Battle of Red Cliffs

The Battle of Red Cliffs, otherwise known as the Battle of Chibi, was a decisive battle at the end of the Han Dynasty, immediately prior to the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. It was fought in the winter of 208/9 AD between the allied forces of the southern warlords Liu Bei and Sun Quan and the numerically superior forces of the northern warlord Cao Cao. Liu Bei and Sun Quan successfully frustrated Cao Cao's effort to conquer the land south of the Yangtze River and reunite the territory of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The allied victory at Red Cliffs ensured the survival of Liu Bei and Sun Quan, gave them control of the Yangtze (de Crespigny 2004:273), and provided a line of defence that was the basis for the later creation of the two southern states of Shu Han and Eastern Wu.

Descriptions of the battle differ widely on details, and the location of the battle is fiercely debated (de Crespigny 2004:256 78n). Although its precise location remains uncertain, the majority of academic conjectures place it on the south bank of the Yangtze River, southwest of present-day Wuhan and northeast of Baqiu (present-day Yueyang, Hunan). The most detailed account of the battle comes from the biography of Zhou Yu in the 3rd century historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms by Chen Shou. An exaggerated and romanticised account is also a central event in Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.