Ancient Chinese Warfare (37 page)

The few inscriptions referring to
lü
mention them being called up for both training and field action.
⁶⁰
Suggestions have been made that in the later reigns they continued to provide an operational umbrella for forces temporarily called to duty and thus represent a major step toward the concept of “people’s soldiers,” in comparison with the essentially professional warriors populating the government and forming the core of the semipermanent military forces. It has also been asserted (without substantiation) that they subsumed the clan armies within their
structure.
⁶¹
However, this would not only constitute a shift away from discrete, individual martial entities to a true state force, but also contradict the tendency toward these people’s forces. In addition, inscriptions referring to both the
lü
and
tsu
(clan forces) are not uncommon, evidence that they continued to coexist as operational contingents.
⁶²

The other large entity frequently ordered onto the battlefield was the
tsu
or clan regiment, whose character has traditionally been interpreted as depicting an arrow under a pennant. The oldest of all units, it must have originally drawn its fighters from among the physically qualified clan warriors who had the privilege and responsibility of serving. Insofar as the Shang loosely encompassed other prominent clans apart from the ruling Tzu house and its collateral lines, including some that had originated among the Yi or other early allies with whom they intermarried and enjoyed cultural exchanges, there were a number of such entities.
⁶³

Most prominent among them was the
wang tsu
or king’s clan, also referred to as “my clan” in the king’s prognostications, but the
tzu tsu
and
tuo tzu tsu
, referring to the royal house and many princely clans respectively, also played major battlefield roles.
⁶⁴
Naturally the king’s clan served as the central force when they fielded the full complement of left, right, and middle, but prognostications referring to just the left or right
tzu tsu
suggest they were also deployed singularly and together. The
tsu
’s basic size has been suggested as 500 men or roughly a battalion, in comparison with the
shih
and
lü
when, in comparison with
chün, lü
is understood as brigade or perhaps regiment.

Because these clan forces must have shouldered core responsibility for the campaign that overthrew the Hsia, postconquest their members certainly would have been reluctant to give up their privileges and honors for routine administrative duties. The other important clans contending for influence (or even survival) amid the evolving Shang state must have held similar views. Some sort of clan-based standing force had to be deployed from the outset to dominate the Hsia enclaves at Yen-shih and the vital crossroads to mineral-rich areas such as Tung-hsia-feng and P’an-lung-ch’eng. Clan forces would also have been required to protect the ruler and the interests of the ruling house. The Shang also took thousands of prisoners through combat, apparently retaining and
employing at least some of them for domestic service and productive labor. Even if the Shang was not fundamentally a slave-based society, clan forces would still have been required to maintain control over enslaved elements of the populace and ensure internal security.

As military needs escalated, larger units evolved that necessarily drew on an expanded population base. No doubt the Shang began to include non-clan members who served the major clans or were otherwise associated with them through marriage relationships, before eventually reaching down to the ordinary inhabitants, peasants, and perhaps even slaves, some of whom may have already been accompanying their masters into battle.
⁶⁵
However, the multiplication and formalization of new field units created an additional problem: whether the older, high-prestige heritage units would be subsumed into the regular forces, perhaps serving as an active core, or continue to operate independently as well as act as the king’s guard. As already mentioned, oracular inscriptions and subsequent historical materials indicate that imperial clan forces played a persistent field role well into the Chou, and the five
tsu
were even charged with defensive responsibilities along the frontier in the last decades of the Shang.

One other unit, the
hang
, seems to have emerged and played a somewhat nebulous battlefield role late in the Shang. (The Chinese character for
hang,
best known under its more common pronunciation as
hsing
except in a military context, fundamentally entails the idea of movement but also came to mean a row or line in later ages.) A paucity of relevant inscriptions has prompted considerable speculation about its exact nature, many commentators noting that it would be deviously used during the Spring and Autumn to designate an army-sized force without actually employing the term
shih
/
chün
, to avoid infringing upon still nominally acknowledged royal prerogatives.
⁶⁶
In subsequent ages it would become a subunit within the army, something like a company, but it seems to have operated as a separate battlefield entity in the Shang.

Inscriptions indicate that the usual tripartite deployment of left, right, and middle applied to the
hang
, and another pair designated as east and west seems to have existed. In addition, the term
ta hang
(large or great
hang
) appears, presumably referring to a battlefield entity that integrated the three component forces of left, right, and middle
hang
.
Although there are scattered references to the
hang
in Wu Ting’s period, it only became more common during the subsequent era of increasing military specialization and formalization. Definitive numbers are lacking, resulting in assessments ranging from 100 to a very unlikely 1,000 and even claims that it exceeded the
shih
, though the latter would have to be conceived as a mere 100 men.
⁶⁷

These larger field units were frequently supplemented by at least two highly specialized contingents, the archers and chariots, both generally ordered forth in units of 100 or 300.
⁶⁸
Their mode of reference implies that the chariots served intact rather than being dispersed, contrary to claims that they represent aggregate figures for apportionment among the 1,000 or 3,000 serving in the army or that each chariot was assigned some fixed number of fighters ranging from five to twenty-five. Although the Chou would see the evolution of the chariot-centered squad, chariots were at a premium in the Shang and therefore reserved for command purposes. A regiment of 100 chariots, unhampered by attached fighters, could have proved a decisive force for penetration and flanking on the dispersed battlefields of Chinese antiquity.

There are several references to “300
she
,” suggesting that in addition to archers exercising a command function atop the chariots, dedicated regiments of archers were deployed.
⁶⁹
Assuming that the tripartite segmentation witnessed in the era’s armies also applied to the archers, the 300 would encompass three companies of 100. In an effort to envision a cohesive military hierarchy, it has been further asserted that their being called up in numbers identical to the chariots—100 or 300 at a time—indicates that these are in fact the archers known to have manned the chariots.

