Battle of Wupingshanyue 吳平山越之戰

According to the biography of Zhuge Ke in the Records, the mountains of Danyang were rugged and its people bold and hardy, so that earlier campaigns had obtained only the commoners of the outer counties and had failed to capture all of those living deep in the remote areas. Zhuge Ke repeatedly asked to take office himself and bring them out, saying that in three years he could obtain 40,000 armored soldiers. Records, Wu 19 §6

Many said it would be difficult. Danyang bordered four commanderies, Wu Commandery, Kuaiji, Xindu and Poyang, measuring several thousand li around with mountains and valleys ten thousand layers deep, and the people living in its depths had never entered a city or faced an official. They forged their own armor and weapons from the copper and iron mined in the mountains, swarmed in like bees when they fought and scattered like birds when defeated, and had never been brought under control since ancient times. His father Zhuge Jin, too, sighed, "If Ke does not greatly raise up our house, he will bring our clan to utter destruction." Records, Wu 19 §6–8

When Zhuge Ke insisted that he would surely win, Sun Quan made him General Who Pacifies Yue, concurrently Administrator of Danyang, and gave him ceremonial halberds and three hundred armed cavalry. The Biography of the Lord of Wu records this appointment as an event of the 8th month, autumn, of the 3rd year of Jiahe (234). Sun Quan had him return home in full ceremonial array to the sound of drum and wind music; he was then thirty-two. Records, Wu 19 §8Records, Wu 2 §78

On taking up his post, Zhuge Ke ordered the chief officials of the cities belonging to the four commanderies each to guard their borders and set up units, and had all the commoners who accepted civilizing rule gather and live in garrisoned settlements. He divided his generals and deployed troops in the deep and rugged places, merely repairing their palisades and never crossing blades, and each time the crops were about to ripen he let loose his troops to cut them down. With the old grain exhausted, nothing harvested from the new fields, and the commoners gathered in the settlements so that there was nothing to plunder, the mountain people starved and gradually came out to surrender. Records, Wu 19 §8–9

Zhuge Ke ordered that the mountain people who came out should not be held under suspicion but should all be moved to the outer counties. When Hu Kang, Chief of Jiuyang, bound and sent in Zhou Yi (周遺), who had long been a wicked man, Zhuge Ke beheaded Hu Kang for disobeying his orders and displayed his body. Realizing that the officials wanted only to bring them out, the people came out with old and young holding hands, and within a year the numbers matched the original plan. Zhuge Ke took 10,000 men under his own command and distributed the rest to his generals. Records, Wu 19 §9–10

Sun Quan sent the Supervisor of the Masters of Writing Xue Zong to reward the troops, and Xue Zong sent a written message in praise, saying that the Shanyue, relying on their rugged terrain, had refused to submit for generations, but that this time a hundred thousand soldiers had been presented without a drop of blood on a blade. Zhuge Ke became General Who Overawes the North and was enfeoffed as Marquis of a District. The Biography of the Lord of Wu records that in the 6th year of Jiahe (237) Zhuge Ke completed the pacification of the Shanyue and garrisoned Lujiang to the north, and the biography of Zhuge Ke continues that he led his followers to farm military colonies at Wankou, from where he raided Shu County and brought back its people. Records, Wu 19 §11 · 14Records, Wu 2 §86