Ch 1 - In the Beginning

A Unified Empire

The small, but powerful State of Qin emerges to unify China in 246 BC. The Legalist, authoritarian regime of Qin Shi Huang Di, "The First Exalted Emperor of Qin," lasts only a single generation before collapsing in 206 BC.

Ancient China's tribal aristocracies observed strict rules of combat. Chieftains fought under the strong belief that, even if subjugated, other noble lineages should not be extinguished. The growing power of northern nomadic tribes during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC changed all that forever. Warrior aristocrats no longer rode from their city-states at the head of a small army. Warfare had become a large-scale affair and combat became far more ruthless. The formation of large, well-equipped conscript armies led by professional soldiers dramatically changed the nature of Asian warfare. Powerful states not only defeated their opponents, they obliterated them and turned the conquered lands into centrally controlled provinces of the victor, inexorably moving China toward a unified state;  a single empire.

Shang and Zhou, the two most powerful states in ancient China, dominated the political landscape, but they never managed to exercise uniform control over the relatively independent states scattered across the region. Territorial wars for hegemony during the Spring and Autumn Period escalated into regional conflicts as China's ten most powerful states battled for not just land and influence, but total supremacy. The years between 481 BC and 221 BC were so chaotic they became known as the Warring States Period.

By the fourth century BC, China's dramatic population growth made it the most populous region on earth - there is no point in history where that has not been true. During the latter Zhou Dynasty, China's cities functioned primarily as political, religious and military centers. They were just large enough to accommodate the ruling lord's family, his aristocratic administrators and their support staffs and servants. The capital, always the largest city in the state, covered approximately 2 square miles and typically contained about 3,000 households. No other city in the state was permitted to exceed one third the size of the capital.

During the early years of the Western Zhou period, peasants lived with their clans for generation after generation in relative stability and peace on royal lands organized under the Zhou kinship system. There was very little migration and controlling criminal behavior was fairly easy. The turmoil of the Spring and Autumn Period tore at the fabric of Chinese society, displacing thousands of people from virtually every social class. The collapse of the old system stripped many peasants from the land and diminished or erased rent payments to landlords. Forced to leave their lands because of incessant warfare, famines and extreme poverty, landless peasants began aimlessly wandering the countryside. As ruling authority weakened in many states, it became nearly impossible to protect territory or control population movement.

As the old methods of controlling the population began to disintegrate, a new class of people emerged in China known as pimin, the "immoral people." The pimin were rogues and bandits, vagabonds and rebels, thieves, robbers and rapists, muggers, murderers, punks, pickpockets, gamblers and con men, hooligans and hoodlums. They refused to follow social rules and publicly challenged and violated law and order. Their ranks were filled with displaced warriors, bankrupted merchants and craftsmen, landless peasants and slaves. China's densely populated cities began attracting people from all walks of life and absorbed large segments of the displaced population, including pimin. Big cities became asylums for political refugees, fleeing slaves and escaped criminals, providing pimin a fertile landscape in which to sow the all the social ills of their status. Dangerous criminal groups found good hunting among city dwellers and triggered a major upsurge in urban crime.

The opening years of the Warring States Period drew Chinese society into a whirlpool of drastic changes. The preceding centuries of wars and annexations had reduced the number of powerful states to fewer than ten, most of whom were evenly matched in both ambition and strength. The five great hegemon kings of the Spring and Autumn Period, who usually conducted their military campaigns under the battle flags of the Zhou Dynasty, directed their political ambitions toward becoming the king of princes and lords. The resulting turmoil, with its attendant breakdown and disintegration of social class and morals, led to the emergence of another group of men known as xia, a Chinese term to describe a man not unlike the medieval European knight-errant. Xia emerged from the warrior class and carried a large part of the code of warrior conduct. These military servants of a king or other noble superior wandered in search of adventures, especially those where they could redress wrongs or display their prowess. As China's great states openly challenged each other for the throne left by the vanishing Zhou Dynasty, an unprecedented world of opportunity opened for all kinds of men with the abilities and talents needed to build economic and military supremacy.

China's great cities provided xia with an ideal arena in which to display their prowess, particularly where the local rulers were both charismatic and chivalrous. State leaders and their warrior aristocracy became quite conscious that their future depended on their success in attracting and keeping such talented men. At the crucial nexus between survival and extinction, noblemen in each state became chivalrous and courteous towards xia. Nearly every state began competing for men with political, diplomatic, economic, and military ability. It soon became a common practice among the states for powerful lords and princes to retain the best xia, both warriors and scholars, for their elite personal armed forces. The size of this force became a matter of great prestige.

