AN ANCIENT CHINESE CAPITAL — BISHOP 575 



effect a practicable breach for a storming party. The latter aim the 

 Chinese military engineers of that day did not achieve with the aid 

 of explosives, then still unknown in China as elsewhere. Instead, 

 they tunneled beneath the earthen city walls and there excavated a 

 large chamber whose ceiling they supported by means of stout tim- 

 bering; this they then set on fire, thus causing it to give way and 

 allow the section of rampart immediately above it to drop into the 

 cavity. 



The earliest mention in Chinese literature of this proceeding, so far 

 as I know, dates back to around the beginning of the fourth century 

 B. C. 11 and the passage would imply that it had already then been 

 known in China for some time, perhaps even as much as a century 

 or two, although scarcely more than that. For prior to around the 

 middle of the first millennium B. C. the methods employed by the 

 Chinese in the capture of walled towns had been chiefly those of 

 surprise, escalade, or blockade. As in the Occident (e. g., at Croton 

 in 510 B. C. and at Mantinea in 385 B. C), so in China also, rivers 

 were sometimes diverted against city walls and made to undermine 

 them. It seems to have been slightly later (i. e., after the middle of 

 the same millenium) that in both China and the West there came 

 into use the above-described method of breaching walls by mining. 

 It was employed in the latter region, for instance, at the siege of 

 Megalopolis by Polyperchon 12 in 318 B. C. and at that of Abydos 

 by Philip V of Macedon in 200 B. C. 



It is only fair to say, however, that the best military opinion in 

 ancient China, such as that of Sun Tzu, 13 was in general opposed to 

 the investment of fortified places, preferring rather to bring about 

 their surrender by overcoming the enemy's forces in the field, 

 jgj In any event, against a rampart so massive and a moat so wide 

 and deep as those which wo saw at old Ch'ang-an, even the most 

 effective methods of siege-craft known to the ancient Chinese must 

 have been well-nigh powerless. The capital of the Hans, though 

 seated in a wide plain and so owing nothing of its strength to natural 

 position, must have been as nearly impregnable to direct assault as 

 was ancient Babylon. 



The space inside the ramparts was, we found, a slightly undulating 

 plain dotted with the mud hamlets of the local peasantry and with 

 clusters of small modern grave mounds shaded by trees; but for by 

 far the greater part under intensive cultivation. As we might expect 

 in a city occupied for so long a period (in all about 200 years) as was 

 old Ch'ang-an, the present surface of the site, within the walls, was 



» Mo-tzu, chap. 14, par. 62. 

 n Formerly miscalled "Polysperchon." 



«• Also called Sun Wu; fl. 4th century B. C. On his writings see Giles, Lionel, Sun Tzu on the art of war 

 (trans, from the Chinese, with notes), London, 1910. 



