Battle of Red Cliffs
Winter 208–209 · in Battle View, played out step by step on the ground where it was fought
Allied forces of Sun Quan and Liu Bei defeated Cao Cao's fleet on the Yangtze, preventing his conquest of the south.
The sides
- Sun Quan and Liu Bei, led by Zhou Yu: about 50,000 men
- Cao Cao, led by Cao Cao: about 200,000 men
States that fought: Han Dynasty, Eastern Wu.
How it went
Battle of Red Cliffs
The great warlord Cao Cao has united northern China in the name of the last Han emperor. He takes Jing province and its fleet and comes down the Yangtze to finish the south. Sun Quan, lord of the lands below the river, and the wandering general Liu Bei join forces against him.
Down the Yangtze
Cao Cao's fleet comes downriver with his army marching on the north bank. Sun Quan's general Zhou Yu sails up to meet him with 30,000 men.
The first clash
They meet at the Red Cliffs. Cao Cao's men are northerners, seasick on the water and falling ill with fever; the first engagement goes against them.
Ships chained together
Cao Cao draws back to the north bank at Wulin. His ships are moored close together, bow to stern; "they can be burned", Huang Gai tells Zhou Yu, and sends Cao Cao a letter offering to change sides.
The false surrender
On the appointed day ten of Huang Gai's ships, packed with dry reeds and oil and hung with banners, sail out before a south-east wind. Cao Cao's men line the bank to watch the general come over.
Fire
Near the fleet the ships are set alight and their crews slip away in boats. The wind drives the fire ships into the moored fleet, and the fire runs from ship to ship and on into the camps ashore. Men and horses burn or drown.
Across the river
Zhou Yu's men cross behind the fire and fall on the camps. Cao Cao's army breaks and flees overland through the marshes by the Huarong road, sick and starving, and many more die on the way.
Red Cliffs
Cao Cao never takes the south. China stays divided between his heirs in the north, Liu Bei in the west and Sun Quan in the south-east: the Three Kingdoms, remembered ever since in history and in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
After the Records of the Three Kingdoms. Cao Cao claimed 800,000 men; Zhou Yu reckoned him at about 230,000, many of them sick or newly surrendered. Where exactly on the Yangtze it was is argued over; this follows the usual site, at Chibi. Borrowed arrows and a wind summoned by Zhuge Liang belong to the later Romance.
People and wars
- Cao Cao (155 CE – 220 CE): Warlord and chancellor of the late Han who unified northern China; his son founded the state of Wei.
- Zhuge Liang (181 CE – 234 CE): Chancellor of the state of Shu Han, celebrated as a strategist and statesman in Chinese history and legend.
- Three Kingdoms period (220–280 CE): After the end of the Han, China was divided among the states of Wei, Shu and Wu.