Battle of Jiangling (208)
Battle of Jiangling | |||||||
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Part of the Red Cliffs campaign | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Sun Quan Liu Bei | Cao Cao | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Zhou Yu Cheng Pu Han Dang Lü Meng Ling Tong Zhou Tai Gan Ning Liu Bei Guan Yu Zhang Fei Lei Xu |
Cao Ren Xu Huang Niu Jin Chen Jiao Yue Jin Li Tong Wen Ping | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
40,000+[a] | 120,000+ (the troops Cao Ren had prior to the battle was more than that of Zhou Yu, and numerous other cities controlled by Cao Cao.) |
Battle of Jiangling | |
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Hanyu Pinyin | Jiānglǐng Zhī Zhàn |
The Battle of Jiangling was fought by the allied forces of
While the fighting around
Background
After the great victory in the Battle of Red Cliffs, the allies immediately carried out their next step of their strategy by attempting to take control of Nan Commandery (南郡) from Cao Cao by driving the retreating enemy toward Jiangling County.
The battles
Liu Bei fronts
Zhou Yu was worried about Cao Cao's unscathed units totaling over 100,000 strong, which were scattered around strategic locations, so he urged Liu Bei to send Guan Yu to block Cao Ren's supply lines via infiltration. Zhou Yu wanted to have Guan Yu attack the enemy rear while bypassing the strongpoint of Jiangling, in order to isolate Jiangling for a coordinated attack.
Guan Yu's northern blockade
While Zhou Yu and Liu Bei were besieging Jiangling on the frontlines, Liu Bei authorized
Guan Yu's fleet was finally defeated by Yue Jin and Wen Ping at Xiakou[13][14] and Guan Yu was held off by his rivals. However, none of Cao Cao's forces were able to fully aid Cao Ren and turn the tide decisively to their favor.
Zhou Yu fronts
The allies appeared to be suffering losses but their failures were considered minor as compared to that of Cao Cao's side. A few months earlier, Cao Ren's elite cavalry suffered over 3,000 casualties in a single day in an attempt to retake Yiling; besides, Cao Ren and his aide, Xu Huang, were unable to suppress Ling Tong, who were defending Zhou Yu's main camp on his own.
Niu Jin's assault
Hence, the soldiers inside Jiangling had low morale, and Cao Ren knew he needed to do something to change the tide of war. To prevent morale from dropping further, Cao Ren recruited 300 volunteers[15] to form an assault force led by general Niu Jin, in the hope that they could score a minor victory or demonstrate bravery on the field to boost morale. When the enemy vanguard reached the outskirts of the city, the small detachment was immediately besieged. Cao Ren ordered several tens of his best men to be ready for the rescue. His Chief Clerk Chen Jiao advised against it, arguing that "the enemy's morale is too high, and losing several hundred men is not a big deal to us."[16]
Cao Ren ignored Chen Jiao's plea and went out, charging directly into the enemy. As Chen Jiao lost sight of Cao Ren, he was certain that Cao Ren was dead. However, to everyone's surprise, not only did Cao Ren rescue Niu Jin on the first attempt, he went back to save the remaining survivors. As Cao Ren and his troops returned to safety behind the city walls, the total fatalities of the combined forces of Cao Ren and Niu Jin were minimal. The surprised Chen Jiao could only mutter one sentence: "General (Cao Ren), you are truly a man from Heaven." When Cao Cao learned of this soon after, he rewarded Cao Ren with the peerage of Marquis of Anping Village (安平亭侯) for his bravery in this battle. Encouraged by this incident, Cao Ren set up camps outside the city walls. Zhou Yu personally led raids on Cao Ren's camps, and during one such raid, he was seriously wounded after he was hit by an arrow that broke one of his right ribs.[17]
Withdrawal of Cao Ren
The siege became prolonged. As Zhou Yu could not command the troops, the battles were left to Ling Tong, Lü Meng and others, who were forced to expediently alter their temporary objective into inflicting damage to the enemy units. After a year of intense fighting, Zhou Yu recovered and insisted on personally leading the army, he purposefully flaunted before Cao Ren and rallied his army to illustrate his determination to keep on the offensive. Being deceived by Zhou Yu, who was actually still in critical condition, Cao Cao unwillingly ordered Cao Ren to retreat under the rationale that his forces could no longer afford the continuous loss of material and labor.[18] Therefore, Sun Quan's forces finally succeeded in their objective of capturing Nan Commandery, which holds the upper stream of the Yangtze River, a strategic stronghold that would never be reclaimed by the state of Cao Wei.[citation needed]
Aftermath
Liu Bei asked for and obtained Zhou Yu's permission to cover the rear and the flank of Zhou Yu's navy by taking the remaining four commanderies to the south of the
Liu Bei was joined by
Traditionally, the Battle of Jiangling is regarded as the end of the Red Cliffs campaign because as the confrontations ended and the battle turned into a siege, Cao Cao returned to his forward base in Qiao County in the north in March, 209, and Sun Quan also gave up his attack on Hefei in the east, and the remainder of the siege of Jiangling was no longer considered as part of the campaign by most historians. The fall of Jiangling to Sun Quan is generally regarded as the aftermath of the campaign.[citation needed]
In Romance of the Three Kingdoms and popular culture
For dramatic effect, in many literary works, Liu Bei's conquest of the four commanderies south of the Yangtze River includes a match between
Contrary to what was depicted in the 14th-century historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Han Xuan was not killed by Wei Yan, while there was no record when Wei Yan became a subject of Liu Bei or whether Wei Yan took part in this battle.
In Dynasty Warriors 4, this battle is called "Race for the Nan Territory".
Notes
- ^ This number is a rough estimate assuming the allied forces suffered minimal casualties during the Battle of Red Cliffs.
References
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