Sinking the boats and smashing the cauldrons
With Julu besieged, the relief armies of the lords all watched from behind their walls. After crossing the Zhang River, Xiang Yu scuttled the boats, smashed the cooking pots, and burned the camp, each man carrying only three days’ rations — win or die. The Chu army won nine battles out of nine, their shouts shaking the sky, while the lords watched from the ramparts, "every man of them terrified." Afterward, when Xiang Yu summoned the lords’ commanders, they entered the gate on their knees, none daring to look up.
Gaixia and the Wu River
Encircled at Gaixia, hearing Chu songs on all sides in the night, Xiang Yu was aghast: "Has Han already taken all of Chu?" Drinking in his tent, he sang the mournful "My strength could uproot mountains," Consort Yu answering him, and all around wept. Breaking out to the Wu River, where a village elder waited with a boat and urged him to cross and rise again, Xiang Yu laughed: "I crossed west with eight thousand sons of Jiangdong, and now not one returns. Even if their fathers and brothers pitied me and made me king, with what face could I meet them?" He dismounted to fight on foot, killed several hundred, took more than ten wounds, and cut his own throat.