A note on sources

It's often said that history is written by the victors. As with all things, this is an oversimplification. History is written by the writers. As trite as that sounds, it has some serious implications for our knowledge of the waging of war in China, particularly during the Three Kingdoms period. Court literati, rather than fighting men, tended to write history. This means that, while we may have records of the tactics of war, the things that court literati tended to find important are what were recorded.

While some aspects of Chinese history are immaculately preserved, others, frustratingly are not. And records which we may have had in the past may not have been retained or preserved.

In preparing this answer I have relied heavily on the works of Rafe de Crespigny, particularly Imperial Warlord: A Biography of Cao Cao 155-220 AD (de Crespigy 2010) (Imperial Warlord) and the re-published online edition of Generals of the South: the foundation and early history of the Three Kingdoms state of Wu (de Crespigny 2018) (Generals of the South). I will also make reference to The Art of War (Sun Zi (Sun Tzu), as translated by John Minford and including commentaries by, relevantly, Cao Cao) (Art of War). I have not cited every statement, and if it seems that there is an over-emphasis on Imperial Warlord, it is because de Crespigny included a very helpful section on warfare in that book which describes in some detail the weapons and conduct of the siege.

I have also had to rely on English translations of Chinese documents. Although I speak Chinese and can read Chinese, classical Chinese is unfortunately beyond me at this stage.

I hope this answer is useful to you.

Introduction

In China, as everywhere else, siege warfare, whereby one storms the walls and put men, women and children to the sword, was comparatively rare. Much more common, particularly during the Three Kingdoms era, was the surrender of a city after a period of siege (or often even without the siege itself). Perhaps one of the most famous capitulations was the fall of Chengdu which marked the end of the state of Shu-Han. Perhaps somewhat anti-climactically, the city itself was surrendered without a fight once Deng Ai had appeared with his army.

This doesn't exactly make for fun and engaging gameplay, so it's understandable why Creative Assembly, and indeed other game publishers would have you believe that assaulting a city was perhaps more common than it actually was!

Of the capturing of major territory within China during this period, the majority were done by surrender (such as when Liu Zong surrendered to Cao Cao's advance in the events preceding the battle of Chi Bi in 208) or were by betrayal (such as when Lu Bu's officer Hou Cheng opened the gates to Cao Cao's forces at Xiapi in 197). We know that Sunzi in the Art of War considered assaulting cities as a method of last resort:

The lowest form of war is

To attack

Cities.

Siege warfare

Is a last resort

(The Art of War, Chapter 3 Strategic Offensive).

Additionally, it is important to remember that, particularly in the beginnings of the Three Kingdoms era, Warlord armies (other than those of the men of the frontier, such as Dong Zhuo) were composed primarily of press-ganged peasants, which formed around a core of trained fighters and personal retainers (which de Crespigny refers to as 'Companions'). The mandated training of all able-bodied men from the Former Han era had largely disappeared, as Later Han emperors, never as secure in their power as the Former Han, preferred to keep their population unarmed and untrained. As was reasoned, better that bandits have no training - all the easier to supress them as necessary.

The defences

Chinese city walls are recorded as being constructed of rammed earth, occasionally faced with bricks, of various heights and widths - de Crespigny notes that some where around 11.5 metres tall, with a parapet of another 1.5 metres on top. The width was often as wide at the base, and half as wide at the top.

Cities were also often protected by a moat - famously Ye city, which used the Huan river and a canal to defend it, and Gongsun Zan's fortress supposedly had 'ten moats dug around, and within the moats he built motte fortresses'.

These defences were often augmented by siege equipment to be used against any attackers.

The weapons of siege

In Imperial Warlord, de Crespigny (at 175-176) quotes from Science and Civilisation by Needham and Yates to describe the variety of siege equipment available to forces during the Later Han. Quoting directly:

Notable among missle weapons used during Han are large crossbows set on frames, probably used at the Great Wall in northwest China, and thorwing machines including the 'Mohist catapult', a form of trebuchet: a beam ten metres long was balanced on a fulcrum with a sling at one end, and several men pulled in unison at the other. The beam was made from lengths of wood bound together and in some forms the fulcrum could be swivelled for aiming.

