Talons and Fangs of the Eastern Han Warlords
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Talons and Fangs of the Eastern Han Warlords Yimin Lu A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of East Asian Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by Yimin Lu (2009) ii Talons and Fangs of the Eastern Han Warlords Yimin Lu, Ph. D Department of East Asian Studies University of Toronto, 2009 Abstract Warriors are a less visible topic in the study of imperial China. They did not write history, but they made new history by destroying the old. The fall of the first enduring Chinese empire, the Han, collides with the rise of its last warriors known as the “talons and fangs.” Despite some classical or deceptive myths like the Chinese ideal of bloodless victories and a culture without soldiers, the talons and fangs of the Eastern Han warlords demonstrated the full potential of military prestige in a Confucian hierarchy, the bloodcurdling reality of dynastic rivalry, as well as a romantic tradition infatuated with individual heroism. iii Table of Content： Introduction (1-22) Chapter One (23-68) The Age of Warlords 1. The Eastern Han – Three Kingdoms Transition 2. Han Military Institutions 3. Three Kingdoms Military Organizations: Adjustments and Developments 4. Han Military Aristocracy Chapter Two (69-104) The Everyday Warriors 1. Social Standing 2. Occupational Backgrounds 3. Daily Necessities 4. Military Market 5. The Soldiers’ Women: Marriage and Prostitution 6. Military Pastimes Chapter Three (105-137) Military Equipment: Physical and Mental 1. Arms and Armor 2. Military Theories, Codes of Warfare iv Chapter Four (138-173) Noble Veterans of the North 1. The Tiger Guards: Dian Wei 典韋 and Xu Chu 許褚 2. Zhang Liao 張遼 3. Zhang He 張郃 4. Xu Huang 徐晃 5. Xiahou Dun 夏侯憞 6. Cao Ren 曹仁 Chapter Five (174-208) The Five Tigers 1. Guan Yu 關羽 2. Zhang Fei 張飛 3. Ma Chao 馬超 4. Huang Zhong 黃忠 5. Zhao Yun 趙雲 Chapter Six (209-240) The Southerners: Last But Not the Least v 1. Taishi Ci 太史慈 2. Dong Xi 董襲 3. Chen Wu 陳武 4. Gan Ning 甘寧 5. Ling Tong 淩統 6. Pan Zhang 潘璋 Chapter Seven (241-276) History and Romance Appendices (277-279) Bibliography (280-302) Glossary (303-327) vi Abbreviations: For standard dynastic histories and other core texts, I use recent editions within the last fifteen years if available. For the single most essential work, the Sanguo zhi 三國志 by Chen Shou 陳壽(233-297) with commentary by Pei Songzhi 裴松之(372-451), I use two 1990’s editions: Sanguo zhi jinzhu jinyi三國志今注今譯 by Su Yuanlei 蘇淵雷(1909-1995) and Sanguo zhi yizhu 三國志譯注 by Fang Beichen 方北辰. These represent more current scholarship than the older editions of the Zhonghua shuju 中華書局 at Beijing. HHS Hou Han shu後漢書 HS Han shu漢書 QTS Quan tangshi全唐詩 SGYY Sanguo yanyi 三國演義 SGZ Sanguo zhi zhuyi 三國志註譯 SGZJZJY Sanguo zhi jinzhu jinyi 三國志今注今譯 Shi Shijing 詩經 SJ Shiji史記 ZZTJ Zizhi tongjian資治通鋻 1 Introduction Imperial China was a culture and an empire. It commands scholarly interest mostly for its early political sophistication and continuous cultural splendor. Despite a well-known Chinese dynastic cycle which involves as much peace as war, the fruits of Western scholarship have long been heavy on the brighter sides of traditional China: a high civilization teeming with humane philosophers, a united empire run by a sophisticated civil bureaucracy, and a refined people with sagelike poets of a bamboo grove and romantic dreamers in a red chamber. What has too often escaped from the general perception of traditional China as home to a glorious culture and storied continuity is the blood-soaked recurrence of civil wars and foreign conquests. Ralph Sawyer once observed in his Unorthodox Strategies for the Everyday Warrior, that "virtually every year witnessed a major battle somewhere in China, significant conflicts erupted nearly every decade, and the nation was consumed by inescapable warfare at least once a century."1 While there has been no negligence of the many Chinese military classics and the minds behind them, more often than not, they have been interpreted as a kind of nonviolent triumph over violence, and tend to suggest that the ancient Chinese 1 Sawyer, R., Unorthodox Strategies for the Everyday Warrior, (Boulder 1996) p.1. 