TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW No rivalry between leaders is more celebrated in Chinese history than the struggle between Hsiang Yu and Liu Pang...
TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW No rivalry between leaders is more celebrated in Chinese history than the struggle between Hsiang Yu and Liu Pang. These two generals began their careers as friends, fighting on the same side. Hsiang Yu came from the nobility; large and powerful, given to bouts of violence and temper, a bit dullwitted, he was yet a mighty warrior who always fought at the head of his troops. Liu Pang came from peasant stock.
He had never been much of a soldier, and preferred women and wine to fighting; in fact, he was something of a scoundrel. But he was wily, and he had the ability to recognize the best strategists, keep them as his advisers, and listen to their advice. He had risen in the army through these strengths. In 208 B.C., the king of Ch'u sent two massive armies to conquer the powerful kingdom of Ch'in. One army went north, under the generalship of Sung Yi, with Hsiang Yu second in command; the other, led by Liu Pang, headed straight toward Ch'in. The target was the kingdom's splendid capital, Hsien-yang. And Hsiang Yu, ever violent and impatient
, could not stand the idea that Liu Pang would get to Hsien-yang first, and perhaps would assurne command of the entire army. At one point on the northem front, Hsiang's commander, Sung Yi, hesitated in sending his troops into battle. Furious, Hsiang entered Sung Yi's tent, proclaimed hirn a traitor, cut off his head, and assumed sole command of the army. Without waiting for orders, he left the northem front and marched directly on Hsien-yang. He feit certain he was the better soldier and general than Liu, but, to his utter astonishment, his riyal, leading a smaller, swifter army, managed to reach Hsien-yang first. Hsiang had an adviser, Fan Tseng, who wamed him, "This village headman [Liu Pang] used to be greedy only for riches and women, but since entering the capital he has not been led astray by wealth, wine, or sex. That shows he is aiming high." Fan Tseng urged Hsiang to kill his riyal before it was too late. He told the general to invite the wily pe asant to a banquet at their camp outside Hsien-yang, and, in the midst of a celebratory sword dance, to have his head cut off. The invitation was sent; Liu fell for the trap, and came to the banquet. But Hsiang hesitated in ordering the sword dance, and by the time he gave the signal, Liu had sensed a trap, and managed to escape. "Bah!" cried Fan Tseng in disgust, seeing that Hsiang had botched the plot. "One cannot plan with a simpleton. Liu Pang will steal your empire yet and make us all his prisoners." Realizing his mistake, Hsiang hurriedly marched on Hsien-yang, this time determined to hack off his rival's head. Liu was never one to fight when the odds were against hirn, and he abandoned the city. Hsiang captured Hsien-yang, murdered the young prince of Ch'in, and bumed the city to the ground. Liu was now Hsiang's bitter enemy, and he pursued hirn for many months, finally comering hirn in a walled city. Lacking food, his army in disarray, Liu sued for peace. Again Fan Tseng wamed Hsiang, "Crush hirn now! If you let hirn go again, you will be sorry later." But Hsiang decided to be merciful. He wanted to bring Liu back to Ch'u alive, and to force his former friend to acknowledge hirn as master. But Fan proved right: Liu managed to use the negotiations for his surrender as a distraction, and he escaped with a small army. Hsiang, amazed that he had yet again let his riyal slip away, once more set out after Liu, this time with such ferocity that he seemed to have lost his mind. At one point, having captured Liu's father in battle, Hsiang stood the old man up during the fighting and yelled to Liu across the line of troops, "Surrender now, or 1 shall boi! your father alive!" Liu calmly answered, "But we are sworn brothers.
So my father is your father also. If you insist on boiling your own father, send me a bowl of the soup!" Hsiang backed down, and the struggle continued. A few weeks later, in the thick of the hunt, Hsiang scattered his forces unwisely, and in a surprise attack Liu was able to surround his main garrison. For the first time the tables were turned. Now it was Hsiang who sued for peace. Liu's top adviser urged hirn to destroy Hsiang, crush his army, show no mercy. "To let hirn go would be like rearing a tiger-it will devour you later," the adviser said. Liu agreed. Making a false treaty, he lured Hsiang into relaxing his defense, then slaughtered almost all of his army.
