Through to modern times, the Chinese equivalent of the English idiom "speak of the Devil" is "Speak of Cao Cao and Cao Cao arrives." ("說曹操，曹操到"; Pinyin: Shuō Cáo Cāo, Cáo Cāo dào).While I'm sure Cao Cao was a complex person, and had many nuances to his character, but it's quite interesting how people are cast into stock good or evil figures. Indeed, we have a similar historical figure in this part of the world too, a once Governor General of French India, Charles Joseph Patissier Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau, or 'boochaaDu' in the local vernacular, has frightened countless generations of Telugu-speaking kids into obeying their elders, his being typecast as a demon a direct result of his fight against Tandra Paparayudu in the Bobbili war.
The matter of controlling and maintaining an army in being was central to the success of Cao Cao and the failure of Yuan Shao. For the armies of this time were ramshackle affairs. The small regular forces of the Han dynasty, professional soldiers based at the capital and experienced troops on the northern frontier, had been well-disciplined and efficient, but elsewhere in the empire the government of Later Han had been more concerned about the loyalty of its people than with the need for competent soldiers, and it maintained no general system of militia training. In civil war, as the mobilisations of the warlords brought vast numbers to the competing banners, there were neither time nor resources for proper training. Many men with experience in the old imperial army gained advancement as commanders of the new recruits, but their units were overwhelmed by the hordes of newcomers, and the traditions, skills and discipline were lost. As for equipment, uniforms, supply and general co-ordination, the texts indicate either that they were completely lacking or, when they were present, that this was considered exceptional.One of the other essays he offers is Later Han Military Organisation
In reality, these armies were simple armed mobs, with landless troops driven variously by loyalty or fear, by personal desperation, and by the hope of plunder. And they were accompanied by a mass of camp-followers _women and children, cooks and prostitutes, peddlers and gamblers, and a few who specialised in care of the sick and wounded. In the ruin of the society of the past, these masses of ragged misery joined the command of any chieftain who might gain them a measure of security.
So the structure and fighting techniques of these armies were based upon small groups of men following individual leaders. The heart of each unit was the commander himself, supported by his Companions, skilled soldiers who owed him personal allegiance and served as a body-guard, and the most important tactic was expressed in the phrase "to break the enemy line". In aggressive action, the commander and his Companions acted as spearhead for a drive at the enemy array, and if they were successful they could hope to be followed by the mass of their followers, spreading out to attack the broken enemy from the flank and the rear.
Such tactics have been used at other times and places, and the reliance upon mass, concentrated at one point, is a natural technique for an ill-disciplined force, but it is a frightening operation for the leaders of a primitive army, with no certainty of support. Such attack requires great courage from the leader and his immediate followers, and a high level of personal authority to attract his men to follow in the charge. So if we read in the stories how one man held a bridge, or another advanced alone against an army, some part of the tale may be true
As we have seen, any able-bodied man was liable for service in time of emergency, and the armies which fought rebels and bandits for the government of Han gained most of their troops by the technique of a press-gang. In the early 170s, for example, the future general Sun Jian obtained his first command against rebels in the southeast as a major with commission to recruit men as he found them and bring his contingent to join the forces of order. Men of rank and substance recruited their followers from retainers and mercenaries: so Cao Cao raised troops in 189 by distributing his family property.posted by Abiezer at 1:38 AM on December 31, 2009 [4 favorites]
At the core of any such levy, however, there was always a small group of family members or trusted friends, and this band of Companions (qinjin) gave security to the leader and coherence to his unit. As the civil war began with "loyal rebellion" against the court controlled by the usurper Dong Zhuo, conflicting claims of right action and allegiance soon defied the sophistries of even the highest officers who sought to serve the state. In practical terms, as social and economic conditions deteriorated ordinary men and their families were concerned primarily with survival, and the best chance for that was the protection of a successful warlord. As a result, whether the leader was a man of good family or a soldier of fortune, his power was based on personal loyalty, not upon an abstract concept of public duty, while his own security depended upon the support of the men he sought to command.
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posted by wuwei at 9:11 AM on December 30, 2009 [2 favorites]