The "Four Grand Princes" - Prince Xinling, Lord of Wei, Prince Mengchang, Lord of Qi, Prince Pingyuan, Lord of Zhao and Prince Zhunshen, Lord of Chu - exemplify the ambitious and chivalrous noblemen that accelerated the xia's upward movement in Chinese high society during the Warring States Period. The princes represented China's chivalrous noble class and were known as "noble xia." The spirit and character of these young men blended prowess, self-sacrifice, altruism, generosity, unwavering loyalty to friendship, and a display of great courtesy towards talented men. The respect and appreciation shown by these noblemen, plus the fact they used their personal wealth to give their retainers preferential treatment, usually attracted a large number of candidates. Prince Mengchang helped settle some sixty thousand refugees, fugitives and criminals in his kingdom, many of whom became his personal retainers.

Each of these four princes retained over three thousand men, many of whom were pimin, but the majority of whom were xia. The men who attached themselves to powerful nobles rarely bore the kind of personal loyalty that distinguished the relationship between a Japanese samurai warrior and his lord. They often "signed on" for purely economic reasons. When a prince lost his power and privilege, it was not uncommon for most of his retainers to vanish. The competition among China's nobility to attract retainers was not altruism, but a calculated investment in their ultimate cause of realizing future ambitions, an investment that helped intensify activities in the Warring States Period.

By the early third century BC, while China was still deeply immersed in the Warring States Period, the Korean kingdom of Old Choson armed itself with the latest in metal weaponry and shed its status as a weak confederation of small tribal states. Under the leadership of Ki Pu, the Marquis of Chaoxian, a man with ancestral links to the former Chinese Shang dynasty, Old Choson developed a formidable military presence and soon became an independent power in East Asia with ambitions of its own.

Ki Pu took note of the decline of China's once powerful Zhou clan and knew that the ambitious ruler of Yen, intent on expanding his own realm eastward by seizing the lands beyond the Liao River, had earlier usurped the title of king. The Marquis of Chaoxian gave himself the ancient Chinese title wang, or king, to match his stature. He wanted to gather an army to oppose the powerful State of Yen and support the House of Zhou. Before that happened however, China's Prince Li went to Ki Pu and convinced him to abandon such a plan. Instead of preparing for war, Ki Pu sent Prince Li back to China to persuade the Yen ruler to call off his attack. Prince Li successfully convinced the Yen king not to move eastward and removed the threat of a confrontation, but only for a time.

Ki Pu's descendants grew to become a cruel and arrogant lot. Years later, they began making their own plans to expand Old Choson's influence eastward into the region beyond the Liao River. Before they could act however, a Yen army under the command of General Qin Gai struck the first blow. General Qin's army crossed the Liao River and rapidly fanned out across the flat plains of the Liaodong Peninsula. Before they stopped, Chinese troops seized enough territory in Old Choson to extend China's frontier border over six hundred fifty miles, all the way to Man-p'an-han. In the aftermath of the invasion, Yen established a military district in the annexed territory to insulate China from the threat of further incursions by Old Choson. Under the control of little more than a vague form of overlordship, the Liaodong region became the conduit through which Chinese influences entered northern Korea along the valleys of the Yalu, Chongchon and Taedong rivers. The comings and goings of thousands of Chinese officials, merchants, military men, and refugees brought a continuous penetration of Chinese political, economic, and military power to the Chinese occupied lands of the Liao River region.

The State of Qin sat in a strategic position in the western reaches of the fertile Wei River valley surrounded by mountains and the Yellow River with only the narrow Han-ku Pass to defend. Near the start of the 3rd century BC, King Zhao's small, powerful state began an aggressive and threatening policy of territorial expansion. Qin attacked the states of Han and Wei in 293 BC, taking 240,000 heads in the fighting. The following year Qin captured two cities from the State of Chu. King Zhao moved to secure his powerful position by declaring himself the Western Emperor in 288 BC. That same year, King Xiang of Qi declared himself the Eastern Emperor. The bloody wars continued, slowed only by the efforts of the "Four Grand Princes."

The State of Song fell to King Min's Qi armies in 286 BC. In the wake of his victory, the king wanted to remove Prince Mengchang, the Lord of Qi, from power. The prince fled to the State of Wei, where he became Grand Counselor. The states of Wei, Jin, Zhao and Yen formed a great alliance and in 260 BC, their combined expedition army led by Prince Pingyuan, the Lord of Zhao, inflicted nearly 400,000 Qin casualties in a decisive battle at Changping, just northwest of modern Beijing. The defeat was only a temporary setback, because four years later, the armies of King Zhao swept through the Han River region, killing some 40,000 and defeating Prince Zhunshen, the Lord of Chu. The Qin then turned north and attacked the State of Zhao, where they beheaded or captured about 90,000. The Zhou Dynasty monarch assembled an army among his vassal states to attack the Qin, but when the showdown came, the Zhou king surrendered his entire territory of 36 cities and 30,000 inhabitants. The next year the Zhou people fled east, leaving the tattered remnants of the Zhou Dynasty in the hands of Qin and marking the final disappearance of a dynasty that had been only a figurehead for several centuries. Qin reigned as the most powerful state in China.