Hsiang managed to escape. Alone and on foot, knowing that Liu had put a bounty on his head, he came upon a small group of his own retreating soldiers, and cried out, "I hear Liu Pang has offered one thousand pieces of gold and a fief of ten thousand families for my head. Let me do you a favor." Then he slit his own throat and died. Interpretation Hsiang Yu had proven his ruthlessness on many an occasion. He rarely hesitated in doing away with a riyal if it served his purposes. But with Liu Pang he acted differently. He respected his rival, and did not want to defeat hirn through deception; he wanted to prove his superiority on the battlefield, even to force the clever Liu to surrender and to serve hirn. Every time he had his riYal in his hands, something made hirn hesitate-a fatal sympathy with or respect for the man who, after all, had once been a friend and comrade in arms. But the moment Hsiang made it clear that he intended to do away with Liu, yet failed to accomplish it, he sealed his own doom. Liu would not suffer the same hesitation on ce the tables were turned. This is the fate that faces all of us when we sympathize with our enemies, when pity, or the hope of reconciliation, makes us pull back from doing away with them. We only strengthen their fear and hatred of uso We have beaten them, and they are humiliated; yet we nurture these resentful vipers who will one day kill uso Power cannot be dealt with this way. It must be exterminated, crushed, and denied the chance to return to haunt uso This is all the truer with a former friend who has become an enemy.
The law governing fatal antagonisms reads: Reconciliation is out of the question. Only one side can win, and it must win totally. Liu Pang learned this lesson weIl. After defeating Hsiang Yu, this son condottieri wanted to hear. On ce he reached Sinigaglia. Cesare would he an easy prey, caught hetween the citadel and their force.\' ringing the town ... The condottieri were sure they had military superiority. helieving that the departure of the French troops had left Ces are with only a small j(Jrce. In fact, according to Machiavelli, [Borgiaj had left Cesena with ten thousand infantrynlen and three thousand horse, taking pains 10 split up his men so that they wOllld march along parallel routes hefore converging on Sinigaglia. The reason for such a large force was that he knew, from a confession extracted jiom Ramiro de Lorca, wh at the condottieri had up their sleeve. He therefore decided 10 turn their own trap against them. This was the masterpiece oftrickery that the historian Paolo Giovio later called
"the magnijicent deceit. " At dawn on Decemher 31 [1502j, Cesare reached the outskirts of Sinigaglia .... Led hy Michelatta Corella, Cesare 's advance guard of two hundred lances lOok up its position on the canal bridge ... This control of the bridge effectiveiy prevented the conspirators ' troops from with drawing ... Cesare greeted the condottieri effusively and invited them 10 join him .... Michelotto LAW 15 109 hat! prepared the Palazzo Bernardino for Cesare 's use, and Ihe duke inviled Ihe condotticri inside, , Onee int!oors Ihe men were lJuietlv arrested by guards WflO crepl up from Ihe rear, , , ' [Cesare[ gave orders for an aflack on Vitelli 's and Orsini :\' soldiers in the oallying areas, '
, , Thai night, while Iheir Imops were being crushed, Michelotto throttled Oliveretto and Vile/li in Ihe Bernardino palace, , , AI one fell swoop, [ßorgiaJ had goi rid of his former generals ami lvors! enemic.''i. TIIE BORC1IAS, IVAN CUHJLAS, ['i89 JiJ have ullimate victory, YOll must be ruthfess, NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1 76'i- lH21 110 LAW 15 of a farmer went on to become supreme commander of the armies of Ch'u. Crushing his next rival-the king of Ch'u, his own former leader-he crowned himself emperor, defeated everyone in his path, and went down in history as one of the greatest rulers of China, the immortal Han Kao-tsu, founder of the Han Dynasty. Those who seek to achieve things should show no mercy. Kautilya, Indian philosopher, third century B, C, OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW Wu Chao, born in A.D. 625, was the daughter of a duke, and as a beautiful young woman of many charms, she was accordingly attached to the harem of Emperor T'ai Tsung.
