Wars of the Late Han and the Three Kingdoms

The wars of the late Han and the Three Kingdoms is a name for almost a hundred years of fighting in China, from the Yellow Turban Rebellion of 184 to the reunification of the country in 280. During this time the Han dynasty, which had ruled China for about four hundred years, lost control, and the country split into pieces ruled by generals and local strongmen. (In English the phrase “Wars of the Three Kingdoms” more often means the seventeenth-century wars in England, Scotland and Ireland; this page is about China.)

Out of these many warlords, three states survived. Wei held the north, with its capital at Luoyang. Shu (also called Shu Han) held Sichuan in the west, with its capital at Chengdu. Wu held the lands along the lower and middle Yangtze River, with its capital at Jianye, today’s Nanjing, for most of its history. From 229 to 263 there were three emperors at once, each claiming to be the rightful ruler of all China.

Historians count the ‘Three Kingdoms period’ proper from 220, when the last Han emperor gave up his throne, to 280. But the story everyone knows begins earlier, with the collapse of the Han, the rise of Cao Cao, Liu Bei and Sun Quan, and the great battles of Guandu and Red Cliffs. This page follows that whole arc.

By the 180s the Han court was weak. Emperors came to the throne as children, and real power passed back and forth between the families of empresses and the palace eunuchs. Officials who protested were purged. Meanwhile floods, epidemics and heavy taxes pushed many farmers into poverty or into the service of rich landowners.

In 184 a religious movement called the Way of Great Peace, led by Zhang Jue, rose in revolt across eastern China; its followers wore yellow headcloths. The court raised armies and defeated the main rebel forces within the year, but to do so it let provincial governors and generals build up their own troops.

When Emperor Ling died in 189, the general-in-chief He Jin tried to destroy the eunuchs and was murdered by them, and officials and eunuchs fought in the palace. The frontier general Dong Zhuo marched into Luoyang and, in late September 189, deposed the young emperor and put his half-brother Liu Xie (Emperor Xian) on the throne. The governors of the east formed a coalition against Dong Zhuo, who burned Luoyang and moved the court to Chang’an. From then on the emperor was a prize to be captured, and the empire belonged to whoever had the strongest army.

Cao Cao (155–220) was a tough, practical general and a talented poet. In 196 he brought the emperor to his base at Xu, which let him give orders in the emperor’s name. He defeated his great rival Yuan Shao, united northern China, and became King of Wei, but he never took the title of emperor himself.

Liu Bei (161–223) spent much of his life losing: he served or allied with one warlord after another and was driven out of base after base. But he was famous for attracting brave followers such as Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun, and the adviser Zhuge Liang. In the 210s he won Sichuan and Hanzhong, and in 221 declared himself emperor, claiming to continue the Han.

Sun Quan (182–252) succeeded his brother Sun Ce in 200, taking over the lands south of the Yangtze that Sun Ce had conquered; their father Sun Jian had been killed years before fighting Liu Biao of Jing Province. A careful and flexible ruler, he allied with Liu Bei against Cao Cao, then with Cao Cao against Liu Bei, whichever kept his state safe. He declared himself emperor of Wu in 229.

Zhuge Liang (181–234) became chancellor of Shu and, after Liu Bei’s death, ran the state for his son Liu Shan. Chen Shou, the historian of the period, praised him as an administrator and noted his talent for invention, while judging that military improvisation was not his strongest point. In later legend he became a near-magical genius.

The 190s were the age of the warlords. Yuan Shao, head of one of the most distinguished families of the empire, won control of the north-east and finally destroyed Gongsun Zan at Yijing (199). Yuan Shu held the Huai region and even proclaimed himself emperor in 197, a move that isolated him. Sun Jian was killed in 191 or 192 fighting Liu Biao, the governor of Jing Province, and his son Sun Ce later conquered the lower Yangtze. Dong Zhuo was assassinated in Chang’an in 192, and his officers fought over the capital until the emperor escaped east.

Cao Cao built his power in Yan Province. His invasions of Xu Province in 193–194, in revenge for his father’s murder, included massacres of civilians that the sources record plainly. While he was away, his officers invited Lü Bu into Yan, and Cao Cao nearly lost everything. He recovered, took Emperor Xian to Xu in 196, set up agricultural garrisons (tuntian) near Xu to feed his armies, and destroyed Lü Bu at Xiapi at the turn of 198–199.