King Zhao of Qin died just ten years after the fall of the Zhou Dynasty, leaving the throne to his thirteen year-old son, Ying Cheng. As a young man, Ying Cheng surrounded himself with brilliant ministers. His most trusted and powerful advisor, Li Si, Chief of Scribes, was among the founding theorists of Legalism and came to Qin from the State of Chu. Li had studied the art of government with Han Feizi at the Chi-hsia Academy under the Confucian realist Xunzi. Although Li always considered this young prince to be the better student, Han Feizi stuttered and could not present his ideas in court. He overcame this serious impediment by developing one of the most brilliant writing styles in ancient China.

On several occasions Han Feizi submitted his writings to the Han court to persuade King An to follow different policies, but the king proved incapable of following his advice. Han watched with growing despair as contemporary rulers seemed intrigued by philosophers who ranted endlessly about moral virtues and by roving bands of daring xia who violated Han laws. He often complained that ambitious scholars and militarists were given prominence over honest gentlemen, thereby increasing social disorder and distracting rulers from the real tasks of governing. The writings of Han Feizi ultimately found their way to the court of King Cheng in Qin, where Li Si, who became Grand Counselor in 237 BC, identified the writings as those of his former classmate Han Feizi. The king read them with great interest and wanted to meet the man behind such words.

In 234 BC, following a Qin attack on the State of Han, King An sent Han Feizi to Qin as his personal envoy. King Cheng was delighted to meet the young philosopher. Though pleased with his advice, the king did not fully trust Han Feizi. Court ministers played on that suspicion and counseled the king that Han Feizi was a member of the Han royal family and noted that, "it is the nature of human feelings that he will always work for the interests of his native Han and not for those of Qin." King Cheng agreed with their conclusion and ordered Han Feizi imprisoned. The philosopher tried in vain to plead his case, but was never permitted an audience with the king.

Han Feizi sent written memorials to King Cheng from his prison cell urging him to treat Han as a loyal ally, not an enemy. He argued that the great north-south alliance of states against Qin was weak because they had no faith in Legalist doctrines and would likely flee if challenged by Qin. He noted that Qin was a far more powerful state and its people respected the idea of courageous death. Han Feizi recounted several lost opportunities to achieve hegemony, adding that only the king's disloyal counselors had prevented Qin from being victorious. He concluded with a daring guarantee;  if Qin followed his advice and did not gain hegemony, the king could have his head as a warning to others. Despite Grand Counselor Li Si's arguments against such theories, the twenty-six year-old Qin monarch began to regret his earlier decision to imprison the philosopher. Li Si quietly sent poison Han Feizi in prison. Isolated and unable to communicate with the king, Han drank the poison and ended his own life in 233 BC. King Cheng's pardon for Han Feizi arrived too late. The young philosopher was already dead.

The writings of Han Feizi left their mark on the State of Qin, which adopted many of its Legalist principles and quickly became a very wealthy and frighteningly autocratic military power. In 232 BC, twenty-seven year-old King Cheng began a vigorous military campaign to unify and centralize China's northern kingdoms. Qin successively destroyed the six states of Han in 230 BC and annexed Zhao two years later. Prince Xinling, Lord of Wei, held off Qin advances into his state for years before finally being defeated in 225 BC. In rapid succession beginning in 223 BC, Qin swept up the North China Plain to conquer the states of Chu, Yen and Qi. By 221 BC, the Warring States Period was over, brought to an end by the formation of the Qin Dynasty, a tyrannical military empire that continued to expand north into Korea and south to the Red River in North Vietnam.

The bloody defeat of Old Choson at the hands of Yen left a deep impression on the ancient kingdom. Suspicious of Chinese motives, Ki Pu and Old Choson's leadership feared a sudden invasion by the powerful Qin army. To avoid the terrible consequences of such an attack, Ki Pu offered to surrender his kingdom, but refused to travel to the Qin court in Xianyang to do so in person. Ki Pu died shortly afterward, leaving the reigns of leadership to his son, Ki Chun. An invasion of sorts did occur, but it did not come from the Qin army. Tired of the constant political turmoil in Qin and the occupied Liaodong Peninsula, thousands of Chinese refugees fled the embattled areas of north China. The refugees, unwilling to submit to the rule of Chinese military authorities, moved further eastward into Old Choson and settled the western part of Ki Chun's domain. The increased immigration of Chinese led to a rise in the influence of Chinese culture in Old Choson, which entered a period of gradual decline marked by continuous political upheaval.