Campaign in The West
As Liu began to increase his influence in the east, he was pondering whom to entrust with an army to head west to try to take over territories while Emperor Gengshi's forces battled the Chimei. In 24, he commissioned Deng with a relatively small force of 20,000. Deng was quickly able to capture the Hedong (河東, modern southern Shanxi) region for Liu. After Liu declared himself emperor in 25, he gave Deng the title of prime minister and created him the Marquess of Zhan—the same title as Xiao He, his ancestor Emperor Gao's famed prime minister—implicitly comparing Deng to Xiao. Deng, at age 23, was the youngest prime minister in Han history.
As Chimei forces destroyed Emperor Gengshi's later that year, forcing Emperor Gengshi's surrender, Deng decided to let the militarily mighty but administratively inept Chimei generals wear themselves out, and chose not to engage them directly, but rather made raids to harass them and meanwhile pacified the modern northern Shaanxi region by treating the people with kindness. Although he became popular among the people who were tired and fearful of Chimei's pillages, Emperor Guangwu was not pleased with his failure to engage the Chimei. Deng, reluctantly, engaged the Chimei in a number of battles but had limited success, perhaps showing that his reluctance to engage the Chimei was correct. Eventually, as he predicted, the Chimei wore out their welcome in the Guanzhong region after they pillaged and destroyed wherever they went, and they were forced to retreat east. Forces led by Emperor Guangwu himself was able to corner the Chimei and force their surrender in 27.
Read more about this topic: Deng Yu
Famous quotes containing the words campaign in, campaign and/or west:
“You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”
—Mario Cuomo (b. 1932)
“The winter is to a woman of fashion what, of yore, a campaign was to the soldiers of the Empire.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“Where there’s more of singing and less of sighing,
Where there’s more of giving and less of buying,
And a man makes friends without half trying
That’s where the West begins.”
—Arthur Chapman (1873–1935)