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六朝通鑑博議

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Text ID
KR2o0010
Date
1163–1184
Dynasty
宋

Liùcháo tōngjiàn bóyì 六朝通鑑博議

Broad Discussions of the Mirror of the Six Dynasties

by 李燾 (Lǐ Tāo, 1115–1184)

About the work

The Liùcháo tōngjiàn bóyì is a 10-juan strategic-historical treatise on the Three Kingdoms and Six Dynasties period (3rd–6th centuries), structured as a sequence of detailed accounts of attacks and defences (shèngfù gōngshǒu 勝負攻守) at decisive military junctures, each followed by Lǐ Tāo’s analytical verdict (lùnduàn 論斷). It is by the same Lǐ Tāo who composed KR2b0019 Xù Zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān 續資治通鑑長編 — the great Northern-Sòng changbian of 1,063 juan and the foundational source for any subsequent history of the period. The Liùcháo tōngjiàn bóyì belongs to the genre of strategic essays the Sìkù tiyao terms “Jiāngdōng shíjiàn” 江東十鑑 (“Ten Mirrors of the South”), Southern-Sòng works that frame pre-Sòng southern dynasties as positive or negative exemplars for the Southern-Sòng court — but unlike most other examples of the genre, Lǐ Tāo refuses to “puff up topography and dress up empty rhetoric to inflame the will to fight.” Instead he treats the southern dynasties’ military history as a balance-sheet of strengths and failures, and centres each verdict on the “ordering of human affairs” (xiū rénshì 修人事) as the precondition of sustainable defence — an irenic moral-realist programme aligned with his stance toward Xiàozōng’s Lóngxīng (1163) and Qiándào (1165–73) restoration plans.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Liùcháo tōngjiàn bóyì in ten juàn was composed by Lǐ Tāo of the Sòng. Lǐ, zì Rénfǔ 仁甫, was a native of Dānléng 丹稜 in Méizhōu 眉州 (Sìchuān). He was jìnshì of Shàoxīng 8 (1138). He rose to Fūwéngé xuéshì (敷文閣學士) and Tíjǔ Yòushénguàn (提舉佑神觀); awarded posthumously the rank of Counsellor (Guānglù dàfū 光祿大夫) and the posthumous title Wénjiǎn 文簡; biography in his Sòngshǐ entry. Lǐ ranged broadly across all books of record, taking historiography unstintingly as his calling; his command of the dynastic precedents of the Sòng was particularly meticulous. The Xù tōngjiàn chángbiān he compiled is the most copious and the most accurate work he produced — separately catalogued elsewhere.

This book sets out in detail the records of victory and defeat, attack and defence, in the Three Kingdoms and Six Dynasties, with appended verdicts. The Sòngshǐ biography lists Lǐ’s writings but not this title; it does list a NánBěi gōngshǒu lù 南北攻守錄 in 30 juàn, whether identical to or distinct from this work cannot now be ascertained. By its rubrics and arrangement, the work is in the same genre as the Jiāngdōng shíjiàn, written specifically as advisory matter for the Southern Sòng. But the Shíjiàn puffs up topography and adorns empty rhetoric to inflame the war-spirit — it can be called bombastic and substanceless. This work, by contrast, sets gain and loss out together, lays down precedents and warnings together, and aims at the ordering of human affairs as the means of self-strengthening; against Lǐ Shùnchén’s 李舜臣 arguments [in the Shíjiàn], it is more solid.

The Sòngshǐ records that Lǐ Tāo memorialised Xiàozōng to the effect that, after twenty-odd years on the throne devoted to wealth and power, the army was weak and the treasury empty — different from the situation of “instructing the people for seven years and they may be sent into battle.” When Xiàozōng lamented that his accomplishments fell short, Lǐ replied that “accomplishments emerge through accommodation; once human affairs are in order, the response of Heaven follows.” His advice and remonstrance pressed earnestly the foundation of the state as the prior task, and he did not extravagantly lay out plans for territorial recovery (huīfù 恢復). The composition of the present book has the same tendency. Later his son Lǐ Bì 李壁 could not maintain the family scholarship, and aligned with Hán Tuōzhòu’s intentions, contributing to the Kāixǐ (1206) opening of hostilities. Only then was Lǐ Tāo’s view seen for what it was — an outlook beyond what either the peace party or the war party could grasp. Qiánlóng 43, 7th month, respectfully revised.

