It is recorded that whenever a council of war was held by Wei on the eve of a far-reaching campaign, he had all his calculations ready; those generals who made use of them did not lose one battle in ten; those who ran counter to them in any particular saw their armies incontinently beaten and put to flight.” 95 Tsʽao Kung’s notes on Sun Tzǔ , models of austere brevity, are so thoroughly characteristic of the stern commander known to history, that it is hard indeed to conceive of them as the work of a mere littérateur. Sometimes, indeed, owing to extreme compression, they are scarcely intelligible and stand no less in need of a commentary than the text itself. 96 As we have seen, Tsʽao Kung is the reputed author of the 新書 , a book of war in 100,000 odd words, now lost, but mentioned in the 魏志 . 97