Sanjiang, situated where three rivers converge in the Silver Pit hills, is both a strategic stronghold and a center of authority for the Man rulers in the account of Kong Ming’s southern campaign. Its fall to a ramp-building stratagem costs King Duosi his life and most of his troops, while the surrounding campaign continues through further confrontations with Meng Huo’s allies and the defenses of the Wugu tribe.

Setting and Importance

The town stands at a point where three rivers meet, in the Silver Pit hills. The surrounding area is presented as the homeland of the Man rulers, and Sanjiang holds their principal ancestral temple. The site therefore carries both military and cultural importance: it is a defensible town, but also a focal place of local authority and ritual.

The account describes the temple as a place for animal sacrifices to family spirits and also for human sacrifice, including captives from Shu. It situates the town within a society whose practices are presented through a series of contrasts with the institutions familiar to the imperial world: illness is handled by shamans rather than doctors, courts are absent, and markets rely on barter. These details make Sanjiang more than a name on a campaign route; they frame it as the center of a distinct political and social order as the Shu army advances into the region.

The Siege and Capture

When Kong Ming’s army reaches Sanjiang, he sends Wei Yan and Zhao Zilong to investigate what appears to be a vulnerable part of the defenses. The reconnaissance meets a sudden barrage of poisoned arrows, forcing the party to withdraw. The defenders take the retreat as evidence of an early victory and relax their vigilance. The apparent weakness has thus served Kong Ming’s purpose by drawing the enemy into confidence.

Five days later, Kong Ming attacks using an improvised method of overcoming the walls. He orders his army to fill their coats with earth, charge toward the city, and empty the earth as they retreat. Repeated charges build a ramp high enough for Shu soldiers to reach the top of the walls and enter the town. The defenders’ advantage in the fortifications is answered not by a direct assault alone but by turning the army’s repeated movement into a means of changing the terrain.

Sanjiang falls, King Duosi is killed, and most of the opposing troops are destroyed. The capture clears a major obstacle for the Shu forces, but it does not end Meng Huo’s resistance. Meng Huo is away in a valley when he learns that the town has fallen; his wife, Lady Zhurong, then takes a force of fifty thousand men into battle. She captures the Shu commanders Zhang Ni and Ma Zhong, making the campaign’s immediate aftermath a new contest over prisoners and military advantage rather than a settled peace.

The Campaign After the Fall

Kong Ming treats Lady Zhurong with respect, and an exchange returns her for Zhang Ni and Ma Zhong. The episode establishes that the capture of Sanjiang changes control of the town without extinguishing resistance in the surrounding region. Meng Huo continues to seek support, and the conflict expands from the defense of a city to alliances with groups whose military resources present different challenges.

Among those challenges is the Wugu tribe’s rattan armor. Its fighters join Meng Huo, and their armor proves impervious to arrows and swords; it can also float, allowing them to cross rivers. The Shu army’s inability to penetrate it produces a retreat. Sanjiang’s position among converging waterways and the wider campaign’s reliance on river crossings thus recur as practical military concerns, even after the town itself has been taken.

Kong Ming responds to the Wugu challenge with a plan involving a succession of apparently successful attacks and retreats. Wei Yan is instructed to abandon camps repeatedly, while Zhao Zilong is assigned to control the end of the valley leading to Sanjiang. Zhang Ni and Ma Zhong also receive a role in the scheme, joined by surrendered Man soldiers. These preparations show Sanjiang continuing to function as a landmark within the campaign’s military geography: the town’s capture is one stage in a wider effort to secure routes and overcome opposition, not the end of the struggle.

Narrative Significance

Sanjiang’s story turns on the difference between possessing a strong position and being able to hold it against an opponent who changes the terms of the contest. Its defenders initially benefit from the town’s walls and the effectiveness of their arrows; Kong Ming’s army answers with earth, labor, and a plan that transforms repeated charges into a ramp. The episode makes terrain an active element of strategy: the siege is won by reshaping the obstacle rather than merely attacking it.

The town’s capture also supplies a clear reversal in the southern campaign. It breaks King Duosi’s control and places the Shu forces within a region organized around the Man rulers’ ancestral center, yet Meng Huo’s continuing resistance and the Wugu alliance keep the victory provisional. Sanjiang therefore marks both an achieved conquest and a threshold into further conflict, linking the fall of one stronghold to the campaign’s continuing tests of planning, adaptation, and control of the surrounding landscape.