Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare From Ancient Times to the Present

by Max Boot

  It was not easy to wield such an “active and indomitable race” into a coherent military force. That required the rare talents of Attila the Hun. The legendary leader of the Huns initially ruled for a decade in conjunction with his brother, Bleda, but in 444 or 445 he murdered his sibling and assumed sole control. “The Scourge of God” was described by a Roman envoy who met him as short and squat, with a broad chest, small eyes, a thin, gray-flecked beard, flat nose, and “swarthy complexion.” He spoke “a confused jumble of Latin, Hunnic, and Gothic.” He dressed simply and disdained the finery, decorative gems, and golden goblets that his chief lieutenants came to favor. A clean garment, an unadorned sword, and a wooden cup were always good enough for Attila. Yet for all his lack of pretense, which anticipated Genghis Khan’s manner, the great Hun’s aura of power was unmistakable: “He was haughty in his walk, rolling his eyes hither and thither, so that the power of his proud spirit appeared in the movement of his body.”

  During the 440s Attila cut a swath of destruction through eastern Europe before moving west. Impalement, the act of driving a wooden stake through the victim’s anus, was a favorite method of execution as well as a source of merriment. The Christian scholar Saint Jerome wrote of how “terror-struck” the Roman world was by the advance of these “wild beasts”: “Everywhere their approach was unexpected, they outstripped rumor in speed, and, when they came, they spared neither religion nor rank nor age, even for wailing infants they felt no pity. Children were made to die before it can be said that they had begun to live. . . . How many of God’s matrons and virgins, virtuous and noble ladies, have been made the sport of these brutes!”

  In the past disciplined Roman armies would have made short work of the rapacious but disorganized Huns. But by the fifth century Rome had been weakened by centuries of incessant infighting, with multiple imperial usurpers competing for power and Roman military units regularly fighting one another, often with the help of tribal allies. As one recent history notes, “After 217 there were only a handful of decades without a violent struggle for power within the Roman Empire.” The once mighty legions were so weak that the Huns were not stopped until 451, when a mixed force of Romans, Franks, Saxons, and Visigoths barely managed to repulse them near the French town of Troyes. Two years after this defeat, Attila died, an apparent victim of excessive drinking on his wedding night, hardly his first, to a German maiden. With its polygamous conqueror gone, the Hunnic empire collapsed within a few years.54

  By then, however, it was too late to save Rome. By 452 much of Britain, Spain, North Africa, and parts of Gaul had been overrun by assorted barbarians. The lost tax revenues from those rich provinces made it impossible to keep the central machinery of the empire going, setting off a death spiral.55 Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 and by the Vandals in 455. The last Western emperor was deposed in 476.

  A recent historical study estimates that the mightiest of empires was ultimately brought down by no more than 110,000 to 120,000 invaders. That might seem like a paltry figure given that as late as AD 375 the Roman army was estimated to total at least 300,000 men and possibly many more. But most of those troops were tied down either confronting the Persian Empire, engaging in Roman civil wars, or guarding thousands of miles of frontier against raiders or guerrillas. That left only 90,000 men in the field armies deployed in the west to confront the barbarian onslaught.56 Not nearly enough. Guerrilla-style raiders thus became a crucial contributing factor in Rome’s downfall, although we should not neglect the important role played by domestic disunity and disorganization—a major factor in the success of more recent insurgents, too, from Chiang Kai-shek’s China to Batista’s Cuba. As Adrian Goldsworthy notes, Rome “may well have been ‘murdered’ by barbarian invaders, but these struck at a body made vulnerable by prolonged decay.”57

  With Roman control gone, European unity and security would also disappear. For centuries to come the continent would be at the mercy of sanguinary raiders who fought for the most part in guerrilla-like fashion. From the north came Vikings; from the south, Arabs; from the east, Avars, Bulgars, Magyars, Mongols, and Turks. Tales of their predations would echo those of the Huns’. It would take a millennium for a polyglot array of weak polities to cohere into states strong enough to safeguard their own frontiers. The Eastern empire was longer lived: it would continue to rule at Constantinople (modern Istanbul) for another thousand years, but over the centuries its culture would become less and less Roman.