The imperial harem was a dangerous place, full of young concubines vying to become the emperor's favorite. Wu's beauty and forceful character quickly won her this battle, but, knowing that an emperor, like other powerful men, is a creature of whim, and that she could easily be replaced, she kept her eye on the future. Wu managed to seduce the emperor's dissolute son, Kao Tsung, on the only possible occasion when she could find him alone: while he was relieving himself at the royal urinal. Even so, when the emperor died and Kao Tsung took over the throne, she still suffered the fate to which all wives and concubines of a deceased emperor were bound by tradition and law
: Her head shaven, she entered a convent, for what was supposed to be the rest of her life. For seven years Wu schemed to escape. By communicating in secret with the new emperor, and by befriending his wife, the empress, she managed to get a highly unusual royal edict allowing her to return to the palace and to the royal harem. Once there, she fawned on the empress, while still sleeping with the emperor. The empress did not discourage this-she had yet to provide the emperor with an heir, her position was vulnerable, and Wu was a valuable ally. In 654 Wu Chao gave birth to a child. One day the empress came to visit, and as so on as she had left, Wu smothered the newborn-her own baby. When the murder was discovered, suspicion immediately fell on the empress, who had been on the scene moments earlier, and whose jealous nature was known by all. This was precisely Wu's plan. Shortly thereafter, the empress was charged with murder and executed. Wu Chao was crowned empress in her place. Her new husband, addicted to his life of pleasure, gladly gave up the reins of govemment to Wu Chao, who was from then on known as Empress Wu. Although now in a position of great power, Wu hardly feh secure. There were enemies everywhere; she could not let down her guard for one moment. Indeed, when she was forty-one, she began to fear that her beautiful young niece was becoming the emperor's favorite. She poisoned the woman with a day mixed into her food. In 675 her own son, touted as the heir apparent, was poisoned as weIl. The next-eldest son-illegitimate, but now the crown prince-was exiled a little later on trumped-up charges. And when the emperor died, in 683, Wu managed to have the son after that declared unfit for the throne. All this meant that it was her youngest, most ineffectual son who finally became emperor. In this way she continued to rule.
Over the next five years there were innumerable palace coups. All of them failed, and all of the conspirators were executed. By 688 there was no one left to challenge Wu. She proclaimed herself a divine descendant of Buddha, and in 690 her wishes were finally granted: She was named Holy and Divine "Emperor" of China. Wu became emperor because there was literally nobody left from the previous T'ang dynasty. And so she ruled unchallenged, for over a decade of relative peace. In 705, at the age of eighty, she was forced to abdicate. Interpretation All who knew Empress Wu remarked on her energy and intelligence. At the time, there was no glory available for an ambitious woman beyond a few years in the imperial harem, then a lifetime walled up in a convent.
In Wu's gradual but remarkable rise to the top, she was never naive. She knew that any hesitation, any momentary weakness, would speIl her end. If, every time she got rid of a riyal a new one appeared, the solution was simple: She had to crush them all or be killed herself. Other emperors before her had followed the same path to the top, but Wu-who, as a woman, had next to no chance to gain power-had to be more ruthless still. Empress Wu's forty-year reign was one of the longest in Chinese history. Although the story of her bloody rise to power is weIl known, in China she is considered one ofthe period's most able and effective rulers. A priest asked the dying Spanish statesman and general Ram6n Maria Narvaez (1800-1868), "Does your Exceltency forgive alt your enemies ?" "[ do not have to forgive my enemies, " answered Narvaez, "[ have had them alt shot. "
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