using them for our own purposes.
[By means of heavy bribes and liberal promises detaching them from the
enemy’s service, and inducing them to carry back false information as
well as to spy in turn on their own countrymen. On the other hand,
Hsiao Shih-hsien says that we pretend not to have detected him, but
contrive to let him carry away a false impression of what is going on.
Several of the commentators accept this as an alternative definition;
but that it is not what Sun Tzŭ meant is conclusively proved by his
subsequent remarks about treating the converted spy generously (§ 21
sqq.). Ho Shih notes three occasions on which converted spies were used
with conspicuous success: (1) by T’ien Tan in his defence of Chi-mo
(see _supra_, p. 90); (2) by Chao She on his march to O-yu (see p. 57);
and by the wily Fan Chu in 260 B.C., when Lien P’o was conducting a
defensive campaign against Ch’in. The King of Chao strongly disapproved
of Lien P’o’s cautious and dilatory methods, which had been unable to
avert a series of minor disasters, and therefore lent a ready ear to
the reports of his spies, who had secretly gone over to the enemy and
were already in Fan Chu’s pay. They said: "The only thing which causes
Ch’in anxiety is lest Chao Kua should be made general. Lien P’o they
consider an easy opponent, who is sure to be vanquished in the long
run." Now this Chao Kua was a son of the famous Chao She. From his
boyhood, he had been wholly engrossed in the study of war and military
matters, until at last he came to believe that there was no commander
in the whole Empire who could stand against him. His father was much
disquieted by this overweening conceit, and the flippancy with which he
spoke of such a serious thing as war, and solemnly declared that if
ever Kua was appointed general, he would bring ruin on the armies of
Chao. This was the man who, in spite of earnest protests from his own
mother and the veteran statesman Lin Hsiang-ju, was now sent to succeed
Lien P’o. Needless to say, he proved no match for the redoubtable Po
Ch’i and the great military power of Ch’in. He fell into a trap by
which his army was divided into two and his communications cut; and
after a desperate resistance lasting 46 days, during which the famished
soldiers devoured one another, he was himself killed by an arrow, and
his whole force, amounting, it is said, to 400,000 men, ruthlessly put
to the sword.]