Page 178 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

warfare—china 1955

To conquer the enemy without resorting to war is the most desirable.
The highest form of generalship is to conquer the enemy by
strategy. • Sun-tzu (500 bce–320 bce)

Chinese first discovered and began using gunpowder, but water-based transport, canals, and rivers of southern
as an explosive and not as a propellant. Curiously, this China stymied them until they learned how to adapt their
was roughly the same time that the Byzantine Empire per- tactics.The Mongols eventually learned to augment their
fected so-called Greek Fire, the formula for which still limited forces, there likely were never more than 200,000
eludes experts today.Tang armies continued to make use Mongol horsed soldiers total at any given time, with mer-
of peasant infantry and aristocratic and nomadic horse- cenaries from northern China, and learned to navigate
men. At its zenith, the Tang dynasty controlled northern the waterways of southern China. More interested in
Korea and Manchuria, south as far as the Red River exploiting China than in ruling it, the Mongols spent
delta, west into the Tibetan lowlands, and then along the funds lavishly and weakened themselves using Chinese
trade route toward the Caspian Sea. Four defeats in the and Korean troops in two failed invasions of Japan in the
750s, most notably a loss to rising Arab power in the Bat- thirteenth century. The Mongols lacked the numbers to
tle of Talas River (751 CE) and the An Lushan rebellion remain in power for long; they refused to Sinicize them-
(755 CE), were followed by a series of increasingly costly selves, and the dynasty fell less than a hundred years after
peasant uprisings leading to a relatively rapid dynastic its establishment.
decline. A resurgent ethnically Chinese dynasty, the Ming
Once again Chinese military power faded and the (1368–1644), followed the Mongols, but existed in a
nomads gained control. Frontier military commanders dangerous world. The Ming never secured control over
succeeded one another in the north, as non-Chinese the hinterlands and the trade routes to the northwest,
nomads ruled the North China Plain. In the south, local where the Mongols remained a threat for many years.The
military leaders ruled various areas. Even when the Song Ming rebuilt the Great Wall to constrain the nomads.
dynasty (960–1279) reunited much of China, its power Later in the Ming era, Japanese ships raided the Chinese
was economic rather than military, and it relied on diplo- coast, and the Ming ordered the coastal population to
macy and the paying of tribute to maintain peace. move inland.
Nomadic groups continued to control the North China There was one bright moment in Ming military history,
Plain. In time, the Jin, a nomadic ruling house, pushed the great voyages of the Eunuch Admiral Zheng He.
the Song out of northern China, and from 1127 the Song Zheng was a Mongol, whom the Chinese castrated, and
controlled only the south.The Mongols overwhelmed the he came to work for the Emperor, achieving an influen-
Jin and other northern nomads and in 1279 crushed the tial position. He led a vast Chinese fleet, with 20,000
Song, establishing the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) and sailors and 20,000 marines from China, into the Indian
bringing China and its periphery together under one rul- Ocean to the east coast of Africa, greatly impressing
ing house for the first time since the Tang. native rulers at the same time that Henry the Navigator
of Portugal was sending individual ships with perhaps a
The Mongols and company of sailors to find a route around Africa to the
the Ming east. But Zheng and sea power was a passing event, and
The Mongols were the greatest military force of the era. the Ming, never as powerful as the Han or Tang Dynas-
They were a horsed people, and they emphasized mobil- ties, weakened as Chinese officials and military experts
ity, with Mongol horsemen having as many as fourteen defected to a rising power in the Northeast.
mounts each, intricate formations, a variety of feints and
ruses, and absolute brutality and cruelty to achieve quick The Qing
victory.The Mongols were adaptive, using techniques of As the Ming declined, the tribal Manchus in the northeast
conquered people in one part of their vast empire to seize adopted the trappings of a Chinese dynasty; in 1644 they
control elsewhere. They took northern China, but the defeated the Ming and established the Qing dynasty