One of the more perplexing problems confronting the historian is how to find fresh vantage points from which to get a better view of the past. Towards this end such diverse subjects as art, literature, economics and religion, as well as many others, have been employed. Each brings useful and illuminating information to the table. One approach that is often overlooked is military history. Perhaps because it is often seen as the preserve of professional soldiers, or the realm of hobbyists, or perhaps because of the natural aversion that many feel for such a sanguinary topic, the insights that military history have to offer are often ignored. By military history we are not now referring merely to the recounting of battles and campaigns, nor to the study of weapons and uniforms. The most useful sort of military history is that which seeks to understand the ways in which armies were raised, equipped, disciplined and employed and what, if anything, such information tells us about the society at large. Campaigns, battles, weapons and the like are only useful in so far as they help to illuminate the broader topic. There is a belief among many historians pursuing the topic from such an angle that the way that a country organizes itself for war is linked to how it organizes itself for peace, and that changes in one must either cause or be caused by changes in the other.
To test this theory, we will examine the military history of China from the beginnings of recorded history in the Shang Dynasty to the end of the Han Dynasty, at which point the main outlines of the Classic Chinese Imperial system had taken form.
The Shang Dynasty, which stands at the dawn of Chinese history, was a semi-pastoral civilization, which relied almost as much on hunting and herding as it did on farming to survive. Its social structure was theocratic, and the state’s power, and ultimate legitimacy, rested on the relationship between the king and Ti, the high god. The people believed that it was Ti who granted good harvests, successful hunts and victory in war, and that the king’s dead ancestors could intercede with Ti on the king’s behalf, if they were provided with a suitable incentive. This incentive was in the form of sacrifices, both animal and human, and securing a steady stream of suitable victims for these sacrifices was a major part of kingship. A hereditary military nobility aided him in this job.
And an enormous job it was, considering the huge numbers of sacrificial victims needed. For a single ceremony of ancestor worship, more than three hundred people were put to death, while for the construction of a single house, more than six hundred victims were dispatched.# Several times a year the king and his nobles would undertake massive royal hunts to provide meat for the table, horn, bone and hide for the workshops, and humans for the sacrificial altar. These hunts were organized like military expeditions, and indeed it would appear that the distinction between hunting and war was somewhat blurred. Apart from imposing royal suzerainty or reminding recalcitrant subjects of the king’s power, the chief war aims of the Shang were mainly concerned with seizing riches for the king to distribute to his loyal followers and in rounding up captives to serve as slaves or as sacrifices. To insure that there would be future opportunities for plunder and captive taking, the enemies of the Shang were often intentionally left unconquered.
The army for these expeditions generally numbered around three to five thousand men, though it could reach as many as thirty thousand in emergencies. The backbone of the army was the royal guard, a force of about a thousand troops, mainly heavy infantry clad in leather armor and equipped with polearms. To this core was added a feudal levy of chariot-riding nobles, and a loosely organized and poorly equipped infantry conscripted from the class of peasants privileged to live within the walls of the cities, mainly clansmen of the nobility. The country-dwelling agricultural peasants, who were often slaves, or at best, serfs, were not permitted weapons and were conscripted only for manual labor. Kings normally commanded the army in person, assisted by a rudimentary military bureaucracy, although there are records of Kings’ wives commanding troops and of maintaining military forces of their own.
Since one of the major aims of these expeditions was to take prisoners for both sacrifice and for use as slave labor, the lethality of war was thereby greatly, and intentionally, reduced. Nothing demonstrates this factor more clearly than the types of weapons used. The weapon of choice for both nobles and commoners was the ko, or dagger axe, so called because of its dagger like blade which was affixed at a right angle to the top of a long wooden shaft. The weapons of nobles had bronze blades while those of the commoners were of stone or bone. In combat, the ko was swung down or to the side and then pulled forward, hooking the enemy and perhaps inflicting a cut. Wounds would not normally have been fatal. This seems to have been the goal since true axes and spears, while known and used in hunting animals, were apparently not highly favored in combat.
