[Yun]

I'll answer this question in the thread on the Wei-Rouran wars...

[Sephodwyrm]

I am playing a game called Xuan Yuan Jian IV right now.

Its historical spin off comes from the freezing of the Fei River so that troops can cross it.

The general of the Jin army Xie An was incensed and ordered an all out strike against the Qin's central army. The Jin lost the day.

[luhai167]

Sephodwyrm, on Oct 24 2004, 09:55 AM, said:

I am playing a game called Xuan Yuan Jian IV right now.

Its historical spin off comes from the freezing of the Fei River so that troops can cross it.

The general of the Jin army Xie An was incensed and ordered an all out strike against the Qin's central army. The Jin lost the day.

At least that was what susposed to happen. Until some careful scratching on the wheel of fate....

It is one of the better RPG games out of China/Taiwan. Also can you make the game go above 800x600?

[DuncanHead]

Looking at Yun's amazon.com review of Graff's Medieval Chinese Warfare, I see:

"The issue of whether the pivotal Battle of the Fei River was a mere myth, first suggested by Michael Rogers and largely ignored since then by experts in both China and the West, at least gets a mention but not the discussion it deserves."

So perhaps we should have that discussion here? What do you think, Yun?

(If anyone wants to look it up, the suggestion is made in Michael C Rogers, The Chronicle of Fu Chien: A Case of Exemplar History, University of California Press, 1968.)

[DuncanHead]

I should have known there was already a thread on this battle! Couldn't find it, though, for some reason.

If I recall correctly, Rogers argues that the account of the Fei battle in the Jin history is deliberately copied from one of the Sui defeats in Korea, as a warning to the Tang emperor against undertaking any similar exercise. He sees several layers of politically-inspired rewriting in the account. I have some extensive notes on the book somewhere, I may try to write up a summary. I recall not being entirely convinced at the time I first read it.

This post has been edited by DuncanHead: 22 November 2005 - 01:26 PM

[Yun]

One reason I would disagree with Rogers is because two Northern Wei works that had no reason to repeat Eastern Jin propaganda - namely, the Shiliuguo Chunqiu (Annals of the 16 States) by Cui Hong and the Shuijing Zhu (Annotations to the Book of Rivers) by Li Daoyuan, mention the Fei River battle as a major defeat for Fu Jian. The earliest account of the battle seems to have been the Jin Zhongxing Shu (History of the Restoration of the Jin dynasty) by He Fasheng, and it has a rather different account of the battle from the one that finally emerged in the Jin Shu. In this account, Fu Jian was at the battle but hid himself so as to avoid making the Eastern Jin army too scared to fight. The end result, however, is the same - a big Former Qin defeat. I'll go check the book again and tell you more.

[Yun]

OK, I've checked the Jin Zhongxing Shu version (which is preserved in the Taiping Yulan), and it goes likes this:

Fu Jian led an army of 500,000 towards Shouchun, and said to Fu Rong, "If the Jin people know that I am coming, they will immediately retreat south of the Yangzi River and use it as a barrier, and even if I had an army of 1 million they would be of no use. Now, let us conceal the fact that I am coming [with the army], so that they will not know. They wish to protect Jiangdong and will surely stand and fight here. If they are routed, even if they want to guard the Yangzi they will have no men to do it with, and victory will be mine." So they hid the fact that Fu Jian himself had come. Thus only a junior general's banner was displayed when the army encamped north of the Fei River.

On the Eastern Jin side, Xie Shi, Xie Xuan, Xie Yan, and Huan Yi were defending the south bank of the Fei River, and began crossing the river [to engage the Qin army]. Fu Rong said, "If we strike at the Wu (i.e. southerners) before they have assembled in formation, we will surely destroy them." Fu Jian, replied, "Not so. We are strong in infantry, and they are skilful in riverine fighting. Now if we forsake the advantage of the infantry and venture into the water, we would be using what we are weak in to attack what they are strong in. That is not a good strategy. We can let them cross to this side of the river, and then suddenly attack them. They will have their backs to the water and unable to either advance or retreat, and we can then wipe them out. After that, our ships cross the Yangzi, strike directly at Kuaiji, and look upon where Yu received the homage of the myriad kingdoms - would that not be great! [Kuaiji (later Suzhou) is where the Sage-King had his last seat of government before he died there]"

So the Former Qin army got into formation and waited. Once the Jin army had finished crossing, they fought on the north bank of the Fei River. Fu Jian was seriously wounded, his army collapsed, and he fled back to Chang'an.

Elsewhere in the Jin Zhongxing Shu (also preserved in the Taiping Yulan) is a biography of Xie Xuan. It states that Fu Jian invaded with a huge army that he claimed numbered 1 million. Xie Xuan, Xie Shi, Xie Yan, and Tan Yuan met it with 80,000 men. Xie Xuan first sent Liu Laozhi with 5,000 men to attack the Former Qin vanguard at the Luo Creek, killing its commander Liang Cheng and his younger brother Liang Yun. The Qin vanguard was routed and stampeded towards the Huai River, with 10,000 killed and over 5,000 captured. Later, Fu Rong encamped in Shouyang (Shouchun), and Xie Xuan and Xie Yan picked 8,000 elite troops to fight it out south of the Fei River [note the discrepancy here with the other account]. Fu Jian was wounded by an arrow, Fu Rong was killed in the battle, tens of thousands of Qin troops were captured, and Fu Jian's royal carriage and huge amounts of treasure and livestock were also captured.

Note: You will see that this version differs significantly from the version in the Jin Shu (which was itself a Tang synthesis of numerous earlier histories of the Jin), in which it is the Jin army that requests to be allowed to cross the river for a battle. However, the Jin Shu does state that Fu Jian was worried that Xie Shi would flee rather than fight, and ordered that whoever revealed that he was with the army would have their tongue pulled out. This bears some similarity to Fu Jian's instructions to Fu Rong in the Jin Zhongxing Shu.

[esse]

Yun, on Oct 20 2004, 11:31 AM, said:

I'll answer this question in the thread on the Wei-Rouran wars...

Could you kindly provide a direct link to this Wei-Rouran thread?

[Yun]

http://www.chinahist...p?showtopic=812

[Yun]

I've found this interesting article in Chinese critiquing Michael Rogers' theory about the Battle of the Fei River being a myth: http://xiangyata.net...es/a02/521.html

[Publius]

On sevaral webpages , I've read some elaborate, slightly more "interesting" versions of the weiqi game.

"As far as the Xie family is concerned, Xie An was the most famous. During
the Battle of Fei Shui, Xie An bet his villa on a game of Weiqi against his
nephew Xian Zuan, to illustrate that if one is determined one can overcome a
stronger opponent. As a result, although they were outnumbered by the Qin
army, they won the battle. This story was recorded in Xie An Zhuan of Jin
Shu."

I enjoy the part that he bet the villa to prove a point using weiqi, and I especially enjoyed the supposed connection between the game and the battle results. As if it the soldiers on the field knew of the infamous Go game. I agree with Yun though, the story was probably slanted to make the learned, non-military savvy Xie An seem more responsible for the victory even though he had nothing to do with it.

My question is: Was this really recorded in the Jin Shu as listed above, or was the translation a little fanciful to create a moral undertone that echoes the classics and to save Xie An's reputation?

True or not, little stories like this humanizes historic battles for me, much like the British vs. German soccer game that initiated a Christmas Eve truce in 1914.