actually carried out by him in conjunction with Wu Yuan, [34] Po
P`ei and Fu Kai?
It is obvious that any attempt to reconstruct even the
outline of Sun Tzu's life must be based almost wholly on
conjecture. With this necessary proviso, I should say that he
probably entered the service of Wu about the time of Ho Lu's
accession, and gathered experience, though only in the capacity
of a subordinate officer, during the intense military activity
which marked the first half of the prince's reign. [35] If he
rose to be a general at all, he certainly was never on an equal
footing with the three above mentioned. He was doubtless present
at the investment and occupation of Ying, and witnessed Wu's
sudden collapse in the following year. Yueh's attack at this
critical juncture, when her rival was embarrassed on every side,
seems to have convinced him that this upstart kingdom was the
great enemy against whom every effort would henceforth have to be
directed. Sun Wu was thus a well-seasoned warrior when he sat
down to write his famous book, which according to my reckoning
must have appeared towards the end, rather than the beginning of
Ho Lu's reign. The story of the women may possibly have grown
out of some real incident occurring about the same time. As we
hear no more of Sun Wu after this from any source, he is hardly
likely to have survived his patron or to have taken part in the
death-struggle with Yueh, which began with the disaster at Tsui-
li.
If these inferences are approximately correct, there is a
certain irony in the fate which decreed that China's most
illustrious man of peace should be contemporary with her greatest
writer on war.