To what Federal soldier did it occur, on the morning of Chancellorsville, that [General Robert E.] Lee, confronted by 90,000 Northerners, would detach the half of his own small force of 50,000 to attack his enemy in flank and rear? . . . [The Battle of Chancellorsville] took place in May 1863. Lee’s maneuvers, in conjunction with General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s devastating surprise attack, are still studied in military academies.
George Francis Robert Henderson and Sir Thomas Barclay, “War,” Encyclopedia Britannica, eleventh edition (1910)
25. These military devices, leading to victory, must not be divulged beforehand.
This . . . is perhaps the best sense to be got out of the text as it stands. Most of the commentators give the following explanation: “It is impossible to lay down rules for warfare before you come into touch with the enemy.”
26. Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought.
Chang Yü tells us that in ancient times it was customary for a temple to be set apart for the use of a general who was about to take the field, in order that he might there elaborate his plan of campaign.
The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.
II. WAGING WAR
Coin is the sinews of war.
François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)
An army marches on its stomach.
Napoleon I, quoted in Mémorial de Ste-Hélène, by Emmanuel, comte de Las Cases (1823)
The main themes of this chapter—the costs of war, the speed with which it is waged, the need to secure good lines of supply, and the requirement of fast movement (fluidity)—are essential to battle, be it guerrilla or traditional warfare. Particularly in the case of fluidity and its concomitant, negative space, these concepts were at one time considered quintessentially “Asian” by military historians.
European culture, contrariwise, they would claim, put its stock in masses, blocks, and bulk. Broadly conceived, think of skyscrapers and epic poetry versus pagodas and haiku, boxing versus tai chi, the huge destroyers of World War II versus kamikazes. Apples and oranges, of course, but that’s the point. The images pose for us a singular difference in cultural emphasis and era. Influential anthropologist Franz Boas insisted that “great” cultures could be divined by the size of their cities and monuments, their accumulation of goods. In the media-dense, peripatetic world of today, where multinational peacekeeping forces exchange notes across borders, those differences are melting away, but in American wars as recent as Korea and Vietnam, the differences literally gave rise to success or loss in battle after battle.
The first translation of The Art of War into a Western language was by a French Jesuit, Jean-Joseph M. Amiot, in the late 1700s, and it caused a great stir. We can be reasonably sure that Napoleon I was aware of the military and scientific ideas of the Chinese. He would have seen the work as confirming his own strategic credo of fluidity: not being where the enemy expects you, appearing always where he least expects, and extraordinary speed in battle. Napoleon insisted in his Maxims: “One must be slow in deliberation and quick in execution.” DG
Ts’ao Kung has the note, “He who wishes to fight must first count the cost,” which prepares us for the discovery that the subject of the chapter is not what we might expect from the title, but is primarily a consideration of ways and means.
1. Sun Tzu said: In the operations of war, where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers,
The swift chariots were lightly built and, according to Chang Yü, used for the attack; the heavy chariots were . . . designed for purposes of defence. . . . It is interesting to note the analogies between early Chinese warfare and that of the Homeric Greeks. In each case, the war-chariot was the important factor, forming as it did the nucleus round which was grouped a certain number of foot-soldiers. . . . We are informed that each swift chariot was accompanied by 75 footmen or infantry, and each heavy chariot by 25 footmen, so that the whole army would be divided up into a thousand battalions, each consisting of two chariots and a hundred men.
with provisions enough to carry them a thousand li,
2.78 modern li go to a mile. The length may have varied slightly since Sun Tzu’s time.
the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armour, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.
2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, the men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardour will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.
The greatest good deed in war is the speedy ending of the war, and every means to that end, so long as it is not reprehensible, must remain open.
Count Helmuth von Moltke, “On the Nature of War” (1880)
3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.
Commerce diminishes the spirit, both of patriotism and military defense. And history sufficiently informs us, that the bravest achievements were always accomplished in the non-age of a nation. . . . The more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture. The rich are in general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembling duplicity of a spaniel.
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardour damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.
5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.
