Ancient Chinese Warfare (4 page)

The Yellow Emperor is said to have dammed a river to prevent Ch’ih Yu from crossing, but adverse weather conditions, which favored those more accustomed to the wet weather indigenous to the east and south, may have resulted in the dikes breaking and Ch’ih Yu being able to exploit the conditions to wrest additional victories.
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However, the Yellow Emperor was able to prevail when the weather dried out, possibly because
Ch’ih Yu had exhausted his army en route to the final confrontation, an error against which most of the classic military writers would subsequently warn.

Ultimately the Yellow Emperor prepared well, trained his troops, and organized them into some sort of cohesive, responsive force. If the battle occurred at Chi-chou in Hebei, his ability to exploit the dust clouds created by the strong winds blowing across the parched yellow soil may have been a critical factor. With the terrain obscured and the four directions unclear, his forces would have enjoyed a unilateral opportunity to advance, because he not only chose the battlefield but also reputedly possessed the superior technology of the southern-pointing chariot.
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However, traditional claims that the Yellow Emperor, as one of the first ancestors, grand progenitors, and magical creators, contrived numerous artifacts essential to civilization, including two vital to military technology, are not sustained by archaeological evidence. His name in the
Shih Chi
, Hsüan-yüan, has long been cited as evidence that he invented the chariot, because the individual terms
hsüan
and
yüan
refer to the horizontal axle pole and the shaft(s) extending to the front of a chariot. Although this interpretation became an article of faith to the Han, it is completely unfounded because the term did not appear until the Warring States period.

Furthermore, even though vestiges of narrow vehicle tracks have been found at the presumed Hsia capital at Erh-li-t’ou, and traditional accounts assert that the Shang employed chariots to vanquish the Hsia in a decisive battle that would date to about 1600 BCE, there is no archaeological evidence that either the Hsia or the early Shang had horsedrawn, functional war chariots. Therefore the Yellow Emperor, who would have been active in the Lungshan period predating the Hsia itself, might only have fashioned some sort of cart or wheelbarrow.
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If they could have been fabricated in quantity and proved reasonably durable, these carts certainly would have facilitated the transport of essential supplies at a time when the only alternative was human portage.

A famous sentence in the
Yi Ching
states that the Yellow Emperor also invented bows and arrows by “stringing a branch to make a curved bow and shaving branches to fashion arrows” and that “the advantage of bows and arrows was to overawe all under Heaven.”
⁴⁸
Although archaeological
excavations have uncovered numerous bone and stone arrowheads dating to the Lungshan period with which the Yellow Emperor should be identified, the preceding Yangshao culture already shows extensive evidence of social stratification and the widespread use of bows and arrows beyond what would have been reasonably necessary for hunting purposes. Moreover, arrowheads of great antiquity have been found in Shanxi, proving that they not only existed but were also employed some twenty millennia prior to the Yellow Emperor’s era.
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Nevertheless, being a martial chieftain in a period probably just beginning to extensively exploit the bow’s potential in warfare, the Yellow Emperor may have emphasized archery training and employed missile fire more vigorously and systematically than other leaders, perhaps even initiated the technique of massed fire. Although totally speculative, these measures could account for the bow and arrow’s close identification with the Yellow Emperor and perhaps indicate a critical factor in vanquishing enemies wielding shock weapons alone.

Two other aspects that have particularly attracted attention are the “fog” that reportedly covered the battlefield and the “southern-pointing chariot.” A naturalistic explanation for the former would be that some sort of temperature shift had occurred after heavy rain, creating an inversion that trapped the moisture at low levels and thus obscured the battlefield, but a simpler one just requires the presence of fog or lowlevel clouds. However, neither interpretation can be sustained in the face of statements that a strong wind had arisen, presumably at the Yellow Emperor’s behest since his transcendent cosmic attunement should have allowed him to magically modify the climatic conditions.
⁵⁰

Perhaps Ch’ih Yu deliberately created a smoke screen, possibly one infused with chemical irritants such as would be witnessed in the Warring States period and used in the Spring and Autumn as well.
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If so, it would certainly constitute the earliest known incident of deliberately employing a smoke screen, even though it might have proven of limited utility unless the winds, which would have quickly dispersed any artificial clouds, were blowing to his advantage. Within this incapacitating miasma the Yellow Emperor could only have resorted to his southern-pointing chariot, an ingenious device that must have taxed even the Sage Emperor’s inventiveness. Remarkably, this “southern-pointing chariot,”
much romanticized in the traditional literature, is no myth but instead a small chariot with a mounted figure whose outstretched hand, once initially set, always points south. However, it was probably invented in the later Han,
⁵²
explaining the lack of references to it and the fog until somewhat later.

Considering all the possible factors, interpretations, archaeological evidence, and perspectives of the scholars who have extensively studied these ancient materials, a reasonable conclusion might be that at some indeterminate time in the middle of the third millennium BCE a few significant battles resulted from two tribal alliances, each seeking to control increasingly greater territory. The first battle marked the ascendancy of the clan subsequently identified as the “imperial” clan, that of the bear, led by an individual termed the “August” one, who eventually (in later Chou literature) was accorded the title of Yellow Emperor and became the focal nexus for many cultural inventions and achievements.

No doubt his and the Red Emperor’s clans were closely related, perhaps even derived from a common ancestor such as the great agricultural deity Shen Nung, as some highly credible scholars have imaginatively suggested.
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The clans therefore clashed not just over the central plains area, but also over who would monopolize the power and leadership of the tribal confederation, whatever the actual character of their alliance. If Marxist analysis has any validity, the process of shifting from a matriarchal to a patriarchal age may have provided the stimulus for this struggle or was perhaps synonymous with it, with the conflict actually stretching over generations between related clans. All the archaeological evidence—the plethora of recovered arrowheads, existence of major moats and walled fortifications, and burial patterns that display increased class distinction—indicates the rise of powerful clan leaders accompanied by a shift from universal military obligation to a dominant martial clan that consolidated power within the tribe and undertook responsibility for waging war outside it.

