The Battle of Red Cliffs, otherwise known as the Battle of Chibi, (simplified Chinese: 赤壁之战; traditional Chinese: 赤壁之戰; pinyin: Chì bì zhī zhàn) was a decisive battle at the end of the Han Dynasty, immediately prior to the period of the Three Kingdoms in China. It was fought in the winter of 208/9 CE[1] 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 kingdoms of Shu Han (蜀) and Eastern Wu (吳).
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 (modern Yueyang city in Hunan province). The most detailed account of the battle comes from the biography of Zhou Yu in the 3rd century historical text Records of Three Kingdoms (Sanguo Zhi). An exaggerated and romanticised account is also a central event in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.