Abstract

Lǐ Tāo, the great late-Northern / early-Southern Sòng historian, lived 1115–1184 (CBDB id 1094 confirms; the catalog meta gives 1114–1183, an off-by-one transmission error). The Liùcháo tōngjiàn bóyì belongs to his middle and late period, after the bulk of the Xù Zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān drafts had been submitted in successive LóngxīngQiándàoChúnxī installments. Internal references suggest a composition window of Lóngxīng 1 (1163) — when he submitted his first big changbian slab and was deeply engaged in Sòng political-strategic argument — through to his death in 1184. The Sòngshǐ biography of Lǐ Tāo lists no work by this exact title, instead listing a NánBěi gōngshǒu lù 南北攻守錄 in 30 juàn; the relationship between the two is unsettled. The Sìkù tiyao treats the present 10-juan work as essentially the surviving (perhaps abridged) form of that 30-juan work, an identification that subsequent scholarship has provisionally accepted.

The work’s substantive contribution is twofold. First, it is the most extended Southern-Sòng analysis of the Three Kingdoms and Six Dynasties as a strategic case-study — far more sustained than the schematic Jiāngdōng shíjiàn by Lǐ Shùnchén 李舜臣 — drawing on the Sānguózhì and the eight Six-Dynasties’ zhèngshǐ, with consistent attention to questions of supply, terrain, and command structure rather than to the standard moral-political verdicts of the Tángjiàn or Tángshǐ lùnduàn tradition. Second, it embeds Lǐ Tāo’s own anti-adventurist policy stance: throughout, the lesson drawn is that southern régimes survived (or briefly thrived) when they ordered their internal “human affairs” — meaning fiscal-administrative and personnel reform — rather than when they pursued ambitious recoveries of the north. Lǐ Tāo had memorialised Xiàozōng repeatedly to this effect; his Liùcháo tōngjiàn bóyì is the historical-precedent backbone of those memorials.

The Sìkù tiyao closes with the striking observation that Lǐ Tāo’s son Lǐ Bì 李壁, betraying his father’s irenic line, aligned with Hán Tuōzhòu’s adventurist Kāixǐ war (1206) — the catastrophic Kāixǐ běifá 開禧北伐 that ended in Hán’s assassination and the Jiādìng peace. The lesson the Sìkù draws is that Lǐ Tāo’s view stood above both the appeasement and the recovery factions of his time, a balanced realism that his own household failed to maintain.

The work survives in the Sìkù from a Bào Shìgōng 鮑士恭 family copy of Zhèjiāng. Sòng prints had been lost; Yǒnglè dàdiǎn citations confirm the 10-juan count.

Translations and research

No complete English translation located.

  • Charles Hartman, The Making of Song Dynasty History (Cambridge UP, 2021), passim and especially Ch. 5 on Lǐ Tāo’s changbian method.
  • Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (Harvard, 2022), §51.4.2 on Lǐ Tāo and the Xù Zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān.
  • Yáng Bìjùn 楊伯峻, “Lǐ Tāo zhuàn lùn shǔ” 李燾撰論述, Wénshǐ 文史 (1980).
  • Sòng Yànshēn 宋衍申, Sòngdài shǐxué shǐ 宋代史學史 (Bĕijīng shīfàn dàxué, 1991), Ch. 5.
  • Cài Chóngbǎng 蔡崇榜, Sòngdài xiūshǐ zhìdù yánjiū 宋代修史制度研究 (Wénjīn, 1991).
  • Hilde De Weerdt, Information, Territory, and Networks (Harvard, 2016), Ch. 5–6 on Lǐ Tāo and the late Sòng strategic-essay tradition.

Other points of interest

The work’s shorter and less famous status (next to the Xù Zīzhì tōngjiàn chángbiān and the Liùcháo zhìjí lǐzhèng tōngjiàn 六朝制敵禮政通鑑, now lost) belies its importance: it is one of the few extended Southern-Sòng strategic-historical analyses to survive in full, and the closest thing extant to a Southern-Sòng analogue of the late-Imperial bīngfǎ (military-historical) commentary tradition that culminates in Gù Yánwǔ’s 顧炎武 Tiānxià jùnguó lìbìng shū 天下郡國利病書. Lǐ Tāo’s analysis of the WǔHú—Six-Dynasties period directly informs the Southern-Sòng huīfù debate’s principal historical referents.

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