon did: he underestimated just how badly an army is weakened by unfamiliar climate and fatigue. His army was made up of Northerners, who were unused to the warm weather and had never been on a ship before. This combined with tropical diseases (against which they had no immunity) and weariness due to the long campaign meant his army was at only a tiny fraction of its effective strength. Had he taken steps to counteract these factors, things might not have gone so badly for him.

** The way I looked at it, Cao Cao sort of made the right moves to counteract his weakness in naval warfare. He even wrote off an enemy fire attack because he knew the winds would only send the fire back onto their own fleet. Honestly, he lost because of the winds blowing in a different direction than he knew they would. Honestly, would you have foresaw that move either?

 

[[Category:Literature/Headscratchers]]