Art of War (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (14 page)

 

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.

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.