In the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the Battle of Chibi is described quite brilliantly, and one classic story after another has emerged, including grass boat archery, Jiang Gan's theft of books, Pang Tong's serial plan, The Qunying Association Jiang Ganzhong's plan, Huang Gai's bitter meat plan, the fraudulent fire attack plan, borrowing the East Wind, the three qi Zhou Yu, etc., which make people relish it, and even Xu Shu's bitter meat plan, Kan Ze's deceitful surrender plan, and Pang Tong's serial plan.
The record in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is that Xu Shu saw through all the plans of Zhou Yu's side, but because Xu Shu resented Cao Cao for forcing his mother to die, he vowed not to sacrifice a plan for Cao Cao for the rest of his life, and did not tell Cao Cao that he had broken the plan, but left on the pretext, after which Sun Liu's coalition army burned 830,000 Cao troops.
However, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is only a novel after all, although the Battle of Chibi is described very wonderfully, but it is only a fiction of the author, and it does not exist in history, such as grass boat archery, Jiang Gan's theft of books, Pang Tongxian's serial plan, the group of heroes jiang Ganzhong, borrowing the East Wind, and the three qi Zhou Yu are all non-existent.
The real Battle of Chibi actually looks like this:
Cao Cao went south to Xiangyang, Liu Chun surrendered, Cao Cao led five thousand tiger and leopard cavalry day and night, defeated Liu Bei at Changsaka, Liu Bei fled to Jiangxia County to surrender to Liu Qi, Cao Cao did not continue to pursue Liu Bei, but went south to Jiangling City, the seat of nan county, which was also the most important strategic place in the whole of Jingzhou, and at the same time Cao Cao occupied all the territory of Jingzhou except Jiangxia County, and actually controlled Xiangyang County and Nan County, as for the four counties of Jingnan, it was only nominally controlled.
Only two months after the occupation of Jingzhou, Cao Cao began to attack Liu Bei in Jiangxia County in two ways, one route from Jiangling City (present-day Jingzhou, Hubei), along the Yangtze River from west to east, land and water, mainly on the north bank of the Yangtze River, because the south bank is not yet Cao Cao's actual control, this route cao himself led, the strength is not recorded in the history books, at least 70,000 or 80,000 people, most of them are Jingzhou troops, Cao Cao's headquarters soldiers and horses accounted for about one-third, this road is all the Cao army involved in the Battle of Chibi.
The other route departed from Xiangyang, along the Han River from north to south, led by the governor Zhao Yu, Zhang Liao, Zhang Gao, Zhu Ling, Li Dian, Lu Zhao, Feng Kai seven roads of about 30,000 people, along the Han River south, this road people and horses did not participate in the Battle of Chibi, the war was over, because Cao Cao's headquarters was defeated too quickly at Chibi.
When Cao Cao led the land and water army east along the Yangtze River, Sun Quan also reached an alliance agreement with Liu Bei, and the sun and Liu Liu's joint army, led by Zhou Yu and Liu Bei, marched along the Yangtze River from east to west by land and water, mainly on the south bank of the Yangtze River, because this was Eastern Wu's sphere of influence.
The Battle of Chibi was an unexpected encounter, Cao Cao originally attacked Liu Bei, because moving east along the Yangtze River, it was first necessary to cross Jiangxia County, Jiangxia County was Liu Bei and Liu Qi's territory, and Sun Liu's coalition forces took the initiative to find Cao's army, the two sides met at Chibi, so the first water battle before the Battle of Chibi broke out.
This battle cao army failed, because the water army was the strength of Eastern Wu, most of the water army led by Cao Cao was the surrender of Jingzhou, the most elite water army in Jingzhou was originally in Jiangxia County, was used to fight against the elite of Eastern Wu, but unfortunately in the hands of Liu Qi, and the Jiangling water army and the Xiangyang water army were not at all as good as the Jiangxia water army due to the lack of actual combat.
Therefore, the reason for Cao Cao's defeat in the first battle was that the water army was too weak, and after the defeat of the water army, Cao Cao led all the large armies to retreat to Wulin on the north bank of the Yangtze River, while Sun Liu's combined forces retreated to Chibi on the south bank of the Yangtze River, and the two sides formed a north-south confrontation stage.