The other weapon of choice for the Shang noble was the light two-horse chariot. This seems to have been introduced to China from Western Asia by way of the Central Asian Steppe Nomads. In common with the Hittites and Central Asian types, the Chinese chariot carried a three-man crew. This consisted of a driver, an archer who stood to the left of the driver, and a third man equipped with a ko, who stood to the driver’s right. The commander of the chariot could be any one of the three, depending on his tastes. All three men wore stiff, inflexible, two-piece armor, made of lacquered leather, either bull or rhinoceros hide, which covered them from shoulder to foot but left their arms unencumbered. This armor would have made dismounting from the chariot very difficult. They also wore bronze helmets and carried large wooden or leather shields.
In battle the opposing armies would line up facing each other with their chariots in front and the infantry to the rear. The chariots would advance in open order, with broad gaps between each vehicle, the archer firing as they went. As the enemy chariots passed one another the warrior with the ko would perform a sort of joust with their opponents, trying to hook them out of the chariot cabs. The infantry, following behind, would gather up the prisoners.
Apart from the royal guard and a few nobles who fought on foot, the majority of infantry were unarmored and equipped only with stone or bone-tipped kos. Since the ko, was swung in combat, and since swinging such a weapon in close formations would have led to the weapons interfering with one another, the infantry must have fought in loose open formations which left them vulnerable to chariot charges. This made the well-equipped chariot riding noble very powerful relative to the peasants.
The theocratic nature of Shang warfare, combined with their limited war aims and intentionally reduced lethality, led to a very formal, ritualistic style of combat that produced a strict code of chivalry between the nobles. This put them at a great disadvantage when they came up against people who didn’t play by the same set of rules. Those people were the Chou, a seinocized group of steppe barbarians originally from north, who were forced to move south into the Wei River valley by more aggressive neighbors. Once there, they found matters scarcely better than they had been in the north since, instead of being harried by northern herder barbarians, they were now harried by western ones. In the struggle to survive, the Chou developed their own unique culture, which combined elements of their nomadic barbarian neighbors with the high culture of the Shang. This culture had a strongly military flavor to it, and unlike the Shang, war was not a game or ritual, but serious business.
One of the first changes the Chou made to war was to increase the horsepower of their chariots by the simple expedient of increasing the number of horses pulling them from two to four. They also improved the chariots themselves, reducing the decoration and improving the quality of construction. The wheels were made bigger, with more spokes and were dished outward from the hub for added strength. They also increased the numbers of chariots used and improved their tactical employment.
The chief advantage that the Chou had over the Shang, however, was their abandonment of the theocratic and ritualistic basis of warfare. Since they were not looking for prisoners to sacrifice they were more than willing to kill. Unable to adapt to the new realities of warfare in time, the Shang were ultimately destroyed.
Faced with the problem of ruling their new domains the Chou rulers developed a formalized type of feudalism. First, they set up four great duchies under native leaders, but gave them Chou titles. To insure their continued loyalty, members of the ruling families, plus thousands of other Shang noble clans, were forced to emigrate to the capital, where they could be more easily watched and controlled. The rest of the land was divided into seventy-one fiefs, with fifty-five going to members of the Chou royal clan.# To keep everything under the king’s control, a standing army of six royal corps, of 12,500 each, was maintained in garrisons throughout the realm. This was augmented by a further eight corps of Shang troops, which were also maintained by the central government. Finally, there were feudal levies which could be called out in times of emergency.
The basis of the army was the chariot-riding nobility. The numbers of chariots increased and tactical employment improved throughout the period. Although the three- man crews still included a man with the ko for close combat, the ritualistic jousts were abandoned and much more emphasis was placed on chariot archery as the decisive factor in winning battles.
Although infantry continued to serve mainly as a support for the chariots throughout the Chou and well into the Warring States period, it did show considerable improvement in its equipment and tactics. Unlike the Shang, whose infantry were for the most part unarmored conscript peasants with makeshift weapons, the Chou’s infantry were drawn from the lesser nobility, known as the Shih, and were well equipped. While they still lacked metal armor, which did not appear in any great quantities until the Ch’in, they did wear a sort of laminar armor made of small rectangles of leather strung together on thongs and arranged in overlapping rows. This provided protection while allowing for mobility. Their weapons improved as well. The ko, while still lacking a point, did develop an improved cutting edge and grew in length to around eighteen feet. The lack of a point is significant since it means that the weapon still had to be swung to be effective, limiting the troops to loose formations.
