The submission of the Nanman tribes to Shu Han

The submission of the Nanman tribes to Shu Han is the culmination of Kong Ming’s southern campaign and a turning point from military resistance to political accommodation. After seven captures and releases, Meng Huo accepts Kong Ming’s mercy as an act of morality and righteousness, submits with his followers, and is appointed ruler over the lands conquered by Shu. The episode makes submission a negotiated settlement rather than the annihilation Kong Ming dreads, though the campaign’s framing also reveals the unequal power through which the tribes are described and governed.

Background and Stakes

The southern settlement belongs to a wider contest over the authority and future of the fractured Han world. In Kong Ming’s strategic account to Xuande, Cao Cao is too powerful to oppose directly: he commands a vast army and controls the emperor. Sun Quan, by contrast, has the support of the people south of the river and should be treated as a potential ally. Kong Ming identifies Jingzhou as the territory whose future will be decisive, while the later struggle in the south shows Shu’s effort to secure its own position and rear. For Xuande, the campaign is part of restoring order and establishing a government that can claim the people’s support; for the southern leaders, it means resisting an army advancing into their lands.

The political environment is not limited to the Man tribes. In Hanzhong, Zhang Lu maintains a religious community governed through libationers rather than ordinary officials. Its practices include public provision of rice and meat for the poor, rules against taking more than one honestly needs, and a system of pardons followed by punishment. After Cao Cao’s victories in the west alarm Zhang Lu, his adviser Yan Pu urges him to take the forty-one departments of the western Riverlands, citing their population, grain, natural defenses, and the weakness of Liu Zhang. These accounts establish the campaign’s broader setting: local systems of rule and regional ambitions confront the expanding military reach of larger states.

Resistance and the Campaign’s Course

Meng Huo responds to the quelling of the governors’ revolt by calling the chieftains of three valleys together to unite against the Shu invasion. Each brings about fifty thousand men. Jinhuansanjie takes the central position, Dongtuna the left, and Ahuinan the right. Kong Ming manipulates the loyalties of his experienced commanders Zhao Zilong and Wei Yan by seeming to dismiss them as too old and unfamiliar with the territory, appointing Wang Ping and Ma Zhong to lead the main forces instead. The two older commanders, disgruntled but resourceful, gather intelligence from local captives and devise their own attack. At night, they lead five thousand picked fighters against Jinhuansanjie’s camp; Zhao Zilong kills the chieftain, the Man troops scatter, and the attackers divide to strike the other camps.

The resistance continues through repeated reversals, rather than ending with that defeat. By the time Meng Huo and his allies return to the Silver Pit hills, their lands have been devastated. They gather the remaining thousand or so men and seek help from King Mulu of the Bana valley, whose reputation rests on magical power and command over dangerous animals. The account locates the Man rulers’ ancestral temple at Sanjiang, where animal and human sacrifices are performed. It also describes a society in which shamans treat illness, crimes are punished by immediate execution, marriage follows individual choice, food depends on the rain, and markets operate through barter. These details present the tribes as culturally distinct from the Shu court, but they also come through an external narrative gaze that defines the people chiefly by customs and contrast.

At Sanjiang, an apparent weakness in the defenses draws Zhao Zilong and Wei Yan’s reconnaissance party into a storm of poisoned arrows. The tribesmen believe they have won an early victory and relax their guard; Kong Ming has anticipated that reaction. Later, the battle against Wutugu’s rattan-armored army is settled by fire. Kong Ming explains how Wei Yan lured the enemy into a valley, how Ma Dai prepared black wagons, and how buried mines were linked with fuses and a thousand bamboo poles. Burning wagons rolled in from the far exit and drove the troops back; fire was the only way to kill the rattan-armored soldiers. The victory exposes the destructive force of the campaign and gives Kong Ming’s subsequent decision to release Meng Huo its moral weight.

Seven Captures and Voluntary Submission

After the final capture, Kong Ming has Meng Huo fed and housed in a separate tent. He sends an officer to say that the prime minister is embarrassed and will not meet him again; Meng Huo is to be released so he can leave, raise an army, and attack once more. Instead of departing, Meng Huo remains. With tears rolling down his face, he acknowledges that he has been captured and released seven times, an unprecedented experience, and says that even a man called a barbarian can understand morality and righteousness.

Meng Huo and his entourage then crawl on their hands and knees to Kong Ming’s tent. In keeping with his own tradition, Meng Huo bares his upper body and kneels, presenting himself as ready to be punished. He declares that Heaven has ensured the southerners will never rebel again. Kong Ming asks directly whether he now submits. Sobbing, Meng Huo answers that generations of his people will remain grateful for being spared, and that they therefore must submit. The surrender is thus made explicit by Meng Huo himself: neither a defeat alone nor an order from Shu, it is a response to repeated release and the mercy he recognizes in it.

The episode’s sevenfold pattern gives its resolution a political as well as dramatic logic. Capturing Meng Huo demonstrates that Shu can defeat him; releasing him gives him repeated opportunities to return to resistance and, in turn, makes his final acknowledgment appear chosen. The unequal military contest remains unmistakable, but the narrative presents the change in allegiance as secured through a combination of force, restraint, and a claim to moral legitimacy. Kong Ming does not describe the destruction of the tribes as a triumph. After explaining the means by which the rattan army was killed, he calls their complete extermination a terrible burden. His regret complicates the campaign’s victory: the weapons that make conquest possible also leave a human cost he cannot treat as incidental.

Settlement and Aftermath

Kong Ming and Meng Huo celebrate late into the night. Kong Ming appoints Meng Huo ruler over all the lands conquered by Shu, converting a former opponent into the local authority of the newly subdued territory. The Man people respond with great rejoicing, leaping and dancing. This settlement combines Shu’s expansion with the continued rule of the leader whose repeated resistance had made him an enemy; political incorporation, rather than the replacement of every local authority, is the immediate outcome shown.

The return to Chengdu extends the settlement beyond the battlefield. After the army crosses the river and reaches the capital, the second ruler rides far beyond the city walls to welcome Kong Ming and his victorious troops. More than two hundred foreign cities send tribute, acknowledging the new kingdom’s power and reach. The ruler also fulfills Kong Ming’s wish that families who lost someone in the war be cared for. The aftermath therefore joins public celebration and wider recognition to an explicit provision for those bereaved by the campaign; the text records both the prestige gained by Shu and the obligation toward its war-affected households.

Political and Narrative Significance

The episode places benevolent rule beside military conquest without making the conquest disappear. Shu’s authority expands through warfare, including an attack that requires fire to destroy an enemy army, yet the closing settlement emphasizes release, gratitude, local appointment, celebration, and care for bereaved families. Kong Ming’s expressed burden over extermination distinguishes victory from simple vengeance, while Meng Huo’s declaration supplies the ethical language of submission. Their exchange lets the narrative present political order as more secure when an opponent is persuaded to accept it than when he is merely defeated.

That account also has a limit visible in its descriptions of the tribes. The narrative names their practices and contrasts them with familiar institutions, but the decisive speech of political reconciliation is framed through Kong Ming’s repeated strategy and Meng Huo’s grateful submission. Their customs are described at length, while the terms of the resulting rule are summarized as Meng Huo’s appointment over lands conquered by Shu. The result is a settlement represented as humane and welcomed, yet one that remains embedded in Shu’s military expansion and in an account where the central court determines the meaning of the southern peoples’ incorporation. The episode’s most consequential contrast is therefore between the scale of force available to the conqueror and the choice the narrative makes its leader prize: not the tribes’ destruction, but their continued rule under a submission presented as freely and morally acknowledged.