However, not only is this an unsubstantiated assumption, but archery was normally the prerogative of the chariot commander. Furthermore, as will be discussed in a subsequent section, to function effectively the chariot crew—whether consisting of just an archer and driver or accompanied by a weapons man on the right—would have had to train together as a team before they could achieve the minimal coordination necessary to function on the battlefield. Archers could not simply be assigned at the last minute to chariots that were manned solely by a driver and would probably prove useless for military purposes.

Instead, whatever their operational size—10, 25, or 100—archery companies were almost certainly employed as discrete units on the battlefield to provide the mass volley fire needed to decimate the enemy and shape the battle space. Unfortunately, historical materials prior to the late Warring States have failed to preserve any passages on the early employment of archery contingents, with only Sun Pin advising that roving crossbow companies be used “to provide support in exigencies.”
⁷⁰

13.

E
VEN MORE QUESTIONS PLAGUE attempts to characterize the men who served in the various military units than the task of outlining the Shang’s command structure. It has always been axiomatic that only men engaged in combat, but the dramatic command role exercised by Fu Hao and Fu Ching, coupled with legends about the T’ai Kung’s daughter having led forces in the early Chou, perhaps a Chiang clan characteristic, has even prompted (totally unsubstantiated) claims that Fu Hao’s contingent was composed solely of women.
¹

In the immediate postconquest days, when hundreds of allies reputedly acknowledged their authority, Shang martial requirements no doubt consisted simply of deploying holding forces to strongpoints and maintaining order in restive areas. Even though some personnel must have been engaged in agricultural and administrative duties, members of the core and extended clans no doubt proved capable of providing the few thousand men necessary for these small field contingents and the royal protective forces that enforced the king’s will, including dragging people off to be sacrificed.
²
However, in response to an unremitting escalation in military needs, the army’s composition would gradually shift from relying on clan warriors to relying on “soldiers” drawn from the ordinary inhabitants of the growing towns, farmers in the surrounding area, and even slaves.

In accord with theoretically mandated interpretations, Marxistoriented PRC scholars generally view the Shang as having been a slave-based society in which massive numbers of slaves were employed in
domestic tasks, productive work, agriculture, and even the hunt.
³
However, whether they or the lesser nobility and common people constituted the core workforce or even provided any noticeable labor remains problematic.
⁴
Certainly the Shang was a tightly controlled, essentially theocratic society in which rank largely dictated a person’s power and influence and an individual’s freedom diminished in direct proportion to lack of hereditary position or close relationship to the increasingly autocratic kings. Consequently, the populace was composed of royal and other clan members of varying degrees of distinction, common people, a variety of subservient classes, and certainly some slaves, all of whom seem to have been liable for military service.

In this context questions about the nature and role of the
chung
, designated by a character that came to refer to the “masses” or common people and the “troops” in the increasingly vast armies of later periods, have stimulated acrimonious debate.
⁵
Even the character’s original meaning, commonly believed to have been a depiction of three people laboring under the sun, is contentious.
⁶
Based on inscriptions discussing the possibility of extinguishing a state and turning the people into
chung
, it has been suggested that they largely originated as war captives.
⁷
Moreover, it is clear from the inscriptions that the term
chung
refers to a particular status (such as persons serving in a dependent role) rather than some indeterminate military grouping, with further confirmation of their menial status being seen in their having been sacrificed and slain without compunction.
⁸

However, such treatment was hardly unique, because everyone seems to have been subject to peremptory execution or sacrifice in the Shang, even the nobility and a few feudal lords falling under the axe. Conversely, some positive measures regarding the
chung
’s welfare seem to have been enacted: some were allotted the use of land, a few gained a degree of derived authority, and the auspiciousness of mobilizing them was the subject of prognostication. Inquiries about the possibility that they had perished or suffered harm would certainly seem to attest to the king’s concern over their welfare, whether out of compassion or simple military efficacy.
⁹

Even if they ultimately constituted a significant portion of a large segment of the Shang’s inhabitants, being mobilized only in small numbers,
they could not have played more than a minor role in the hunt and military activities.
¹⁰
Instead of combatants, the
chung
seem to have acted more as support personnel,
¹¹
perhaps something like the servants who accompanied their masters into battle in other cultures and served in ancillary roles. No doubt the king’s servants would have accompanied him whenever he exercised command, and repeated mobilizations may have solidified their presence on the battlefield. In addition, their apparent formation into defined contingents seems to have been a temporary measure, implying that they were not integrated into the hierarchy of standing units that evolved in Wu Ting’s era and thereafter, though it has also been suggested that they were a sort of semipermanent military group with somewhat elevated status.
¹²
The most ever mobilized were a mere hundred, basically the same as the other known specialized units of archers and charioteers, and there are battlefield references to left and right
chung
, confirming that they comprised distinct functional units for operational purposes.

The rapid escalation of external martial activity witnessed during Wu Ting’s reign, in requiring the frequent summoning of the realm’s warriors, must have seriously stressed the manpower system. After his reign the absence of such levies implies that larger, more permanent numbers of men were maintained under arms, and it is during the late Shang that the
chung
assumed an expanded role. The term
chung jen
, almost universally interpreted as synonymous with
chung,
also became more common under the last Shang kings
.
However, in terms of function and military liability, the
chung
and
jen
were originally distinct, and the
jen
were mobilized far more frequently and in larger numbers than the
chung
. Although the exact sense and scope of
jen
similarly remain uncertain, the term apparently designated what might be considered the “free” people—to the extent that anyone in the Shang might be free—and therefore encompassed low-ranking clan members, various dependents, farmers, and others subsumed within the Shang apart from slaves.
¹³