Gongsun Zan arrived at the Qing River with an impressive force: 30,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry, arranged with the infantry in a square formation and the cavalry divided between the wings. At the center rode his most feared unit, the "White Horse Volunteers," an elite mounted force whose appearance, according to the Records of Heroes, was so striking that their "flags and armour lit up Heaven and Earth." These riders were Gongsun Zan's signature weapon, the spearhead he relied on to shatter enemy formations. Yuan Shao's army was roughly the same size but consisted almost entirely of infantry, a disadvantage in mobility that he compensated for with discipline and a commander named Qu Yi.

Qu Yi placed 800 elite troops and 1,000 crossbowmen at the vanguard, with masses of foot soldiers behind them. Seeing Yuan's thin forward line, Gongsun Zan ordered his cavalry to charge, expecting to break through and roll up the infantry behind. Qu Yi's men crouched behind their shields and waited. When the thundering cavalry reached ten paces, roughly fifteen meters, the crossbowmen rose and fired. Waves of bolts tore into riders and horses at point-blank range. The foot soldiers followed, surging forward with spears into the chaos of falling horses and unhorsed riders. Gongsun Zan's general Yan Gang was killed. Yuan Shao's forces reportedly took a thousand heads. The White Horse Volunteers, the pride of Gongsun's army, wheeled and fled, followed by the rest of the cavalry and then the infantry.

After Qu Yi's vanguard drove Gongsun Zan's forces back to the Qing River and overran their camp, Yuan Shao advanced with a bodyguard of fewer than two hundred men. It was a reckless move. Two thousand of Gongsun Zan's horsemen, detached from the main force, stumbled upon Yuan Shao's small party. Yuan's aide-de-camp Tian Feng urged him to take cover behind a low wall. Yuan refused, threw down his helmet, and made his stand. The enemy riders, not recognizing Yuan Shao and uncertain of their situation, were already beginning to pull back when Qu Yi's troops arrived to scatter them. The episode became a celebrated story of personal courage, though a cooler assessment might note that Yuan Shao nearly got himself killed through impetuousness.

The Battle of Jieqiao is uniquely valuable to historians because Pei Songzhi's annotations to the Records of Three Kingdoms preserve an unusually detailed account of troop dispositions, tactical decisions, and battlefield dynamics. Traditional Chinese histories typically reduced battles to their political outcomes, but here the arrangement of formations, the timing of the crossbow volley, and the psychology of the cavalry charge survive in the record. The battle demonstrated a principle that military thinkers would rediscover in many eras: disciplined infantry with ranged weapons can defeat even elite cavalry if they hold their nerve. Gongsun Zan's defeat at Jieqiao halted his southern advance, though the war between the two warlords continued for another seven years, ending only with Gongsun Zan's death in 199.