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Zhou Yu
Wu commander from Lujiang who, with Cheng Pu, led the allied forces that burned Cao Cao's fleet at Red Cliffs in 208
Mural of the event “Battle of Red Cliffs”, which this person took part in.
At the end of the Eastern Han, the Yellow Turban Rebellion had collapsed central authority and the realm dissolved into warlord territories. After pacifying the north, Cao Cao led hundreds of thousands of land and naval forces southward to swallow the south in one unifying campaign.
Also known as Zi Gongjin · Zhou Lang
Zhou Yu, courtesy name Gongjin, came from Shu county in Lujiang; two of his kinsmen had been Grand Commandant of the Han. The same age as Sun Ce and his friend from boyhood, he gave the Sun family his large house south of the road. He joined Sun Ce in 198 at twenty-four, and people in Wu called him young master Zhou; after they took Wan, Sun Ce married the elder daughter of Lord Qiao and Zhou Yu the younger. When Cao Cao came south in 208 and most advisers urged surrender, he and Lu Su argued for resistance; sharing command with Cheng Pu and allied with Liu Bei, he beat Cao at Red Cliffs with Huang Gai's feigned surrender and fire ships, then drove Cao Ren from Jiangling. In 210, while preparing to invade Yi province, he died at Baqiu aged thirty-six. His biography says he turned at any wrong note; Su Shi's lyric on Red Cliffs recalls Gongjin newly wed to the younger Qiao.
Life and times
Dates 175 CE–210 CE
- 208Battle of Red CliffsTook partage 33
- 208Zhuge Liang Forges the Sun-Liu Allianceage 33