Since the actual fighting continued to be done by men of rank until the end of the Western Chou there was a certain degree of mutual respect and deference shown by the combatants to one another. There was a reemergence of chivalry and for a while war became again a game played by noblemen with elaborate rules as to how to offer or accept battle. Battlefields were chosen with an eye to the needs of the chariots.
Battles were preceded by a ritualistic series of duels and skirmishes between champions. At one battle a chariot crewed by a group of noblemen was chased by an entire squadron of enemy chariots, both sides exchanging archery fire as they went. Suddenly a stag leaped up in front of the fleeing chariot and without hesitation the archer killed it with his last arrow as though he were on a royal hunt. Halting their chariot the noble crew made a present of their kill to their noble pursuers who, impressed with the panache of the gesture, accepted the gift and ended the pursuit.
But it couldn’t last. As the Chou slid into the Spring and Autumn and then the Warring States period the lethality of combat increased, as did the size of the armies. Nobles could no longer make up the numbers needed and peasants began to be allowed to join the ranks, particularly of the infantry. The habit of mutual respect and deference that had marked the old style war began to fade and those nobles who remained often found little to choose from between the noble gesture and suicide.
After only four generations the central power of the Western Chou began to erode. Plagued by barbarian threats from the West and North the central government had to scramble for support. One time tested method of garnering support, the granting of tax exempt fiefs, only made matters worse by impoverishing the crown and fragmenting the administration. The central government was further weakened about this time as the dynasty suffered a series of weak or incompetent kings. Finally, in 771 B.C.E., the sacking of the capital of Hao by the Jung barbarians forced the Chou to move their capital east to Loyang.
With the central government distracted by barbarian threats and bad kings, the royal vassals gained in power and became more concerned with protecting their lands and less concerned with their national obligations. This led to the rise of regionalism and an a marked increase in the number and ferocity of wars between the various noble families as each sought to increase its holdings at the expense of its neighbors. This almost chronic state of war eventually led to the virtual extinction of the nobility. Not, however, to the wars. They continued as the noble fiefs coalesced into independent states, which vied with one another for supremacy.
As the nobles disappeared, their place in the ranks was taken by the rising class of freehold farmers, and upwardly-mobile professional soldiers. So great were the opportunities for social advancement in the military that by the fifth century C.E., generals of peasant origins were becoming common.
Starting around 650 B.C.E., China experienced a population boom. By the end of the Chou, the population had grown to almost 40 million. Of necessity, army size grew and the need for more soldiers led to the wholesale recruitment of peasants. At the beginning of the dynasty, Chou armies had consisted of several hundred to a thousand chariots supported by about ten thousand infantry, but by its end a strong state would typically field as many as four thousand chariots and more than forty thousand infantry. It was about this time that the venerable ko began to develop a spear-like point in addition to its axe-like one, making it into a slash and thrust weapon with a greatly enhanced killing ability. It also allowed tighter formations, which enhanced the infantry’s effectiveness against chariots, as did the new fashion of marching in step.# New weapons such as the sword and crossbow also began to appear, which further enhanced the effectiveness of infantry.
As the importance of peasant infantry to warfare grew, the social and political institutions began to reflect this fact. The Book of Changes uses the metaphor of hidden water under the earth to emphasize the strength of the peasants. It also stresses the need to deal fairly with them to retain their loyalty. Since the enthusiasm of the common people was now considered important for war, the rulers began consulting popular assemblies before making policy.
As armies increased in size, securing a bigger economic surplus to support them became more and more vital. Rulers who realized this and who did something to increase the surplus, survived, while those who did not, perished. To oversee water projects, land reclamation, and the general running of the state and its economic development, extensive bureaucracies became essential. With survival on the line, and the nobles dying out anyway, the abilities of the bureaucrat was of more importance than his lineage, and the competing states vied with one another to find and develop the best talent available, even going so far as wooing able men from other states. A whole class of itinerate bureaucrats and military officers grew up to support this need, and the training of these men was one of the roots of the Hundred Schools movement from which Legalism, Confucianism and Taoism developed.
