Questions and Replies唐李問對

Scroll One卷上

Seventeen exchanges, eighty-one speeches. The book opens not on theory but on a live piece of business: Koguryŏ keeps raiding Silla, the emissaries have been ignored, and the emperor wants to know whether to march. Li Jing answers in four characters — I would use orthodox troops — and from that answer the scroll never leaves the pair qi and zheng, the unorthodox and the orthodox. It runs through Taizong’s own battle at Huoyi, Cao Cao’s ratios, the disputed title of the Wo qi text, the Yellow Emperor’s well-field grid, the army systems of the Taigong and of Guan Zhong, the descent of the Sima fa, Chu’s two wings and Xun Wu breaking up his chariots, and comes back at the end to the frontier, where Turkic and Chinese troops are garrisoned side by side. One sentence carries the whole: the unorthodox and the orthodox are not two kinds of troops but two uses of the same troops — what is fixed in advance belongs to the drill ground; what is improvised on the day cannot be exhausted. The scroll also contains the book’s finest piece of historical judgement: Xie Xuan’s victory over Fu Jian, which Li Jing refuses to credit to Xie Xuan at all.

Taizong. “Koguryŏ has raided Silla again and again. I sent an envoy to admonish them; they will not obey the edict. I mean to punish them. What do you say?”

Li Jing. “My information is that Yŏn Kaesomun trusts his own grasp of war and believes China is incapable of punishing him — that is why he defies the order. Give me thirty thousand men and I will take him.”

Taizong. “Few troops and a long march. By what art will you face him?”

Li Jing. “With orthodox troops.”

Taizong. “When you destroyed the Turks you used unorthodox troops. Now you say orthodox. Why?”

Li Jing. “When Zhuge Liang captured Meng Huo seven times he used no other method: orthodox troops, and nothing else.”

Taizong. “Ma Long of the Jin, when he punished Liangzhou, likewise followed the Eight Formations chart and built boxed-side wagons. Where the ground was open he used the antler-barrier wagon laager; where the road was narrow he set timber houses on the wagons and fought as he advanced. It is true, then — the ancients did set store by orthodox troops.”

Li Jing. “When I punished the Turks I marched several thousand li west. Without orthodox troops, how could I have reached so far? The boxed wagon and the antler barrier are the great essentials of war: one husbands strength, one holds the front, one binds the ranks. The three are used in turn, each serving the others. Ma Long had got the old method deep.”

Taizong. “When I broke Song Laosheng, at the first clash our righteous army gave way a little. I came down from the southern plain myself with the armoured horse and cut across him. Laosheng’s troops were severed in the rear, collapsed utterly, and he was taken. Was that orthodox, or unorthodox?”

Li Jing. “Your Majesty’s martial genius is heaven-given, not learned. But by the books: from the Yellow Emperor onward, the orthodox comes first and the unorthodox after, humanity and right come first and stratagem after. At Huoyi, that the army rose in a just cause was the orthodox; that Jiancheng fell from his horse and the right wing gave way a little — that was the unorthodox.”

Taizong. “Giving way at that moment nearly ruined everything. How can you call it unorthodox?”

Li Jing. “In war, to face forward is orthodox and to fall back is unorthodox. Had the right wing not given way, what would have drawn Laosheng out? The rule says: Lure him with gain; take him in disorder. Laosheng did not know war. He trusted his courage and pressed on, never expecting to be cut off behind, and Your Majesty took him. This is what is meant by making the unorthodox serve as the orthodox.”

Taizong. “Huo Qubing tallied with Sun and Wu without having read them — is it really so? When the right wing gave way the Emperor Gaozu went pale; when I struck, it turned to our advantage. That he tallied with Sun and Wu unknowing — you speak with knowledge.”

Taizong. “Then may every withdrawal be called unorthodox?”

Li Jing. “No. When troops fall back with banners ragged and uneven, drums loud and soft and out of answer, orders shouted and not as one — that is a true rout, not the unorthodox. But if the banners keep their line and the drums answer, if the orders are as one, then however confused and swirling, though they retreat they are not beaten: there is certainly something unorthodox in it. The rule says: Do not pursue feigned flight. And: When able, show him you are unable. Both speak of the unorthodox.”

Taizong. “At Huoyi, that the right wing gave way — was that heaven? That Laosheng was taken — was that man?”

Li Jing. “If the orthodox had not turned into the unorthodox and the unorthodox into the orthodox, how could there have been a victory? So with one who is good at war, the unorthodox and the orthodox rest with the man. It is because the changes pass understanding that we push them off onto heaven.” Taizong bowed his head.

Taizong. “Are the unorthodox and the orthodox divided in advance, or settled at the time?”

Li Jing. “Duke Cao’s New Book says: If I am two to his one, then one part is orthodox and one unorthodox; if I am five to his one, then three parts are orthodox and two unorthodox. That is a rough statement only. It is Sun Wu who has it: In battle there are no more than the unorthodox and the orthodox, yet their changes can never be exhausted. They give birth to each other, like a ring that has no end — who can exhaust them? That is the thing itself. Where is any dividing in advance? If the men have not yet learnt my methods and the sub-commanders are not yet at home in my orders, then the two parts must indeed be made: at drill each company learns its own flag and drum and they divide and join by turns, which is why it is said that dividing and joining are the change. That is a drill-ground art, no more. Once the training is done and the host knows my methods, then I drive them as one drives a flock of sheep, and they go where the commander points: who then can tell the unorthodox from the orthodox? What Sun Wu calls giving the enemy a shape while I have none is the last reach of the pair. So: dividing in advance is drill; improvising the change cannot be exhausted.”

Taizong. “Deep — deep indeed. Duke Cao must have known it. But the New Book was written to hand to his generals; it is not the root method of the unorthodox and the orthodox.”

Taizong. “Duke Cao says, unorthodox troops strike from the flank. What do you say to that?”

Li Jing. “In Duke Cao’s commentary on the Sunzi he says: What goes out first and engages is orthodox; what goes out after is unorthodox. That is not the same as the rule about striking from the flank. My own poor view is that what the main body joins with is the orthodox, and what the commander sends out himself is the unorthodox. Where is there any rule about front, rear or flank?”

Taizong. “My orthodox, so used that the enemy takes it for unorthodox; my unorthodox, so used that the enemy takes it for orthodox. Is this what is meant by giving him a shape? To make the unorthodox orthodox and the orthodox unorthodox, past all measuring — is this what is meant by having no shape?”

Li Jing bowed twice. “Your Majesty’s sagacity stands far out beyond the ancients. It is past my reach.”

Taizong. “If dividing and joining are the change, where are the unorthodox and the orthodox in it?”

Li Jing. “With one good at war there is nothing that is not orthodox and nothing that is not unorthodox, so that the enemy can never take his measure. Therefore he wins by the orthodox and he wins by the unorthodox. The men of the three armies know only that they have won; they do not know how. Without the power to change and so to pass through, how could he come to this? As for what dividing and joining bring out — only Sun Wu could do it. From Wu Qi down, no one comes near.”

Taizong. “And what was Wu Qi’s art?”

Li Jing. “Let me put it shortly. Marquis Wu of Wei asked Wu Qi about two armies facing each other, and Qi said: Send the cheap and brave forward to strike. When the blades have just crossed, let them flee, and do not punish the flight. Watch what the enemy does with his advantage. If he sits and rises, and does not pursue the fleeing, then he has a plan. But if he chases the runaways with his whole host, halting and moving without order, then the man is no good: strike him and do not hesitate. Wu’s art, I should say, is mostly of this kind. It is not what Sun Wu meant by joining with the orthodox.”

