Ancient Chinese Warfare (60 page)

Chariots were also employed to ensure a measured advance in the Spring and Autumn, Warring States, and later periods when they no longer functioned as the decisive means for penetration. Li Ching’s comments about his historically well-known expeditionary campaign against the Turks indicate that even in the T’ang and early Sung they were still considered the means to constrain large force movements: “When I conducted the punitive campaign against the T’u-ch’üeh we traveled westward several thousand
li.
Narrow chariots and deer-horn chariots are essential to the army. They allow controlling the expenditure of energy, provide a defense to the fore, and constrain the regiments and squads of five.”
¹⁶

Although certainly not applicable to the Shang, chariots could also be cobbled together to provide a temporary defense, particularly the larger versions equipped with protective roofs.
¹⁷
The authors of the great Sung dynasty military compendium, the
Wu-ching Tsung-yao
, after (somewhat surprisingly) commenting that “the essentials of employing chariots are all found in the ancient military methods,” concluded that “the methods for chariot warfare can trample fervency, create strong formations, and thwart mobile attacks. When in motion vehicles can transport provisions and armaments, when halted can be circled to create encampment defenses.”
¹⁸

Numerous examples of employing chariots as obstacles or for exigent defense are seen as early as the Spring and Autumn period.
¹⁹
The later military writings cite several Han dynasty exploitations of “circled wagons” being employed as temporary bastions, including three incidents in which beleaguered commanders expeditiously deployed their chariots much as Jan Ziska would in the West to successfully withstand significantly superior forces.
²⁰
Sometimes the wheels were removed, but generally the chariots were simply maneuvered into a condensed array.

Based on burial patterns and traditional texts, it has been strongly, but perhaps erroneously, argued that three warriors manned the Chinese chariot from inception: an archer who normally stood on the left, the
driver who controlled the horses from the middle of the compartment, and a warrior on the right who wielded some sort of shock weapon. Nevertheless, graves with only one or two warriors interred with a chariot are common in the Shang, the
Tso Chuan
occasionally refers to a fourth rider as if his presence was unusual but not exceptional, and a few Eastern Chou incidents note only two occupants.
²¹

Sun Pin’s comment that “those who excel at archery should act as the left, those who excel at driving should act as drivers, and those who lack both skills should act as the right” indicates that driving a chariot was also considered a specialized skill.
²²
Archery and charioteering would continue to comprise two of the six essential components of the
chün-tzu
or gentleman’s education known as the
liu yi
through the end of the Spring and Autumn period and into the early Warring States, even though Confucius personally disdained charioteering and has been generally perceived as disparaging warfare.

Contrary to possible impression that chariot service imposed lesser physical demands on the occupants than on the average foot soldier, outstanding conditioning and ability seem to have been required: “The rule for selecting chariot warriors is to pick men under forty years of age, seven feet five inches or taller, with the ability to pursue a galloping horse, catch it, mount it, and ride it forward and back, left and right, up and down, all around. They should be able to quickly furl up the flags and pennants, and have the strength to fully draw an eight picul crossbow. They should practice shooting front and back, left and right, until thoroughly skilled.”
²³
Incidents in the
Tso Chuan
confirm that great strength and courage were necessary for the chariot’s occupants to survive the rigors of battle and that constant training was needed to ride in a chariot and simultaneously shoot an arrow.
²⁴

Apart from acting as an integral component capable of mounting penetrating attacks and engaging other chariots, the mobility provided by chariots had the potential to radically affect the course of battle. However, their actual mode of employment in the Shang remains uncertain despite deeply held traditional explanations. Nevertheless, only three possibilities exist: serving as a command platform for the officers at various levels; providing an elevated platform for observation and archery; and simply transporting the occupants to points on the battlefield, where they fought dismounted as in Western antiquity.

Even though oracular inscriptions have been interpreted as indicating that war chariots were sometimes called up in contingents of a hundred, because of their minimal numbers and novelty most Shang chariots must have been reserved for members of the ruling clan, high-ranking officials, and important officers dispersed across the battlefield. Initially they would have served as transport throughout the several days typically required to reach the battleground and then as mobile command platforms during the engagement.

When the effects of the axle, mounting bar, and box structure are included, the fighters standing in the chariot were elevated at least two and a half feet above the ground. This facilitated observing the battlefield and allowed ancient China’s highly skilled archers to shoot over the heads of any accompanying infantry at the enemy. However, their increased visibility also exposed the officers to attack and identified them as prime targets for enemy archers and spearmen.

Whether even the most skilled archers could maintain their vaunted performance levels despite the bouncing, jostling, and instability experienced while standing in a racing chariot seems problematic. Nevertheless, a few Spring and Autumn episodes recount instances of surpassing skill not just in shooting at ground forces, but also in targeting other warriors in rapidly moving vehicles. For example, even though he was fleeing during the Battle of An in 589 BCE, Duke Ch’ing of Ch’i refused to allow his archer to shoot Han Ch’üeh, who was pursuing him in another chariot, because he was a
chün-tzu
(gentleman). The archer therefore shot and killed the two occupants standing on either side of Han Ch’üeh.
²⁵

Even if these incidents are not highly embellished or outright fabrications, they were probably recorded simply because of their exceptional or infrequent nature, thereby implying warriors on rapidly moving chariots rarely achieved such mastery. Questions remain, and the evidence is simply insufficient for a definitive conclusion, but insofar as the infantry dominated Shang and early Chou battlefields, chariot-mounted bowmen need not have been particularly accurate to strike down enemy soldiers with a flurry of arrows aimed in their general direction.

