Commander-in-chief of the New and Marquis of Chengdu. He led the mobilisation of a million, refused good advice twice under Kunyang, and rode back to Luoyang with a few thousand men.
An army of a million, wherever it passes, should wipe everything out. Now we take this city, march on through blood, singing ahead and singing behind — is that not pleasant?Hanshu, juan 99 lower — his answer under Kunyang when Yan You told him to leave one side of the ring open
Appears in
Relations
- Wang Mang commander — He was the New's Commander-in-chief and Marquis of Chengdu, and he led the mobilisation the book calls a million, raised after two armies had already been lost in the east.
- Yan You colleagues — The one sound piece of advice he received in the field came from his own subordinate, and he refused it twice: do not press a cornered foe, open a way out for a city under encirclement.
Myth vs record
Wang Yi's host was a million strong and was smashed by a handful at Kunyang.
The million is the court's own mobilisation figure in the Book of the Han, and the same book says four hundred and twenty thousand reached Luoyang; the Book of the Later Han keeps both numbers and adds that when Mang's troops came to the walls they were nearly a hundred thousand, with eight or nine thousand in the city, a thousand and odd in the relieving column and three thousand pushed in beside the water. No early text has ten thousand against a million. What the records do credit is a strike on a stationary ring: the camps were ordered not to move while their field commander fought with ten thousand, so the mass could not help one another, and then the storm came. He rode back to Luoyang with a few thousand men.