The Art of War, Sun Tzu [best english books to read for beginners TXT] 📗

Kung says, 皆持必死之計 “all have embraced the firm resolution to do or die.” We may remember that the heroes of the Iliad were equally childlike in showing their emotion. Chang Yü alludes to the mournful parting at the 易 I River between 荆軻 Ching Kʽo and his friends, when the former was sent to attempt the life of the King of Chʽin (afterwards First Emperor) in 227 BC. The tears of all flowed down like rain as he bade them farewell and uttered the following lines: 風蕭蕭兮, 易水寒, 壯士一去兮, 不復還 “The shrill blast is blowing, Chilly the burn; Your champion is going⁠—Not to return.”786 ↩

諸 was the personal name of 專諸 Chuan Chu, a native of the Wu State and contemporary with Sun Tzǔ himself, who was employed by 公子光 Kung-tzǔ Kuang, better known as Ho Lü Wang, to assassinate his sovereign 王僚 Wang Liao with a dagger which he secreted in the belly of a fish served up at a banquet. He succeeded in his attempt, but was immediately hacked to pieces by the king’s bodyguard. This was in 515 BC. The other hero referred to, 曹劌 Tsʽao Kuei (or Tsʽao 沫 Mo), performed the exploit which has made his name famous 166 years earlier, in 681 BC. Lu had been thrice defeated by Chʽi, and was just about to conclude a treaty surrendering a large slice of territory, when Tsʽao Kuei suddenly seized 桓公 Huan Kung, the Duke of Chʽi, as he stood on the altar steps and held a dagger against his chest. None of the Duke’s retainers dared to move a muscle, and Tsʽao Kuei proceeded to demand full restitution, declaring that Lu was being unjustly treated because she was a smaller and weaker state. Huan Kung, in peril of his life, was obliged to consent, whereupon Tsʽao Kuei flung away his dagger and quietly resumed his place amid the terrified assemblage without having so much as changed colour. As was to be expected, the Duke wanted afterwards to repudiate the bargain, but his wise old counsellor 管仲 Kuan Chung pointed out to him the impolicy of breaking his word, and the upshot was that this bold stroke regained for Lu the whole of what she had lost in three pitched battles. (For another anecdote of Tsʽao Kuei see VII, note 385; and for the biographies of these three bravos, Tsʽao, Chuan and Ching, see Shih Chi, ch. 86.) ↩

率然 means “suddenly” or “rapidly,” and the snake in question was doubtless so called owing to the rapidity of its movements. Through this passage, the term has now come to be used in the sense of “military manoeuvres.” The 常山 have apparently not been identified. ↩

Another reading in the Yü Lan for 中 is 腹 “belly.” ↩

That is, as Mei Yao-chʽên says, 可使兵首尾率然相應如一體乎 “Is it possible to make the front and rear of an army each swiftly responsive to attack on the other, just as though they were parts of a single living body?” ↩

Cf. chapter VI, “Though according to my estimate⁠ ⁠…” ↩

The meaning is: If two enemies will help each other in a time of common peril, how much more should two parts of the same army, bound together as they are by every tie of interest and fellow-feeling. Yet it is notorious that many a campaign has been ruined through lack of cooperation, especially in the case of allied armies. ↩

方 is said here to be equivalent to 縛. ↩

These quaint devices to prevent one’s army from running away recall the Athenian hero Sôphanes, who carried an anchor with him at the battle of Plataea, by means of which he fastened himself firmly to one spot. (See Herodotus, IX 74.) It is not enough, says Sun Tzǔ, to render flight impossible by such mechanical means. You will not succeed unless your man have tenacity and unity of purpose, and, above all, a spirit of sympathetic cooperation. This is the lesson which can be learned from the shuai-jan. ↩

Literally, “level the courage [of all] as though [it were that of] one.” If the ideal army is to form a single organic whole, then it follows that the resolution and spirit of its component parts must be of the same quality, or at any rate must not fall below a certain standard. Wellington’s seemingly ungrateful description of his army at Waterloo as “the worst he had ever commanded” meant no more than that it was deficient in this important particular⁠—unity of spirit and courage. Had he not foreseen the Belgian defections and carefully kept those troops in the background, he would almost certainly have lost the day. ↩

This is rather a hard sentence on the first reading, but the key to it will be found, firstly, in the pause after 得, and next, in the meaning of 得 itself. The best equivalent for this that I can think of is the German zur Geltung kommen. Mei Yao-chʽên’s paraphrase is: 兵無强弱皆得用者是困地之勢也 “The way to eliminate the differences of