The History of China - #40 - E. Han 7: The Red Cliffs Of Chibi

Episode Date: September 28, 2014

The warlord Cao Cao has crushed any rivals to his power in the North, and now turns South to reunify China under his new regime. South of the mighty Yangtze River, the rival lords of Jing Province and Wu Prefecture must put aside their differences and unite if they're to have any hope of stopping the northern invasion at the river's shores Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. This week's episode of the History of China is dedicated to the memory of Neil F. Goltz. Neil was a long-time ENT physician, world traveler, World War II veteran, and truly a great human being. He was also my grandfather. He passed away this week at 94 years old, surrounded by friends and family from near and far. We dedicate today to a celebration of his long life and enduring legacy. Here's to you, Grandpa. We will always love you, and you will remain with us in our hearts.

To all of you podcast listeners out there, give your family a hug when you get the chance. You never know how many more you might get. And please, enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 38, The Red Cliffs of Zhibi. Last time, we got a better feel for the circumstances of southern China, that is to say, China south of the Yangtze River, and the warlords for who all intents and purposes controlled it.

Along the southern southeast, Sun Ce had seized control before taking an arrow to the face and leaving his territories to his younger brother, Sun Quan. Meanwhile, the central and western portions of China's interior were dominated by Liu Biao, the governor of Jing province, who had not long ago taken his distant cousin Liu Bei in as a refugee of war. Then we had finished up with exactly what Liu Bei had been fleeing from, the warlord in possession of the at this point trivial Emperor Xian of Han, and uncontested warlord of the entire northern expanse, Cao Cao. He had finished out the episode with a risky, foolish, and through almost sheer luck wildly successful campaign to stamp out the last of his old enemy, Yuan Shao's, relatives and allies in a campaign outside of China itself against the Wuhan

steppe tribes. Today, the newly minted Chancellor Cao Cao turns south. With the north unsecured and heady with the confidence of recent victory, it seems that there is nothing to stop his complete domination of China under his iron fist. To even have a chance at slowing him down, the warlords of the South will have no choice but to put aside their differences and blood feuds to band together against this existential threat. As the winter of 208 whipped across the countryside, though the North was newly unified, the South remained in disarray.

So before we get to the post-209 Happy New Year, let's take a look at the glorious mess that was southern China of the early 3rd century. The 18-year-old Sun Quan, after a period of mourning for his elder brother, had donned his own battle armor back in 203 to carry on Sun Ce's legacy, and by legacy I of course mean revenge, against the man who had murdered the Sun brothers' father more than a decade prior, the general and now prefect of northeastern Jing province, Huang Zu. And this meant direct confrontation with the aging Liu Biao. The armies of Sun Quan and Huang Zu met on the Jiangzi River, at a place called Xiakou, in Hubei, in what would be a

large if strategically inconclusive ship-to-ship naval battle. Though Huang Zu's navy was vastly larger than the vanguard of Sun Quan's lieutenant, estimates putting Huang's force at more than 30,000 while Sun's a few thousand men at most. However, the element of surprise threw them into disarray and disorganized retreat. Though not before Huang's own bodyguard, Gan Ning, killed the vanguard commander Ling when he attempted to attack Huang directly. Though Gan had literally just saved Huang Zu's life, and yeah, a simple thank you would suffice, Huang's personal prejudice against Gan Ning's history, one of piracy,

ensured that not even saving his life earned the bodyguard anything but icy hostility and even an attempt to blame Gan for the loss at Xiakou. Fed up with this complete lack of thanks, Gan Ning would end up defecting to Sun Quan's side shortly thereafter. And he would wind up being instrumental

in Huang Zu's eventual downfall. And again, all of this could have been prevented with the simple, hey, thanks for saving my life. That would have to wait, however, because for the next 45 years, Sun would be forced to put his revenge on hold to contend with several rebellions in his own territories, as well as the ever-vexing southern Yue tribes, who were always just too happy to make trouble along the borders of his state. It wouldn't be until early 208 that Huang Zu would finally get his comeuppance. That cathartic victory would be at Jiangsha Prefectural City in Hubei, once again along the northern banks of the Yangtze.

