Background
From a modern political-history perspective, the background of the Second Memorial on the Expedition (Houshu Shibiao) is fundamentally different from that of the First. The First Memorial was written before the Diyicibeifa, its purpose being "why we must send troops" and "how to govern the state in my absence." The Second Memorial was written after the failure of the First Expedition, the defeat at Jieting, the execution of Ma Su, and the battering of morale up and down the hierarchy — its purpose was "why we must continue to send troops." In the winter of the sixth year of Jian'an Xing, Zhao Yun's death from illness was a further heavy blow — the last senior general among the Five Tiger heroes had died, and Shuhan's reserves of military capital shrank sharply [c:16299]. Against this backdrop of compounding internal and external setbacks, voices within the court saying "it is not yet time to act rashly" grew dramatically louder. If Zhuge Liang could not silence those voices, Shuhan would pivot to defensive contraction, and the strategic goal of "restoring the old capital" would remain forever a slogan. The Second Memorial was produced under precisely this pressure of "the legitimacy of the northern expedition must be argued all over again."
Principal Figures
There were three principal figures in this event: Zhuge Liang, Emperor Liu Chan, and Yang Yi. Zhuge Liang as author of the memorial carried a dual identity — both Chancellor and commander of the northern expedition; he had to use a single document to simultaneously persuade the court, motivate the army, and consolidate his own authority. Emperor Liu Chan was "undecided and hesitant" in this event [c:16299]; he did not actively oppose the northern expedition, but he did not actively support it either. This posture of "passive acceptance" was the constant mode of the entire reign. Yang Yi, as Chief of Staff, presented the memorial at court; his very presence told every courtier that this document was not a "suggestion" but "a decision the Chancellor has already reached." This personnel arrangement communicated Zhuge Liang's political intent more powerfully than the text of the memorial itself.
Core Issues
The central issue was a strategic debate of "take the initiative and strike vs. sit on defense and preserve oneself." The core arguments of the court's conservative faction were: the First Expedition had already failed; another expedition carried even greater risk; Shuhan's national strength was insufficient to sustain continuous war; the right course was to wait for the right moment and for internal changes within Caowei before seeking to advance. In the Second Memorial, Zhuge Liang offered a three-layered rebuttal against this line of reasoning. First, the legitimacy argument of "Han and the rebel are incompatible" — Shuhan claimed to be the legitimate continuation of the Han dynasty; abandoning the northern expedition would amount to tacitly accepting Caowei's legitimacy, a political philosophy dead-end. Second, the national-strength analysis of "sitting still will doom us" — Shuhan held one zhou against Caowei's nine; the gap could only widen over time, not shrink; without taking the initiative to attack, the power gap would put Shuhan in an even more passive situation in ten or twenty years. Third, the personal commitment of "I will exhaust myself until death" — Zhuge Liang pledged his very life as security, elevating the northern expedition from a state policy to his personal political mission; this "devoting oneself to death in service" commitment made it nearly impossible for any opponent to rebut from a position of moral authority.
Political Consequences
The most immediate consequence was that the Emperor approved the memorial and troops were dispatched — Shuhan launched the Diercibeifa [c:16299]. But the true political consequences of the Second Memorial extended far beyond this. First, "gong gong jin cui, si er hou yi" — "I will exhaust my strength in devoted service, and cease only at death" — became one of the supreme defining phrases of the "model loyal minister" in Chinese political culture; Zhuge Liang used it to secure his place at the pinnacle of the loyal-official genealogy through all subsequent dynasties. From Su Shi to Yue Fei, virtually every statesman who wished to express the political commitment of "devoting himself to the state" cited this phrase. Second, the Second Memorial locked Shuhan's strategic path onto "active northern expedition," a path inherited after Zhuge Liang's death by Jiang Wei — the legitimating origin of Jiang Wei's nine expeditions into the Central Plains lay precisely in the Second Memorial. From this perspective, the Second Memorial's influence on Shuhan's fate exceeded that of any single concrete battle: it caused Shuhan, with national strength far inferior to its opponent's, to sustain offensive pressure for thirty years — exhausting its national strength while also, through sustained high-tempo activity, delaying Caowei's consolidation of the western frontier. Third, the authenticity of the Second Memorial has been debated by successive generations (the San Guozhi biography does not include it; it is preserved only in the Pei commentary's citation of the Hanjin Chunqiu), but regardless of whether the author was truly Zhuge Liang, the political will of "persisting despite knowing it cannot succeed" that it represents has become the central symbol of the Shuhan spirit.
Counterfactual Analysis
What would have happened if Zhuge Liang, after the failure of the First Expedition, had switched to a defensive strategy and chosen to no longer take the initiative in northward campaigns? The most probable outcome: Shuhan would have gained a short-term breathing space; its national strength might have partially recovered over five to ten years; but with no sustained pressure against it, Caowei would have completed the integration of the north and west at a faster pace, and the gap in national strength between Shuhan and Caowei would have expanded at an accelerating rate. Twenty years later, Shuhan's problem would no longer have been "can an active northern campaign succeed?" but "can the defense hold?" — precisely the real situation in which Shuhan found itself when Deng Ai crossed Yinping. A second counterfactual: if Zhuge Liang had failed to suppress the "sit and defend" faction at court and the northern expedition had been shelved, when Jiang Wan and Fei Yi took over, Shuhan's "active posture" would have been non-existent, and Jiang Wei could never have launched his nine campaigns against the Central Plains. Seen from this angle, the Second Memorial was essentially a "politically lasting testament" through which Zhuge Liang locked in Shuhan's strategic path for the next thirty years. Its actual effect may well have been to accelerate the exhaustion of Shuhan's national strength; yet it also allowed Shuhan to live out its final thirty years with dignity and agency rather than passively awaiting destruction. This is a classic strategic choice of "active destruction vs. passive decline" — there is no standard answer, but Zhuge Liang chose the former, and used a brief memorial to make that choice a thousand-year cultural memory.