Three Kingdoms

Zhuge Liang's Northern Expeditions
©Anonymous
228 Feb 1 - 234 Oct

Zhuge Liang's Northern Expeditions

Gansu, China

Zhuge Liang's Northern Expeditions were a series of five military campaigns launched by the state of Shu Han against the rival state of Cao Wei from 228 to 234 during the Three Kingdoms period in China. All five expeditions were led by Zhuge Liang, the Imperial Chancellor and regent of Shu. Although they proved unsuccessful and ended up as a stalemate, the expeditions have become some of the best known conflicts of the Three Kingdoms period and one of the few battles during it where each side (Shu and Wei) fought against each other with hundreds of thousands of troops, as opposed to other battles where one side had a huge numerical advantage.


The expeditions are dramatised and romanticised in the 14th-century historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, where they are referred to as the "six campaigns from Mount Qi" (六出祁山). This term is inaccurate, since Zhuge Liang only launched two of his expeditions (the first and the fourth) from Mount Qi.