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Need for reference, POV, &c.

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(天亡我也！) translated as "Heaven has annihilated me!" literally translates as "Today I die". A citation would clear this up. 18:43, 2 January 2010. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.30.205.20 (talk) This article is in serious need of references - there are some POV statements, and some confusing points (Jin defending the Huai river but the battle took place at the Fei river, smaller force requests a stand-up battle instead of waiting and attacking a crossing force, no reason for panic during an ordered retreat). I've added the milhist battle box based on the article content, and tagged facts for citation - someone want to fact check in the Cambridge histories? -- Medains 08:45, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note: the article unambiguously states that the Fei River, which no longer exists, flowed near the Huai River. There's no conflict between defending the Huai River and the battle occurring at the Fei River. --Nlu (talk) 09:28, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Had the Qin already crossed the Huai, or had the Jin crossed the Huai in order to provide themselves with fighting space and a defensive line to fall back to? -- Medains 10:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That is not clear from existing sources, since it is not clear whether the Fei River was north or south of the Huai. --Nlu (talk) 16:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It was the Qin people who crossed the Huai River, and the main battlefield was Fei Shui and Luo Jian, on the south bank of the Huai River, which is today's Shou County, Anhui Province. 李双能 (talk) 04:26, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Another note: virtually all of the {{fact}} tags referred to factual statements that could be found within volume 105 of the Zizhi Tongjian (s:zh:資治通鑑:第105卷). I don't know if you'd consider that sufficient verification. The Cambridge histories in all likelihood would not be able to provide much help, since they don't go to the level of detail that Chinese language sources do. As I am currently busy with other projects, I won't be able to do full citations on these. Someone else more interested in military history would have to do it. --Nlu (talk) 09:32, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This wasn't referenced at all when I added them. Each of those items IMO needs a direct reference via harvard referencing or footnote style - see Wikipedia:Citing_sources. -- Medains 10:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That part is understood, but it's beyond my time right now. Basically, a direct reference to volume 105 should be sufficient, in my opinion; this seems like something that someone with a bot can do, and I don't have one. --Nlu (talk) 16:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
One more thought: can you point out which statements you consider POV, so that they can be revised accordingly? --Nlu (talk) 09:34, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • "believed to have flowed" by who?
  • "considered to be one of the most significant battles" is POV
  • "vigorous leader of tremendous drive and ambition" is POV - could need references
  • "By 381, he had united" suggests a united nation, whereas his army had some big issues with its makeup of conquered peoples.
  • Xie An's abilities are POV
  • "never regain its power and glory" is POV
These could be sorted mostly by referencing, since then it's clear that they are POV from the reference source. -- Medains 10:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'll add references for these, however. --Nlu (talk) 16:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Done (as far as these statements are concerned), changing, in particular, "united" to "conquered" and adding citations. Please take a look. --Nlu (talk) 16:36, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Great progress, would be great if an English translation of those texts could be got hold of (other than babelfishing the chinese text) :) I could add an English-Language source - one of the Osprey Publishing short texts on the time period has a short account of the battle, but I'm not sure about the accuracy of the account - there's probably some other references in there that I could dig out, but I don't have the time to chase down other English texts. When I have access to it, I'll add the reference and the references that it cites if you have time to chase them? -- Medains 12:40, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've added information from the Osprey book - it references the Cambridge history, Fairbank's "Chinese Ways in Warfare", none of the other references cover the period of the battle. Definately need more English sources. -- Medains 08:02, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can you reference the change to the quote and that Zhu Xu personally raised the cry that caused the route? The changes made in these statements now appear to be referenced from the Osprey source, when the quote appears differently there and it has no reference to Zhu Xu. -- Medains 11:38, 30 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Actually, most of the information in this page were common knowledge found in the high school history text books in China, actual references are mainly from Chapters 113-114 in the Book of Jin (晋书) and chapters 104-105 in ZizhiTongjian (资治通鉴), somebody just need to add the citations (pretty annoying). I think wikisource has these books in Chinese and the english translations can be found on the net easily. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.201.115.210 (talk) 21:05, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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There are several points that need to be added

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Before the outbreak of the Battle of Feishui, in the face of the fierce offensive of Former Qin, the Eastern Jin Dynasty suffered repeated defeats and lost Sichuan, Nanyang, and land north of the Huai River. The Battle of Water and Water was the main battlefield of the Qin-Jin War at that time, and there were also fierce battles on the Western Front. Former Qin sent a total of 1.12 million troops, while the Eastern Jin Dynasty sent only 200,000 troops, most of them on the western front, although the eastern front was the main force of the Qin army.

At that time, the commander of the western front of the Eastern Jin Dynasty was Huan Chong, who heard that the main forces of Former Qin were on the eastern front, and planned to transfer troops to reinforce the eastern front, but Xie An refused, Xie An asked Huan Chong to be in charge of the western front, and he could deal with the affairs of the eastern front himself. Despite this, Huan Chong was still apprehensive in his heart, saying: "Huaxia is really going to be ruled by the Hu people. ”

Before the outbreak of the war, the senior generals in the Eastern Jin Dynasty thought that they would lose, but in the end, they miraculously won under the command of Xie Xuan, which can be called a miracle in military history. 李双能 (talk) 04:37, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Having some idea of the history between the Xie and Huan families leading up to this point, I'm not surprised Xie Xuan didn't want to share command with Huan Chong.
And while the Jin victory here was certainly important, I'm not sure we should call it miraculous. We shouldn't trust too closely the troop estimates carried by the early sources, particularly the Jin Shu (we already have a footnote from a modern historian who calls the numbers "greatly exaggerated"). It was pretty common practice back in the day to overcount by a large margin the number of opposing troops, to make one's own victory seem that much more outstanding, or to make one's own defeat sound more reasonable. I remember reading that when dealing with bandits and brigands, it was common to inflate the number of people captured or killed by a factor of ten. And it went both ways too: prior to military engagement, leaders on opposing sides would state they had way more troops at their disposal than in reality, in order to convince cities or entire polities to submit without a fight.
A second thing is that from how all the records state, the call went up that the Qin army had been defeated, and repeating it enough made it so. Early armies rarely had great discipline, and it was often the charisma and strictness of their own leaders that kept them on the team at all. People were press-ganged, conscripted as corvée, or had joined for wages, food, and a chance at plunder. Here's this huge mass of men far from their homes, fearful for their lives, and they hear the that they've lost and are retreating? Not much reason to keep fighting, especially when their opponents had actual training and experience and morale.
A third problem is actually how big the force was. Even though it almost definitely wasn't a million, it was certainly a very significant crowd, and when you have that many poorly disciplined troops all in the same place at the same time they get in each other's way more than they harrass the enemy forces. It's extremely difficult to perform an organised falling-back manoeuvre in a huge crowd without something going awry or being misinterpreted. There's a whole discursus in Imperial Warlord, 2010, by Rafe de Crespigny that talks about all these issues in the context of premodern warfare. It's a biography of Cao Cao, so it's situated close to two hundred years previous, but it almost all still holds for this timeframe. It's published by Brill, so if you have Wikipedia Library access you can read the whole thing online for free. The bit on period warfare is about half a chapter somewhere in the middle of the book (right before Guandu, if I recall correctly).
Having said all that, I do think a bit more of the background could be touched on in this article instead of just nearby articles. Do you have a particular source or sources you'd like to cite to include the information you proposed? I particularly think it would be a great idea to highlight how desperate the Jin position seemed before the battle, with all those cities upstream having been conquered, and mention the clan dynamics at play between Huan Chong and Xie Xuan. Folly Mox (talk) 03:28, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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