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Studies in Medieval Chinese Siegecraft: The Siege of Yü-pi, A.D. 5461

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Benjamin E. Wallacker
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North China in a.d. 546 was the scene of a contest between two men, de facto rulers of the fractions of Northern Wei which had held the entire area for over one hundred fifty years but had been split in the middle of the previous decade. One of the two men, Kao Huan,b headed the state called Eastern Wei, in Shansi and Honan, which became the dynasty of Northern Chʻi under his descendants. The other, Yü-wen Tʻai,e ruled Western Wei, in Shensi, later to become Northern Chou. The ensuing half-century witnessed the final victory of Northern Chou over Northern Chʻi, the usurpation of Northern Chou by the founder of the Sui dynasty, and Sui's destruction of the last of the Southern Dynasties to unify all of China and usher in the era of Tʻang.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , August 1969 , pp. 789 - 802
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1969

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References

2 CS 18, PS 62.

3 Tou Tʻai's biography is in PCS 15 and PS 54.

4 Tu-shih fang-yü chi-yao bf (Taiwan, 1968, reprint of edition of 1879), 41.40b.

5 Dated in TCTC, page 4940, under the day kuei-ssu of the eighth month. In its very brief account the Wei Annals (WS 12.14b, omitted in PS 5.26b) says Kao Huan attacked Yü-pi in order to provoke Yü-wen T'ai, but the latter “dared not respond.”

6 Chin shu 81.7b; and Hou Ching's biography in Nan shih 80.7a, omitted in Liang shu 50.13a.

7 Wei shu 84.33a and PS 81.22a.

8 Shih chi 128.14b; 128.29 of the Taiwan reprint of Shiki kaichū kōchō.

9 Peiping, 1956 edition, p. 4941. I have not discovered the locus classicus of the passage.

10 Hou-Han shu 112B.4b–5a. See also Li Hsien'sbg comment on the ku-hsü system in the preface to 112A.2a-b.

11 The Chʻi Annals refer to ku-hsü shu, but TCTC says ku-hsü fabh and the Peiping, 1956, edition underlines the three words as though they were the title of a book. Perhaps Ssu-ma Kuang identified the ku-hsü shu of the Chʻi Annals with a book of ten scrolls listed in the Sui bibliography, Sui shu 34.13b. No author is given. See also Sui shu ching-chi-chih kʻao-cheng 5554a-b in Erh-shih-wu shih pu-pien. I have found no book entitled ku-hsü shu, but Kao Huan might employ the “method” without a book at hand especially since he probably visited Li Yeh-hsing before departing Chin-yang.

12 Sun-tzu, Ssu-pu tsʻung-kʻan (SPTK) edition, 3.38.

13 Chung-kuo ping-hsüeh ta-his b1 edition, p. 89, original paging 4.2a.

14 TT 160.846a. On Tu Yu's extensive use of Li Ch'üan's material in his sections on city warfare in particular, see Ssu-kʻu chʻüan-shu tsung-mu tʻi-yao, (Commercial Press edition of 1934), p. 2040.

15 Sun Tzu—The Art of War. Samuel B. Griffith. (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 78.

16 I have taken as “can” the CS-PS word huz bj for which TCTC has tang.bk This is a rather early use of hui in this sense, to judge from the examples given in Dai kanwa jiten, page 5640a.

17 Mo-tzu 62, 14.327, Chu-tzu chi-chʻeng b1 edition, (Shanghai, 1957)Google Scholar. Alfred Forke's translation of the Mo-tzu description appears in his “Me Ti,” Mitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen, Supplement 23–25, p. 612. See also his “Der Festungskrieg im alten China,” Ostasiatische Zeitschrift 8 (1919), pp. 103–16Google Scholar. Tʻai-po yin ching 4.94–95 and TT 152.800c contain the Tʻang description of the device.

18 A Western parallel to the geophone is described in Polybius XXI.28, (Loeb Classical Library edition), p. 299, in which the wall of a counter-mine trench was lined with thin plates of brass as diaphragms. The same text, pp. 299–300, describes an ingenious device for blowing noxious fume into a tunnel to drive back its occupants.

19 The Po-na edition of the Pei-Chʻi shu version of the Chʻi Annals has, for “twenty-one,” the words, erh tzu bm which I believe to be a graphic error. The Kʻai-ming edition, p. 2204d, has “twenty-one.”

20 In whose biography in PCS 39.4a and PS 47.24b no mention of his mission at Yū-pi appears. TCTC uses the envoy's ming, Tʻing.bn

21 The Chʻi Annals outlines the siege as follows: Use of facial armor by the defenders; use of Li Yeh-hsing's methods; concentration at the north; construction of an earth mound; digging of ten tunnels; digging of twenty-one tunnels; diversion of the Fen River; seizure by Wei Hsiao-kʻuan of an Eastern Wei earth mound. The Chou Annals account gives no tactical details whatsoever. TCTC combines the essentials of both CS-PS and Chʻi annals in a sequence which confirms the idea that Eastern Wei first concentrated at the south and only later at the north of the city. One may speculate that the earth mound seized by Western Wei was the one at the south, and that the seizure occurred late in the siege when Eastern Wei had transferred its strength to the north. It is possible, of course, that both earth mounds were taken by Wei Hsiao-kʻuan towards the end of the siege.

22 Biography in PCS 17 and PS 54.

23 Yüeh-fu shih-chi; SPTK edition, 86.7a-b. Hung Maibo questions, among other things, the attribution of Hsien-pi language to a Tölös in his Jung-chai sui-pi, SPTK edition, 1.4b–5a.

24 Translations from the Chinese, (New York: Knopf, 1919, 1941), pp. 110–11. Waley's introductory paragraph to the translation is marred by his misreading of the second character of the phrase chou Yü-pi bp as wang “King.” He thus has, “Kao Huan attacked Pi, king of Chou.”