《资治通鉴·汉纪》373-2｜李广利首战大宛国，打得有多惨？

Summary

This 芮淇讲透资治通鉴 episode supplies the failed first expedition that precedes 汉武帝’s state-scale second campaign against 大宛. Western Regions states close their gates and deny food and water, so 李广利 attacks towns for provisions, reaches 郁成 with a depleted and exhausted force, loses heavily, and returns to Dunhuang with fewer than one or two tenths of the original army. When he requests a pause and reinforcement, Wudi bars retreat through Yumen Pass and leaves the survivors at Dunhuang.

The second branch reconstructs 赵破奴’s capture more fully. A planned defection by a Xiongnu Left Grand Commandant is exposed before Zhao can receive him; Zhao’s force is surrounded on its return, he is captured after leaving camp alone at night to seek water, and fear of punishment after losing the commander helps turn command collapse into the capture of the whole army. Together the two failures show that distance, food, water, intelligence, and command continuity can defeat an army before or apart from a decisive battle.

Key Claims

• In 104 BCE, Western Regions states along Li Guangli’s route refuse food and water and close their gates rather than support the Han expedition against Dayuan.
• Li responds by attacking towns for provisions and abandoning those that cannot be taken quickly, turning the advance into repeated local combat and attrition.
• By the time the army reaches Yucheng, it is small, hungry, and exhausted; its attack fails with heavy losses before it reaches Dayuan’s capital.
• Fewer than one or two tenths of the expedition reportedly return to Dunhuang, where Li asks to suspend the campaign and return later with more troops.
• Wudi rejects retreat, orders that soldiers entering Yumen Pass be executed, and forces the survivors to remain at Dunhuang.
• A separate Han plan to receive a defecting Xiongnu Left Grand Commandant fails after the plot is exposed and the chanyu kills the would-be defector.
• Zhao Ponu’s returning force of more than twenty thousand cavalry is surrounded by a reported eighty thousand Xiongnu cavalry; Zhao leaves camp alone at night for water and is captured.
• After the commander’s loss, officers fear punishment if they return without him, and the source says this helps produce the capture of the entire force before Xiongnu raids the Han frontier.

Key Quotes

“士卒不患战而患饥” - the source’s compact explanation that the troops’ binding constraint was hunger rather than willingness to fight.

“军吏恐亡将而诛，莫相劝而归” - the command-and-punishment mechanism used to explain why the surrounded force does not organize a return after Zhao Ponu’s capture.

Connections

• 李广利 - commander whose first Dayuan expedition culminates through corridor denial, forced local attacks, hunger, and attrition before the main objective.
• 大宛 - distant target protected in practice by the refusal of intermediate Western Regions states to sustain Han’s advance.
• 汉武帝 - ruler who refuses the requested pause and converts retreat from a failed expedition into a punishable act.
• 赵破奴 - commander whose failed reception mission ends in encirclement, personal capture, and loss of the army.
• 匈奴 - power that exposes the defection plan, kills the internal ally, concentrates superior cavalry, and exploits the resulting command collapse.
• 边境远征过度 - the Dayuan branch shows an expedition reaching operational exhaustion before the principal target.
• 决断型资源投入 - the first failure establishes why the second expedition required not just more troops but a supported corridor, transport, engineering, and provisions.
• 边疆战略成本分型 - both defeats make supply loss, foregone alternatives, command failure, and punishment incentives part of frontier cost accounting.
• Hanji 374-1 - continuation from Zhao Ponu’s capture and the failed first expedition to the court dispute over renewing the Dayuan war.

Contradictions

• No settled factual contradiction with existing wiki content was found. The episode fills the missing first-expedition and Zhao Ponu mission sequence between Hanji 373-1 and Hanji 374-1.
• Narrative-scope tension: Hanji 376-2 compresses Zhao Ponu’s 103 BCE action as an expedition against the Xiongnu Left Wise King, while this source centers a failed reception of a defecting Left Grand Commandant followed by attack from Xiongnu left-wing forces. The wiki preserves both episode formulations rather than silently treating every title and office as identical.
• Transcript normalization: “御城” is routed to the established 郁成 campaign location, and “御门关” is read as Yumen Pass; “郡基山” and the general’s “郡基” title remain source-scoped transcription forms.
• Force totals, distances, casualty ratios, exact route, dialogue, the defector’s office, Zhao Ponu’s solitary water search, officer motives, and the whole-army capture mechanism remain episode-attributed pending primary-source comparison.