The decisive clash came in 200 at Guandu, south of the Yellow River near modern Kaifeng. Yuan Shao’s army was much larger, and Cao Cao held a defensive line for more than a month while running short of food. When the Yuan adviser Xu You defected, Cao Cao led a raid that burned Yuan Shao’s supply depot at Wuchao, and the Yuan army collapsed. Yuan Shao died in 202; Cao Cao exploited the quarrels of his sons, took their capital Ye in 204, and in 207 crossed the mountains to defeat their Wuhuan allies at White Wolf Mountain. By the end of 207 he controlled the north China plain.

In the autumn of 208 Cao Cao marched south to Jing Province. Liu Biao died, his son surrendered, and Cao Cao’s cavalry caught Liu Bei’s fleeing column at Changban. Lu Su of Wu met Liu Bei at Changban in Dangyang and urged him to cooperate with Sun Quan; Liu Bei then moved to Xiakou and sent Zhuge Liang to Sun Quan. Cao Cao wrote to Sun Quan of an army of 800,000 by water and land; Zhou Yu argued that his northern troops were no more than 150,000–160,000, worn out, and that the newly surrendered Jing troops numbered at most 70,000–80,000 and were of doubtful loyalty. Sun Quan sent Zhou Yu with 30,000 men. Zhuge Liang told Sun Quan that Liu Bei’s surviving troops and Guan Yu’s naval force numbered 10,000, with at least another 10,000 under Liu Qi.

According to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, sickness had already broken out in Cao Cao’s army. After a first clash Cao Cao drew back to the north bank, where his ships lay packed bow to stern. Zhou Yu’s officer Huang Gai sent a letter pretending to surrender, then sailed several dozen warships filled with firewood and grass soaked in oil towards Cao Cao’s fleet and set them alight. In a strong wind the fire spread to the camps on shore. Cao Cao retreated; a source quoted in Pei Songzhi’s commentary describes his army struggling through mud on the Huarong road, where many weak soldiers were trampled to death, and Cao Cao’s own annals say that a great epidemic killed many of his men. Rafe de Crespigny notes that the scale of the defeat has very likely been exaggerated.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms turns this into a contest of genius. In chapters 46, 49 and 50 of the novel, Zhuge Liang ‘borrows’ more than 100,000 arrows by sending straw-covered boats into the fog, calls up the south-east wind with a ritual at an altar, and Guan Yu lets Cao Cao escape at Huarong in memory of past kindness. None of these episodes appears in the Records of the Three Kingdoms; the novel also gives Zhuge Liang credit that the histories give to Zhou Yu, Huang Gai and Lu Su. The historical battle was a victory of the Sun army, with Liu Bei’s forces as partners.

Even the place is uncertain. Several places along the Yangtze are called Red Cliffs (Chibi). Reference works place the battle on the south bank in the area of Jiayu and today’s Chibi city, south-west of Wuhan, and de Crespigny puts it between Wuhan and Yueyang. The ‘Red Cliff’ at Huangzhou (Huanggang) celebrated by the Song poet Su Shi is a different place.

After Red Cliffs the allies divided Jing Province, the rich middle Yangtze region. Liu Bei then accepted an invitation from Liu Zhang, the governor of Yi Province (Sichuan), to help against Zhang Lu in Hanzhong, and instead turned on his host. After a long siege of Luo, in which his adviser Pang Tong was killed, Liu Bei took Chengdu in 214. Cao Cao meanwhile crushed Ma Chao and the north-western warlords near Tong Pass (211) and took Hanzhong from Zhang Lu (215). From 217 Liu Bei fought him for Hanzhong; in 219 Liu Bei’s general Huang Zhong killed Cao Cao’s commander Xiahou Yuan at Mount Dingjun, and Cao Cao withdrew.

In 219 Guan Yu, who held Jing for Liu Bei, attacked Cao Ren at Fancheng. Autumn floods on the Han River drowned the relief army and its commander Yu Jin surrendered; Cao Cao even considered moving the imperial court away from Xu. But Sun Quan, alarmed by Guan Yu’s power and angry over Jing, turned against him. His general Lü Meng hid soldiers in boats rowed by men dressed as merchants, took the river posts and received the surrender of Jiangling. Guan Yu was trapped, captured and executed at the end of 219. Wu now held Liu Bei’s former territories in Jing Province, while Cao Cao kept his northern positions around Xiangyang and Fancheng.

Cao Cao died early in 220. His son Cao Pi had Emperor Xian abdicate later that year, ending the Han and founding Wei. Liu Bei proclaimed himself emperor in 221 and that autumn set out down the Yangtze against Wu. In 222 the Wu commander Lu Xun waited for months, then attacked Liu Bei’s long line of camps with fire near Xiaoting (Yiling). Liu Bei died at Baidi in 223, and Zhuge Liang, ruling for Liu Shan, restored the alliance with Wu. Sun Quan took the title of emperor in 229. The map of three states was now fixed for a generation.