Taizong. “Your uncle Han Qinhu used to say that you were a man one could discuss Sun and Wu with. Did he mean this business of the unorthodox and the orthodox?”

Li Jing. “How should Qinhu know the last reach of the pair? He took the unorthodox for unorthodox and the orthodox for orthodox, that is all. He never knew that they turn into each other, a ring without end.”

Taizong. “The ancients put out the unorthodox in the face of the enemy and struck where he did not expect it. Is that too the method of turning into each other?”

Li Jing. “The battles of earlier ages were mostly a small trick beating no trick at all, a scrap of merit beating no merit at all. How can that be called the art of war? Take Xie Xuan’s breaking of Fu Jian. It was not that Xie Xuan was good; it was that Fu Jian was not good.”

Taizong turned to his attendants and had the Life of Xie Xuan brought and read out. Then he said: “Where exactly was Fu Jian not good?”

Li Jing. “I read in the Annals of Fu Jian: All the armies of Qin collapsed in rout; only Murong Chui’s one army came through whole. Jian rode to him with something over a thousand horse. Chui’s son Bao urged his father to kill Jian, and it was not done. From this one can see that the disorder was inside the Qin army, and that Murong Chui alone came through whole: plainly Jian had been trapped by Chui. When a man has been trapped by his own side and still wants to beat the enemy, is that not hard? So I say: there was no art in it. Fu Jian is of that kind.”

Taizong. “The Sunzi says, many calculations beat few — and from that one knows that few calculations beat none at all. It is so in everything.”

Taizong. “Of the Yellow Emperor’s art of war, the world hands down a text called Wo qi, the Held Unorthodox; some call it Wo ji, the Held Trigger. What does it mean?”

Li Jing. “Qi and ji sound alike, so it came to be written ji; the sense is one. Look at its words: four parts orthodox, four parts unorthodox, and the remaining odd part is the held trigger. Qi here means the odd remainder, and that is why it was read ji. My own poor view is that there is no part of an army that is not a trigger; where is the sense in holding one and saying so? It should be taken as the odd remainder, and that is right. Now the orthodox troops are received from the sovereign, while the unorthodox the commander brings out of himself. The rule says: When orders are habitually carried out in the teaching of the people, the people submit — that is what is received from the sovereign. And it says: War is not spoken of beforehand; there are commands of the sovereign that are not accepted — that is what the commander brings out of himself. A commander who is orthodox and has nothing unorthodox is a holding commander; one who is unorthodox and has nothing orthodox is a brawling commander; one who has both is the support of the state. So the Held Trigger and the Held Unorthodox were never two methods. It rests with the student to master both.”

Taizong. “The formation has nine numbers, and the odd one at the centre the commander holds. The four faces and eight bearings all take their alignment from it. Formation holds formation within it, company holds company. What was front becomes rear, what was rear becomes front. Advancing, there is no headlong rush; withdrawing, no scramble. Four heads and eight tails: wherever it is touched, there is a head, and if the enemy drives at the middle, both heads come to the rescue. The count begins at five and ends at eight. What does that mean?”

Li Jing. “Zhuge Liang laid out stones in rows across and down, eight lines of them: the method of the square formation is that very chart. When I drilled troops I always began with this formation. The Wo ji text that circulates has caught only the coarse of it.”

Taizong. “Heaven, earth, wind, cloud, dragon, tiger, bird, snake — what do these eight formations mean?”

Li Jing. “Those who handed them down were wrong. The ancients kept the method secret and so set eight false names to it. The eight formations are basically one, divided into eight. Heaven and earth come from the banner designations; wind and cloud from the names of the pennons; dragon, tiger, bird and snake from the distinctions of the companies. Later ages passed on the error and set up figures of things — and why should they have stopped at eight?”

Taizong. “Then since the count from five to eight is not figures of things but a real old system, set it out for me.”

Li Jing. “By the books, the Yellow Emperor first set up the well-field system and shaped his army from it. The well is cut by four roads and eight households sit in it; its shape is the character for a well, and squared out it makes nine. Five are the formation and four the spaces between — this is what is meant by beginning at five. The centre is left empty and the commander sits there, and round its four faces the divisions link and wind — this is what is meant by ending at eight. And when it comes to changing to master the enemy, then confused and swirling, the fighting is disordered and the method is not; formless and shapeless, the form is round and the momentum does not scatter. That is what is meant by scattering to make eight and returning to be one.”

Taizong. “Deep indeed, the Yellow Emperor’s ordering of armies. Later ages may have heaven-sent wit and godlike plans, but none can step outside his threshold. After him, who carried it on?”

Li Jing. “At the rise of Zhou it was the Taigong who really put the method in order. He began at the capital of Qi, laying out wells and fields; three hundred war chariots and three hundred tiger guards, and the army system stood; six paces or seven, six strokes or seven, and the drill was taught. When the host was arrayed at Muye, the Taigong challenged with a hundred men and so completed the martial work, and with forty-five thousand men he beat Zhou’s seven hundred thousand. The Zhou Sima fa comes from the Taigong. After the Taigong died, the men of Qi kept what he left. By the time Duke Huan ruled the feudal lords he employed Guan Zhong, who restored the Taigong’s method — what is called the army under proper restraint — and the lords all submitted.”

Taizong. “Scholars mostly say Guan Zhong was no more than a minister of a hegemon; they do not know that his art of war was rooted in the royal institutions. Zhuge Liang had the gifts of a king’s counsellor and compared himself to Guan and Yue; by that we know Guan Zhong too was a king’s counsellor. It was only that Zhou had declined and the king could not use him, so he borrowed Qi to raise his army.”

Li Jing bowed twice. “That Your Majesty is sage enough to know men so well — an old servant may die without shame before the worthies of old. Let me set out Guan Zhong’s ordering of Qi. He divided Qi into three armies. Five households made a track, so five men made a file; ten tracks made a hamlet, so fifty men made a small chariot-team; four hamlets made a ward, so two hundred men made a company; ten wards made a district, so two thousand men made a brigade; five districts made a command, so ten thousand men made an army. It follows also the sense of the Sima fa: a division is five brigades, a brigade is five companies. All of it in truth is what the Taigong left.”

Taizong. “The Sima fa — men say Rangju wrote it. Is that so, or not?”

Li Jing. “By the Life of Rangju in the Shiji: in the time of Duke Jing of Qi, Rangju was good at war and beat the armies of Yan and Jin, and the duke honoured him with the office of Marshal, from which he was called Sima Rangju and his descendants took Sima as their surname. Down to King Wei of Qi, they went back over the ancient Marshal’s methods and set out besides what Rangju had learnt, and so there came to be the Book of Sima Rangju in several tens of chapters. What the world now hands down as the school of the military writers, divided again into the four kinds — stratagem, disposition, yin-yang and technique — all comes out of the Sima fa.”

Taizong. “Zhang Liang and Han Xin of the Han put the military books in order, a hundred and eighty-two schools in all, and cut them down to thirty-five they judged of use. Today they are lost. Why?”

Li Jing. “What Zhang Liang studied was the Taigong’s Six Secret Teachings and Three Strategies; what Han Xin studied was Rangju and Sun Wu. But the substance goes no further than the three gates and the four kinds.”

Taizong. “What are the three gates?”

Li Jing. “By the books: the Taigong’s Stratagems, eighty-one chapters — what is called the hidden plan, which words cannot exhaust; the Taigong’s Sayings, seventy-one chapters, which arms cannot exhaust; the Taigong’s Arms, eighty-five chapters, which wealth cannot exhaust. These are the three gates.”

Taizong. “And the four kinds?”

