Maicheng

Maicheng is the small, besieged town where Guan Yu makes his final stand after losing Jingzhou. Its isolation turns a military retreat into a test of loyalty: with relief failing to arrive and escape routes watched, he rejects surrender to Sun Quan, attempts a nighttime breakout, and is captured with Guan Ping. After their execution, Maicheng falls as well.

A refuge under siege

After his forces scatter and desert, Guan Yu withdraws with the men still around him to Maicheng, seals its four gates, and sends Liao Hua to Shangyong to request help from Liu Feng and Meng Da. The town offers temporary shelter, not safety: Wu forces surround it, while the message carried by Liao Hua makes clear that relief is urgently needed.

The prospects worsen as the siege continues. At the time of the planned escape, Guan Yu has only about three hundred cavalry and infantry, food is running out, and men continue to slip away at night. Maicheng is thus both a defensive position and a narrowing trap: its gates can be shut, but the dwindling force inside cannot hold out indefinitely.

The choice to refuse surrender

Before the final breakout, Zhuge Jin enters Maicheng at Sun Quan’s command and urges Guan Yu to surrender. He argues that the town is close to falling, and that submission could restore Guan Yu to a position of authority while saving his family. Guan Yu refuses because he will not betray his sworn lord. His answer makes the town’s crisis a matter of principle as well as survival: he would rather die than exchange allegiance for safety.

Guan Ping reacts angrily to Zhuge Jin’s continued persuasion and draws his sword, but Guan Yu stops him with a gesture. Zhuge Jin is then sent away. The exchange leaves the terms of the coming battle plain: Maicheng may be lost, but Guan Yu will not negotiate his loyalty away.

Escape routes and ambushes

Sun Quan’s forces leave the north gate apparently open as part of a plan devised by Lü Meng. Zhu Ran and Pan Zhang each position five thousand elite troops along the narrow road beyond it, so that Guan Yu will be drawn from Maicheng into successive traps. Sun Quan also consults the Yi Jing, whose hexagram indicates that the fugitives will head northwest; reassured, he puts the plan into motion.

Inside the town, Wang Fu warns Guan Yu that the northern mountain passes are well suited to ambush. Guan Yu nevertheless chooses that route, leaving Wang Fu with one hundred men to hold Maicheng while he rides out at night with Guan Ping and Zhao Lei and about two hundred others. The breakout initially meets no opposition, but Zhu Ran’s men attack after the party has traveled several miles. A further assault forces Guan Yu away from the route, and he turns toward a minor road leading to Linju. Pan Zhang’s second ambush follows; although Guan Yu drives his attackers back, the repeated fighting and flight break down the small party. Zhao Lei is killed, and only about a dozen men remain with Guan Yu.

The last trap lies in a narrow valley. Ma Zhong’s men use grappling hooks and nets to bring down Red Hare, Guan Yu’s horse, and capture Guan Yu when he falls. Guan Ping fights to reach and free his father, but he too is captured. The escape that was meant to save the remnant from the siege instead leaves father and son prisoners of Wu.

The town’s fall and its aftermath

Liao Hua’s appeal for help does not bring a relief column to Maicheng in time. Guan Yu waits in vain, and after his capture the heads of Guan Yu and Guan Ping are taken back to the town and shown to Wang Fu and Zhou Cang. When the defenders are then challenged to surrender, the news confirms that the effort to preserve the town has ended with the loss of its commander and his son.

Wang Fu had dreamed the previous night that Guan Yu appeared to him covered in blood. Faced with the heads, he throws himself from the walls; Zhou Cang takes his own life. Maicheng consequently falls to the southern forces. Its final scenes connect the collapse of the garrison to the loyalty that sustained it: the defenders do not outlast the siege, but the account presents their deaths as a last response to Guan Yu’s fate.

Narrative significance

Maicheng marks the change from Guan Yu’s retreat after the loss of Jingzhou to his capture and death. The town’s gates, depleted provisions, and exposed northern road make its military predicament concrete; each narrowing option carries the plot toward the ambushes outside its walls. The contrast between Sun Quan’s offer of restored authority and Guan Yu’s refusal gives the place a second function: it is the setting where his allegiance is tested at the moment when it can no longer protect him.

The story does not end with the fall of the town. Wang Fu and Zhou Cang’s responses extend Maicheng’s defeat into the aftermath, while the fate of Guan Yu and Guan Ping makes the town a turning point in the larger account of the struggle for Jingzhou. Its loss is therefore not merely a change of possession: it closes the defenders’ last refuge and ushers in the deaths that follow.