Considerable textual and archaeological evidence indicates that the chariot’s occupants had specialized functions, but the placing of complete weapons sets—a bow and dagger-axe—with both the archer and the warrior on the right side in one tomb at Hsiao-t’un suggests that
both occupants may have functioned as archers in the Shang, when the shortness of their piercing weapons would have precluded direct chariot-to-chariot combat. On the other hand, the shields occasionally found in chariot graves, even though probably employed by the warrior on the right in conjunction with his dagger-axe, may have been used to protect the archer during battle, a mode known in the West as well.

After employing missile fire at a distance, closing with the enemy, and becoming caught in the melee, the chariot’s occupants would have had to dismount to engage in close combat because their shock weapons only averaged three feet in length, far too short to strike anyone while standing two and a half feet above the ground in a chariot compartment inset from the wheels and isolated by the bulk of the horses. Whether commanders continued to remain aloof or, far more likely, every Shang clansman was a fighter remains unknown. However, one warrior’s famous refusal to fight dismounted in the Spring and Autumn suggests that the prestige of being a chariot warrior carried considerable emotional weight and that later eras did not view chariots simply as battle taxis, whatever their function in Shang warfare.

Despite extensive speculation, how the chariot and any accompanying forces may have been coordinated remains murky and confused. Operationally the crucial question is whether the foot soldiers, if any, were nominally attached or were integrated in some sort of close spatial configuration that would enable the commander to direct them in the execution of basic tactics. Vestiges in the oracular records, bronze inscriptions, and traditional historical works note soldier-to-chariot ratios ranging from 10:1 to 300:1, with those preserved from the early Chou commonly being 10:1, a reasonable contingent to have been commanded by a chariot officer.
²⁶
However, significant variation is seen with the passage of time, and standing ratios for states in the late Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods lack consistency. Operational and historical discussions in the military writings describe attached contingents as numbering anywhere from 10 or 25 through 72 (plus 3 officers), even as many as 150, further complicating any assessment of
prebattle formations and tactical deployments, both of which varied over time and were subject to local organizational differences, as in Ch’u.
²⁷

Battle accounts and memorial inscriptions perhaps offer a more realistic picture. When chariots were few in comparison with total troop strength, as in the Shang, the overall battlefield ratio was doubtless much higher. According to Shang oracle inscriptions, 100 chariots were occasionally assigned to a fighting force of 3,000, with the chariots apparently acting as an operational group rather than being dispersed and accompanied by a designated number of infantry. Traditional accounts also indicate that the Chou vanguard that penetrated the Shang lines at the battle of Mu-yeh consisted of 3,000 tiger warriors accompanied by 300 chariots. Although this is a highly realistic 10:1 ratio, given the assault’s ferocity the 10 may have simply been running behind their assigned vehicles.

Based on 100 chariots being accompanied by 1,000 men, the famous
Yü Ting
, dating to the reign of King K’ang of the Chou (1005-978 BCE), similarly indicates a ratio of 10:1. The 100 chariots that had to be dispatched as reinforcements in the conflict with the marquis of E were also basically accompanied by 1,000 men, even though supplemented by another 200 in support. Despite being a Warring States work, the
Kuan-tzu
indicates that feudal lords were enfeoffed with 100 chariots and 1,000 men and that major lords were expected to supply 200 chariots and 2,000 men for military efforts, minor ones (
hsiao hou
) only 100 chariots and 1,000 men.
²⁸
However, several other ratios are also recorded, including 300 chariots accompanied by 5,000 men and 800 chariots with 30,000 men;
²⁹
a taxation system specifies seven armored soldiers and five guards for each of the chariot’s four horses, yielding an odd number of 48 men per chariot;
³⁰
and the state of Ch’i supposedly had 100,000 armored soldiers but only 5,000 chariots, still an astonishing number, for a 20:1 ratio.
³¹

With the inception of specialized vehicles for dedicated purposes, the ratios were apparently revised and troops attached only to certain vehicles such as the attack chariots.
³²
Although the configurations described in texts such as the
Liu-t’ao
may never have been deployed, they incontrovertibly conjoin ground troops with chariots, further supporting the link’s historicity.
³³
However, even if one or another of these ratios
characterized Shang armies, the problem of how the accompanying infantry actually functioned in any era remains unresolved, because the early military writings fail to provide any useful information.

The only evidence to date for the existence of prescribed numbers of men being attached to Shang chariots is an intriguing aggregation of graves at Yin-hsü that has rather controversially been interpreted as an array intended to deliberately depict the composition of a chariot company and therefore prompted claims that the late Shang fully integrated ground troops with chariots in an organized manner.
³⁴
The excavators have categorized the graves into eleven types based on the occupants and accompanying artifacts, ten of which are seen as having direct martial implications. Mainly slain by decapitation, all the occupants appear to have been sacrificed on site rather than brought for interment after dying in battle or other violent circumstances.

Five chariot graves laid out in a roughly T-shaped pattern comprise the core of the contingent. Two are offset at the ends of the T; the other three are arrayed in an essentially vertical line that commences somewhat below, giving the group a south-facing orientation. On the assumption that each grave contains one chariot and a crew of three warriors armed in the traditional manner, the site apparently preserves the first concrete evidence that the five-chariot company, long pronounced as a virtual matter of faith, actually existed.
³⁵

A horizontal line of five graves, each of which contains five warriors with red-pigmented bones, runs across in front of the chariot group, apparently the contingent’s vanguard. Although analysts immediately concluded that they represent the so-called provocateurs employed in later warfare to enrage the enemy and raise the fighting spirit of one’s own troops, the sole reference found in the oracle bones to dispatching a small forward contingent shows a unit of thirty horses being employed as an advance element. Therefore, if the practice of deliberate provocation in early Chinese warfare ever existed other than in the imagination of historical writers, its inception should be traced to the Spring and Autumn, not projected back into the Shang, with small units subsequently being employed in Warring States warfare to deliberately probe the enemy.