Li Jing. “What Ren Hong of the Han set out is right. Of the military writers, stratagem is one kind, disposition is one kind, and yin-yang and technique are the other two. These are the four kinds.”

Taizong. “The Sima fa opens by setting out the spring and autumn hunts. Why?”

Li Jing. “To follow the season, to bind it with awe, and so to give the thing weight. In the rites of Zhou it was the greatest of state acts. King Cheng had the hunt at Qiyang, King Kang the audience at the Feng palace, King Mu the assembly at Tushan — these were the acts of the Son of Heaven. When Zhou declined, Duke Huan of Qi had the campaign at Shaoling and Duke Wen of Jin the covenant at Jiantu — these were the feudal lords carrying out the acts of the Son of Heaven on his behalf. In truth they used the nine punitive measures to overawe the irreverent, borrowing the form of an audience, making use of a royal progress, drilling them with arms — meaning that in quiet times arms are not raised idly, but must be taken up in the slack season of farming, so that the readiness for war is not forgotten. That is why the hunts come first. Is it not deep?”

Taizong. “On the two wings of the Viscount of Chu the Spring and Autumn says: The hundred officers moved by the signs, and the army’s business was ready without a warning given. Is this too got from the Zhou system?”

Li Jing. “By the account in the Zuo tradition, the Viscount of Chu rode with a wing of thirty chariots; a wing had one company, and the company was flanked by its pairs. On the march the army kept to the right of the shaft and took the shaft for its rule, so they fought hugging the shaft — all of it the Zhou system. I should say that a hundred men make a company and fifty men a pair, so that each chariot here uses a hundred and fifty men, rather more than the Zhou system. In Zhou one chariot had seventy-two foot and three armoured men; twenty-five men made one armoured section, three sections seventy-five men in all. Chu was a land of hills and marshes, short of chariots and full of men, so they split into three companies — and then it is the same as the Zhou system.”

Taizong. “In the Spring and Autumn, Xun Wu attacked the Di and broke up his chariots to make foot ranks. Was that orthodox, or unorthodox?”

Li Jing. “Xun Wu was using the chariot method, that is all: he left the chariots but the method stayed inside it. One part for the left horn, one for the right horn, one for the front screen, divided into three companies — that is the method of a single chariot, and a thousand or ten thousand are all the same. By the books, Duke Cao’s New Book says: The assault chariot takes seventy-five men: one company for the front screen, two for the left and right horns; the baggage chariot one company, with ten cooks, five to guard the kit, five grooms and five for wood and water, twenty-five in all. Assault and baggage, two chariots, a hundred men. Raise an army of a hundred thousand and you use a thousand chariots and two thousand baggage carts. That is broadly Xun Wu’s old method. Look again at the army system between Han and Wei: five chariots made a company with one commandant, ten chariots a division with one colonel, and for a full thousand chariots, two staff officers — and so on upward. I have used it in the present system: the raiders are the light horse; the battle-edge company is half foot and half horse; the standing company goes out with the wagons. When I marched west against the Turks I never once dared to alter this over some thousands of li of broken country. The old method of restraint may truly be relied on.”

When Taizong returned from Lingzhou he called Li Jing in, gave him a seat, and said: “I ordered Daozong and Ashina She’er and the rest to punish the Xueyantuo, and the tribes of the Tiele asked for Chinese officials to be set over them; I granted them all. The Yantuo fled west, and I feared trouble to come, so I sent Li Ji after them. Now the waste lands are all quiet, but the tribes are mixed, Turkic and Chinese together. By what course can this be made to last, so that both are kept safe?”

Li Jing. “Your Majesty’s order that sixty-six post stations be set up from the Turks to the Uighurs, to carry the watch, was already a good plan. But my poor view is that the Chinese garrisons should have one system and the tribal settlements another, drilled differently and never mixed. Then if raiders come, a secret order to the commander can change the signals and the dress on the day, and the unorthodox blow is struck.”

Taizong. “What course is this?”

Li Jing. “It is what is called misleading him in many ways. Show the Turk as a Chinese and the Chinese as a Turk, and when he cannot tell Turk from Chinese he can take no measure of our attack or defence. One good at war first makes himself unmeasurable, and then the enemy is thrown off the line he meant to take.”

Taizong. “That is exactly my meaning. You may teach the frontier commanders privately. This Turk-and-Chinese business alone will show them the method of the unorthodox and the orthodox.”

Li Jing bowed twice. “Your Majesty’s thought is heaven-given: you hear one thing and know ten. How should I ever reach the end of what you say?”

Taizong. “Zhuge Liang said: Troops under restraint, with an incapable commander, cannot be beaten; troops without restraint, with a capable commander, cannot win. I suspect this is not the last word.”

Li Jing. “The marquis said it under provocation. By the books, the Sunzi says: When the way of training is not clear, when officers and men have no constancy, when the troops are drawn up every which way — this is called disorder. From of old, armies that have thrown victory away by their own disorder are past counting. That the way of training is not clear means the drill has no old method in it; that officers and men have no constancy means commanders hold no post for long; that a disordered army throws victory away means it collapses of itself and the enemy did not beat it. So when the marquis said that troops under restraint will not be beaten even under a mediocre commander, and that troops in disorder put even a worthy commander in danger — what is there to doubt?”

Taizong. “The method of drill, then. It truly cannot be slighted.”

Li Jing. “Where the teaching finds its way, the men are glad to be used; where it does not, you may drive them at dawn and scold them at dusk to no purpose. That is why I have stuck so doggedly to the old systems and set them all out in charts: in hope of making an army under restraint.”

Taizong. “Choose the old formation methods for me and present them all in charts.”

Taizong. “Tribal troops are only good for the charge of strong horse — is that the unorthodox? Chinese troops are only good for the crossbow holding a flank — is that the orthodox?”

Li Jing. “By the books, the Sunzi says: One good at war seeks it in the momentum and does not demand it of his men; so he can choose men and ride the momentum. Choosing men means fighting each according to what the Turk or the Chinese is good at. The Turk is good with the horse, and the horse profits by the quick encounter; the Chinese is good with the crossbow, and the crossbow profits by the slow fight. That is each of them taking his natural momentum — but it is not what divides the unorthodox from the orthodox. What I spoke of before, the changing of signals and dress between Turk and Chinese, is the method by which the two beget each other. The horse too has its orthodox and the crossbow its unorthodox. Where is anything fixed?”

Taizong. “Say more of the art, in detail.”

Li Jing. “Give him a shape first, and make him follow it. That is the art.”

Taizong. “I have it. The Sunzi says: The last reach of giving troops a shape is to have none. And: He takes hold of victory before the host by means of shape, and the host cannot know it. This is what it means.”

Li Jing bowed twice. “Deep. Your Majesty’s thought has already gone more than half the way.”

Taizong. “Lately the Qidan and the Xi have both come in, and I have set up the two governorships of Songmo and Raole under the Protectorate of Anbei. I mean to use Xue Wanche. What do you say?”

Li Jing. “Wanche is not the equal of Ashina She’er, Zhishi Sili or Qibi Heli: these are tribal officers who know war. I have often talked with them of the rivers and roads of Songmo and Raole, of which tribes are loyal and which are not, on as far as a dozen or more peoples of the Western Regions, and every word of it holds. I have taught them the formations and they nod and take the point, every one. I beg Your Majesty to use them and not to doubt them. As for Wanche — brave and without a plan; he is hard to trust alone.”

Taizong laughed. “The tribesmen are all at your service. The ancients said: To set barbarian on barbarian is China’s way of standing. You have the thing.”

