Ancient Chinese Warfare (66 page)

References scattered throughout the wider collection of pre-imperial materials indicate that growing unrest already troubled the highly idealized, semi-legendary Sage progenitors. Sun Pin noted that seven groups didn’t obey Yao’s mandates, including two among the Yi and four in the central area, and that he pacified the realm with force.
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Other observers such as Hsün-tzu suggest that Shun found it necessary to subjugate fourteen recalcitrant entities and that he attacked the Miao, then entrusted Yü with the same task and actually perished in a campaign against them. When Yü finally acquired power he found thirty-three groups refused to submit, and he had to “forcefully impose his teachings.” Fortunately, the Tung Yi did not support the Miao in their conflict; otherwise, the Hsia’s comparatively paltry forces would have been crushed.
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However insubstantial and unreliable, these laconic references still accurately reflect an accelerating trend toward localized and global conflict, the failure of vaunted Virtue to prevail, and a purported unwillingness to recognize what would later be termed “Heaven’s will.” More significantly, particularly for the weaker or less populous areas, alliance building had already emerged as an important factor. Even the neutrality of supposedly natural allies could doom the isolated to defeat, prefiguring the validity of the
Art of War
’s admonition a millennium and a half later to thwart alliances and thereby incapacitate enemies.

Historians have traditionally argued that accumulating wealth, class differentiation, and the evolution of authoritarian structures are the crucial elements underlying the emergence of conflict and early warfare.
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Although the temptations of material goods and suffering of deprivation no doubt beget greed and rapaciousness, neither hierarchical structure nor class differentiation was necessary for bands of marauders to begin pillaging simply because it was more profitable than farming and hunting. Strife and conflict, once unleashed, stimulate not just a need for defensive measures, but also esteem for the warriors who can preserve life, as well as for those fighters who trample the cowardly and unprepared, with admirers of the latter comprising the growing pool of miscreants.

Specialized weapons with no useful purpose other than attacking and slaying upright human enemies rapidly multiplied at the end of the Yangshao and early Lungshan.
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Apart from empowering and emboldening their wielders, their growth, coincident with the emergence of fortified population centers, shows how low-intensity warfare can stimulate inventiveness, organization, and authority. The massive defensive walls that appeared in the Lungshan and are considered one of the distinguishing features of the culture have long been recognized as a disproportionately important development in the inexorable evolution of Chinese civilization, a step in the unremitting march toward fulfilling the subsequently articulated idea that “
ch’eng
[walls] were erected in order to protect the ruler and
kuo
[external walls] were constructed in order to preserve the people.”
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Despite increasing differentiation in dwellings and other evidence of an incipient hierarchical structure such as ancestral temples, the
absence of fortified internal quarters indicates the defensive focus was externally directed, toward unknown others, rather than locally oriented and therefore intended to protect emerging power groups that were increasingly claiming authority over others.
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In the ancient period it is only at the two Yi-luo capitals of Yen-shih and Cheng-chou that inner palace quarters and fully formed encircling fortifications are found. Even the final Hsia and Shang capitals at Erh-li-t’ou and Anyang are famously unprotected by visible fortifications.

As warfare became more complex and its lethality increased in the late Neolithic, the hard lessons derived from ever-accumulating martial experience prompted the realization that topography inherently conveys strategic advantages and disadvantages. In deciding where to locate their settlements the first “urban planners,” a term hardly misused here as many fortified towns clearly implemented a preconceived plan, were confronted by vital choices. Foremost among them was relatively high but dry terrain that ranged from hillsides through hillocks and mesas, versus the alternative of well-watered areas situated alongside rivers, lakes, or other bodies of water.

Height and inaccessibility are key factors in deterring and repulsing marauders, but in the absence of extensive wells even minimal quantities of water require laborious effort to acquire and transport for communities located any distance from aquatic resources. Conversely, settlements near streams and rivers, even though significantly protected by natural barriers and generally located amid fertile alluvial plains, must contend with seasonal flooding and moisture-borne diseases. In providing enemies skilled enough to employ rafts and canoes with virtual highways, these same waterways also enhance perversity’s mobility.

Early communities therefore tended to inhabit naturally raised terrain alongside streams and rivers, whether slight mounds or relative heights created by the forces of erosion. However, particularly in the central plains, terrace settlements soon sought the enhanced protection of deliberately excavated perimeter ditches, except where deliberately situated amid the confluence of flowing streams or protected by the presence of a lake and perhaps another river. Despite being a simplistic though onerous measure, the ditches’ effectiveness is evident from their continued employment well past the Yangshao and Lungshan periods,
including to enhance the complex defensive systems deployed at Yen-shih and Erh-li-t’ou.
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Although many of these early ditches were dry, a significant number functioned as moats in the rainy season or when deliberately connected to a water source, augmenting their inherent ability to impede and frustrate aggressors. Claims have also been made that they provided protection against flooding, but it is highly unlikely that they would have been effective because even moderately rising river levels would have rapidly exceeded their limited capacity. Nor could they have functioned as drainage canals in alluvial plains marked by minimal declination.

At first the soil that had been removed was employed to raise the village floor’s overall height and construct building foundations, but later it was mounded up on the ditch’s interior to form primitive walls. Even these low mounds constituted a significantly enhanced challenge for early aggressors who now had to negotiate not just the shallow ditch but also ascend a low embankment, all the while exposed to spears, rocks, and arrows. Although never universal, solidly pounded walls that soared several meters in the air and extensive conjoined moats soon followed that confronted enemies with more formidable challenges.

