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The portraits of me are all imaginary. There is no image from life. I existed — the Art of War is too specific to be a forgery — but the details are contested. The king of Wu tested me, I am told, by asking me to drill his concubines. Two of them laughed during the exercise. I had them executed. The others drilled perfectly.

This story is probably apocryphal. But it contains the essential lesson: the commands of the commander must be understood, and then they must be followed without hesitation. The two failures were not failures of courage. They were failures of communication. I had not made the gravity of the situation clear. The fault was mine. Then I corrected it.