The Romance of the Three Kingdoms records that Battle of Red Cliffs is one of the famous wars in the history of China. In 208 AD (13th year of Jian 'an of Emperor Xian of Han Dynasty), Cao Cao led an army of land and water known as a million mighty men to launch a crusade against Sun Quan in Jingzhou. Result. Sun Quan and Liu Bei formed an alliance, and under Zhou Yu's command, they defeated Cao Jun in the Chibi area of the Yangtze River (now northwest of chibi city, Hubei, northeast of Jiayu), thus laying a tripartite confrontation pattern among the three countries.
Battle of Red Cliffs was the first large-scale river battle in the Yangtze River basin, and it was also the only time that Sun, Cao and Liu all sent their main forces to participate in the war.
However, the history books have recorded who set fire to the warship:
Reflection? Shu Wei? Wu Di Ji: "(Cao) going to Chibi is not conducive to preparing for war. So the plague, officers and men, officers and men died, and led the army back. " This article says that Cao Cao came to Chibi to prepare for a big fight, but he got off to a bad start. A large-scale plague broke out among the soldiers and he had to move back to North Korea. There was no mention of fire attack at all, but Cao Cao took the initiative to lead the troops north.
Biography of the Three Kingdoms, Wu Shu and Zhou Yu: "Battle of Red Cliffs, suffering from illness, lost his boat alone, which made Zhou so famous." It says here that Cao Cao wrote to Sun Quan after the war, saying that the soldiers were infected with the plague and didn't want to fight any more.
To sum up, Battle of Red Cliffs really happened, and it was because of the plague (possibly schistosomiasis) in Cao Cao's army that the warships were set on fire, and then the soldiers' bodies were set on fire to avoid the spread of the plague, which was not written in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Stories such as borrowing an arrow from a straw boat and burning a warship in the novel highlight clever figures such as Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang, and modify and exaggerate the official history, which is also a common literary technique.