Scroll Two卷中

Eighteen exchanges, sixty-five speeches — the most technical of the three scrolls. Taizong opens by saying that of the thirteen chapters of the Sunzi nothing surpasses “Weak Points and Strong,” so after the unorthodox and the orthodox comes the full and the empty. But what fills the pages is the drill book: the file system, the Six-Flower formation, the spacing of companies and the beats of horn and drum, battle horse and breaking horse and roving horse, the conversion rate between chariot, foot and horse, the Taigong’s way of marking out ground, the Five Phases formation, female and male, the four beasts. These passages come nearer to being an actual Tang field regulation than anything else in the seven classics — companies stand ten paces apart; the standing company is twenty paces behind the one in front is the only place in the book that gives a measurement. Then the key changes. The last three exchanges are about severity, about refusing to confiscate a defeated enemy’s households, and about whether Li Jing had once spent an envoy’s life as an expendable agent: three ways of asking one question, which is what a commander may do to people. His answer — that in a thousand li beyond the passes he never once executed a Yang Gan or beheaded a Zhuang Jia — is the one thing in the book he says in his own defence.

Taizong. “I have looked at all the military books, and none goes beyond Sun Wu; and of Sun Wu’s thirteen chapters none goes beyond Weak Points and Strong. In using troops, if a man knows the shape of the full and the empty there is nothing he cannot win. My commanders can all say turn your back on the strong and strike the weak, but come to the face of an enemy and few of them know which is which — because they cannot bring the enemy to them, and are brought to him instead. How is this? Set out the essentials for them.”

Li Jing. “Teach them first the art by which the unorthodox and the orthodox turn into each other; then one may speak to them of the shape of the full and the empty. Most of them do not know how to make the unorthodox orthodox and the orthodox unorthodox. How should they know that the empty is the full and the full the empty?”

Taizong. “Reckon him, and know the plan that gains or loses; stir him, and know the principle of his moving and his stillness; shape him, and know the ground of his life and death; test him, and know where he has enough and where he has not. Then the unorthodox and the orthodox lie with me, and the full and the empty with the enemy?”

Li Jing. “The unorthodox and the orthodox are the means by which the enemy’s fullness and emptiness are brought about. If he is full I must use the orthodox; if he is empty I must make the unorthodox. If a commander does not know the pair, then though he knows where the enemy is full and where empty, how is he to bring it about? I have had your order, and I teach the commanders only the unorthodox and the orthodox; the full and the empty they will then know of themselves.”

Taizong. “Making the unorthodox orthodox: he thinks it unorthodox, so I strike with the orthodox. Making the orthodox unorthodox: he thinks it orthodox, so I strike with the unorthodox. So his force is always empty and mine always full. Give the commanders this method — it will be easy for them to grasp.”

Li Jing. “A thousand chapters and ten thousand sentences come to no more than bring the enemy to you; do not be brought to him. I shall teach them by that.”

Taizong. “I have set up the governorship of Yaochi under the Protectorate of Anxi. How should the Turkic and Chinese troops be arranged?”

Li Jing. “Heaven bears men without any distinction of Turk and Chinese. But the land out there is far and desert, and they must live by hunting, and so they are always in practice for war. If we soothe them with kindness and good faith and see to their clothing and food, they will all be Chinese. Now that Your Majesty has set up this protectorate, let me gather in the Chinese garrison troops and settle them in the interior, to save the cost of carrying grain. This is what the military writers call husbanding strength. Only pick Chinese officials who know the tribes well, and post them about the forts and barriers — that will hold for a long time. And if an alarm comes, the reserve troops go out.”

Taizong. “What of the husbanding of strength that the Sunzi speaks of?”

Li Jing. “Meeting the far with the near, the weary with the rested, the hungry with the fed — that is only the outline of it. One good at war pushes these three out into six: meet his coming with a lure, his agitation with stillness, his lightness with weight, his slackness with severity, his disorder with order, his attack with defence. Do the opposite and strength falls short. Without the art of husbanding it, how is a man to stand before an army?”

Taizong. “Those who study the Sunzi nowadays only recite the empty text; few can push the sense out wide. The method of husbanding strength should be told to all the commanders.”

Taizong. “The old commanders and veteran troops are nearly all gone, and the newly raised armies have never faced a line of battle. What way of teaching matters most now?”

Li Jing. “I have always taught men in three grades. First the file system must be fixed; the file system once fixed, they are handed to the company officers — that is one grade. The officers’ method takes one and makes it ten, ten and makes it a hundred — that is one grade. Then they are handed to the sub-commanders, who gather the officers’ companies and mass them into the formation chart — that is one grade. The commanding general inspects these three grades of teaching, and then holds the great review, checking the regulations, distinguishing the unorthodox from the orthodox, swearing the host and enforcing the punishments. Let Your Majesty watch from a height: there is nothing that will not answer.”

Taizong. “There are several schools of the file system. Which matters most?”

Li Jing. “By the books: the Zuo tradition of the Spring and Autumn says chariot-pairs in front, files behind; the Sima fa says five men make a file; the Wei Liaozi has the chapter Binding the Files; the Han system had the foot-rule register and the file tally. Later ages made their tallies and registers of paper, and there the system was lost. I have weighed the methods: from five men it goes to twenty-five, and from twenty-five to seventy-five, which is the system of seventy-two foot and three armoured men. Drop the chariots and take horse, and twenty-five men answer to eight horses, which is the system by which the five weapons answer to five. So of all the schools of war it is the file system that matters. Small ranked, five men; large ranked, twenty-five; trebled, seventy-five; and five times that number gives three hundred and seventy-five. Three hundred are the orthodox and sixty the unorthodox; that is, a hundred and fifty split into two orthodox and thirty into two unorthodox, left and right being equal. What Rangju called five men to a file, ten files to a company has been followed ever since. That is the essential.”

Taizong. “I discuss war with Li Ji, and he mostly agrees with what you say, only he does not go into where a thing comes from. That Six-Flower formation of yours — out of what art does it come?”

Li Jing. “I took it from Zhuge Liang’s eight formations. Large formation enclosing small, large camp enclosing small, corners hooked together and bends answering each other — the old system was like this, and I followed it in my chart. So the outside is drawn square and the inside ringed round, and it comes out as six petals. The name is only what people call it.”

Taizong. “Round within and square without — what does that mean?”

Li Jing. “The square is born of the pace, the round of the turn. The square is what sets the square on their pacing; the round is what strings together their wheeling. So the count of paces is fixed by the ground and the marching order answers to the sky. Paces fixed and order even, the changes do not fall into confusion. Eight formations made into six — that is the marquis’s old method.”

Taizong. “Draw squares to show the pacing, set points to show the troops. Pacing teaches the feet their method, troops teach the hands theirs. Hands and feet in order — is that more than half the matter?”

Li Jing. “Wu Qi says: Cut off but not parted, driven back but not scattered. That is the method of the feet. Teaching men is like setting stones on a board: if there are no lines drawn, what use are the stones? Sun Wu says: Ground gives rise to measure, measure to quantity, quantity to number, number to weighing, weighing to victory. A winning army is as a full weight against a grain; a beaten army as a grain against a full weight. All of it begins in measuring the square and the round.”

Taizong. “Deep, Sun Wu’s words. Without measuring far and near, broad and narrow, how is one to set the beat?”