But bureaucrats weren’t the only ones whose talents were sought. Agriculture was the engine that ran everything and that engine ran on the work of good farmers. Generations of incessant warfare, however, had taken its toll. The landed aristocracy was gone and the bonds that held the peasant to the land had broken down. Free to go where they wanted, most peasants went where they could own the land for themselves instead of working for a landlord, so the bureaucrats weren’t the only itinerate class roaming China at this time.
All this moving about, seeking for a better life, or merely seeking to avoid losing one’s life to rampaging armies meant that most states had more farmland than farmers to work it. It became necessary to woo peasants from other states and prevent one’s own peasants from being wooed away. Tax reductions, a respect for the rights and needs of the peasants, and above all, land reform, became a matter of survival for the rulers. As a result of such measures a large class of freehold peasants grew up in China for the first time in its history.
One dynasty that failed to grasp this was the state of Ch’i. As a result of heavy taxation, a harsh penal code and an indifference to the plight of the peasants during a famine, the state was on the point of collapse when a ministerial family named Ch’en ousted the old regime and sized power. They were able to get away with this because they had carefully curried favor with the masses through a policy of generosity, fair dealing and famine relief. This story was repeated, with slight variations, many times throughout China in the late Warring States period. The common thread that unites these incidents is that the new rulers came from the rising class of educated administrators known as the shih. The name of the class was descended from the petty nobility, and later, upwardly-mobile commoners who had followed behind the chariots of the early Chou lords.
The change in the nature of war led to a change in its aims. Whereas the Shang had fought primarily for loot and prisoners, and the Chou had fought for family and honor, the Warring States armies fought mainly for land. To protect the land, rulers built long walls and fortifications. Though the Great Wall is the most famous of these, Warring States China was filled with many other long walls on the borders of the various states.
In the early Chou all armies had been professionals of noble birth. Then peasants were admitted to the ranks, but still as professionals. But as the arms race between rival states heated up, the need for bigger and bigger armies finally outstripped the numbers of professionals available to fill the ranks. Besides, if everyone became a soldier who would grow the food? Maintaining large standing armies became impractical for most states. It was necessary for the majority of soldiers to return to their farms when not needed for combat and yet be able to form effective armies when called upon to do so. The result was a system of militia units built around a core of drilled and disciplined professionals and commanded by corps of highly trained officers. To this professional framework drafts of conscripts could be added at need. These were drawn from the freehold farmers.
Under the Shang, most agricultural workers had been slaves or, at best, serfs. It would have been dangerous for the nobles to arm such people for fear that they would turn on them. But when every farmer was a free man who owned his own piece of land, it was in his best interest to defend the state that insured his freedoms and contained his land. Since part time soldiers could never hope to match long-serving professionals in military skills, the quality of the officers who welded the militiamen together with their professional cadres was vital. This led to the rise of a class of professional officers which mirrored the rise of professional bureaucrats in all essential points. Like the bureaucrats, the soldiers developed their own body of professional literature, which, like that of the bureaucrats, would eventually form the core for written examinations leading to promotions. In any event, the turmoil of the Warring States, and the practical needs of national survival, led to that general rise in scholasticism of all sorts that earned itself the name of “The Hundred Schools.”
When the dust of the Warring States era finally settled, one state stood supreme, the Ch’in. Like the Chou before them, the Ch’in came out of the Wei River Valley, and, like the Chou, their culture was a unique amalgam of barbarian and Chinese elements. The dynasty traced its origins to a fief granted to their ancestors in return for their services in providing horses for the royal army. It was also hoped that they would provide a buffer between the Chou and the Jung barbarians. This they did, by absorbing the Jung into their state sometime around 400 B.C.E.
Although most Chinese states regarded the Ch’in as little better than semi-civilized barbarians, it was this very primitiveness that was the source of their power. With less tradition behind them, they were not as averse to trying new things and accepting foreigners into their service. They had also been at the forefront of the social reforms that had resulted in the shift from serfdom to freehold farming which was the necessary precursor to the development of conscript armies.
