406 MILITARY REFORM
cern for calamity and happiness. When they were living at home, they shared
he same joys, and when they were going around [together], thcy kncw of one
another's activities.
For this reason, during night battles they would hear the sounds of their
voices, and it was sufficient to prevent their being confused. During daytime
battles, thcy could see onc another, and it was sufficient to I enable them] to
recognize one another. Their joy was such that it was enough for them to die
for one another. For this reason, they were strong on defense and victorious on
the attack. Trained like this, a force of thirty thousand men in crossing the land
was used to chastise those who did not obey [lit. "lacked the proper way"] and
to protect the Chou house. Eventually they [the Ch'i] became the hegemon of
the world)3Ch'iu Chlin, Yu's favorite Ming dynasty commentator, also praised the advan-
tages of the village militia. It was not necessary to recruit more men than needed
for service because sons could take the place of their fathers who might die in
battle. Since the militia fed themselves from their own crops, there were no costs
in providing them with salaries. And because they were disbanded after the fight-
ing was over, there was no need to keep them stationed in garrisons, and no polit-
ical threat from commanders who might have control over them and use them
to seize power.34
The Han Military Service SystemThe conventional evaluation of the nature of the Former Han dynasty military
service system differed considerably from the generally negative view of the
Han land tenure system. While the twin evils of private property and landlordism
were reputed to have made their appearance in the Han, the Han military ser-
vice system was supposed to have preserved the Chou militia ideal and carried
it over into the period of centralized, bureaucratic empire. Yu's account of the
Han military system repeats the well-known description of its division into cap-
ital and local forces, the main feature of which was that service was both uni-
versal and rotating. The imperial or palace guards (Southern Army or Nan-chiin)
and capital guards (Northern Army or Pei-chiin) were staffed by peasants
recruited from the countryside and the capital provinces, respectively, and both
capital guards and frontier defenders rotated on and off duty, and when off duty
the rotating soldiers would return to their farms.3S
Even though the system of tours or shifts of duty appears to have been a nec-
essary feature of universal service, peasants obligated supposedly for their annual
quota of a month's duty in the capital guards or three days on the frontier could
buy substitutes with cash payments. Ma Tuan-lin criticized the system because
it meant that one hired soldier would end up substituting for a hundred men,
leaving the garrisons bereft of troopS.3^6 Obviously Yu had found a precedent for