This concise and difficult sentence is not well explained by any of the commentators. [Six commentators suggest] that a general, though naturally stupid, may nevertheless conquer through sheer force of rapidity. Ho Shih says: “Haste may be stupid, but at any rate it saves expenditure of energy and treasure; protracted operations may be very clever, but they bring calamity in their train.” Wang Hsi evades the difficulty by remarking: “Lengthy operations mean an army growing old, wealth being expended, an empty exchequer and distress among the people; true cleverness insures against the occurrence of such calamities.” Chang Yü says: “So long as victory can be attained, stupid haste is preferable to clever dilatoriness.”
Now Sun Tzu says nothing whatever, except possibly by implication, about ill-considered haste being better than ingenious but lengthy operations. What he does say is something much more guarded, namely that, while speed may sometimes be injudicious, tardiness can never be anything but foolish—if only because it means impoverishment to the nation. . . .
In considering the point raised here by Sun Tzu, the classic example of Fabius Cunctator will inevitably occur to the mind. That general deliberately measured the endurance of Rome against that of Hannibal’s isolated army, because it seemed to him that the latter was more likely to suffer from a long campaign in a strange country. But it is quite a moot question whether his tactics would have proved successful in the long run. Their reversal, it is true, led to Cannae [a huge defeat for the Romans under his successor]; but this only establishes a negative presumption in their favour.
Fabius Maximus Cunctator, Quintus, Roman statesman and military commander, was known as “the Delayer.” His use of long delays in the Second Punic War wore down the resistance of Hannibal’s Car-thaginian army and decimated their supply lines, giving Rome a savage victory. DG
6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
We hear war called murder. It is not: it is suicide.
&n
bsp; British Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald (1930)
7. It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.
That is, with rapidity. Only one who knows the disastrous effects of a long war can realise the supreme importance of rapidity in bringing it to a close.
8. The skilful soldier does not raise a second levy, neither are his supply-wagons loaded more than twice.
Once war is declared, he will not waste precious time in waiting for reinforcements, nor will he turn his army back for fresh supplies, but crosses the enemy’s frontier without delay. This may seem an audacious policy to recommend, but with all great strategists, from Julius Caesar to Napoleon Buonaparte, the value of time—that is, being a little ahead of your opponent—has counted for more than either numerical superiority or the nicest calculations with regard to commissariat [food supplies].
I don’t want to get any messages saying, “I am holding my position.” We are not holding a goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly, and we are not interested in holding onto anything except the enemies’ balls. . . . Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose.
Gen. George S. Patton, speech to the Third Army on the eve of the Allied invasion of France (1944)
9. Bring war material with you from home, but forage on the enemy. Thus the army will have food enough for its needs.
10. Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance. Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.
11. On the other hand, the proximity of an army causes prices to go up, and high prices cause the people’s substance to be drained away.
12. When their substance is drained away, the peasantry will be afflicted by heavy exactions.
13, 14. With this loss of substance and exhaustion of strength, the homes of the people will be stripped bare, and three-tenths of their incomes will be dissipated; while Government expenses for broken chariots, worn-out horses, breast-plates and helmets, bows and arrows, spears and shields, protective mantlets, draught-oxen and heavy waggons, will amount to four-tenths of its total revenue.
15. Hence a wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy. One carload of the enemy’s provisions is equivalent to twenty of one’s own, and likewise a single picul of his provender is equivalent to twenty from one’s own store.
Because twenty carloads will be consumed in the process of transporting one cartload to the front.
16. Now in order to kill the enemy, our men must be roused to anger; that there may be advantage from defeating the enemy, they must have their rewards.
Tu Mu says: “Rewards are necessary in order to make the soldiers see the advantage of beating the enemy; thus, when you capture spoils from the enemy, they must be used as rewards, so that all your men may have a keen desire to fight, each on his own account.”
17. Therefore in chariot fighting, when ten or more chariots have been taken, those should be rewarded who took the first. Our own flags should be substituted for those of the enemy, and the chariots mingled and used in conjunction with ours. The captured soldiers should be kindly treated and kept.