Li Jing. “It is a rare mediocre commander who knows the beat. With one good at war the momentum is steep and the beat is short; the momentum like a drawn crossbow, the beat like the release of the trigger. I have worked the art out thus. Companies stand ten paces apart; the standing company is twenty paces behind the one in front; every other company is a battle company. They advance fifty paces to a beat. At one blast of the horn the companies all break and stand loose, within ten paces. At the fourth blast they ground their spears and kneel. Then the drum: three shouts and three blows, thirty paces to fifty, to master whatever the enemy does. The horse come out from behind, also fifty paces, halting at the beat as the moment requires. Orthodox in front and unorthodox behind, they watch what the enemy does; at the second drum it is unorthodox in front and orthodox behind, drawing him on again, watching for the gap to strike at the empty. The Six-Flower is all of it like this.”

Taizong. “Duke Cao’s New Book says: In drawing up before an enemy, first plant the markers and bring the troops up to the markers to form. If one division takes the attack and the others do not come forward to help, they are beheaded. What art is this?”

Li Jing. “Planting markers in the face of an enemy is wrong. It is only a method for drill. Those of the ancients who were good at war taught the orthodox and did not teach the unorthodox; they drove the host as one drives a flock of sheep, forward with them and back with them, and it did not know where it was going. Duke Cao was proud and liked to win, and of the commanders who received the New Book at that time none dared attack its faults. And to plant markers in the face of an enemy — is it not rather late? I have watched the Dance of the Prince of Qin Breaking the Line that Your Majesty composed: four markers set out in front, eight pennons strung behind, wheeling left and right, the step keeping time to gong and drum, each with its own beat. That is the eight-formation chart itself, the system of four heads and eight tails. The world sees only the splendour of a dance; who knows there is an order of battle in it?”

Taizong. “Long ago, when Gaozu of Han had settled the empire, he sang: Where shall I get brave men to guard the four quarters? The art of war may be handed on in sense but not in words. Of the dance I made, you alone have understood the markers. Later ages will know I did not make it idly.”

Taizong. “Are the five flags of the five colours the orthodox, and the pennon-signals for the charge the unorthodox? If dividing and joining are the change, how many companies make it come out right?”

Li Jing. “I have used the old method with some adjustment. When three companies join, the flags lean together but do not cross; when five join, two flags cross; when ten join, five flags cross. At the horn, open the five crossed flags and they break again into ten; open the two crossed flags and they break into five; open the leaning uncrossed flags and they break into three. When the troops are scattered, joining is the unorthodox; when they are joined, scattering is the unorthodox. Order given three times and repeated five, scattered three times and joined three, and then back to the orthodox: four heads and eight tails, and they may be taught. That is what the company method requires.” Taizong praised it.

Taizong. “Duke Cao has battle horse, breaking horse and roving horse. What in our cavalry answers to them?”

Li Jing. “By the books, the New Book says: The battle horse stand in front, the breaking horse in the middle, the roving horse behind. If so, then these are only three names for three kinds. Broadly, eight horse of a cavalry company answer to twenty-four chariot-foot, and twenty-four horse to seventy-two chariot-foot; that is the old system. The chariot-foot are always drilled in the orthodox, the horse companies always in the unorthodox. Duke Cao’s front, rear and middle are three layers of ambush; he says nothing of the two wings, having spoken of one end only. Later men, not understanding the three layers, supposed that the battle horse must go out ahead of the breaking horse and the roving horse — and how is that to be used? I have used this method till it is familiar: when the army wheels and the formation turns, the roving horse are in front, the battle horse behind, and the breaking horse divide as the change requires. It is all Duke Cao’s art.”

Taizong laughed. “How many men Duke Cao has led astray!”

Taizong. “Chariot, foot and horse — three things, one method. Does the use of it lie with the man?”

Li Jing. “By the books, the fish-scale formation of the Spring and Autumn put the chariot-pairs in front and the files behind: there was chariot and foot but no horse, and it was called the left and right screen, meaning that it only screened and did not seek to win by the unorthodox. When Xun Wu of Jin attacked the Di and gave up chariots for foot ranks, there horse were the convenient thing, and it was all for winning by the unorthodox and not for screening. I have evened out the art: one horse counts as three men, chariot and foot are reckoned against that, and all is blended into one method, whose use lies with the man. How is the enemy to know where my chariots will come out, where my horse will come from, where my foot will follow? Now hidden in the nine depths of earth, now stirring in the nine heights of heaven — such knowing is like a god’s, and Your Majesty has it. What should I know of it?”

Taizong. “The Taigong’s book says: Ground six hundred paces square, or sixty, marked out by the twelve watches. What is the art of it?”

Li Jing. “Mark out a square of twelve hundred paces — the squared-out shape. Each division takes a square of twenty paces; across, a man every five paces; down, a man every four paces; two thousand five hundred men in all, divided into five quarters with four empty spaces — this is what is meant by formation holding formation. When King Wu attacked Zhou, the tiger guards each commanded three thousand men and each formation held six thousand, thirty thousand in all: this is the Taigong’s method of marking out ground.”

Taizong. “And how much ground does your Six-Flower mark out?”

Li Jing. “For a great review, on ground twelve hundred paces square: the six formations take four hundred paces each, divided into an eastern and a western wing, and twelve hundred paces of open ground are left for the drill. I once drilled thirty thousand men, five thousand to a formation; one of the six served as the camp pattern and five took the shapes of square, round, crooked, straight and pointed; each formation had five changes, twenty-five changes in all, and then it stopped.”

Taizong. “And the Five Phases formation?”

Li Jing. “The name was set up merely from the colours of the five quarters. Square, round, crooked, straight and pointed are in truth what the lie of the ground forces on you. But war is a way of deceit, and so the Five Phases are forced onto it as a name, dressed up with the doctrine of mutual production and conquest. In truth the shape of an army is like water, which takes its course from the ground. That is the sense of it.”

Taizong. “Li Ji speaks of female and male, square and round as the method of ambush. Did the ancients have this?”

Li Jing. “The female-and-male method comes out of common report; in truth it is no more than the two senses of yin and yang. By the books, Fan Li says: Coming after, use yin; going first, use yang. Exhaust the enemy’s yang measure, fill out your own yin measure, and take him. That is the fine point of yin and yang among the military writers. Fan Li also says: Set the right as female, strengthen the left as male, and take early or late according to the way of heaven. Here left and right, early and late, differ with the moment; the thing lies in the changes of the unorthodox and the orthodox. Left and right are the yin and yang of men; early and late are the yin and yang of heaven; the unorthodox and the orthodox are the yin and yang in which heaven and man change into each other. Hold to them without changing, and both yin and yang are wasted. What then? Keeping to the shape of female and male, and no more. So: what gives a shape shows the enemy the unorthodox, and it is not my orthodox; what wins strikes the enemy with the orthodox, and it is not my unorthodox. This is what is meant by their changing into each other. As for ambush, it is not only valleys, grass and trees: to lie hidden is to be an ambush. Steady as a mountain in the orthodox, sudden as thunder in the unorthodox, so that though the enemy is face to face with me he cannot take the measure of either. At that point, what shape is there?”

Taizong. “The four-beast formations, figured besides by the notes shang, yu, zhi and jue — what course is this?”

Li Jing. “A way of deceit.”

Taizong. “Can it be done away with?”

Li Jing. “Keeping it is the way to be rid of it. Do away with it and leave it unused, and the deceit will only grow worse.”

Taizong. “What do you mean?”

Li Jing. “Borrowing the four-beast formations, and the names of heaven, earth, wind and cloud, and adding to them shang as metal, yu as water, zhi as fire and jue as wood — all this has been the military writers’ way of deceit from of old. Keep it, and no further deceits are added; do away with it, and by what shall the art of using the greedy and using the foolish be worked?”

After a long while Taizong said: “You had better keep this to yourself, and let nothing out.”