Starting around 390 B.C.E. with the reforms of Kung-sun Yang, known to the West as Lord Shang, the Ch’in had pursued a systematic policy of state-building that included irrigation projects of unprecedented size and scope, land redistribution and legal reforms allowing peasants to buy and sell land. They also included the suppression of the remaining remnants of feudalism and a system of civil and military promotion based on merit. This produced a highly efficient bureaucracy, able military commanders and a soldiery that quickly became the terror of their neighbors. Like the other states, the core of the Ch’in army was a militia of freehold farmer- soldiers, differing only in that they were more highly motivated than were their opponents. Ch’in was also at the forefront of the move away from chariots and towards horse cavalry.
Much has been made, particularly by Confucian-inspired historians and those who have learned of Chinese history through them, of the draconian laws that governed Ch’in from the time of Lord Shang until the demise of the dynasty. No doubt they played an important role in the discipline and motivation that animated Ch’in armies. From all accounts they were brutal and uncompromising. However, this in no way contravenes the notion that conscript armies must be based on the support of the people. Harsh laws, provided they are administered fairly and equally, are no bar to public support. In the era of the Warring States, Ch’in’s internal stability and national security must have been very attractive to many people. The degree of public support enjoyed by the government is apparent by the high number of peasants, soldiers and bureaucrats who chose to immigrate there.
Even the Grand Historian Ssu-ma Ch’ien, no fan of Legalism, as this policy of harsh laws coupled with merit based rewards is known, admits that within ten years of the onset of Lord Shangs’ reforms: “Nothing lost on the road was picked up and pocketed, the hills were free of bandits, every household prospered, men fought bravely on the battlefield but avoided quarrels at home, and good government existed in both towns and villages.” The era of state building and social engineering inaugurated by Lord Shang continued for another four generations and finally bore fruit when a man of dark genius, King Cheng, came to power in 247 B.C.E.
Though only thirteen when he ascended to the throne, once he reached adulthood the young king swept through China with fire and sword, and by 221 B.C.E. had brought the whole of it under his control. It was the first time that the whole country had been united under one rule, and a new title was devised to acknowledge the fact, huang-ti or emperor, and the young king became Ch’in Shih-haung-ti, the First Emperor of China.
Once in control of the whole of China he set about remaking it in the image of his native Ch’in. All of the old feudal states were abolished, the country was divided into administrative districts called commanderies, and the governance of the whole country was turned over to a nonfeudal, nonhereditary, bureaucratic administration.# From a military point of view his most important reform was to make the policies that had given rise to freehold farmers in Ch’in standard throughout China. Militia units were set up in every district and farmers conscripted to fill them.
This policy proved to be a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it provided China with its first national army, one of such size and effectiveness that it was able to extend the country’s borders into the Liotung Peninsula in Manchuria and to reach the sea near Canton.# On the other hand, it gave China a large population of men with weapons training and the habits of military discipline. This proved disastrous to the dynasty when, following the death of the first emperor, popular discontent boiled over into open revolt.
The small garrisons of professionals that had been scattered throughout the land to enforce the emperor’s will proved no match for the hordes of angry peasants who were able to defeat them in detail and then equip themselves with captured arms and armor. Some rebels went so far as to loot the tomb of the First Emperor and take the weapons that had been in the hands of the famous terracotta figures. The land dissolved into chaos of huge warring armies. The turmoil did not last long, however, and by 202 B.C.E. China had a new dynasty, the Han.
The new dynasty founded by Han Kao’tsu, a man of lowly birth, understood the plight of the peasants, and the new emperor emphasized the doctrine that government exists to serve the people.# Since his reign was short and he was distracted by the necessity of putting down revolts among former allies, Han Kao’tsu was not able to do much changing of the basic political and military machinery that the Ch’in had built. He did, however, moderate the harsh punishments and lower the tax rate with the result that China prospered.
Like its predecessor, the army of the Han was built around a core of long-serving professionals supplemented by a conscripted militia. Under the early Han all males were drafted at age twenty-three and served on active duty for two years. Thereafter they were in the active reserve until the age of fifty-six. In the eighth month of each year, following the harvest, a nation-wide military inspection was held during which all personnel, regardless of rank, were tested. Commanders of units that failed to measure up were subject to severe penalties.
Even convicts were liable for military duty in one of two capacities. Common prisoners serving out their sentences were used as labor brigades digging latrines, building fortifications and the like. The Ch’ih-hsing were a special class of trustees who volunteered for combat in return for avoiding execution for their crimes. They tended to be very fierce fighters since distinction on the battlefield could lead to a pardon.
