13.

TROOPS, INTELLIGENCE, AND TACTICS

EVEN MORE QUESTIONS PLAGUE attempts to characterize the men who served in the various military units than the task of outlining the Shang’s command structure. It has always been axiomatic that only men engaged in combat, but the dramatic command role exercised by Fu Hao and Fu Ching, coupled with legends about the T’ai Kung’s daughter having led forces in the early Chou, perhaps a Chiang clan characteristic, has even prompted (totally unsubstantiated) claims that Fu Hao’s contingent was composed solely of women.1

In the immediate postconquest days, when hundreds of allies reputedly acknowledged their authority, Shang martial requirements no doubt consisted simply of deploying holding forces to strongpoints and maintaining order in restive areas. Even though some personnel must have been engaged in agricultural and administrative duties, members of the core and extended clans no doubt proved capable of providing the few thousand men necessary for these small field contingents and the royal protective forces that enforced the king’s will, including dragging people off to be sacrificed.2However, in response to an unremitting escalation in military needs, the army’s composition would gradually shift from relying on clan warriors to relying on “soldiers” drawn from the ordinary inhabitants of the growing towns, farmers in the surrounding area, and even slaves.

In accord with theoretically mandated interpretations, Marxistoriented PRC scholars generally view the Shang as having been a slave-based society in which massive numbers of slaves were employed in domestic tasks, productive work, agriculture, and even the hunt.3 However, whether they or the lesser nobility and common people constituted the core workforce or even provided any noticeable labor remains problematic. 4 Certainly the Shang was a tightly controlled, essentially theocratic society in which rank largely dictated a person’s power and influence and an individual’s freedom diminished in direct proportion to lack of hereditary position or close relationship to the increasingly autocratic kings. Consequently, the populace was composed of royal and other clan members of varying degrees of distinction, common people, a variety of subservient classes, and certainly some slaves, all of whom seem to have been liable for military service.

In this context questions about the nature and role of the chung, designated by a character that came to refer to the “masses” or common people and the “troops” in the increasingly vast armies of later periods, have stimulated acrimonious debate.5 Even the character’s original meaning, commonly believed to have been a depiction of three people laboring under the sun, is contentious.6 Based on inscriptions discussing the possibility of extinguishing a state and turning the people into chung, it has been suggested that they largely originated as war captives.7 Moreover, it is clear from the inscriptions that the term chung refers to a particular status (such as persons serving in a dependent role) rather than some indeterminate military grouping, with further confirmation of their menial status being seen in their having been sacrificed and slain without compunction.8

However, such treatment was hardly unique, because everyone seems to have been subject to peremptory execution or sacrifice in the Shang, even the nobility and a few feudal lords falling under the axe. Conversely, some positive measures regarding the chung’s welfare seem to have been enacted: some were allotted the use of land, a few gained a degree of derived authority, and the auspiciousness of mobilizing them was the subject of prognostication. Inquiries about the possibility that they had perished or suffered harm would certainly seem to attest to the king’s concern over their welfare, whether out of compassion or simple military efficacy.9

Even if they ultimately constituted a significant portion of a large segment of the Shang’s inhabitants, being mobilized only in small numbers, they could not have played more than a minor role in the hunt and military activities.10 Instead of combatants, the chung seem to have acted more as support personnel,11 perhaps something like the servants who accompanied their masters into battle in other cultures and served in ancillary roles. No doubt the king’s servants would have accompanied him whenever he exercised command, and repeated mobilizations may have solidified their presence on the battlefield. In addition, their apparent formation into defined contingents seems to have been a temporary measure, implying that they were not integrated into the hierarchy of standing units that evolved in Wu Ting’s era and thereafter, though it has also been suggested that they were a sort of semipermanent military group with somewhat elevated status.12 The most ever mobilized were a mere hundred, basically the same as the other known specialized units of archers and charioteers, and there are battlefield references to left and right chung, confirming that they comprised distinct functional units for operational purposes.