At the battle of Guandu (to which we will return later), there is reference of Yuan Shao constructing high towers in order to rain arrows down onto Cao Cao's forces who were secure behind prepared defences. We do not have conclusive evidence one way or the other, but it is possible that these towers may have been intended to roll towards Cao Cao's defences ala siege towers, but in any event, they were destroyed by Cao Cao's 'thunder cars'. Both Needham and de Crespigny suggest that these were mobile trebuchets.

In the Art of War, Sun Zi makes reference to other weapons of the siege - protective shields, armoured wagons, and 'sundry siege weapons and equipment'. Additionally, there is reference to the 'pil[ing] of earthen ramps', which Cao Cao's commentary indicates were to be piled against the city walls themselves.

Li Quan, writing during the Tang Dynasty (so several centuries after the period in question) makes reference to the armoured wagons as 'four-wheeled, wooden, missile proof mobile wagons, each carrying ten men and used for the purpose of filling up the encircling moat of a city with earth'.

de Crespigny further makes reference to 'long hooks to dear down portions of the wall', battering rams for the purpose of breaking down gates and on the defenders' side, movable screens or curtains to defend against missiles and burning torches lowered onto attackers and their machines.

Often times nature itself could be used against the defenders. For example, during Guan Yu's celebrated assault on Fan castle in 219, autumn rains had caused massive flooding of Cao Ren's positions, which were overwhelmed by 'metres of water' (Imperial Warlord, at 430). In Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms there is reference to Guan Yu breaching the dams to cause the flooding - though not historically accurate, it does show the ways in which Chinese armies could, and did, attack cities, as Cao Cao did against Ye city in 204, or against Lu Bu in 198 at Xiapi.

And where all else failed - wooden palisades could always be set on fire, as Lu Xun famously did to Liu Bei's army in 222.

The trebuchet

In a footnote on page 176, de Crespigny also notes that a trebuchet without a counterweight (as appears in Total War: Three Kingdoms) would have had a range of about 80 metres - extraordinarily vulnerable to attack from defenders. There is some suggestion that the Later Han and warlords from the Three Kingdoms period had access to the counterweight trebuchet, but if they were widespread then one would have expected Yuan Shao to have deployed them at Guandu, which he never did.

The attack

In the Art of War, Sun Zi notes that the preparations for a siege could take months - and sometimes an attacker could not wait. It was not unknown for a city to be taken by direct assault - for example, Sun Jian's biography in the Sanguo Zhi (as quoted in Generals of the South, at 75) notes that during the taking of Wan, he was first over the wall in the final successful breakthrough. Although there is some argument as to whether this in fact happened (the biograph of Zhu Jun, Sun Jian's commander makes no reference to this event), it is clear that an assault on Wan was in fact undertaken.

Moreover, in 214, when Sun Quan considered laying siege to Huan on the Qian River, Lu Meng counselled him to 'attack fiercely on all sides at once, we can take it by storm' (Imperial Warlord at 177). Gan Ning is recorded as climbing the walls with a grapnel-rope of silk. An earlier passage indicates that floodwaters had assisted - it seems that the forces of Sun Quan approached by water on ships.

Troops were also known to use sapping to collapse defences, as Yuan Shao did to Gongsun Zan in 198, tunnelling under Gongsun Zan's defences and setting wooden supports which were burned once dug, collapsing the tower which was standing upon those foundations.

The long siege

For a patient commander, with strong supply lines and no pressing need to take a city, there was, after all, always the siege. In 195, when Yuan Shao besieged the city of Dongwuyang (as quoted by de Crespigny in Imperial Warlord at 180), it was recorded that:

[T]here was nothing more to be cooked and eaten. [Zang Hong's] registrar reported that there were three dou of rice in the inner kitchen and asked for a little to make porridge. Zang Hong sighed and said "How can I enjoy this alone?" He had a thing ruel made and shared it with all the army, and he killed his favourite concubine to feed his men. All bowed their heads and wept.

Starvation could be just as deadly as floods, or storming, or towers.

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