Background
From the seventeenth year of Jian'an onward, Liu Zhang — acting on the invitation of Zhang Song and Fa Zheng — welcomed Liu Bei into Yizhou with the aim of jointly resisting Zhang Lu, only to have invited a wolf into the house. From the raising of troops at Jiameng to the siege of Chengdu, the Yizhou campaign dragged on for more than three years, exhausting the province's armies and people. The final card Liu Zhang held was that Chengdu had high walls and a deep moat, with enough provisions to sustain a year-long resistance — in theory the material conditions for a prolonged defense still existed. Yet the true crisis of the Liuzhangjituan was not logistics but the collapse of political credibility: local magnate clans had been defecting to Liu Bei one after another, and the would-be external rescuer Zhang Lu, manipulated by Yang Song's slanders, had instead pressured Ma Chao into switching his allegiance to Liu Bei and closing the ring around Chengdu from the north. When Ma Chao rode up to the walls and called for surrender, and Liu Zhang, climbing to view the ramparts, collapsed against the parapet in shock, the will to resist had already been shattered — in symbolic terms — before the material conditions had been exhausted.
Key Figures
The inner monologue of Liu Zhang is deliberately amplified by the Romance: he admits that "my father and I have governed Shu for more than twenty years, yet have bestowed no benevolence or grace upon the common people," and lays all the suffering of three years of warfare at his own feet. This posture repackages a militarily forced capitulation as a morally grounded choice motivated by concern for the people's welfare, granting Liu Zhang the dignity befitting a former lord. The voices urging a fight to the death — such as Dong He's firmness and Li Gui's hard line — are passed over in a single stroke here, reflecting the Romance's preference for the template of "a benevolent lord versus passionate subordinates." On Liu Bei's side, the envoy sent to negotiate the final surrender was not a famous general but the counselor Jian Yong, who accomplished the task through the art of language; when he faced the Yizhou man Qin Mi's rebuke outside the walls he displayed graceful deference, echoing Liu Bei's own tearful handclasp and declaration that "it was not that I failed to practice benevolence and righteousness — circumstances left me no other choice." Together they assembled the ritual order of a "peaceful transfer of power." Zhuge Liang, Fa Zheng, Ma Chao, and other powerful figures were deliberately pushed to the background during the surrender ceremony, so that the political transfer would appear as "a mutual bow between lord and minister" rather than "military conquest."
Core Issues
This act of surrender was in essence a transfer of political power, not a mere capitulation under the city walls. Three core issues were at stake. First, the continuation and advancement of the old Yizhou bureaucratic apparatus — Liu Bei promoted more than sixty officials wholesale, including Yan Yan, Fa Zheng, Dong He, Xu Jing, Pang Xi, Liu Ba, Huang Quan, Li Yan, Fei Guan, and Qiao Zhou, absorbing Liu Zhang's entire political staff into the new Shuhan bureaucratic sequence. Second, the balance of posts between the Jingzhou old guard and Yizhou natives — Zhuge Liang became military adviser; Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun, Huang Zhong, and Wei Yan each received a general's title; Ma Chao along with Fa Zheng and Dong He were incorporated into the ranks of generals and commandery administrators, forming a tripartite power structure of "Jing–Yi–Liang." Third, the final disposition of Liu Zhang himself: he was allowed to retain his household property and the seal and ribbon of the General Who Subdues Threats, and was relocated to Gong'an in Jingzhou — preserving the face of the former lord while completely severing his political roots in Yizhou.
Political Consequences
In the short term, opening the granaries to distribute relief and lavishly rewarding the troops allowed the new regime to rapidly win the support of soldiers and civilians alike, avoiding the prolonged damage that a stormed city would have caused. In the medium term, the wholesale retention of the Yizhou bureaucracy gave rise to the binary "Jing–Yi power-sharing" structure of the Shuhan early period, a configuration that was only gradually consolidated after Zhuge Liang took personal charge of the government and Li Yan was stripped of his power. In the long term, Liu Zhang's "voluntary surrender" furnished Shuhan with a crucial narrative of legitimacy: Liu Bei had not usurped Yizhou but was received by the Shu people as a liberator who spared them from mass carnage. The echo of this narrative can still be heard three decades later in the mournful framing of Zhuge Liang's "Memorial on Sending Out the Army" — "today the realm is divided into three, and Yizhou is exhausted."
Counterfactual Analysis
Had Liu Zhang accepted Dong He's counsel that "the city still holds more than thirty thousand troops, with money, silk, and provisions to last a year" and chosen to hold out, what would the outcome have been? Modern military-historical analysis tends to conclude that a prolonged siege would have amplified Liu Bei's vulnerabilities — his supply lines were overextended and provisions were tight — but simultaneously would have intensified the Yizhou populace's resentment toward the Liu Zhang father-and-son rule. Three years of warfare had already exhausted local patience, and the great families inside the city would very likely have launched an internal revolt in the later stages of a siege; the result might have been no better than a "voluntary surrender." A second counterfactual: had Liu Bei refused Liu Zhang's generous terms and instead carried out the political purge of wiping out three generations, this would have immediately shattered the rhetoric of "a righteous army," making the early costs of Shuhan governance significantly higher, while also intensifying the pressure of diplomatic leverage from Zhang Lu, Sun Quan, and Cao Cao. In this sense, Liu Zhang's surrender and Liu Bei's generous treatment were in essence the lowest-cost path both parties chose together after the outcome was already decided. That the Romance's sixty-fifth chapter renders this as a political drama laden with moral posturing is a testament to its clear-eyed grasp of this historical logic.