Person
Do Thu
The Qin commandant who led the army into the Yue lands. The Huainanzi says the Yue killed him in a night attack; the Qin annals never name him once.
At a glance
- Also known as
- The Han texts call him Commandant Do Thu, the rank joined to the name; the notes to the Complete Annals call him the colonel Do Thu12
- Role
- The Qin commandant who led the attack on the Hundred Yue in the south. The Huainanzi has him raise five hundred thousand men in five armies — one to block the ridge at Dam Thanh, one to hold the pass at Cuu Nghi, one to sit in the city of Phien Ngung, one to guard the border at Nam Da, one to hold the river at Du Can — then three years without unfastening their armour or letting a crossbow go slack; Nghiem An's memorial instead has him lead tower-ship troops, that is a river navy, and gives no troop figure at all13
- End
- Only one text says he was killed: the Huainanzi has the Yue fall on the Qin by night, break them utterly, kill Commandant Do Thu, and bodies lie and blood run by the hundreds of thousands — the original does not say whose bodies those were. Luu An's memorial in the Han shu and Nghiem An's memorial in the Records of the Grand Historian both say only that the Qin army was heavily beaten, not that he was killed143
- Earliest record
- His name is in the Records of the Grand Historian, but not in the annals and not in Sima Qian's own voice: it stands in Nghiem An's memorial to Emperor Wu of Han against making war, copied into the book whole at book 112. The annals of that same history give the taking of the south one sentence, and there is no Do Thu in it35
Life
The old chronicles say
The text that gives him a force, a deployment and a death is the Huainanzi — put together by retainers of Luu An, prince of Huainan, presented to the Han emperor around 139 BC, some seventy or eighty years after the Qin had already fallen, and written to argue an emperor out of war in the south. In that same passage the man who killed him has no name: the original says only that the Yue set up among themselves one outstanding and able as general, a phrase about ability rather than a personal name. The Qin commander carries rank and name; the man who led the night attack is left blank.1
Two Han men, both urging their ruler not to fight in the south, both telling of a Qin defeat in the Yue lands, tell it differently exactly where it matters. Nghiem An gives no troop figure at all, puts the quagmire at more than ten years rather than three, says plainly that these were tower-ship troops, and does not say he was killed — only that the Qin army was heavily beaten. The memorial Luu An signed and handed to his emperor opens with five words, your servant has heard the elders say, and then tells a war with no five hundred thousand, no five armies, no three years in armour, and no death of Do Thu.34
How later ages remembered
The notes to the Le dynasty national history reproduce the Chinese story almost word for word: the Yue all fled into the forests, none would let themselves be used by the Qin, they quietly set capable men over them as generals, attacked the Qin, and killed the colonel Do Thu. Yet that same history, when it carries the figure of five hundred thousand, does not attach it to his army: it attaches it to the convict troops that Nham Ngao and Trieu Da led over to garrison the Five Ranges after the three commanderies were established. One number, three texts, three different places to put it.2
Mentioned in
Sources for this page
Every row of the profile and every passage below points to one of these documents. How we choose and check sources