The Battle of Red Cliffs and the blurring of fact and fiction

This Week in China’s History: Winter 208-09

Sometime in the winter of 208-09 CE — in the waning days of the Han dynasty — one of the greatest naval battles in history took place on the Yangtze River, somewhere in Hubei province. Even though the soldiers involved were almost certainly fewer than the 850,000 recorded, the massive engagement between the forces of Cáo Cāo 曹操 — representing (and perhaps usurping) the decayed Han dynasty — and those of Sūn Quán 孙权 and Liú Bèi 刘备 has significance that extends far beyond the many thousands who died in the Yangtze valley that winter.

To begin with, let’s be clear that placing the battle in mid-February is at best a guess. Sources agree that the engagement took place in winter, but not much more than that. That hasn’t stopped the battle’s story from being retold for nearly 2,000 years. Luō Guànzhōng’s 罗贯中 14th-century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms opens with the role of the battle in the unraveling of China’s Qin-Han “first unification.” And in the 21st century, John Woo’s two-part epic Red Cliff spends more than four hours depicting the battle.

Needless to say, recounting events from 1,800 years ago is a challenge, and influential fictionalized accounts like Three Kingdoms and Red Cliff — regardless of their accuracy — make it even harder. In cases like this, though, the accuracy of these stories becomes secondary: what matters is not so much whether a story is true or false, but what does it mean.

Even what we know of the retellings is not always so. Many of us “know” that Luo Guanzhong opened his novel with the famous description (or is it prescription?) of China’s imperial history: “The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been” (話說天下大勢．分久必合，合久必分 huà shuō tiānxià dà shì. Fēn jiǔ bì hé, hé jiǔ bì fēn). But he didn’t: scholars have established that this line was added several centuries later by editors, tying it to the Ming-Qing transition as the Manchus overran China. Its origins notwithstanding, the celebrated opening has become part of the standard edition of the novel, and attained a timeless quality in many contexts.

In the case of the Battle of Red Cliffs, many of the stories recounted have risen to the level of myth. Cinematically, the scenes are spectacular in Woo’s hands (and dozens of top-shelf performances, with Takeshi Kaneshiro’s Zhūgé Liàng 诸葛亮, Zhāng Fēngyì’s 张丰毅 Cao Cao, and Zhào Wēi’s 赵薇 Sūn Shàngxiāng 孫尚香 among the best, for my money).

I can’t compete with the literary art of the novel or the spectacle of the movie, but I’ll outline the events that Luo (et al.) and Woo brought to life.

After nearly two centuries in power (including a brief interregnum under Wáng Mǎng 王莽), the Han dynasty was in decline at the end of the 2nd century CE. The emperors were mere shadows of the powerful early rulers, and the state administration was hardly able to govern. As central power ebbed, regional militarists filled the vacuum, sometimes appealing to the Han for legitimacy. One of the most powerful of these regional leaders was Cao Cao, an army captain of variable loyalties who first gained rank fighting against the Yellow Turban rebellion of the 180s. In 200, after defeating a rival in the Battle of Guandu, Cao Cao came to rule most of north China.

Rather than overthrow the Han, Cao leveraged his power to legitimize himself with the Han legacy. In the summer of 208, he compelled the emperor to appoint him as chancellor, though in truth the emperor served at Cao Cao’s pleasure rather than the other way around. As chancellor, Cao Cao had political power that matched his military might. Holding sway over north China, he turned his focus south.

The most prominent southern powers were Liu Bei and Sun Quan. Like Cao Cao, Liu Bei first gained his reputation fighting against the Yellow Turbans, and had in fact been an ally of Cao Cao’s in the late 190s. Liu Bei, however, came to see Cao Cao as a traitor to the Han, and attempted to assassinate him at the behest of the emperor. After being defeated by Cao Cao’s armies in the early 200s, Liu Bei fled south to regroup, but remained convinced that opposing Cao Cao represented loyalty to the Han.

Liu Bei’s principal advisor was Zhuge Liang, a military and diplomatic genius with a reputation for preternatural abilities. Tall and slender, usually carrying a fan made of crane feathers, going by the style name Kǒngmíng 孔明, Zhuge Liang persuaded Sun Quan to ally with Liu against Cao Cao. Most important to the alliance was Sun’s fleet of ships on the Yangtze: hundreds of vessels that controlled the middle stretches of the river, half a mile wide or more as the river wound its way through Hubei. Sun stated his intentions to fight by slashing his desk with a sword; pointing to the piece lying on the floor, he declared that anyone who refused to fight would meet the same fate as the furniture.

Sun Quan’s slashing of the desk was just one of many episodes that have taken on the power of myth. Sun’s forces lured Cao Cao’s cavalry into an ambush, then decimated them using an ancient infantry formation. Running short on ammunition, Zhuge Liang staffed his ships with straw bales dressed as sailors; drawing the enemy fire, thousands of arrows stuck to the bales and could be reused by his own archers. And later, Zhuge Liang predicted a shifting in the winds that would enable fireships to plow into Cao Cao’s fleet, setting them alight. What’s more, Cao Cao’s admirals had bound their ships to one another to stave off seasickness among the landlubber troops. The fleet burned.

Amid the naval debacle, rumors that Liu Bei had abandoned his alliance with Sun Quan circulated to Cao Cao, who left his flank open only to have Liu Bei mount a surprise attack. Cao Cao’s vessels sank, his troops routed; he barely survived.

The legacy of the Battle of Red Cliffs was enormous. Cao Cao remained in control of the north, but his ambitions to conquer southern China were confounded. Each of the combatants established their own state: Cao Cao proclaimed his Wei Kingdom in the north; Liu Bei claimed the legacy of the fallen Han dynasty with his Later Han (Shu Han) dynasty in the southwest; Sun Quan ruled over most of what is today China south of the Yangtze, including the coastal provinces, as the state of Wu. It would be another 300 years before, to paraphrase the Romance, long divided, the empire united.

This Week in China’s History is a weekly column.