Shu was the smallest of the three states. In 225 Zhuge Liang campaigned against revolts in Nanzhong, covering parts of today’s southern Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou. Then, from 228 to 234, he led a series of expeditions north through the Qinling mountains. In 228 three Wei commanderies rebelled in his support, but his general Ma Su was defeated at Jieting and the army had to withdraw. That winter Zhuge Liang besieged Chencang but withdrew when his grain ran out, and in 229 his forces secured the commanderies of Wudu and Yinping. Later expeditions fought around Mount Qi and used new transport devices of Zhuge Liang’s design, the ‘wooden oxen’ and ‘flowing horses’, to carry grain over mountain roads.

Wei’s answer was patience. Sima Yi took command against Zhuge Liang in 231; the sources disagree about the fighting that year. On the last expedition in 234 he avoided the decisive battle Zhuge Liang sought, and the two armies faced each other for more than a hundred days on the Wuzhang Plains beside the Wei River, until Zhuge Liang fell ill and died in camp. After his death Jiang Wan and then Fei Yi led the Shu government; Jiang Wei expanded the northern offensives, especially after Fei Yi was assassinated in 253, but achieved no lasting breakthrough, and Wu’s offensives against Hefei in the east failed just as often.

The real change happened inside Wei. Sima Yi destroyed Gongsun Yuan in Liaodong in 238 and in 249 seized power in a coup while the regent Cao Shuang was visiting the imperial tombs outside Luoyang. Rebellions against the Sima at Shouchun in the 250s were put down, and a Wei emperor who tried to strike back, Cao Mao, was killed in 260. By the 260s Wei was a Sima state in all but name.

In 263 Sima Zhao sent armies against Shu. Zhong Hui’s main force took Hanzhong but was stopped by Jiang Wei at the pass of Jiange. Deng Ai then led a force from Yinping for more than 700 li through country without roads, cutting paths through mountains, and came out behind the Shu defences. Zhuge Liang’s son Zhuge Zhan was killed at Mianzhu, and the emperor Liu Shan surrendered Chengdu. An attempted revolt by Zhong Hui with Jiang Wei in early 264 ended with both men killed.

At the turn of 265–266 Sima Zhao’s son Sima Yan made the last Wei emperor abdicate and founded the Jin dynasty. Wu, under its harsh last ruler Sun Hao, held out for another fourteen years behind the Yangtze. Jin began its offensive along the whole frontier in the winter of 279–280, and in the first lunar month of 280 a great fleet built in Sichuan under Wang Jun set out from Chengdu down the Yangtze; Wu had stretched iron chains across the river and planted iron spikes in it, and Wang Jun’s men burned through the chains with huge oil-soaked torches. In the spring of 280 Wang Jun reached Jianye and Sun Hao surrendered.

The cost was enormous, but hard to measure. The Book of Jin records 56,486,856 registered people for 157 and 16,163,863 for 280. These are registration figures compiled in different ways, not direct counts of everyone alive, and they cannot tell us how many died in the wars; registration had broken down, and many people had moved or come under the protection of great families. Still, war, famine and epidemic clearly killed very many, and the sources describe cities destroyed, whole districts emptied, and massacres such as Cao Cao’s in Xu Province in 193–194.

Geography shaped every campaign. The north had cavalry country, big cities and most of the people. Wu’s strength was the Yangtze: its navy made the great river a moat. Shu sat behind mountains; the few roads through the Qinling range and the gorges of the Yangtze were easy to defend but hard to attack out of. This is one reason why the division lasted for decades, and why both Zhuge Liang’s and Wei’s invasions of each other so often ended in retreat.

Supply was usually the deciding factor. Armies of tens of thousands had to be fed over long distances. From about 196 Cao Cao settled refugees and soldiers on abandoned land in agricultural garrisons (tuntian), and the system was extended across Wei. Many campaigns, Guandu among them, turned on grain depots, supply lines or the simple fact that food ran out.

Military power was often personal. Generals led followings loyal to themselves, and in Wu, as the Wei general Deng Ai observed, the great families held real power through their own troops and retainers. The states also pushed into their southern frontiers: Wu extended its control over the hill communities of the south-east, which included both non-Han peoples and Chinese refugees, and Shu suppressed revolts by local leaders in Nanzhong. Numbers in the sources, such as Cao Cao’s claim of 800,000 men in 208, should be read as propaganda or rough guesses rather than counts.