Huang Zu had received word of Sun Quan's impending attack, and resolved to stave him off from atop the high, thick walls of the city, thereby avoiding a direct clash in the open field. Huang Zu, as it were, was getting on in the years, and can you really blame him for not wanting to go toe-to-toe with a 22-year-old on a vengeance kick? Regardless, Sun Quan's scouts into the area were able to board the ship ferrying Huang's top general, Zhang Shuo, to take control of the vessel and kill the general. Once he'd heard of this blow, Huang Zu ordered the mouth of the tributary Miankou River,

blockaded by two armored capital assault craft, called Meng Chong. Meng Chong's were to the Yangtze River, as the Imperial walkers of Star Wars were to the rebel base on Hoth, absolute juggernauts. Their exteriors were sheathed in oxhide, both in armor against arrows and other projectiles, as well as partial proof against potential flame weapons. Inside, sharpshooters were equipped with crossbows, but these were not your grandfather's crossbow. Du Ge Liang, the military advisor Liu Bei had

convinced to join him last episode, had been hard at work improving the design of the repeating crossbow. His work had paid off with a weapon that could fire two to three bolts without needing to stop to reload, and eventually clips as large as ten crossbolts would be developed. This ancient world equivalent of a heavy machine gun would be named after its, if not inventor, then at least improver, Zhuge Liang, the Zhuge Nu, which is sometimes alternatively romanized as the Chukou Nu. As if that wasn't enough, on the shores above the river, Huang had stationed stone throwers, well, more like stone droppers, and additional archers to hurl stones and fire down on Sun Quan's inbound naval attack fleet. Sun's commander tried to overcome Huang's pair of massive Mengchong capital ships with his own fleet, but it was brought down by the stones

assaulting them from above. After several hours of deadlock and taking heavy casualties from the armored floating death mobiles raining down thousands of crossbolts, it became clearer and clearer that a direct assault was not going to get them what they wanted. A change of strategy was in order. Sun's commander, Zou Yu, enlisted 100 diehard elite warriors and strapped them up with double suits of armor. Unwieldy though that must have been, the 100 warriors charged into the hail of arrows and stones and boarded the massive Meng Chong ships. There, they were able to cut the cables

connecting the two leviathans and slay their admiral. Reimboldened by the fall of the defensive capital ships, Sunchuan's forces renewed their assault, at last breaching the mouth of Jiangsha Harbor and overrunning Huang Zu's position. As the elder general attempted to flee once again, though, he was caught by pursuing horsemen and killed. His head had specifically been requested by Sun Quan to be collected for his personal inspection, and upon delivery Sun Quan presented it as a sacrifice to his father's ancestral temple. At long last, his justice had been achieved. Alright, so the revenge narrative does make great copy.

It certainly has worked for the romance of the Three Kingdoms, and certainly it was a reason behind the conflict between Sun Quan and Liu Biao. But there, of course, was more to it than simply a father dying in battle. Specifically, it was control over the southern banks of the Yangtze River. And since we're going to be dipping our toes into this particular body of water for quite some time, let's take a moment to get better acquainted with it. The infamously violent Yellow River has gotten all of the spotlight for its disastrously unpredictable nature, but in many respects its more relaxed brother to the south is the more impressive body.

Blowing from the glaciers of Tibet, through the jungles of Sichuan, all the way to Shanghai before emptying into the East China Sea, it wends its way over more than 6,300 kilometers, making it the third longest river in the world just after the Amazon and edging out the Mississippi. In fact, its Chinese name isn't even Yangtze, but rather Changjiang, which literally just means the Long River. What we call it in English actually only refers to a specific segment of the river, that stretch of it around the city of Yangzhou, near Shanghai. So why did the English language and other European languages pick up that particular name rather than the segment that flows through Sichuan called the Chuanjiang, or that flowing

through Jingzhou called the Jingjiang? Pretty simple. Throughout history, Westerners have interacted far more often with the residents of coastal towns like Yangzhou and Shanghai than the populace of China's interior. Hence, we've tended to adopt whatever they call a particular body of water. In terms of volume discharged, it's no slouch either, ranking 7th in the world and spewing out into the sea some 30,000 cubic meters of water every second. All of this is pretty much to say that in terms of defense, you really couldn't do much better than 30,000 cubic meters of deep, dangerous moving water. The Yangtze River made an almost perfect natural barrier to the kind of northern incursion

