16．火【灬】部 fire
火fire烧burn赤red壁cliff (Red Cliff: a place name)
This is a another story from the novel of the Three Kingdoms三国.
In 208, Cao Cao曹操 – King of the Wei State魏, Liu Bei刘备 – King of the Shu State蜀, and Sun Quan 孙权– King of Wu State吴, were still competing to become the emperor of all of China.
One day Cao Cao led 200 thousand soldiers in an attack on Liu’s southern territory. He intended to defeat Liu and then conquer Sun. Liu and Sun, however, finally formed an alliance to stand against Cao at Red Cliff, (a town in the north side of Yangzi River. Today the town is called Chijishan赤脊山 in Hubei province湖北省).
Zhou Yu周瑜 – the general of Sun’s army, and Zhuge Liang诸葛亮 – the Military Councilor of Liu Bei, got together to prepare for this military assault. They knew that they had much fewer soldiers than Cao Cao. It would not wise to engage in one-to-one direct combat. However, the battle was fought on the river beside Red Cliff. Cao’s soldiers were all from dry northern China, and therefore most of them did not know how to swim. For this reason, Cao Cao had ordered his troops to connect their war boats with iron chains and also to pave with wood boards the spaces between the ships, so that the soldiers could engage in combat in the boats as if they were on land.
Knowing this, Zhou and Zhuge decided to attack with fire. Pretending that they were going to capitulate to Cao, they prepared more than 10 small boats and sailed toward Cao’s war boats. Cao was tricked and pleased to see his enemy with intention of surrendering. Then suddenly, each small boat burst into flame! The strong southeast wind caught the fire and quickly spread it into Cao’s battleships. Soon all of Cao Cao’s boats burned to ash and most of his soldiers were dead by burning or drowning. All Cao could do was to collect his surviving soldiers and withdraw to the north.
【注释】赤壁之战，是指东汉末年，孙权、刘备联军于建安十三年（208年）在长江赤壁（今湖北省赤壁市西北）一带大破曹操大军，奠定三国鼎立基础的以少胜多,以弱胜强的著名战役。这是中国历史上以少胜多的著名战争之一，也是三国时期“三大战役”中最为著名的一场。它也是中国历史上第一次在长江流域进行的大规模江河作战，标志着中国军事政治中心不再限于黄河流域。孙刘联军最后以火攻大破曹军，曹操北回，孙、刘各自夺去荆州的一部分。
