Liu Biao

Liu Biao held the richest province in China for eighteen years without ever using it, and it was handed to Cao Cao by his son a few weeks after he died. He was a member of the imperial clan, tall and well spoken, and one of the scholars proscribed in the Partisan Prohibitions of the 160s. Sent to govern Jing province in 190 he arrived alone, with no troops, and took the province by inviting the leading local clans - the Kuai and the Cai - to a meeting, taking their advice, and having the independent bandit leaders killed at a banquet. He married into the Cai family, which decided the succession after his death. He ruled the middle Yangtze from Xiangyang for the whole period of the warlord wars and kept out of them: he supplied Yuan Shao with words rather than men, sent Sun Jian's killer Huang Zu to hold the river, and gave asylum to Liu Bei in 201 without ever employing him properly. What he did do was collect scholars: refugees from the north filled Xiangyang, he founded schools and had the classics collated, and the province was the one place in China where learning continued through the collapse. Cao Cao's advisers repeatedly told him Liu Biao would not move, and they were right. He died in 208 as Cao Cao marched south; the Cai family put forward his younger son Liu Cong, who surrendered the province without a fight, and Liu Bei had to run for the river. Red Cliffs was fought over what Liu Biao had spent his life not spending. He was described by his contemporaries as a man of appearance and reputation who could not decide anything. His elder son Liu Qi was pushed aside by the Cai faction and died the year after Red Cliffs. The scholars he had gathered at Xiangyang scattered into the service of all three of the states that followed, which is the most durable thing he did.

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