In the Three Kingdoms, the burning of Chibi is actually false. Where is the real fire?

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is no stranger to Battle of Red Cliffs. This time, the most famous of the "three major battles" in the Three Kingdoms period, and the first large-scale river war in the Yangtze River basin in China's history, finally formed the embryonic form of "three points in the world" and laid the foundation for the tripartite confrontation among the three countries.

Speaking of this war, one of the main reasons for Cao Cao's failure was that Cao Cao was not used to taking a boat for the soldiers in the north, so he was connected with the boat from beginning to end, with men and women on the flat ground. Finally, Sun Liulian defeated Cao Jun with fire attack, so many people also said that Battle of Red Cliffs burned Chibi.

In fact, what Battle of Red Cliffs burned in history was not Chibi, but Wulin. Chibi, named after the fire that burned Wulin reflected the red color on the other side of Chibi River, is recorded in Historical Materials of Burning Wulin, Notes on Shuijing, Records of the Three Kingdoms and Records of Mianyang in Ming Jiaqing.

In December of the 13th year of Jian 'an (2008), after Cao Cao was defeated by Zhou Yu's water army in the first battle, he had to "lead the water army to the north of the Yangtze River" to join the army, tilt the warship to the Wulin side on the north shore and practice the water army. In order to make the soldiers in the north unaccustomed to taking a boat, he connected the boat from end to end, and his troops were on board. Zhou Yu's subordinate Huang Gai, who confronted Cao Jun on the Chibi side of the south bank of the Yangtze River, thought that Cao Cao had been tricked into surrendering. He chose ten Meng Chong warships, loaded them with hay and dead wood firewood, poured oil on them, wrapped them in curtains, put up banners, prepared speedboats in advance, tied them at the stern, and lit ten warships at the same time. All Cao Jun warships were burned down because they were connected.

The burning of Cao Cao's army gave Sun Liu a chance to win. Zhou Yu and other light soldiers followed, and Cao Jun was defeated. Cao Cao led a great army to retreat on foot from Huarong Road, but it was muddy, the road was impassable and the wind blew again. Cao Cao asked all the old and weak soldiers to spread grass on the road, but the cavalry barely passed. The old, weak and disabled soldiers were trampled by horses, trapped in the mud and died a lot.

In this battle, Cao Cao suffered more than half of the casualties. After Cao Cao returned to Jiangling, he was afraid of losing Chibi and making the regime in the rear unstable. Cao Ren and Huang Xu were ordered to guard Nanjun and Wen Pin to guard Jiangxia. Then he ordered Le Jin to guard Xiangyang, with Man Chong as the general, and stationed troops as the sun. Sun and Liu joined forces to win the victory in Battle of Red Cliffs.