Chancellor Cao Cao just so happened to be planning at this very moment. So why were Liu Biao and Sun Quan fighting over it? Well, other than the whole you killed my dad bit, it was just plain strategic defense. He who controlled the Yangtze's banks could maybe, hopefully, stave off Cao Cao's impending advance southward. And make no mistake, control of the middle reaches of this vast waterway was absolutely crucial for Cao Cao's further plans to reunify China. Since it proved such a formidable barrier, stable and sufficient access to a crossing point was essential to the warlord of the north being able to lay claim to the south.

As such, in autumn of 208, Cao Cao's forces advanced. The initial stages of his advance were nothing short of unqualified success. With no other northern enemy to pester or distract him, Cao Cao was able to march his vast army in virtually a straight line south, crushing any foolish enough to stand against him. For their part, the bitter infighting between Liu Biao's Jing province and Sun Quan's Wu prefecture had significantly weakened both's ability to counter Cao Cao's advance north of the Yangtze.

It certainly wasn't a great situation, but it was about to get much, much worse for the defenders of the south. Because in late 208, Liu Biao, the governor and supreme ruler of Jing province, warlord of the southwest, succumbed to an illness. According to the Annals of the Three Kingdoms, Liu Biao had previously favored bequeathing his position as the governor of Jing to his second son because of typical Chinese politicking. You know, we've been talking about it forever. Marriage alliances with powerful clans, smack talk about the eldest son, the usual. But where's the drama in that?

So, in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, we get a rather more spiced-up tale, where he had seen his demise coming ahead of time and had discussed with his distant cousin Liu Bei which of his two sons should succeed him when the time comes. Now the obvious and traditional choice would be his eldest son Liu Qi, but Biao confided to Liu Bei that his wife desperately wanted his second son, Liu Cong, to inherit the province. This would, and again only going by the fictionalized account of the romance, be borne out when she altered Liu Biao's will to suit her desires. Regardless of which version of events one chooses to go by, the outcome is the same. Whether by Liu

Biao's own design or a deviously altered will, it would be Liu Cong who inherited much of Jing province's territories, leaving only a minor portion under the control of the eldest brother, who, obviously, was none too amused at how this had all panned out. The two brothers tangled with each other over the course of 208, drawing the attention of Cao Cao, who could hardly have asked for a better opening to invade than what was quickly escalating into a civil war of succession in Jing, and mobilized his army southward to take advantage of the fraternal strife. Though Liu Cong did initially begin organizing a defense against the northern incursion, he was convinced by no fewer than three of his advisors that resistance was futile,

and he should surrender to Cao Cao's supremacy rather than risk defeat and destruction. He agreed, and just like that, without a drop of blood spilled or a single battle fought, Cao Cao had captured almost all of Jing province and the key to the rest of the south, the naval base at Jingliang on the Yangtze, and its sizable fleet docked there. This was bad news for the likes of Liu Bei, who had overnight gone from reasonably secure ward of the state to once more in mortal danger of falling into Cao Cao's vengeful grasp. He was forced to flee south with a group of his officials and soldiers, as well as civilian refugees. Slow moving as such a disorganized retreat was, though. It became easy prey for Cao Cao's elite cavalry and was dealt a tremendous defeat.

