Cao Cao: Five-Colored Curfew Staffs, Tuntian Farms and Defeat at Red Cliffs

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Cao Cao lived from about 155 to 220 AD as the Han dynasty collapsed. A young assessor predicted he would be a capable official in peaceful times and a cunning rogue in chaos. As a teenager who hunted with falcons, he faked a stroke in front of an uncle who reported on him, then told his father the uncle was lying, so his father never believed the uncle again. As a district security chief in Luoyang he hung five-colored staffs outside his office and had the uncle of a powerful court eunuch beaten to death for breaking curfew. When a warlord burned the capital and took Emperor Xian hostage, Cao Cao took in the escaped emperor in 196 and moved the court to Xuchang, ruling in his name.

His tuntian colonies settled refugees on abandoned land with tools and oxen in return for 50 to 60 percent of the harvest, feeding his armies. At Guandu in 200 he burned the enemy grain depot at Wuchao and unified the north. In 208 at Red Cliffs his sick northern troops chained their ships together against seasickness, and fire ships destroyed the fleet. He later became a king, wrote direct and influential poetry and lived frugally. After his death in 220 his son ended the Han and founded Cao Wei.

• For the Wuchao raid he disguised a small strike force in enemy uniforms and attacked at night.
• On the Huarong Trail retreat, weak soldiers laying straw in the mud were trampled by the army, and Cao Cao laughed at his enemies for failing to trap him.
• Warning that he killed anyone who approached him asleep, he killed a servant who tried to cover him with a blanket.
• When his horse trampled a protected wheat field, he cut off his own hair as a symbolic execution.
• He wore leather caps instead of silk, mended his own screens and asked for a burial without gold or jade.