  8.

  AN EASTERN WAY OF WAR?

  Ancient Chinese Warfare beyond Sun Tzu

  ROMAN LEGIONS OFTEN fought guerrillas but did not practice guerrilla tactics themselves. What about their counterparts in Asia? There is a widespread belief that a distinctly “Oriental” or “Eastern Way of War” placed particular emphasis, in John Keegan’s words, on “evasion, delay and indirectness”58—the skills of the guerrilla. This is usually contrasted with the kind of toe-to-toe fight to the death that has supposedly characterized the “Western Way of War” since the days of classical Greece.59 This interpretation became especially popular after the success of Chinese and Vietnamese communists in guerrilla struggles in the twentieth century. Many concluded that Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh were the direct heirs of Sun Tzu and other ancient Confucian strategists who had supposedly placed a greater emphasis than their Western counterparts on strategies designed to circumvent the main forces of the enemy. Thus Keegan writes that “ ‘the Chinese Way of Warfare’ would, in the twentieth century, inflict on Western armies and their commanders, schooled in [Clausewitz’s] teachings, a painful and long-drawn-out humiliation.”60

  This interpretation is given superficial support by the fact that China’s foremost military philosopher, Sun Tzu, famously counseled that “attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of excellence. Subjugating the enemy’s army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence.” Another widely cited passage of his masterpiece, The Art of War, holds, “Warfare is the Way (Tao) of deception. Thus although [you are] capable display incapability to them. When committed to employing your forces, feign inactivity. When [your objective] is nearby, make it appear as if distant; when far away, create the illusion of being nearby.”61 Mao would later echo this advice almost verbatim.

  But The Art of War was only one of the “Seven Military Classics” of ancient China. Other tomes, which are less quoted today, suggested a more direct approach. For instance, there was the Wei Liao-tzu, written by an official named Wei Liao during the same Warring States period (403–221 BC) that produced The Art of War. Wei Liao was as concerned with drill, discipline, and formation as any Roman drillmaster. He laid out an elaborate procedure utilizing “gongs, drums, bells, and flags” to control and maneuver formations in battle down to the level of a five-man squad: “When the drums sound, the army should advance; when the drums are beat again, they should attack. When the gongs sound, they should stop; when the gongs are struck again, they should withdraw. Bells are used to transmit orders. When the flags point to the left, [the army should] go left; when the flags point to the right, then to the right.”

  Those who failed to heed these elaborate instructions could expect a fate that makes the Roman practice of decimation seem lenient by comparison. If the soldiers in a squad “lose members without capturing [or killing] equal numbers of the enemy, they will be killed and their families will be exterminated.” So too “anyone who loses his emblem will be executed.” Even the poor drummers were in peril: “If a drummer misses a beat he is executed.”

  All of these injunctions presumably were designed to produce an army that in good Clausewitzian fashion was capable of defeating the main forces of the enemy. Rather than preaching indirectness, the Wei Liao-tzu holds, “If the enemy is in the mountains, climb up after him. If the enemy is in the depths, plunge in after him. Seek the enemy as if searching for a lost child, follow him without any doubt. In this way you will be able to defeat the enemy and control his fate.”62


  Although definitive evidence is lacking, ancient Chinese and Indian warfare seemed to conform more closely to Wei Lao’s conventional injunctions than to Sun Tzu’s indirect approach. Certainly both cultures produced vast armies that would have been of little use for evasive maneuvers. In the third century BC, at a time when China was divided like Greece into numerous warring polities, the weaker states were said to field armies of a hundred thousand men. The largest states supposedly had armies of nearly a million men. Even allowing for inevitable exaggeration by contemporary chroniclers, that is indisputably a lot of soldiers. Most were conscripted peasants who fought on foot, wore armor, and were equipped with swords, spears, halberds, and crossbows. As in the Roman army, these infantrymen were supplemented by experts in such fields as mechanical artillery and siege works. Note that the army of more than six thousand life-size terracotta soldiers and horses discovered in 1974 at the burial place of China’s first emperor, Shi Huangdi (r. 221–210 BC), was arranged in elaborate formations and grouped by type of weapon. The odds are that China saw many clashes between such armies.63