18. This is called, using the conquered foe to augment one’s own strength.
19. In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.
Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war, there is no substitute for victory.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur, speech at West Point (1962)
20. Thus it may be known that the leader of armies is the arbiter of the people’s fate, the man on whom it depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in peril.
In Chinese historiography it is still the will of the individual which directs the course of history.
Burton Watson, Early Chinese Literature (1962)
I came, I saw, I conquered.
Julius Caesar, quoted in Plutarch’s Lives (A.D. 75)
III. ATTACK BY STRATAGEM
The general himself ought to be such a one as can at the same time see both forward and backward.
Plutarch, Moralia (A.D. 75)
1. Sun Tzu said: In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to capture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.
The Denma Translation is worth comparing here (see “For Further Reading”). Closer to the astringent sound and pared rhythms of the Classical Chinese text, it reads: “In sum, the method of employing the military—Taking a state whole is superior. Destroying it is inferior to this. Taking an army whole is superior. Destroying it is inferior to this. Taking a battalion whole is superior. Destroying it is inferior to this. Taking a company whole is superior. Destroying it is inferior to this. Taking a squad whole is superior. Destroying it is inferior to this.” DG
2. Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.
Here again, no modern strategist but will approve the words of [Sun Tzu]. Moltke’s greatest triumph, the capitulation of the huge French army at Sedan, was won practically without bloodshed.
3. Thus the highest form of generalship is to baulk the enemy’s plans;
I.e., as Li Ch’üan says, in their very inception. Perhaps the word “baulk” falls short of expressing the full force of [the Chinese term], which implies not an attitude of defence, whereby one might be content to foil the enemy’s stratagems one after another, but an active policy of counter-attack. Ho Shih put this very clearly in his note: “When the enemy has made a plan of attack against us, we must anticipate him by delivering our own attack first.”
the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy’s forces;
Isolating him from his allies. We must not forget that Sun Tzu, in speaking of hostilities, always has in mind the numerous states or principalities into which the China of his day was split up.
the next in order is to attack the enemy’s army in the field;
When he is already in full strength.
and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.
4. The rule is, not to besiege walled cities if it can possibly be avoided.
Another sound piece of military theory. Had the Boers acted upon it in 1899, and refrained from dissipating their strength before Kimberley, Mafeking, or even Ladysmith, it is more than probable that they would have been masters of the situation before the British were ready seriously to oppose them.
Kimberley, Mafeking, and Ladysmith were all important early defeats for the British against the Boer insurgency. The British regulars badly underestimated their colonial foes in what was essentially a war for independence: the South African War. The details of the siege, the battles, and the final British response are worth examining in greater detail both to capture Giles’s full meaning here and also because they read like a petri dish exemplar of Sun Tzu’s admonitions on tactics. Turn to the early writings of Winston Churchill for a pithy examination of the war from the perspective of a participant whose life was deeply affected by it.
The gist of Giles’s comment, however, is that the Boers (Dutch South Africans) initially had the jump on the British. They dissipated their military energies, however, in “small,” brutal engagements, such as the siege at Ladysmith, which they besieged from October 1899 through February 1900, causing the deaths of several thousand citizens. This gave the British time to dispatch formidable regiments from England. Because of its strategic geography, South Africa was important to the British Empire both for its considerable natural resources and also as a protection for their col
onial properties, especially India. Ladysmith, for example, is in the Natal region, which had long served as a gateway to the Indian Ocean. DG
The preparation of mantlets, movable shelters, and various implements of war, will take up three whole months;
It is not quite clear what mantlets were. Ts’ao Kung simply defines them as “large shields,” but we get a better idea of them from Li Ch’üan, who says they were to protect the heads of those who were assaulting the city walls at close quarters. This seems to suggest a sort of Roman testudo, ready made. Tu Mu says they were . . . (wheeled vehicles used in repelling attacks, according to K’ang Hsi). . . . The name is also applied to turrets on city walls.
Of movable shelters, we get a fairly clear description from several commentators. They were wooden missile-proof structures on four wheels, propelled from within, covered over with raw hides, and used in sieges to convey parties of men to and from the walls, for the purpose of filling up the encircling moat with earth. Tu Mu adds that they are now called “wooden donkeys.”