Porcupine Boats and Empty Forts
One of the most remarkable figures of China’s Three Kingdoms Period (184 – 280 AD) was Zhuge Liang (181 – 234), a military strategist and wily politician with a reputation for trickery and hoaxes. One of his most famous exploits occurred in 208, during the buildup to a climactic battle between rival Chinese armies separated by the Yangtze River.
As the forces gathered, Zhuge Liang’s opponents maneuvered him into publicly pledging to furnish 100,000 arrows within a few days. It was a seemingly impossible task, and because of the political dynamics at the time, failure would have meant Liang’s doom. He mulled things over, then gathered a flotilla of river boats, lined them up with bales of wet straw, and instructed their crews what he expected from them.
Liang waited for a foggy night and quietly had his boats rowed across the river with muffled oars to escape detection, and positioned them in a line close to the enemy camp. Then, at a signal, Liang’s crews broke the night’s silence with an unholy din, clanging gongs, beating drums, and shouting. The startled enemy camp awoke from its sleep in a panic. Convinced that they were under attack, the enemy soldiers loosed a hail of arrows at the boat silhouettes flitting in the murk. The arrows were embedded in the bales of straw lining Liang’s boats, until they resembled giant floating porcupines. Then, with his pincushioned boats groaning beneath the weight of over 100,000 captured arrows, Liang returned to camp, his pledge fulfilled.
Liang was also credited with devising what came to be known in Chinese folklore as the “empty fort strategy”. It came about when he was tasked with defending a walled city with a severely undermanned garrison. A huge enemy army approached – one that Zhuge’s tiny garrison had no hope of resisting. Realizing the futility of fighting, Liang resorted to hoaxing the enemy. Instead of barricading the city gates, he threw them wide open, then grabbed a musical instrument and started playing it nonchalantly atop the gates. Enemy scouts witnessed that and reported it to their commander, so he rode to the gates to see for himself. He saw a city whose gates were wide open, its walls unmanned, and visible atop the entryway, the famously tricky Liang playing music. That did not seem right, so suspecting a trap, the enemy commander turned his army around and beat a hasty retreat.