deception, and allowing our own spies to know of them and report them
to the enemy.
[Tu Yu gives the best exposition of the meaning: "We ostentatiously do
things calculated to deceive our own spies, who must be led to believe
that they have been unwittingly disclosed. Then, when these spies are
captured in the enemy’s lines, they will make an entirely false report,
and the enemy will take measures accordingly, only to find that we do
something quite different. The spies will thereupon be put to death."
As an example of doomed spies, Ho Shih mentions the prisoners released
by Pan Ch’ao in his campaign against Yarkand. (See p. 132.) He also
refers to T’ang Chien, who in 630 A.D. was sent by T’ai Tsung to lull
the Turkish Kahn Chieh-li into fancied security, until Li Ching was
able to deliver a crushing blow against him. Chang Yu says that the
Turks revenged themselves by killing T’ang Chien, but this is a
mistake, for we read in both the old and the New T’ang History (ch. 58,
fol. 2 and ch. 89, fol. 8 respectively) that he escaped and lived on
until 656. Li I-chi played a somewhat similar part in 203 B.C., when
sent by the King of Han to open peaceful negotiations with Ch’i. He has
certainly more claim to be described a "doomed spy", for the king of
Ch’i, being subsequently attacked without warning by Han Hsin, and
infuriated by what he considered the treachery of Li I-chi, ordered the
unfortunate envoy to be boiled alive.]