Battle of Kaiyang

When the Battle of Kaiyang ended, the war in Xu Province came to an end. The Cao army which consisted of 100,000 soldiers, adding Liu Bei, Liu Bei’s forces of 20,000 soldiers would sum up to a total of 120,000 soldiers. With the leading of Military Counselor Guo Jia and the brave generals like Cao Ren, Xiahou brothers, Yu Jin, Li Dian, Xu Huang and Xu Chu, they had conquered the Xu Province, but Lu Bu broke through their siege and escaped.

After the war, Cao Cao was distressed for losing more than 50,000 out of his 120,000 soldiers. The saddest part for him was to lose his precious Ferocious Cavalry. Before the battle his elite cavalry consisted of 3000 elite soldiers. After the battle they were left with less than 300 wounded soldiers. Training a single soldier of Ferocious Cavalry was equal to training 10 normal soldiers, which means losing all 3,000 riders of Ferocious Cavalry were equal to losing 30,000 infantries. That counted only for the rider’s training without considering the loss of horses and equipment.

The battle also cost Lu Bu dearly. Originally he had 70,000 defenders. With the Formation Breaker and Bing Province Wolf Cavalry, he had a force of a total of 75,000 people. At the end, only around 2,500 soldiers survived. He had lost not only Xu Province, but also 4 generals: Song Xian, Wei Xu, Hou Cheng and Cao Xing. He was left with only Zhang Liao, Gao Shun, and Zang Ba. Among the 5,000 warhorses that Liu Mang brought to Kaiyang, only less than 4,500 had survived. Most of the horses died under Guo Jia’s volley fire.