Battle of Red Cliffs - Three Kingdoms

The Battle of Red Cliffs, otherwise known as the Battle of Chibi, was one of the novel Three Kindoms' secondery stories. During the confrontation of the Three Kingdoms in China, The Battle of Red Cliffs was a decisive battle at the end of the Han Dynasty, immediately prior to the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. It was fought in the winter of 208/9 AD[1] between the allied forces of the southern warlords Liu Bei and Sun Quan and the numerically superior forces of the northern warlord Cao Cao. 
After the Duke of Wei, Cao Cao had controlled all of the North China Plain, he led the troop of 800.000 soldiers to south aiming to eliminate his main southern rivals swiftly and unify China. Meanwhile, Zhou Yu and Lu Su, the generals of Wu and Zhuge Liang of Shu accurately analyzed the situation and disadvantages of Cao army, including its unstable rear supply despite of the claimed 800 thousand soldiers, exhausting expedition and inexperience in water battle, and developed their strategy of confronting the army.
There were altogether 50,000 soldiers, including 30,000 trained naval soldiers led by Zhou Yu, the general of Wu and others led by Liu Bei of Shu organized to confront the Cao army. Since Cao Cao's troop was already decimated by seasickness and lack of water experience, it lost control in battle effectiveness and had to camp northern of the Yangtze River with the Wu and Shu troops in the south. Later Cao Cao ordered to chain his entire fleet together with strong iron chains to drill the navy. Zhou Yu then adopted Huang Gai’s plan of an attack that he pretended to surrender to Cao Cao and got the chance to get close to Cao’s fleet and attacked Cao Cao with fire ships. Cao Cao simply assumed that superiority in number would eventually defeat the Wu and Shu navy and gave Huang Gai the chance to approach his fleet. This eventually brought the debacle of his fleets, which were intruded by Huang Gai’s boats with all firewood ignited at the same time. The Cao army became a sea of fire immediately, which extended to the camps on bank and caused decisive damage of the army. Zhou Yu and others seized the opportunity and chased the Cao force along the way and successfully beat it. Cao Cao had to flee with the remaining troops. The ally then chased to enlarge their victory.
The decisive battle of red cliffs was brought to an end under the background that Cao Cao held the favorable position but underestimated his enemy and made the wrong decision that led to his defeat. During the battle, Sun and Liu allied to repel the strong enemy, leveraged their advantage in water battle and adopted the fire attack to finally defeat the stronger with the weaker. The battle laid the foundation for the confrontation of the latter three kingdoms, Wei, Shu and Wu.
A combination of Cao Cao's strategic errors and the effectiveness of Huang Gai's ruse had resulted in the allied victory at the Battle of Red Cliffs. Zhou Yu had previously observed that Cao Cao's generals and soldiers comprised mostly cavalry and infantry, and few had any experience in naval warfare. Cao Cao also had little support among the people of Jing Province, and thus lacked a secure forward base of operations. Despite the strategic acumen Cao Cao had displayed in earlier campaigns and battles, in this case he had simply assumed that numerical superiority would eventually defeat the Sun and Liu navy. Cao's first tactical mistake was converting his massive army of infantry and cavalry into a marine corps and navy: with only a few days of drills before the battle, Cao Cao's troops were ravaged by sea-sickness and lack of experience on water. Tropical diseases, to which the southerners had long been immune, also plagued the soldiers of the north with the debilitating effects of sickness rampant in Cao Cao's camps. Although numerous, Cao Cao's men were already exhausted by the unfamiliar environment and the extended southern campaign, as Zhuge Liang observed: "Even a powerful arrow at the end of its flight cannot penetrate a silk cloth"