Taizong. “Harsh laws and heavy punishments make men fear me and not fear the enemy. This greatly puzzles me. Long ago Guangwu faced Wang Mang’s million with a solitary army, and it was not the law that held them. How did that come about?”

Li Jing. “The circumstances of winning and losing are past counting; one case cannot be argued from another. When Chen Sheng and Wu Guang beat the armies of Qin, could Sheng and Guang’s laws be laid upon Qin? Guangwu rose because he went with men’s hatred of Mang; and besides, Wang Xun and Wang Yi knew nothing of war and only boasted of numbers, and so beat themselves. By the books, the Sunzi says: Punish troops before they are attached to you and they will not submit; leave punishment undone once they are attached and they cannot be used. This means that a commander must first have bound his men to him by kindness, and then he may use severity. If kindness has not been given and harsh law used alone, it seldom answers.”

Taizong. “The Book of Documents says: When awe overcomes love, there is success; when love overcomes awe, there is no merit. What of that?”

Li Jing. “Love is set first and awe after; it may not be reversed. If awe is laid on first and love brought up afterwards to save it, it is of no use. The Documents is warning us to be careful of the end, not telling us how to lay our plans at the beginning. So the method of the Sunzi stands uncut for ten thousand ages.”

Taizong. “When you pacified Xiao Xian, all the commanders wanted to register the households of his officials and reward the troops with them; you alone refused, saying that Kuai Tong was not put to death by Han. Presently the Jiang and Han country came over of itself. From that I came to think of the old saying: By civil means he can win men; by martial means he can awe an enemy. Is it not said of you?”

Li Jing. “When Guangwu of Han had put down the Red Eyebrows he walked into their camp to inspect it, and the rebels said: The King of Xiao lays his red heart in other men’s bellies. This was because he had judged beforehand that men’s feelings were not evil at bottom — was that not forethought? When I lately punished the Turks, commanding a host of Turks and Chinese a thousand li beyond the passes, I never once executed a Yang Gan or beheaded a Zhuang Jia. I too did no more than put out a plain heart and keep to what was fair. Your Majesty listened too kindly and raised me to a rank out of my turn. As for the civil and the martial — how should I dare take them?”

Taizong. “Long ago Tang Jian went as envoy to the Turks, and you struck and beat them on that account. Men say you spent Jian as an expendable agent, and I doubt it to this day. How was it?”

Li Jing bowed twice. “Jian and I served the same lord shoulder to shoulder. I judged that his talking would never bring them quietly in, and so I loosed the troops on them: I put away a great evil and did not stand on a small propriety. That men call it spending Jian as an expendable agent was never my mind. By the Sunzi’s chapter on the use of agents, it is the lowest of plans. I once wrote a discussion of it and said at the end: Water can carry a boat and water can overturn it; some use agents and succeed, some lean on agents and are ruined. If a man has bound his hair and taken service with his lord, standing straight-faced in court, loyal to the point of giving his life, faithful to the last of his sincerity — then though there were a good agent to be had, how could he be used? Tang Jian was a small propriety. What has Your Majesty to doubt?”

Taizong. “True — without humanity and right one cannot use agents. Is this a thing a small man could do? The Duke of Zhou destroyed his own kin for the greater right; how much more one envoy. It is clear, and I doubt no longer.”

Taizong. “In war it is better to be host than guest, better quick than slow. Why?”

Li Jing. “War is used only when there is no help for it. Where is the being a guest, and for long? The Sunzi says: Long hauls make the people poor. That is the harm of being a guest. And it says: Levy no second draft, ship no third load of grain. That is the proof that it cannot be long. But when I weigh the positions of host and guest, there is an art of turning guest into host and host into guest.”

Taizong. “What do you mean?”

Li Jing. “Take your grain from the enemy — that turns guest into host. When he is fed, be able to starve him; when he is rested, be able to weary him — that turns host into guest. So an army is not bound to host or guest, slow or quick: only let the release fall on the beat, and that is what suits.”

Taizong. “Did the ancients do it?”

Li Jing. “Long ago, when Yue attacked Wu, it sent the left and right armies forward beating their drums, and Wu divided troops to meet them, while Yue’s centre forded in silence without drums and broke the Wu host: that is the proof of turning guest into host. When Shi Le fought Ji Dan, Dan’s troops had come far; Le sent Kong Chang ahead to strike them, and Chang fell back and Dan pursued, and Le caught him between his ambushes and Dan’s army was broken: that is the proof of turning weariness into rest. The ancients did much of this kind.”

Taizong. “Iron caltrops and chevaux-de-frise — were they made by the Taigong?”

Li Jing. “They were; but they only keep the enemy off. What war values is bringing him to you, not keeping him away. The Taigong’s Six Secret Teachings speaks of them among the gear of defence; they are not for the attack.”

Scroll Three卷下

Fifteen exchanges, fifty-one speeches. The first half is still theory — dividing and massing, misleading the enemy in many ways, attack and defence as one method, knowing him and knowing yourself, the morning spirit and the evening — but the second half turns to people, and to leaving. Can Li Ji be used, and by whom? Can Zhangsun Wuji be worked with? Which of Han Gaozu and Guangwu really knew how to command commanders? Should the old ceremony of sending out a general be revived? Should the yin-yang arts be abolished? At the last question — which art of war is deepest — Li Jing answers with three grades, the Way, heaven and earth, and the methods of command, and says that a student must climb from the bottom. Then Taizong says that the Daoists hold it unlucky to be a general for three generations, that the books must not be passed on lightly and must not be left unpassed, and that Li Jing should be careful; and Li Jing bows twice, goes out, and hands the whole of his writings to Li Ji. A book about the unorthodox and the orthodox ends on a warning about transmission — whoever wrote that ending, it is a good one.

Taizong. “The Taigong says: Foot fighting chariots and horse must lean on mounds and broken ground. But the Sunzi says: Ground of heaven’s crevices, grave mounds and old walls — troops may not camp there. How is this?”

Li Jing. “The use of a host lies in a single mind, and a single mind lies in forbidding omens and putting away doubt. If the commander has anything he doubts or shrinks from, the general feeling wavers; once it wavers, the enemy takes the crack and comes in. So in pitching camp and taking ground, what matters is only what suits human business. Ravines, wells, pits and crevices, and places like a snare or a net, do not suit human business, and therefore the military writers lead away and avoid them, lest the enemy make use of us. Grave mounds and old walls are not utterly broken ground; if we get them it is to our advantage. Why on earth should we give them up? What the Taigong said is the very heart of war.”

Taizong. “I think no instrument is more baleful than arms; but if the conduct of war suits human business, why hold back for a taboo? Hereafter, if any commander misses what a case requires through some yin-yang scruple, you are to warn him, and warn him plainly.”

Li Jing bowed twice and thanked him. “By the books, the Wei Liaozi says: The Yellow Emperor kept it by virtue and punished by force: this is what is meant by punishment and virtue. It is not a matter of the heavenly offices and lucky days. Yet the way of deceit is something men may be made to follow and may not be made to understand. Later ages have had mediocre commanders who stuck in the numbers and were often beaten by it; they must be warned. Your Majesty’s sage instruction I shall proclaim to the commanders at once.”

Taizong. “Troops divide and troops mass, and each in its own season. Of the deeds of earlier ages, who did this well?”

Li Jing. “Fu Jian gathered a million men and was beaten at the Fei; that came of troops that could mass and could not divide. Wu Han, punishing Gongsun Shu, camped apart from his lieutenant Liu Shang twenty li away; Shu came to attack Han, Shang came out and they struck together and broke him utterly; that came of troops that could divide and could mass. The Taigong says: Not dividing when you should is a tethered army; not massing when you should is a stranded one.”