Agricultural activities would certainly have consumed most, if not all, of the time of the few hundred able-bodied people who populated the typical late Neolithic settlement, leaving little energy for martial endeavors. Unless the inhabitants devoted some effort to self-defense, an aggressive band of forty or so warriors would probably have had sufficient strength to overpower them, seize their property, and carry away prisoners. Therefore static measures—the exploitation of extant water barriers, excavation of ditches and moats, and the building of walls—frequently provided the only means for sedentary communities to thwart raiders. As the
Art of War
would subsequently state, “Those who cannot be victorious assume a defensive posture, those who can be victorious attack. In such circumstances, by assuming a defensive posture strength will be more than adequate, whereas in offensive actions it will be inadequate.”
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Although a few Neolithic villages seem to have been burnt to the ground
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and King Wu Ting dispatched an attack party to prevent the walling of a town (thereby showing that the defensive advantages
provided by fortifications were well understood), little evidence yet exists that assaults were undertaken against fortified towns. Moreover, whether they were too costly or simply doomed to fail, sieges did not commence until the Chou. However, human determination ensured that fifty-meter-wide moats and five-meter-high walls would not be insurmountable unless they were stoutly defended. Even then the San Miao’s virtual disappearance despite the extensiveness of Shih-chia-ho fortifications shows the most expansive fortifications would not provide an infallible refuge if the combatants engaged in open field battle.

According to traditional sources, the first known failure dates to the legendary period when Yao, also known as T’ang-shih, embarked upon a remarkably aggressive external policy to vanquish a number of peripheral states, including the Hsi Hsia, an entity of uncertain identity to the west. A brief paragraph in the
Yi Chou-shu
notes: “One who doesn’t practice the martial will perish. In antiquity the Hsi Hsia were benevolent rather than warlike in nature. Their walls were not maintained and their warriors lacked positions. Instead, they practiced beneficence and loved rewards, but when their material wealth was exhausted they had nothing to use for rewards. When T’ang-shih attacked them their walls were not defended, their martial warriors were not employed, and the Hsi Hsia perished.”
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Having failed to maintain their walls and integrate their warriors into their sociopolitical structure, the Hsi Hsia lacked the means to either mount an active defense or stimulate the requisite behavior at a crucial moment. As Sun Pin subsequently observed, “No one under Heaven can be solid and strong if they mount a defense without anything to rely upon.”
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Even though history shows that the forces of destruction normally overwhelm constructively oriented efforts, the defensive solidity provided by the earliest walls and moats made possible the gradual accumulation of the goods produced by the weaving and handicraft industries, facilitated the domestication of animals, protected the emergence and expansion of agriculture, and harbored metallurgical workshops. It also fostered social cohesion and nurtured a sense of identity by separating the community from the external realm. By the middle Lungshan period increasing strength and prosperity enabled these early cultures to construct and occupy fortified towns that encompassed
dwelling areas of several hundred thousand to even a million square meters.

The transition, however fitful, from isolated settlements to more centrally focused power centers, the repulsion of aggressors, and the execution of successful external campaigns in aggregate allowed, as well as stimulated, the essentially unimpeded evolution of political structures and authority. The incredible effort required over a sustained period to erect these defensive fortifications and accompanying palace foundations provides evidence of not only a new ability to mobilize a vast labor force with a sense of common purpose, but also the emergence of chieftains strong enough to coerce compliance. Fortifications also made power projection possible and thus no doubt contributed to the growth of multi-tiered settlement patterns whose lesser members could similarly be compelled to participate in their construction. Nevertheless, though the inhabitants may have come to feel walls were essential, they apparently lacked full faith in them; otherwise, they would never have been built on such a massive scale or reinforced with ditches and moats.

This shift from simple circular defensive ditches to well-integrated, technologically sophisticated rectangular fortifications can be interpreted as incontrovertible evidence for an unremitting increase in warfare’s frequency and lethality from perhaps 3000 BCE. Equally revealing is the rapid proliferation in the types and numbers of weapons, especially bronze variants dating from their true inception in the late Hsia, as well as their widespread production in the Shang in comparison with bronze ritual vessels.
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This multiplication was accompanied by a comparatively rapid rise in the number and proportion of weapons interred with the deceased in every cultural manifestation, ranging from the much earlier Yangshao through Hung-shan, Ch’ü-chia-ling, Liang-chu, and Lungshan, highly indicative of the emergence of military authority and of a growing esteem for martial achievement and values. (Confirmation of the latter appears as early as the Ta-wen-k’ou in lavishly decorated but empty tombs intended to honor military heroes whose bodies had not been recovered.)
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More sorrowfully, the number of humans whose skeletons still betray the effects of violence or torture, who must have been sacrificed, wounded, or perished in battle, also rapidly multiplied.
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A fundamental question that might be posed about the nature of ancient Chinese warfare is how one group or culture succeeded in dominating, displacing, or extinguishing another. Attention has been largely focused on the growth of significant power centers and the evolution of states, the process by which a few fortified towns began to exceed the common 10,000-square-meter settlement size before a pattern of primary and secondary centers encompassing several hundred thousand and a few 10,000 square meters, respectively, emerged.

Food surpluses, population increases, and improvements in tools and productivity allowed manpower to be allocated to secondary, nonsubsistence tasks such as wall building, military training, and ultimately military campaigns that could, contrary to much traditional thought, be highly productive in acquiring possessions and terrain. (In the brutal context of history it would be astonishing if anyone enj oying surpassing military success ever spontaneously desisted from aggressive activities, whether prompted by greed, a desire for power, or simple hatred of others.) However, the forces that actually enabled any particular group to excel, to culturally and politically, if not physically, overwhelm nearby peoples, remain a mystery even though a few charismatic chieftains may have been disproportionately effective leaders and motivators.
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