The Art of War
Sun Tzu · translated by Lionel Giles
A short, dense set of maxims that holds up on concentration, logistics and spies and dates badly where it turns to omens and the stars.
Editorial review. Written from the complete text of Project Gutenberg eBook #17405.
All warfare is based on deception.
What it is
This is Lionel Giles's 1910 translation, and its title page calls the work the oldest military treatise in the world. The text is an extract from Giles's larger commentary, as its front matter notes. Thirteen chapters run from laying plans and the cost of a campaign through terrain, the nine kinds of ground and the use of spies. Paragraphs are numbered within chapters, so VI.18 means Chapter VI, paragraph 18. Most of the instruction is conditional: if the enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him; if he is in superior strength, evade him (I.21).
What holds up
The strongest passage concerns concentration. Numerical weakness comes from having to prepare against possible attacks, and numerical strength from forcing the enemy to prepare against you (VI.18). An enemy forced to prepare at several points has few men at each one (VI.16). The claim can be checked against any map.
The forced-march paragraphs are concrete. A hundred li of marching day and night leaves the leaders of all three divisions in enemy hands, and only a tenth of the army reaches the goal. Fifty li costs the first division's leader and half the force; thirty li costs a third (VII.7 to 10). The figures carry no source, but the reasoning does: the strong run ahead, the jaded fall behind, and an army without baggage, provisions or supply bases is lost (VII.8, VII.11).
The spy chapter gives the clearest chain. Sun Tzu names five kinds of spy (XIII.7), then makes the converted spy, an enemy agent bribed and housed, the first source for the rest (XIII.21 to 25). The local, inward, doomed and surviving spies all depend on him (XIII.22 to 24). The text states the dependency outright.
What does not
Chapters VI, IX, XI and XII carry the dated material. Chapter VI describes shifting advantage through five elements and the four seasons (VI.34). Chapter XII times fire attacks to lunar days, when the moon sits in four constellations that the text says bring rising wind (XII.4), and requires that the movements of the stars be calculated (XII.12). The text offers no evidence for those links. Chapter XI bans taking omens (XI.26), while Chapter IX reads rising birds and startled beasts as signs of ambush or sudden attack (IX.22).
A spy who divulges a secret before its time is put to death along with the man he told (XIII.19), and the rule comes without argument. Plunder is handled the same way: forage on the enemy, where one of his cartloads equals twenty of yours (II.9, II.15), and divide the spoil of a plundered countryside among the men (VII.20). Chapter XI tells the general to put soldiers where no escape exists (XI.23). The humane lines, such as treating captured soldiers kindly (II.17), sit beside these unreconciled.
Giles's English is dated in places: hearkens (I.15), ere (I.26), baulk (III.3). The units li and picul go unexplained, the snake shuai-jan (XI.29) is left unglossed, and the Five Advantages (VIII.6) are invoked but never listed. Two passages repeat almost word for word (VII.12 to 14 and XI.52).
Who should read it
Read it for a compressed primary text on planning, ground and intelligence, with its gaps in view. Pair it with the full commentary or a history of the period, because the text names people such as the Yellow Emperor (IX.10) and leaves them unexplained. Chapters X and XI are the most usable alone, with little of the omen material. Skip it for campaign detail: the examples run a sentence or two each, such as the two dynasties in XIII.26.
Read it free at Project Gutenberg · Find a print edition on Amazon