But with Liu Bei once more managing to wriggle free and slip off further east. At the township of Xiakou, Liu met the emissary of Senchuan, who convinced him to proceed even further east to Fankou. There, Liu Bei would be joined by Liu Qi and his troop levies from Jiangxia, where the pair were left to figure out how to squeeze lemonade from this particular lemon. Liu Bei's advisor, Zhuge Liang, had luckily escaped his lord's latest defeat and was among the Liu court at Fankou. Given his expertise in such affairs, it was decided that Zhuge would be dispatched to Sanchuan's headquarters to open negotiations into forming a united front against Cao Cao's advance. Whatever differences they might have had, and there were still many,

remaining divided now would allow Cao Cao access to the Yangtze River and the land south of it, spelling all but certain doom for all of the southern warlords. Only a united front could even have a hope of pushing him back. Cao Cao was well aware of this potential threat as well, and sought to nip it in the bud. Thus, by the time Zhuge Liang arrived at Sanchuan's court, Cao Cao had already sent a letter to the warlord of the coast, boasting an army of more than 800,000 men and implying that surrender was Sanchuan's best and only option. Now, 800,000 is just an absurd number. There was no way Cao Cao commanded a force that vast. The logistics of it would have been all but impossible. And that overblown number was not lost on Sunchuan's battle commander, Zhou Yu, who estimated himself that Cao Cao only commanded about a quarter of that number.

You know, only 230,000. And he further estimated that some 80,000 of those had been forces recently impressed into the army from Liu Bao's former territory. And as such, their loyalty in combat would potentially be rather flexible. So 230,000 is admittedly a lot more manageable than 800,000, but still no meager force, and certainly not with the numbers Liu Bei and Sun Quan were looking to be able to muster, which combined might have topped 50,000 men. Several of Sun's other advisors, led by his chief clerk Zhang Zhao, looked at the forced disparity of at best 4 to 1 and at worst 16 to 1, and urged Sun Quan to read the writing

on the wall here. United or not, there is no way we're going to be able to stop this avalanche of northerners, and we need to make the best peace terms possible by surrendering now. I mean, look at Leo Cong. He surrendered, and he's now sitting pretty as Cao Cao's inspector of Qing province and army advisor. But between Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu, Zeng Shun was convinced of the efficacy of an alliance with Liu Bei and Liu Qi against the Northern Advance.

Supposedly, when he announced his intention to declare war rather than surrender, he drew his sword and chopped off a corner of his desk while all his advisors were assembled. Sun then turned to the Surrender Now faction and declared, quote, anyone who still dares to argue for surrender will be treated the same as this desk, end quote. And so, he assigned Zhou Yu to lead his force of 30,000 to join up with and aid Liu Bei's force of 20,000 marines. Thus, in the winter of 208, the joint Sun-Liu Defense Force boarded their transport ships and sailed upstream to the area of Qibi, or more famously known in English as the Red Cliffs, outside of modern Wulin, Hebei. There, they would first encounter Cao Cao's vanguard force

and engage in small-scale skirmishes. But though Cao Cao held a large numerical advantage, as usual, those numbers on paper are only one factor that ever comes into play, and as Cao Cao himself knew from personal experience at both Guandu and then White Wolf Mountain, it's often not even the most important factor of combat. Not only was a sizable portion of his massive expeditionary army more or less marching by force, but the extended nature of the operation had exhausted the majority of the troops

through repeated forced marches. Moreover, the southern climate of China comes with a whole host of climate difficulties, and more especially, new tropical diseases these Northmen had never contended with before. Disease and distress had ravaged Cao Cao's troops even before they encountered the Liu Sun strike force. Finally, they were on ships, something that as men of the mountains and valleys of the North, very few had ever done before.