  In sum, any attempt to suggest that Europeans have an inherent predilection toward infantry battle in the open field, whereas Asians prefer to fight in guerrilla-like ways, does not stand up to scrutiny. As two scholars of Chinese military history write, “The difference between premodern warfare in China and the West was probably not as great as prescriptive texts such as the Chinese military classics might lead us to believe. Despite the literary emphasis on caution and avoidance of the risks of battle, battle was no less common an occurrence in imperial China than it was in the ancient Mediterranean world or in medieval Europe.”64

  Guerrilla warfare, then, is not the product of an “Eastern (or Oriental) culture”—itself a misnomer, since Asia has more than one culture. It is the last resort of all those over time, of whatever culture, forced to fight a stronger foe. Generally, whenever any group was strong enough to field a conventional army, it did so. But this required the creation of a strong, centralized state, and this was usually beyond the capabilities of tribal societies.

  9.

  NOMADS AND MANDARINS

  Xiongnu vs. Han, 200 BC–AD 48

  IF THERE WAS any group that had a particular predilection for guerrilla warfare, it was not the great states of Asia but rather the stateless nomads that preyed on them—just as they preyed on the Roman Empire and its predecessors and successors in the West. In 135–134 BC, a major debate broke out in the Han imperial court over how to deal with one particularly dangerous group of nomads: the Xiongnu.65

  The godlike emperors of the Han dynasty, styled as the Sons of Heaven, ruled over some 50 million people with the help of 120,000 mandarins who were educated in an elite academy and tested for competence. The imperial capital was Ch’ang-an in present-day Shaanxi Province. With a population of over 500,000, it was one of the biggest cities in the world, rivaled only by Rome, and had a variety of impressive structures, ranging from the emperor’s palace to a vast marketplace said to be bigger than any mall in the United States today. The wealthy drove through its streets in fine carriages, wearing beautiful silk robes. To keep them entertained, there were orchestras, jugglers, and acrobats, and elaborate banquets featuring exquisitely prepared delicacies served in lacquer dishes.66

  Very different were the Xiongnu—herdsmen and hunters who were known as “Mountain Barbarians” to the Han Chinese. They came from Inner Asia, a term that usually takes in, at a minimum, Mongolia, the modern Chinese province of Xinxiang, and Central Asia,67 but, like the Huns to whom they may have been related, they remain figures of mystery. One theory has it that they were of Mongolian stock, but no one knows for sure. What little we know of them comes from Chinese sources, and it was not flattering. One Confucian scholar likened them to “all manner of insects, reptiles, snakes and lizards,”68 while the Han court historian Sima Qian regarded them “as beasts to be pastured, not as members of the human race.”69 He was shocked that “these people know nothing of the elegance of hats and girdles, nor of the rituals of the court!”70

  What the Xiongnu did know was war, and in this field their superiority to the more settled Chinese was unquestioned. They had mastered a style of archery on horseback that was alien to a Han army composed primarily of infantrymen supplemented by charioteers. Thus time after time they were able to inflict humiliating defeats on the Chinese, even though their entire population of 1 million to 3.5 million people would hardly have amounted to one province of the Celestial Empire.71 A mandarin named Zhao Zuo wrote ruefully, “On dangerous roads and sloping narrow passages they can both ride and shoot arrows; Chinese mounted soldiers cannot match that. They can withstand the wind and rain, fatigue, hunger and thirst; Chinese soldiers are not as good.”72

  When Chinese forces got close, the Xiongnu simply retreated, sometimes clear across the Gobi Desert, and the Chinese armies, with their cumbersome supply requirements, lacked the ability to keep up. Sounding very much like his Western counterparts, Sima Qian complained, “If the battle is going well for them they will advance, but if not, they will retreat, for they do not consider it a disgrace to run away. Their only concern is self-advantage, and they know nothing of propriety and righteousness.”73 (This passage provides further evidence that the Chinese, like the Greeks and Romans, elevated face-to-face infantry battle to the pinnacle of warfare and frowned upon tactical retreat.)