Viewed from the dynamics of tribal conflict, the Yellow Emperor may therefore have been the truculent leader of an obstreperous group that challenged the Red Emperor’s established authority and ultimately wrested control of the collective organization.
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Whether the Yellow Emperor’s clan was economically more prosperous or simply more martial
and self-disciplined than Shen Nung’s, whom power and privilege had perhaps made soft, as would happen to virtually all of China’s ruling clans, cannot be known. If the
Shih Chi
account even minimally reflects actual events, the issue of supremacy wasn’t decided with the sort of single clash that supposedly characterizes primitive warfare, but through at least three battles. Preliminary skirmishes between members of the opposing alliances probably preceded any command decision to mobilize their forces and act more decisively. Although the Yellow Emperor’s cause has traditionally been identified with morality and the forcible restoration (or imposition) of order was his avowed aim, whether he actually enjoyed some sort of superior moral claim remains doubtful.

Bows and arrows would have initially been employed, followed by spears, clubs, hand axes, and other shock weapons, even agricultural tools, upon closing for combat. However, neither swords nor the ubiquitous dagger-axes of later times had yet come into existence, and chariots were equally absent, traditional accounts to the contrary. Depending upon the effectiveness of their training and degree of rudimentary organization, the battles probably resolved into general melees marked by hundreds of individualized fights of the type thought to have marked so-called primitive warfare.
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At their conclusion, the vanquished either fled or submitted and became an integral part of the Yellow Emperor’s alliance, evidence that this was more of an intratribal conflict for dominance than a war of extermination wherein the defeated would either be slain or enslaved, as in the Shang and later times.
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The extant literature similarly portrays the Yellow Emperor’s subsequent conflict with Ch’ih Yu as a struggle between good and evil, morality and licentiousness, as well as between a benevolent despot who had garnered the people’s allegiance and a brutal leader who forcefully coerced it. This sort of archetypical depiction would be repeatedly encountered across the millennia as dynasties fell and their successors wrote historical tales to justify their own violence and excesses to posterity. The laconic
Shih Chi
account actually records little beyond a conflict between an alliance leader and an obstreperous subleader, but later versions significantly embellish the story.

This battle with Ch’ih Yu should perhaps also be accepted as simply a struggle for supremacy between two subgroups with different totems
seeking to dominate a newly forged, extended alliance. Although the Yellow Emperor may have profited from his experience to create a more formidable or cohesive fighting organization, their weapons would have been unchanged. Although both groups were obviously mobile, the Yellow Emperor essentially responded to Ch’ih Yu, since the latter played the role of an invader, later termed a “guest” by military theorists, yet managed to shape the battlefield. However, whether Ch’ih Yu’s movements constituted a strategic initiative is fruitless to discuss at this level of warfare.

Overall, the archaeological records in fact indicate a transitional period of rising conflict, increasing class distinction, and the evolution of political and concomitant military power or, depending upon theoretical emphasis, military strength and concomitant political power. The details have been mythologized, but these traditional accounts may still reflect actual tribal conflicts and preserve the names of the most impressive martial leaders. Apart from whatever truths may be embedded within them, whatever ancient realities they may reflect, these legendary versions also display the subsequent historical mindset, one not irrelevant to understanding the views and motives of commanders and emperors across the centuries. However, asserting more than this leads only into the realm of even more rampant speculation.

2.

L
ONG VIRTUALLY DEFINED by the mythic aspects of its Great Wall, China’s tradition of wall building far exceeds the most exaggerated claims spawned by its famous icon. As early as 7000 BCE, protective ditches had already appeared in scattered settlements along the two great river systems and their tributaries. However, rather than being employed to construct defensive fortifications, the excavated soil furnished the raw material for structural foundations and for raising the entire settlement above the surrounding terrain, thereby preventing inundation from pooling rainwater and overflowing streams and providing a slight tactical advantage.

In response to escalating threats, the concepts and technology of defensive fortifications fitfully but continually evolved over the next five millennia until what has been claimed to be the distinctive form of the double-walled Chinese city protected by an external moat was finally realized. Several stages can be discerned: shallow perimeter ditches; simple ditches augmented by mounded earthen walls, the latter simply the by-product of ditch and moat excavation; earthen walls deliberately constructed with early pounding techniques, generally augmented by perimeter ditches or early moats; massive, rigorously constructed
hang-t’u
(stamped or pounded earth) walls coupled with expansive protective moats; and the culmination of Chinese martial engineering, massive rammed earth walls faced with stone or brick, buttressed with waist walls, and systematically augmented by conjoined exterior and interior moats.

Although low stone walls had been erected in conducive, semiarid regions such as Inner Mongolia as early as the Neolithic period, solid
walls of stone, brick, and even marble were not constructed in China until recent centuries, and then only in limited areas. Moreover, regional practices and localized disparities would persist across the centuries despite consistent progress in understanding the engineering principles required for fortification construction, the development of work methods, and the evolution of administrative measures. Some towns in the late Shang and early Chou continued to employ nothing more than ditches long after massive fortifications had become commonplace.
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Conversely, peripheral states such as Chao that faced external threats began constructing lengthy defensive structures, appropriately termed “long walls,” along their proclaimed borders late in the Warring States period, a practice that would eventually culminate in the colossal Ming dynasty edifice.