Wu Jialiang Deploys the Four Dippers and Five Directions Banners; Song Gongming Arrays the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams Formation

There is a poem that says: Could the plans made in the court really be called thorough? Yet in the mountains and forests there were men of wondrous strategy. A phoenix cannot soar high without full-grown wings; A fierce tiger can roam freely only deep in the mountains. They set out banners matching the four quarters and the five directions, And deployed troops according to the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams. Only when soldiers were lost, generals wounded, and military prestige swept away Did the court understand that these were truly formidable foes. Now Tong Guan, the Privy Councilor, accepted the post of Grand Marshal conferred by the emperor and went straight to the Privy Council. He at once issued the tallies for mobilizing troops and ordered the eight prefectures under the jurisdiction of the Eastern Capital to send ten thousand soldiers each, led by their local garrison commanders. From the Imperial Guard in the capital he selected twenty thousand more to protect the central army where the commander stood. All routine affairs of the Privy Council were handed......