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Water Battles
“Nowadays in training we use the tactics of land forces for the best effect. Thus great-wing ships correspond to the army’s heavy chariots, little-wing ships to light chariots, stomach-strikers to battering rams, castled ships to mobile assault towers and bridge ships to the light cavalry.”
- The King of Wu (514 to 496 BC)
The jade container to the right is in a 5th century B.C. style. It depicts what some scholars believe to be large, decked canoes engaged in battle. It dates from a warring period which culminated in the rise of the state of Qin and the unification of China under the first emperor. The fighters on deck, armed with halberds and swords, fight it out, bow to bow. Two figures at the bow grapple, with one man grabbing the other’s head and thrusting down into his neck with a sword. Behind the figure being stabbed, another warrior jabs down with his long-hafted dagger-axe to hack at the stabbing swordsman. Three figures are in the water beneath the boats. They may be swimmers, or the dead. While the details of the boats and weapons are sketchy, they show that naval combat was close-in and personal in this age.
Chinese literary accounts suggest how war was waged afloat. Fleets approached to the sound of loud drumming, shouts, and brightly coloured banners and painted decorations – often animals or spirits – to awe the enemy. As the ships closed, some of them would ram the enemy to capsize them and send men into the water. On other occasions, the accounts of battles talk of fire ships filled with burning material and oil to set the enemy fleet ablaze and destroy it without battle. As the ships closed, the men on the decks struggled to fend off or grapple an enemy. From opposing decks, spear and halberd thrusts, volleys of arrows, and a slash or stab with a sword as an enemy drew close marked ancient Chinese battles on the water.
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