Taizong. “Just so. Fu Jian at first had Wang Meng, who really knew war, and so he took the central plain; when Meng died, Jian was beaten after all. Is that not what is meant by a tethered army? Wu Han was trusted by Guangwu and not directed from a distance, and so he pacified Shu. Is that not what is meant by not falling into being stranded? Gain and loss in these two cases may serve as a mirror for ten thousand ages.”

Taizong. “I have looked at a thousand chapters and ten thousand sentences, and they come to no more than the one phrase, mislead him in many ways.”

After a long silence Li Jing said: “It is truly as Your Majesty says. In general, if the enemy does not go wrong, how is our army to beat him? It is like a game of chess: two players evenly matched, and let one stone be misplaced and there is no saving it. So victory and defeat, now and in the past, mostly come of a single error — how much more of many.”

Taizong. “Attack and defence — are they in truth one method? The Sunzi says: With one good at attack, the enemy does not know what to defend; with one good at defence, the enemy does not know what to attack. It says nothing of the enemy coming to attack me while I attack him too, or of my standing on the defensive while he stands on it as well. Attack and defence matched on both sides — what is the art of that?”

Li Jing. “In earlier ages there was much of this attacking and defending on both sides. They all said, to defend is to have too little, to attack is to have more than enough, and so took too little for weakness and more than enough for strength — never seeing the real method of attack and defence. By the books, the Sunzi says: What cannot be beaten is defence; what can be beaten is attack. It means that while the enemy cannot yet be beaten I stand on the defensive, and when he can be beaten I attack him; it is not a way of speaking about strong and weak. Later men not understanding the sense, they defend when they should attack and attack when they should defend; and once the two duties are held apart, the one method cannot be kept.”

Taizong. “True. More than enough and too little have made later men mistake them for strong and weak. They quite fail to see that the method of defence is to show the enemy too little, and the method of attack is to show him more than enough. Show him too little and he is bound to come and attack — that is his not knowing what to attack. Show him more than enough and he is bound to stand on his own defence — that is his not knowing what to defend. Once attack and defence are decided, he and I are two separate businesses. If my business succeeds, his fails; if his succeeds, mine fails. Winning and losing are divided between us. But attack and defence are one thing, and only one; get the one and you win a hundred fights in a hundred. So it is said: Know him and know yourself, and in a hundred fights you are never in danger. Is that not knowing the one?”

Li Jing bowed twice. “Deep — the method of the sages. Attack is the trigger of defence, defence is the plan of attack; both go the same road, which is winning. If a man attacks without knowing defence and defends without knowing attack, he not only makes two things of them, he makes two offices of them as well; and though his mouth recites Sun and Wu, his mind never dwells on the fine point of the two being matched. How should he know how the thing stands?”

Taizong. “The Sima fa says: Though a state be great, if it loves war it will surely perish; though all under heaven be at peace, if it forgets war it will surely be in danger. Is this too the one road of attack and defence?”

Li Jing. “Whoever has a state or a house has always had to talk of attack and defence. Attack does not stop at attacking his walls and striking his line; there must be an art of attacking his mind. Defence does not stop at making your ramparts whole and your line firm; you must also keep your own spirit and bide your time. Spoken large, it is the way of a sovereign; spoken small, it is the method of a commander. Attacking his mind is what is meant by knowing him; keeping my own spirit is what is meant by knowing myself.”

Taizong. “True. When I stood in the line I would first reckon which was the sounder, the enemy’s mind or my own, and then he could be known; and judge which was the better ordered, his spirit or mine, and then I could be known. So knowing him and knowing yourself is the great essential of war. My commanders today may not know the enemy; but if they can only know themselves, how shall they ever lose an advantage?”

Li Jing. “What Sun Wu calls first making yourself unbeatable is knowing yourself; waiting for the enemy to be beatable is knowing him. And he says: Being unbeatable lies with yourself; being beatable lies with the enemy. Not for a moment do I dare let go of that warning.”

Taizong. “The Sunzi gives a method by which the spirit of three armies may be taken away: The morning spirit is keen, the midday spirit slack, the evening spirit bent on home. One good at war avoids the keen spirit and strikes the slack and the homeward. How is that?”

Li Jing. “That what bears life and holds blood should beat itself into a fight and not know itself for dead — this is the spirit’s doing. So the method of war must first be to look to my own men and rouse their winning spirit, and then the enemy may be struck. Of Wu Qi’s four triggers, the spirit is the first, for no other reason: if you can make every man fight of himself, the edge of it cannot be met. As for the morning spirit being keen — it does not mean an hour of the clock; it is a figure taken from the beginning and end of a single day. If you beat the drum three times and the enemy neither flags nor fails, how are you to make him slack and homeward? Students merely recite the empty text and are lured by the enemy. Once a man has grasped the principle of taking the spirit away, troops may be entrusted to him.”

Taizong. “You have said that Li Ji is capable in war. Can he be used for long? Yet if I am not the one holding the rein, he cannot be used. One day, when the Crown Prince Zhi reigns, how is he to hold him?”

Li Jing. “If I may plan for Your Majesty: nothing would be better than to put Ji out of office, and let the Crown Prince take him back into it. Then he will certainly feel the favour and plan how to repay it. Where is the harm in that?”

Taizong. “Good. I doubt no more.”

Taizong. “If Li Ji and Zhangsun Wuji were to hold the government together, what would come of it?”

Li Jing. “Ji is loyal and upright; for him I will stand surety. Wuji has the great merit of having helped to found the reign, and Your Majesty, as his kinsman, has laid the chief ministry on him; but outwardly he condescends to men of talent while inwardly he is jealous of the worthy. So Yuchi Jingde threw his faults in his face and then withdrew; so Hou Junji nursed the grudge that he was forgotten and fell into treason. Wuji brought both to that pass. Your Majesty has asked me, and I do not dare shirk the saying of it.”

Taizong. “Let nothing out. I shall think quietly how to dispose of it.”

Taizong. “Gaozu of Han could command commanders; yet afterwards Han Xin and Peng Yue were put to death, and Xiao He was thrown into prison. Why was that?”

Li Jing. “Looking at Liu and Xiang, neither was a lord who could command commanders. When Qin fell, Zhang Liang was really avenging Han; Chen Ping and Han Xin both resented that Chu would not use them, and so borrowed Han’s strength to make their own way. As for Xiao, Cao, Fan and Guan, they were all outlaws to begin with. Gaozu made use of them and so got the empire. Suppose the heirs of the six states had been set up again, and every man had held to his old allegiance: then even a lord with the gift of commanding commanders — how should he have got them for Han? I say Han won the empire by Zhang Liang’s plan sketched with the chopsticks and Xiao He’s work of hauling the grain. Put it that way, and the killing of Han Xin and Peng Yue and the not using of Fan Zeng are one and the same thing. So I say neither Liu nor Xiang was a lord who could command commanders.”

Taizong. “Guangwu restored the house and was able to keep his meritorious officers whole, not burdening them with the business of office. Was he then good at commanding commanders?”

Li Jing. “Guangwu did lean on what had been built before him and had an easier success; but Mang’s power was no less than Xiang Ji’s, and Kou Xun and Deng Yu did not surpass Xiao He and Zhang Liang. That he alone could put out a red heart, govern by mildness, and keep his meritorious officers whole makes him far better than Gaozu. If the way of commanding commanders is to be judged by this, I say Guangwu had it.”

