Xuande’s Exodus from Xinye and Fan

Xuande’s Exodus from Xinye and Fan is a retreat transformed by a choice: Xuande will not save his own forces by leaving the ordinary people behind. With Cao Cao’s army bearing down and neither Xinye nor Fan defensible, Xuande and Kong Ming ask the people what they want to do. They choose to follow, and the resulting exodus—eventually numbering more than one hundred thousand—puts Xuande’s protection of civilians in direct conflict with the speed and safety a military retreat demands.

Causes and the decision to leave

The immediate crisis follows Xuande’s refusal to surrender to Cao Cao. Shan Fu warns him that Cao Cao’s offer of clemency is a political maneuver, that eight armies are ready to attack, and that Fan cannot be defended. After Shan Fu returns to Cao Cao and confirms Xuande will not yield, Xuande and Kong Ming recognize that Cao Cao will bring the full strength of his army against them. They must leave Fan, as they had already left Xinye, but the question of what to do about the residents of both places cannot be separated from the retreat.

Xuande and Kong Ming agree not to abandon the people and ask them directly whether they want to go. The people cry out that they will follow Xuande. Their answer makes the choice collective, but it does not make the journey easy: the retreat begins immediately, carrying a population as well as an army away from the advancing threat.

The exodus and its human cost

The flight is marked by the effort of the people to care for one another. The young help the elderly, parents carry their children, and men look after women as the crowd moves onward amid cries of distress. The people’s mutual care is set against the harsh necessity of leaving home under threat; this is no swift military maneuver but a slow movement of families and dependents along with Xuande’s force.

Xuande takes the suffering as his own responsibility. Calling the distress his fault, he attempts to throw himself into a river, and his closest commanders intervene in time to prevent him. The episode makes the cost of his policy personal: he does not treat the people as an incidental burden of military movement, but as lives for whom he feels answerable. His commanders’ intervention keeps him with the very group whose safety and suffering have become inseparable from his decisions.

Xiangyang and the onward retreat

At Xiangyang, Xuande’s party is refused entry by Liu Zong, the younger son of Liu Biao, who fears Cao Cao’s vengeance if he offers them shelter. The crowd gathered outside the city walls is visibly suffering, but the defenders’ fear prevails. Cao Mao and Zhang Yun order archers on the walls to shoot at the people outside, turning the gate into a threat rather than a refuge.

Wei Yan breaks with the defenders. Calling them traitors and declaring Xuande virtuous, he fights his way to the gate, opens it, and lowers the drawbridge, urging the people to enter and kill those he condemns. Wen Ping immediately attacks Wei Yan, and disorder erupts inside Xiangyang. The breach does not secure a safe passage for Xuande’s entire following. Watching the violence, Kong Ming advises abandoning the attempt to enter, and the party turns instead toward Jiangling.

Protection as a political principle

By this point, more than one hundred thousand people are traveling with Xuande. His officers urge him to hurry to Jiangling, even if that means leaving them behind, because the slow pace exposes him to serious danger while Cao Cao is already at the river preparing to cross. Xuande refuses. His decision prioritizes the people’s continued protection over the immediate military advantage of moving faster, and places his own safety at risk rather than make the crowd pay for it.

The retreat’s significance lies not in a recorded victory but in the test it imposes on Xuande’s claim to rule justly. Earlier, he tells Kong Ming that he wants the land governed by justice despite his own weakness and failures. Kong Ming’s counsel presents Cao Cao’s control of the emperor and command of a vast army as a power Xuande cannot directly oppose, while treating Sun Quan as a potential ally and Jingzhou as the region where the future will be decided. Against that strategic calculation, the exodus shows what Xuande’s preferred legitimacy means in practice: the people are not to be discarded when protecting them becomes costly. His refusal both slows the retreat and establishes the ethical contrast on which his claim to benevolent leadership rests.