2 deceived with good brain rather than fought with strong arms, and therefore realized their ideal of winning without fighting. Moreover, many named warriors in official histories, who actually engaged yet frequently contradicted the ideal rules of engagement, remain less noticed in the West. Warriors may be subject to a broad classification of three levels: lords, kings, or emperors of an entire state at war, their generals, and the nameless mass soldiers. The latter two were naturally more visible during troubled times such as dynastic transitions. Almost all Chinese dynasties rose and fell in violence, but the ultimate fall of the Han漢(206 BC-8; 25-220) empire probably gives the first glimpse of the patterns and varieties of military opportunists who were to exploit future changes throughout imperial China. These I call “warlords,” roughly equivalent to junfa軍閥 in Chinese: province-based leaders, often in the guise of local governors, who actively sought political independence and military expansion. They were rampant during the eclipse of the Han and Tang唐(618-907), arguably the two greatest Chinese empires ever, as well as the early republican era.2 Actual fighting, however, was more directly done by an array of military officers subordinate to the warlords while commanding their own rank-and-file soldiers. The current thesis will limit itself to a reassessment of the second-level warriors 2 For an etymological definition of the Chinese warlord, consult Peers, C., Warlords of China 700 BC – AD 1622, (London 1998) p. 8. 3 between the Eastern Han東漢(25-220) and the Three Kingdoms三國(220-280). It has two observations: 1. this professional group, in defiance of “a culture without soldiers,”3 dominated an adaptive wartime government; 2. Contrary to the concept of bloodless victory, the way of warfare in early imperial China was no less physical than elsewhere in the world. It is also noteworthy that the Han-Three Kingdoms military saga inspired a romantic tradition far greater than its historical proportions. Some problems this essay aims to explore are: 1. What was the military's place during the eclipse of the Eastern Han? 2. What were the opportunities for the military in imperial China’s first wave of provincial warlordism?4 3. How did warriors contribute to the rise and fall of the warlords? 4. What were the general characters of the Eastern Han – Three Kingdoms warriors? One of the oldest metaphors that have survived into the modern Chinese vocabulary is "talons and fangs," or zhaoya 爪牙. Essentially it applies to all men of action, but exactly who they were and whether they were considered good or bad varies with the 3 Lei Haizong雷海宗(1902-1962) proposed the notion of wubing wenhua無兵文化 or “a culture without soldiers” as an extreme protest against the military incompetence of post-Han China. Lei Haizong, Zhongguo de wenhua yu zhongguo de bing中國的文化與中國的兵, (Shanghai 2001) p. 125. 4 Political and military opportunists of the Eastern Han – Three Kingdoms transition differed from their Warring States predecessors mainly in the center of power struggles: technically centralized administrative geography rather than feudal domains. In this regard, they bore greater similarity to the warlords of early republican China. 4 three distinct eras in Chinese history: ancient, imperial, and modern.5 The term was introduced in the Book of Songs, or Shijing 詩經, China's earliest anthology of lyrics dating from the Western Zhou 西周Dynasty (ca.11th century-771 BC) down to Confucius' time (551-479 BC). In a song titled “Qifu”祈父, noble warriors were likened to the talons and fangs of the Zhou king, obviously in recognition of their usefulness in defending and expanding the kingdom.6 For imperial China, the first recorded “talons and fangs” were two lieutenants of the Eastern Han General-in-Chief, Dou Xian竇憲 (died. 92).7 However, the meaning of “talons and fangs” continued to take on an increasingly derogative undertone. This coincides with a gradual decline of military primacy in traditional Chinese culture, especially after the Tang, and since the modern era at the latest, "talons and fangs" has become an exclusive metaphor for henchmen of an evildoer. Its earlier meanings are almost forgotten. 5 Cihai辭海,（Shanghai 1990）p. 3910. 6 Shi, 127, Shen Zeyi沈澤宜 ed., Shijing xinjie詩經新解, (Shanghai 2000). The original line is yu wang zhi zhaoya予王之爪牙, or “I am the talons and fangs of my king.” The title qifu, with another occurrence in the Shang shu尚書, 46, has commonly been translated as “Minister of War” although its exact nature remains questionable between military or policing. Creel, H, The Origins of Statecraft in China, vol. 1, (Chicago 1970) p. 303–4. 7 The earliest known “talons and fangs” of imperial China were Geng Kui耿夔and Ren Shang任尚(died. 118), both lieutenant generals to Dou Xian by whom the Xiongnu nomads suffered a crushing defeat in 89. Fan Ye范曄(398-445), HHS, (Hangzhou 2000) ch. 23: 812–21. 5 Synonymous with "talons and fangs" is the term "falcon and hound", or yingquan 鷹犬. It first appears in the Sanguo zhi 三國志 (henceforth SGZ), one of the standard dynastic histories that chronicles the Eastern Han civil war and the Three Kingdoms period (220-280). In an official call to arms against him, the warlord Cao Cao曹操 (155-220) was described as yingquan and zhaoya material.8 Within the context this description is at least neutral, saying no more than that Cao Cao was a resource in battle.