Cao Cao's soldiers were mostly northerners and were not accustomed to the turbulence of the water in the south, so Cao Cao ordered that all the warships should be lined up head to tail, and there was no iron cable to connect the ships, which was just a fiction of the interpretation, just to line the ships neatly end to end to reduce the turbulence of the current.
After the two sides formed a confrontation, if the Eastern Wu army attacked the Cao army with water, even if it could barely win the battle, the losses were very large, and the strength of the Cao army was far stronger than that of Sun Liu's combined army, Huang Gai saw the flaws of the Cao army, so he proposed to Zhou Yu to surrender to Cao Cao by himself, get the opportunity to surrender to Cao Cao, and then use the opportunity of surrender to rush to the Cao camp with a lighted warship, so that he could defeat the Cao army.
Tongyu agreed to Huang Gai's suggestion, made all preparations, and prepared dozens of Mengchong warships to surrender with Huang Gai when Huang Gai surrendered, and only two miles away from Cao Ying, Huang Gai lit dozens of fire ships, and the ships took advantage of the wind to rush directly to Cao Ying, at that time, there were many people in Cao Gai who watched and said that Huang Gai had surrendered, and as a result, all the people who greeted them were fire boats, and then everyone knew the result, Cao Cao's army was burned clean by a big fire, and fled back to the north in defeat.
Huang Gai's deceitful surrender plan is true, and the fire attack plan is also true, but the other events in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms are fictional, in the whole plan of Zhou Yu's fraudulent surrender and fire attack, why did Cao Ying not guard against it at all? Didn't Cao Cao have five great strategists, and didn't they even see Zhou Yu's plan?
The key to the success of Huang Gai's plan is actually not the human factor, but the terrain and natural weather reasons, although Huang Gai ignited the warships when he was two miles away from Cao Ying, in fact, there was no one on the burning warships, and they relied on the wind to rush to Cao Ying, while Huang Gai's death squad followed behind the fire boats as the second wave to attack Cao Ying.
The crux of the matter is why are those burning warships capable of rushing towards Cao Ying without manpower?
First of all, we must look at the terrain, Sun Liu's coalition army is on the south bank of the Yangtze River, Cao Cao is on the north bank of the Yangtze River, from the south bank to the north bank, in terms of geographical location, it is equivalent to attacking from the southeast to the northwest, if the ships are unmanned, then there must be wind, to be clear, there must be a southeast wind. Only when the southeast wind blew, those unmanned fire boats would automatically rush to Cao Ying, although it was only two miles.
The Battle of Chibi occurred in December 208 AD, December is the standard winter, the weather is cold, this season is generally blown by the north wind or northwest wind, according to geographical common sense, it is absolutely impossible to blow the southeast wind, the southeast wind is generally the wind that will blow in summer and autumn, and Cao Cao himself, including those generals and advisers under Cao Cao who have experienced hundreds of battles, still understand the basic weather common sense.
In other words, starting from Cao Cao, including his advisers Xun Yu, Cheng Yu, Xun You, Jia Xu and other strategists, they all knew that it was impossible to blow the southeast wind in winter and let the surrendered Huang Gai bring fire attacks, Cao Cao was not without suspicion of Huang Gai, nor was he defenseless against fire attacks, first, because he was determined to win, and second, because the actual natural conditions and weather reasons could not make Huang Gai and others make a difference, Cao Cao just wanted to see whether Huang Gai really surrendered or fake surrendered, in Cao Cao's style, even if Huang Gai surrendered, the army behind him must have made arrangements.
However, what was strange was that the southeast wind blew up in the winter, and Huang Gai lit the warship when he was two miles away from Cao Ying, and according to the speed of the ships, it only took five or six minutes to reach Cao Ying, and even if Cao Cao was fully prepared, it was impossible to crack the attacking fire ship in five or six minutes.
Now it seems that
The real reason for Cao Cao's defeat at the Battle of Chibi was not why so many strategists could not see Zhou Yu's fire attack plan, but this strange reason: the southeast wind of the great winter
。 It can only be said that the Dongwu people who live by the Yangtze River all year round are more familiar with the terrain and weather reasons, which is not the east wind borrowed by Zhuge Liang, but a strange natural phenomenon in nature.