Stories about the Three Kingdoms were told by storytellers and on stage for centuries. A printed popular version, the Sanguozhi pinghua, appeared in the Zhizhi era (1321–1323). The great novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, attributed to Luo Guanzhong, survives in its earliest printed form in the Jiajing-era edition of the sixteenth century, and in the early Qing Mao Lun and Mao Zonggang produced the 120-chapter version most people read today. The novel takes the side of Shu Han, favouring Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang as heroes and painting Cao Cao as a cunning villain.

Guan Yu became a god. Over the centuries he was worshipped as a symbol of loyalty and righteousness. In Korea, Ming commanders who came to fight Japan’s invasions in the 1590s built shrines to him: in 1598 the Ming officer Chen Yin (陳寅) set up the southern shrine outside Seoul’s Sungnyemun gate, and the shrine now called Dongmyo, outside the East Gate, was established in 1601, also on Ming initiative. Dongmyo is a Treasure of Korea.

In Korea the novel, known as Samgukji, and in Japan, where Yoshikawa Eiji wrote his retelling in 1939–1943, the story has been adapted again and again into novels, comics, television dramas and video games. For Korean and Japanese history the period matters for another reason too: the Records of the Three Kingdoms contains some of the earliest detailed Chinese descriptions of Goguryeo, Buyeo, the Samhan and the Wa, including Queen Himiko, who sent envoys to Wei: the received text of the Records dates the embassy to Jingchu 2 (238), while the later Book of Liang has Jingchu 3 (239).

The core source is the Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi) by Chen Shou (233–297), a former Shu official who wrote under Jin. It is concise and mostly made of biographies, arranged in separate books for Wei, Shu and Wu; only the Wei rulers receive imperial annals. Chen Shou drew on earlier histories such as Wang Chen’s Book of Wei, Wei Zhao’s Book of Wu and Yu Huan’s Weilüe, while the Shu section is thought to rest largely on his own knowledge. In 429 Pei Songzhi added a commentary quoting a large number of other works, many now lost. Much of the colourful detail people remember, and many contradictions, come from Pei’s quotations rather than from Chen Shou.

Later historians rearranged this material. The Book of the Later Han (5th century) covers the Han side of the story, and Sima Guang’s Zizhi tongjian (completed 1084) wove all the sources into a single year-by-year narrative, choosing between conflicting versions. In English, Rafe de Crespigny’s annotated translations and studies, including his biography of Cao Cao, are standard.

Dating is a real problem. The sources give dates by reign era, lunar month and sometimes a sexagenary day name, and converting them to Western dates needs tables of the historical Chinese calendar. The three states did not always use the same calendar; Wu, for example, adopted the Qianxiang calendar. The sources also disagree with each other. Red Cliffs is narrated by the Zizhi tongjian after an entry for the tenth month, while Cao Cao’s annals place it after an entry for the twelfth month, and Sun Sheng, in a comment preserved in Pei Songzhi’s annotations, noted that the Wu records give a different order of events. The campaign is conventionally dated to the winter of 208, but its exact chronology remains uncertain.

The oldest debate is about legitimacy. Chen Shou, writing for Jin, which had inherited its throne from Wei, treated Wei as the legitimate successor of Han by giving only its rulers imperial annals. Sima Guang used Wei’s era names only to keep a chronology, explaining that none of the three had unified the realm and that he did not mean to rank one above the others; he also doubted Liu Bei’s claimed descent. The Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi rejected this and made Shu the legitimate line, a view that shaped popular storytelling and the novel.

A second debate concerns scale. The census figures and army sizes in the sources cannot be taken at face value. Registered population measured who was on the registers, not who was alive, and armies reported round and often inflated figures; in the account quoted from the Jiangbiao zhuan, Zhou Yu himself puts Cao Cao’s northern and surrendered Jing troops at a combined 220,000–240,000, against the claimed 800,000. Historians therefore argue both about how catastrophic the demographic collapse was and about how large the armies at Guandu or Red Cliffs really were.

Finally there is the relationship between history and fiction. The novel is sometimes described as ‘seven parts fact and three parts fiction’, a literary characterisation rather than a measured accuracy rate. Modern scholarship studies it as a literary work, and its image of Cao Cao as a villain has been challenged by writers and historians who stress his achievements as a unifier, administrator and poet. Because the novel has so strongly shaped popular images of the period, historians often have to distinguish its episodes from what the sources actually say.