The battle Huan Wen fought after crossing the Ba River began with a tiger's head and ended with a snake's tail.
The Di people had suffered losses, and a careful reckoning showed they were considerable. Grand Commandant Lei Ruo'er had been captured, Fu Huangmei had been cut off east of Chang'an and forced to surrender, and three of Fu Jian's ten remaining sons had been taken prisoner.
But the four central figures of the Fu Clan-the Di emperor, crown prince, chancellor, and General-in-Chief of Wei-had all escaped, along with most of the Fangtou grandees who could serve as bridges between the newly settled Di people in Guanzhong and the Fu Clan, and the vast majority of the Fangtou faction's families, women and children included.
Of the thirty thousand newly settled Di troops, at least twenty-four or twenty-five thousand had withdrawn.
It was entirely fair to say that the Di people had chosen a strategic retreat themselves.
Nevertheless, after the bloody battle at Lantian, the army from top to bottom was fairly satisfied with this outcome, for no one wanted another battle with casualties and carnage like that.
Huan Wen himself was also extremely satisfied... because he had recovered Chang'an.
This was nothing like Yin Hao's sort of recovery, which involved sending a few men to Luoyang to sweep up, nor like Xie Shang's recapture of Xuchang through a counterattack by a defeated army. Huan Wen had fought two major engagements against the enemy's main forces, won them both, and then recovered Chang'an after driving out the Di faction that had presumptuously proclaimed an emperor.
It was easy to imagine that the prestige he gained this time would probably rival what he had won in the Conquest of Shu.
After the Conquest of Shu, Huan Wen had already become General Who