The rapid escalation of external martial activity witnessed during Wu Ting’s reign, in requiring the frequent summoning of the realm’s warriors, must have seriously stressed the manpower system. After his reign the absence of such levies implies that larger, more permanent numbers of men were maintained under arms, and it is during the late Shang that the chung assumed an expanded role. The term chung jen, almost universally interpreted as synonymous with chung, also became more common under the last Shang kings. However, in terms of function and military liability, the chung and jen were originally distinct, and the jen were mobilized far more frequently and in larger numbers than the chung. Although the exact sense and scope of jen similarly remain uncertain, the term apparently designated what might be considered the “free” people—to the extent that anyone in the Shang might be free—and therefore encompassed low-ranking clan members, various dependents, farmers, and others subsumed within the Shang apart from slaves.13

Through an uncertain process the distinction between the chung and jen began to erode after Wu Ting’s reign, the chung expanding in scope and numbers and acquiring a major role in court-based military activities.14 By the end of the dynasty they are thought to have been furnishing the soldiers (rather than warriors) needed for external campaigns, the terms generally employed being chung and chung jen rather than jen alone.15 Though not unreasonable, this sort of explanation is not fully encompassing unless they comprised the manpower for the other types of units such as the shu and that had become prominent. Nevertheless, even if the elite warrior nobility thereby lost many of their military privileges under the Shang’s highly despotic rulers (and their redirection to administrative duties), clan units—especially the wu tsu or five clans—continued to be fielded throughout the Shang and would even form the core of Ch’u’s forces at the Battle of Ch’eng-p’u in the Spring and Autumn period.

SHANG MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

The development of an extensive intelligence system capable of efficiently transmitting crucial economic and military information from every quarter was another vital achievement that marked the emergence of the centralized Shang state. Written administrative reports discussed unusual weather conditions, eclipses, prospects for the harvest, and tribute items being forwarded to the capital, including horses and prognosticatory media.16 Military dispatches tended to emphasize disruptions and other urgent issues, especially the activity of raiders plundering the border or more serious incursions being mounted by contiguous peoples, and thus frequently prompted regal action. Even in their absence, the possibility that inimical events might be occurring clearly troubled the king, because he frequently queried the ancestors whether he would not soon receive dire news from the periphery.17

Reports of enemy action were rapidly transmitted over an incipient network of roads and rivers by utilizing widely scattered state guesthouses and hostelries where horses, provisions, and lodging were maintained. In addition to boats, chariots, and runners, it is claimed that some sort of “pony express” may have existed, horses in the Shang being ridden primarily for this sort of mission and possibly battlefield command rather than employed for cavalry.18 The system’s efficiency is well attested by reports of T’u-fang aggressiveness being routinely received within twelve days from 1,000 li, or about 350 miles away.19 In a crisis the Shang also had a system of drums (and possibly signal fires) that could quickly warn of approaching enemy forces, though the amount of information that might be conveyed would have been minimal. Nevertheless, one or two early written characters associated with drum warnings were also employed in an extended sense to indicate the transmission of urgent information.20

This emphasis on intelligence gathering may have derived its initial impetus from King T’ang’s exploitation of various reports on the Hsia prior to the Shang’s uprising. Numerous inscriptions reveal that the gathering and transmission of intelligence had become well established and highly organized by the Anyang period. Despite being enigmatic, the inquiries often contain condensed reports prefaced by the term yüeh, a character that basically means “to say,” as in the king “saying” or putting a proposition to the ancestors, but also designating something that had been reported.21The querulous king then ascertained the report’s veracity through prognostication, such as when it was reported that the Kung-fang had made an incursion and he asked whether any damage had been suffered, whether they had really acted aggressively. (Although divination would often be condemned as a means for acquiring knowledge from Sun-tzu onward, in the Shang it was not only used to pose general questions of military intelligence—whether a certain enemy would attack or a certain quarter suffer disorder—but also to evaluate reports gathered through human agency.)22

Other terms used for reporting and transmitting important information (orders) outward via the same system include wen, “to hear,” synonymous with “to learn” and “cause to be heard” or “inform”; kao, “to report (from below)” and “announce” or “proclaim” (especially for statements originating with the ruler); t’eng, apparently a report transmitted by horse, whether ridden or yoked to a chariot; and hsin, a character that now means “letter” or “information” but can simply be understood as knowledge transmitted by envoy.23

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