Taizong. “Anciently, when an army went out and a commander was appointed, the ruler fasted three days and handed him the battle-axe, saying: From here up to heaven, the general commands it. Then he handed him the hatchet, saying: From here down to earth, the general commands it. Then he pushed the hub of his chariot and said: Advance and withdraw as the moment requires. Once you have gone, the army hears only the general’s orders and not the ruler’s commands. I think this rite has long lapsed; I should like to settle with you a ceremony for sending out a general. What do you say?”

Li Jing. “My own poor view is that when the sages framed it, the fasting in the ancestral temple was a way of borrowing awe from the spirits, and the handing of axe and hatchet and the pushing of the hub were a way of committing the authority to him. Now, whenever Your Majesty sends out an army, you always debate it with the ministers and announce it in the temple before the army goes: that is inviting the spirits to the utmost. And whenever you appoint a commander you always let him act as the case requires: that is committing the authority in full. What need of fasting and hub-pushing? It accords with the old rite entirely; the sense is the same; there is no need to settle anything.”

The emperor said: “Good.” And he ordered the attendant officials to write these two things down as a rule for later ages.

Taizong. “The yin-yang arts and the numbers — may they be done away with?”

Li Jing. “They may not. War is a way of deceit. Lodge it in the yin-yang arts and the numbers, and you can use the greedy and use the foolish. This is why they may not be done away with.”

Taizong. “But you have said: The heavenly offices and the lucky days — an enlightened commander does not go by them; a benighted one is bound by them. By that they ought to be done away with.”

Li Jing. “Zhou fell on a jiazi day and King Wu rose on a jiazi day; by the heavenly offices and the lucky days the jiazi was one and the same, yet Yin fell into disorder and Zhou into order, and the rise and the fall were different. Again, Emperor Wu of the Song raised his troops on a “day of going and perishing,” and his officers said it could not be done; the emperor said, I go, and he perishes, and he beat them after all. By this it is plain that they may be done away with. And yet, when Tian Dan was hemmed in by Yan, Dan ordered a man to act as a god and bowed and sacrificed to him, and the god said Yan can be broken; whereupon Dan sent out the fire oxen and broke Yan utterly. This is the military writers’ way of deceit, and the heavenly offices and lucky days are like it.”

Taizong. “Tian Dan relied on a bogus god and broke Yan; the Taigong burnt the yarrow and the tortoise and destroyed Zhou. The two are opposites. How so?”

Li Jing. “The trigger is one and the same: one took it by going against, one by going with. Long ago, when the Taigong was helping King Wu and they reached Muye, they met thunder and rain, the banners and drums were smashed, and San Yisheng wished to divine for a good omen before going on: that was because the army was doubtful and afraid, and he had to borrow divination to ask the spirits. The Taigong held that rotten grass and dry bone were not worth asking; and besides, a subject striking his sovereign — could it be done twice? Yet observe that San Yisheng sprang the trigger first and the Taigong finished it after; going against and going with differ, but the principle comes to one. When I said earlier that the numbers may not be done away with, I meant keeping the trigger before it has sprouted. As for bringing the thing to success, that lies in human business and nowhere else.”

Taizong. “Of the commanders of today there are only Li Ji, Daozong and Xue Wanche. Setting Daozong aside as a kinsman, which of them can bear a great charge?”

Li Jing. “Your Majesty has said that Ji and Daozong, in using troops, neither win greatly nor lose greatly, while Wanche, if he does not win greatly, must lose greatly. Turning your sage words over in my dull head: he who neither seeks a great victory nor suffers a great defeat is an army under restraint; he who either wins greatly or loses greatly has succeeded by luck. So Sun Wu says: One good at war stands on ground where he cannot be beaten, and does not let slip the enemy’s being beatable. The restraint, that is to say, lies with me.”

Taizong. “Two lines face each other and one wishes to say: no battle. How can that be had?”

Li Jing. “Long ago the army of Jin attacked Qin, and they drew rein and withdrew. The Sima fa says: Do not chase the fleeing far; do not follow the withdrawing close. I take sui to be the rein-cord. If my troops are under restraint and the enemy too keeps his ranks straight, how should either dare to fight lightly? So there are cases of going out and drawing rein, of withdrawing and not being chased, each guarding against a defeat. Sun Wu says: Do not strike an array in full order; do not meet a banner in full line. If the two lines are even in body and matched in force, then let one of them once act lightly and be taken at it, and there may be a great defeat; that is how the thing works. Therefore there is a not-fighting and there is a must-fighting. The not-fighting lies with me; the must-fighting lies with the enemy.”

Taizong. “The not-fighting lies with me — what does that mean?”

Li Jing. “Sun Wu says: If I do not wish to fight, I mark out the ground and hold it, and the enemy cannot get a fight out of me, because I have thrown him off the line he meant to take. If the enemy has a man of sense, then in the moment of drawing rein there is nothing to be had of him — so it is said, the not-fighting lies with me. As for the must-fighting lying with the enemy, Sun Wu says: One good at moving an enemy gives him a shape and he is bound to follow it; offers him something and he is bound to take it. He moves him with gain and waits for him with his own substance. If the enemy has no man of sense, he is bound to come and fight, and I can take him at it and break him — so it is said, the must-fighting lies with the enemy.”

Taizong. “Deep, the army under restraint. Get the method and it flourishes; lose it and it perishes. Compile for me an account of those in past ages who were good at restraint, with charts, and present it; I shall choose out the fine points and hand them down to later ages.”

Li Jing. “The two formation charts of the Yellow Emperor and the Taigong that I presented earlier, with the Sima fa and Zhuge Liang’s method of the unorthodox and the orthodox, are already full and exact. Of the famous commanders of the ages, many have succeeded by using one part or two of them. But the historians are seldom capable in war and cannot record what was actually done. How should I not obey the order? I shall compile it and report.”

Taizong. “Of the arts of war, which is deepest?”

Li Jing. “I have always divided it into three grades, so that the student may come to it by degrees. The first is the Way; the second is heaven and earth; the third is the methods of command. The doctrine of the Way is subtle to the last degree and deep to the last degree; it is what the Book of Changes calls clear-sighted, wise, godlike in war and yet not killing. The doctrine of heaven speaks of yin and yang, the doctrine of earth of the broken and the easy; one good at war can take the yang with the yin and attack the easy with the broken, which is what Mencius calls the season of heaven and the advantage of the ground. The doctrine of the methods of command lies in employing men and keeping the weapons good, which is what the Three Strategies means by he who wins the officers flourishes and the Guanzi by the gear must be hard and sharp.”

Taizong. “Just so. I should say that to subdue another’s army without fighting is the highest; to win a hundred fights in a hundred is the middle; to hold oneself behind a deep ditch and a high rampart is the lowest. Measure by that, and in the book Sun Wu wrote all three grades are present.”

Li Jing. “Read the writing, trace the deeds, and the grades may indeed be told apart. Zhang Liang, Fan Li and Sun Wu shook themselves free and withdrew, and no one knew where they went: without knowing the Way, how could they have done it? Yue Yi, Guan Zhong and Zhuge Liang fought and always won, defended and always held: without judging the season of heaven and the advantage of the ground, how could they have done it? Below them, Wang Meng holding Qin together and Xie An guarding Jin: without appointing commanders, choosing men, mending the works and making themselves secure, how could they have done it? So the study of war must climb from the bottom to the middle and from the middle to the top, and then it deepens by degrees. Otherwise a man only hands down empty words and recites them by rote, and there is nothing in it worth taking.”

Taizong. “The Daoists hold it unlucky to be a general in the third generation. The books may not be handed on lightly, and they may not be left unhanded. Be careful of it.” Li Jing bowed twice and went out, and handed the whole of his writings to Li Ji.