And so as if disease itself wasn't miserable enough, seasickness was also very likely a factor for morale. It was possibly in an effort to reduce this feeling of seasickness that Cao Cao had ordered his ships all chained together from bow to stern. This may have reduced the rocking and swaying of the ships as they lumbered through the river, but it also presented a unique opportunity for the southern defenders. Chained together as they were, Cao Cao's troop ships would be unable to effectively maneuver independently, and became effectively one enormous target for the right type of attack. This opportunity was noticed by divisional commander Huang Gai, and he came up with a

bold plan. He sent a letter to Cao Cao declaring his and his men's intent to surrender and turn themselves over to the northerners. And indeed, Huang Gai was loading his fleet of Mengchong battleship transports up and preparing to sail them over to Cao Cao's approaching fleet. But rather than filling the Mengchong ships with defectors, Huang instead filled each to the brim with kindling, dry reeds, fats, and oils. The troop transports had been transformed into fire ships,

ready to plow into Cao Cao's fleet and go off like incendiary bombs. As the supposedly defecting ships reached the midpoint of the Yangtze River and approached Cao Cao's chained-together fleet, the skeleton crew keeping them on course lit their payloads and abandoned the Mengchongs using small rowboats. Carried on by a strong southeastern wind, the now unmanned and blazing fire ships did exactly what they were supposed to do, careening uncontrollably into Cao Cao's troopships and setting nearly the entire fleet ablaze. Within minutes, black smoke and flame stretched across the sky, and in the water tens of thousands of men and horses drowned as the currents of the Yangtze dragged the heavily armored soldiers to its depths, or cooked them alive if they stayed aboard their burning ships. The Northmen's advance across the river had been stopped dead. Zhou Yu led a lightly armored force to capitalize on this

shock-and-awe tactic, throwing the remnants of the Northern army into confusion en route. Cao Cao, seeing the inevitability of defeat should he remain at Red Cliffs, ordered the remainder of his ships scuttled, before issuing a general retreat along the Huarong Road toward Jiangling, his base of naval operations and fallback position. Unfortunately, Huarong Road passed directly through bogs and marshlands that made up the northern shore of Lake Dongting. Recent heavy rains had reduced the earthen path to a thick, sticky mire, rendering the road all but impassable. Infantrymen, sick and weak as many of them were from the climate and the recent boat ride from hell,

were nonetheless forced to carry bundles of grass on their backs as they retreated through the swamp, laying it down to fill in the worst portions of the road so that the horsemen following them could make it through the muck. Between the dangerous conditions and the panic of retreat, many of these men either sank into the bog and drowned, or were trampled. But the day was not yet over for Cao Cao's badly beaten and routed army. The Sun Liu Allied Force, led by Liu Bei and Zhou Yu, proceeded both by land and water to give chase to the fleeing northern force, decim Liu Bei and Zhou Yu, proceeded both by land and water to give chase to the fleeing northern force, decimating whatever was left of the once-mighty army before it could reach the relative safety of Jiangling's outer walls. Cut off, sick, and starving, Cao Cao was forced to retreat north back to his military headquarters

at Handan Hebei, which was then called Ye City. His ability to wage southern warfare had been nullified entirely, and he was only just able to retain control of the northern banks of the Yangtze, leaving his sub-commander Cao Ren in charge of Jiangling Harbor. But as bad as Red Cliffs was for Cao Cao, and make no mistake, this is his worst defeat ever, it could have been worse. The Sun Liu alliance was poised to sweep Cao Cao's forces off the board entirely with their counterattack, when that tenuous alliance began to come apart at the seams. As the combined force hurried to board their transport ships and cross the Yangtze, infighting began to break out over

who would be the first to cross. The fire ship tactic had been a dramatic victory, but it had by its very nature limited the number of transports left available. And after all, those who crossed first would have a better chance to secure total victory for themselves. Order was restored when a bridgehead was established at the northward crossing at Yiling, but by that point Cao Ren had managed to establish a fortified rearguard defense and prevent a decisive defeat from becoming a total defeat for the northerners. Cao Cao, master strategist, who had turned so many seemingly unwinnable situations into massive victories for himself, found out what it was like to be on the receiving end of

such a crushing defeat at Red Cliffs. What had happened? Certainly his own strategic blunders had played a major role. Cao Cao's army excelled on land and on horseback. What did he think he was doing mounting amphibious warfare, especially when none of his generals or commanders, much less the common troops, knew much if anything about naval warfare's unique and uniquely dangerous qualities. You can't simply file cavalry onto ships and call them marines. Moreover, he'd made a similar mistake that Yan Shao had made against him at Guangdu less than a decade prior. He was overextended. Though he had taken Jing province without a fight,