  The first emperor of the Han dynasty, Gaozu, discovered for himself just how formidable the Mountain Barbarians were. He mounted a major expedition against them in 200 BC which turned into a fiasco. First his forces, said to be more than 300,000-strong, ran into cold weather that caused a third of his men to lose fingers to frostbite. Then they stumbled onto what they thought was a weak Xiongnu detachment. The Chinese vanguard mounted pursuit, only to run into an ambush; they were not familiar with the tried-and-true nomadic tactic of “feigned retreat.” The entire Han army was surrounded and allowed to withdraw only after offering “generous gifts,” essentially bribes, to Modun, the powerful Chanyu, or chieftain, of the Xiongnu confederation.74

  Making the best of a bad situation, Gaozu entered into a supposedly equal arrangement of “brothers” with Modun that was in fact anything but equal. In return for peace, in 198 BC China agreed to send to the Xiongnu a Chinese princess in marriage along with annual shipments of grain, silk, and wine—all goods that the nomads coveted but could not make for themselves. The subsidies, which increased over time, included 200,000 liters of wine a year and 92,400 meters of silk.75 The wise men of the Han court hoped to use these luxury goods to sap the ferocity of their rivals as part of what became known as the “five baits” policy and what would today be called foreign aid: “elaborate clothes and carriages to corrupt their eyes; fine food to corrupt their mouths; music to corrupt their ears; lofty buildings, granaries, and slaves to corrupt their stomachs; gifts and favors for Xiongnu who surrendered.”76

  The Xiongnu, like the modern North Koreans, proved hard to corrupt. The initial shipments only whetted their appetite for more, and they knew that by raiding they could either carry away what they wanted or force the Chinese to increase the size of their tribute. Even if the Chanyu wanted to honor the terms of his treaty with the emperor, moreover, he had only limited power to control individual tribes in his confederation. (Much the same problem would later confront early American leaders trying to cut deals with Indian chiefs.) As a result, the frontier remained turbulent and unsettled. The Xiongnu, “greedy as ever” in the eyes of the Chinese, continued to carry out “innumerable plundering raids.”77

  Hence the debate that took place in 135–134 BC in the court of the young emperor Wu. How, his mandarins wondered, should they deal with the Xiongnu? Continue the he-qin (peace and kinship) policy? Or take up arms for the first time in more than half a century?

  Dovish officials argued that it was hopeless to fight the Xiongnu. One of them cited the arguments that a predecessor had made to Emperor G
aozu, Wu’s great-grandfather, against launching his own ill-fated expedition:

  They move from place to place like flocks of birds and are just as difficult to catch and control. . . . Even if we were to seize control of the Xiongnu lands, they would bring us no profit, and even if we were to win over their people, we could never administer and keep control of them. . . . Therefore we would only be wearing out the strength of China in an attempt to have our way with the Xiongnu. Surely this is not a wise policy!”78

  But more hawkish advisers argued that it was useless to make any agreements with the Xiongnu, because they had shown themselves to be untrustworthy. One official likened them to “an abscess which must be burst open with strong crossbows and arrows, and absolutely should not be left to fester.”79 Others argued that the Han Chinese had an obligation to establish a “universal empire” that would bring “the poor, backward, and uncultured barbarians . . . into civilization.”80

  The emperor was just twenty-one years old and had been on the throne for five years. He was the tenth son of the preceding emperor, and his mother had been merely a middle-ranking concubine when he was born. But she had been successful enough at palace intrigue to displace the elder empress and win the throne for her son. Wu remained dominated in his early years by his mother, the empress dowager. He was also a bisexual with two prominent male lovers, one of whom was killed by his mother over his protests; the other he killed himself in a fit of jealous rage. Having grown up in an atmosphere of insecurity and intrigue, Wu became brutal and aggressive. He killed five of his seven chancellors and several of his children and wives on suspicion of plotting against him. Anxious to establish greater security for his realm as well as for his person and to “avenge the difficulties” suffered by his great-grandfather Gaozu, he was readily won over to calls to attack the Xiongnu.81