centuries; his opponent to the west had tofind another source of military
power. While it is clear that local Chinese power holders, and perhaps
other landlords of non-Chinese culture, maintained some level of security
forces or militias, the amount of participation of those forces in the
Western Wei army is less certain. Local security forces or ordinary farmers
were brought into the Western Wei army in the middle of the sixth century
out of sheer necessity. Since the Western Wei–Northern Zhou army was
the foundation of what would become the Sui and then Tang imperial
army, the origin of these infantry forces has been the subject of consider-
able academic interest.
Yuwen Tai, Gao Huan’s Western Wei opponent, found himself cut off
from the steppe manpower that supplied the Eastern Wei. Where the
Eastern Wei had used its Chinese subjects in the military in a very limited
fashion, the Western Wei was forced to recruit its Chinese subjects in large
numbers. Yuwen Tai, like Gao Huan, drew upon the preexisting local
militias to bolster his forces. But the Western Wei could neither limit the
number of Chinese troops it recruited nor accept that they would play a
subordinate role in anyfighting. The Western Wei government was forced
to engage in the tricky process of drawing in local strongmen, who often
differed very little from bandits, because they were accomplished martial
artists and military leaders, giving them official sanction tofight and also
somehow gaining control over them.
Initially, the main Western Wei method for incorporating bands of strong-
men or local leaders was to invest them with official government titles or
positions. This incorporated them within the regular hierarchical command
structure, either civil or military, and gave them a direct stake in maintaining
the power of the government. In some cases this was simply a matter of
recognizing the existing local power structure; an individual or head of a
powerful family who had established local control by force was made part of
the government. Martial skill thus led directly to political power. A man who
could recruitfighters was obviously someone worth employing.
A middle rank of men trusted by the Western Wei rulers on the one
hand, and able to recruit and gain the trust of local strongmen on the
other, were carefully selected to be in charge of these new forces. Perhaps
just as important, this forged political ties between local Chinese society
and the steppe rulers of the Western Wei. These initial forays into co-
opting the martial power of the Chinese may or may not have contributed
directly to the creation of the“territorial soldiery”orfubing, the military
system that was so important to the Sui and early Tang dynasties. In 550 ,
the Twenty-four Armies arefirst mentioned, with an initial strength of
90 The Six Dynasties