The ideal in early Imperial China was a prosperous free peasantry governed by a scholar elite, and for a time this system worked very well. The Early Han was marked by a high degree of patriotism and martial spirit, but as time went by the weakness of the militia system began to become apparent. While it worked well for local defense, long campaigns placed a severe strain on militiamen whose farms and businesses suffered by their prolonged absences. Soon, draft-eligible men with the means to do so were being allowed to pay “substitute money” to avoid service. This money was used to pay “volunteers” who quickly became long-serving professionals. The expansive campaigns of Emperor Wu-ti accelerated the process of professionalization, as did the shift of population from north to the south that took place in the late Han. Since the main threat to China lay in the north, the shift of population to the south meant that the militiaman’s term of service was usually up by the time he had marched to the seat of war.
Added to this was the rising importance of cavalry. Although the Ch’in had been at the forefront of the shift from chariots to cavalry, their horsemen had been mainly mercenary barbarians with a sprinkling of peasant conscripts thrown in. When the chief opponents had been Chinese states with little or no cavalry of their own this had been sufficient, but as the empire grew, the main threat shifted to the north where the Hsung-nu, ancestors of the Huns, were all cavalrymen. It was therefore necessary to match them in horsepower, and mercenary barbarians were found to be the best way to do this.
As the role of the militiaman declined in warfare, so to did his political status. For so long as a prosperous, freehold farm population was necessary to the defense of the state, the state saw to it that farmers were fostered and protected. With the rise of mercenaries that protection waned. The usurper Wang Mang tried to reverse the process, but after his fall, the process accelerated. The government began allowing distinguished generals to raise their own armies. Soon, wealthy landowners were doing the same, and with no militia to confront them, quickly had whole districts under control.
Driven to desperation by the excesses of the great families the peasants revolted in 184 C.E., calling themselves the Yellow Turbans. The generals charged with putting down the rebellion and commanding mercenary armies loyal to them, became warlords instead. Their struggles for personal power eventually doomed the dynasty and plunged China into another prolonged period of disintegration and internal strife.
Looking back over the almost two thousand years from the rise of the Shang to the fall of the Han, some patterns become apparent. As each change in the military technology or practice took place, a corresponding one took place in the culture at large. Chariots and bronze weapons combined with theology gave the Shang their unique form of warfare. Although the Shang are often called feudal, their culture retained many elements that were closer to the tribal one of their Neolithic predecessors. Their deliberate use of the ineffective ko when more lethal weapons were at hand demonstrates how military considerations can be trumped by social ones.
The Chou abandoned the theocratic basis of Shang warfare but kept their weapons and, particularly the expensive chariot. The expense of maintaining the chariot combined with the long training necessary for its effective use, caused the rise of a class of warrior nobles, which in turn resulted in a system of feudalism. As the Chou disintegrated into the Warring States, simple survival demanded new approaches to warfare. States that could not raise chariot forces, or whose terrain precluded their use, were forced to develop their infantry. Under the Chou, the power of the state was reckoned by the number of chariots it could field and as a result, the political power of the chariot-driving class was supreme.
When the balance of power shifted to the infantry, the need to raise large armies led to social changes that favored the class from which the common foot soldier was drawn--the peasants. Social and legal changes, coupled with land reform, led to a class of freehold farmers with a major stake in the defense of the realm. For so long as the militia remained the shield of the state, the state shielded the rights of the militiaman, but when mercenaries and the shift to cavalry armies reduced the importance of the militiaman, his political clout waned. The militiaman’s loss was the rich man’s gain. With no effective force to stop them, the wealthy gained power and eventually were able to raise their own armies and set up as “great families” and warlords. As such, they were able to take the peasant’s land and force them into serfdom. The downward spiral eventually ended in the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the collapse of the Dynasty. It is significant that when order was finally restored under the T’ang Dynasty they quickly restored the militia system. For so long as the militia remained strong, the T’ang enjoyed prosperity and stability, but eventually the same forces that had doomed the Han militia destroyed that of the T’ang. Thus, it would appear that the thesis works. As the Chinese changed the way they fought, their society changed. Conversely, changes in the society at large forced changes in the way that wars were fought.