Cao Cao had little support among its populace, and as such had no secure forward base of operations. When things went truly badly, he was forced to retreat all the way back to Ye City, negating whatever might have been left of his army's ability to salvage the situation. Flying in the face of everything he should have learned from his victories at Guandu, where his army had defeated a force twice its size, and White Wolf Mountain, where his 30,000 light infantry had been able to completely destroy a disorganized force more than three times its

size, Tassaut seemed to have thrown that whole strategy out the window at Red Cliffs, and simply assumed that overwhelming numbers would be able to solve whatever problems might have come up. That, combined with the ravages of overexertion, southern diseases, and seasickness, left his men almost totally depleted even before battle was engaged. To quote Zhu Ge Liang's own observation of Tao Tao's overextension, quote, even a powerful arrow at the end of its flight cannot pierce so much as a silk cloth, end quote. Cao Cao, when he would later reflect on the outcome at Red Cliffs, also attributed the outcome of the battle to his own mistakes rather than the strategies of his enemies,

writing, quote, it was only because of the sickness that I burnt my ships and retreated. It is out of all reason for Dou Yu to take credit for himself." Though let's be honest, Cao Cao, that fire ship trick worked pretty spectacularly. By the end of 209, even Jiangling Harbor had been reclaimed by Zhou Yu's forces, and in all, Cao Cao's border was forced back some 160 kilometers north of the Yangtze's bank. As mentioned a minute ago, his ability to mount offensive southward warfare had been permanently crippled. In stark contrast, Liu Bei had made out like a bandit

following the Battle of Red Cliffs, and had carved out for himself four prefectural capital cities south of the Yangtze in west-central China, Changsha, Guiyang, Lingling, and Wuling specifically. Moreover, since Sen Quan's forces had suffered a significantly higher attrition rate during the Red Cliffs than those of Liu Bei, he was in a position to assert his personal control over most of Jing province, which would prove critically important since it provided Liu a strategic and naturally fortified zone of control along the Yangtze, even as Sun Shen continued to insist that it ought to be him

who controlled the territory. But especially with the death of his top commander Zhou Yu in 210 from illness at age 35 or 36, Sun would find himself in no position to force the issue. The line was drawn in the sand. The north and south would be divided, a split which would in fact be echoed for centuries in later dynastic fractures. We'll finish out today with a small segment some of you have been asking for, noting the differences between the historical account and that of the fiction The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

The romance adds fantastical and mythological elements to the story, as well as portraying Liu Bei as the protagonist and hero of the conflict, and Zhuge Liang as some unmatched strategist. This is because many later writers and scholars, especially those of the Southern Song Dynasty of the 12th century, would come to view the state of Xu Han as the legitimate inheritor and successor of the Han dynasty. Another difference is that Cao Cao's boast of having more than 800,000 soldiers in his attacking force is presented as having actually been true

rather than some wildly inflated number, making Liu and Sun's victory seem all the more miraculous. Zhuge Liang is given virtually all of the strategic credit, as well as portraying him as a military commander which he certainly was not, which the romance accomplishes by almost totally downplaying the role of Sun Quan's advisor, Zhou Yu, portraying him as a cruel and cynical man, a characterization very much at odds with historical writings which describe him as generous, sensible, and courageous. The fantastical elements presented in the romance include Zhuge Liang using magic to call forth a divine wind

to blow the fire ships at Cao Cao's fleet, when in fact that southwestern wind is a highly predictable element of the Zhibi Yangtze region. Next time, though the unexpectedly equalized forces of Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Quan will continue to vie for supremacy over all of China, their positions will begin to calcify. At last, even the pretense of the Eastern Han dynasty existing anymore will finally be dropped with the deposing of Emperor Xian and a formalized tripartition will emerge, with warlords becoming dukes, those dukes becoming kings, and eventually those kings

proclaiming themselves emperors. Thank you for listening.