2. From 643 B.C. to 385 B.C. Ts'in was in occupation of the territory between the Yellow River and the River Loh, taken from Tsin and again lost to Tsin at those dates.]

CHAPTER VII

THE COAST STATES

Before we enter into a categorical description of the hegemony or Protector system, under which the most powerful state for the time being held durbars "in camp," and in theory maintained the shadowy rights of the Emperor, we must first introduce the two coast states of the Yang-tsz delta, just mentioned as having a.s.serted their independence of Ts'u, each state being in possession of one of the Great River branches, In ancient times the Yang-tsz was simply called the _Kiang_ ("river"), just as the Yellow River was simply styled the _Ho_ (also "river"). In those days the Great River had three mouths-the northernmost very much as at present, except that the flat accretions did not then extend so far out to sea, and in any case were for all practical purposes unknown to orthodox China, and entirely in the hands of "Eastern barbarians"; the southerly course, which branched off near the modern treaty-port of Wuhu in An Hwei province, emerging into the sea at, or very near, Hangchow; and the middle course, which was practically the combined beds of the Soochow Creek and the Wusung River of Shanghai. Before the Chou dynasty came to power in 1122 B.C., the grandfather of the future founder, as a youth, displayed such extraordinary talents, that, by family arrangement, his two eldest brothers voluntarily resigned their rights, and exiled themselves in the Jungle territory, subsequently working their way east to the coast, and adopting entirely, or in part, the rude ways of the barbarous tribes they hoped to govern. We can understand this better if we picture how the Phoenician and Greek merchants in turn acted when successively colonizing Ma.r.s.eilles, Cadiz, and even parts of Britain. Excepting doubtful genealogies and lists of rulers, nothing whatever is heard of this colony until 585 B.C.--say, 800 years subsequent to the original settlement. A malcontent of Ts'u had, as was the practice among the rival states of those, times, offered his services to the hated Tsin, then engaged in desperate warfare with Ts'u: he proposed to his new master that he should be sent on a mission to the King of Wu (for that was, and still is, for literary purposes, the name of the kingdom comprising Shanghai, Soochow, and Nanking) in order to induce him to join in attacking Ts'u. "He taught them the use of arrows and chariots," from which we may a.s.sume that spears and boats were, up to that date, the usual warlike apparatus of the coast power. Its capital was at a spot about half-way between Soochow and Nanking, on the new (British) railway line; and it is described by Chinese visitors during the sixth century B.C. as being "a mean place, with low-built houses, narrow streets, a vulgar palace, and crowds of boats and wheelbarrows." The native word for the country was something like Keugu, which the Chinese (as they still do with foreign words, as, for instance, _Ying_ for "England") promptly turned into a convenient monosyllable Ngu, or Wu. The semi-barbarous King was delighted at the opening thus given him to a.s.sociate with orthodox Chinese princes on an equal footing, and to throw off his former tyrannical suzerain. He annexed a number of neighbouring barbarian states. .h.i.therto, like himself, belonging to Ts'u; paid visits to the Emperor's court, to the Ts'u court, and to the petty but highly cultivated court of Lu (in South Shan Tung), in order to "study the rites"; and threw himself with zest into the whirl of interstate political intrigue. Confucius in his history hardly alludes to him as a civilized being until the year 561, when the King died; and as his services to China (i.e. to orthodox Tsin against unorthodox Ts'u) could not be ignored, the philosopher- historian condescends to say "the Viscount of Wu died this year."

It must be explained that the Lu capital had been celebrated for its learning ever since the founder of the Chou dynasty sent the Duke of Chou, his own brother, there as a satrap (1122 B.C.).

Confucius, of course, wrote retrospectively, for he himself was only born in 551 and did not compose his "Springs and Autumns"

history for at least half a century after that date. The old Lu capital of K'uh-fu on she River Sz (both still so called) is the official headquarters of the Dukes Confucius, the seventy-sixth in descent from the Sage having at this moment direct semi-official relations with Great Britain's representative at Wei-hai-wei. It must also be explained that the va.s.sal princes were all dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, or barons, according to the size of their states, the distinction of their clan or gens, and the length of their pedigrees; but the Emperor somewhat contemptuously accorded only the courtesy t.i.tle of "viscount" to barbarian "kings," such as those of Ts'u and Wu, very much as we vaguely speak of "His Highness the Khedive," or (until last year) "His Highness the Amir," so as to mark unequality with genuine crowned or sovereign heads.

The history of the wars between Wu and Ts'u is extremely interesting, the more so in that there are some grounds for believing that at least some part of the j.a.panese civilization was subsequently introduced from the east coast of China, when the ruling caste of Wu, in its declining days, had to "take flight eastwards in boats to the islands to the east of the coast." But we shall come to that episode later on. In the year 506 the capital of Ts'u was occupied by a victorious Wu army, under circ.u.mstances full of dramatic detail. But now, in the flush of success, it was Wu's turn to suffer from the ambition of a va.s.sal.

South of Wu, with a capital at the modern Shao-hing, near Ningpo, reigned the barbarian King of Yiieh (this is a corrupted monosyllable supposed to represent a dissyllabic native word something like Uviet); and this king had once been a 'va.s.sal of Ts'u, but had, since Wu's conquests, transferred, either willingly or under local compulsion, his allegiance to Wu. Advances were made to him by Ts'u, and he was ultimately induced to declare war as an ally of Ts'u. There is nothing more interesting in our European history than the detailed account, full of personal incident, of the fierce contests between Wu and Yiieh. The extinction of Wu took place in 483, after that state had played a very commanding part in federal affairs, as we shall have occasion to specify in the proper places. Yiieh, in turn, peopled by a race supposed to have ethnological connection with the Annamese of Vietnam or "Southern Yiieh," became a great power in China, and in 468 even transferred its capital to a spot on or near the coast, very near the German colony of Kiao Chou in Shan Tung. But its predominance was only successfully a.s.serted on the coasts; to use the historians' words: "Yiieh could never effectively administer the territory comprised in the Yang-tsz Kiang and Hwai River regions."

It was precisely during this barbarian struggle, when federated China, having escaped the Tartars, seemed to be running the risk of falling into the clutches of southern pirates, that Confucius flourished, and it is in reference to the historical events sketched above-(1) the providential escape of China from Tartardom, (2) the collapse of the imperial Chou house, (3) the hegemony or Protector system, (4) the triumph of might over rite (right and rite being one with Confucius), and (5) the desirability of a prompt return to the good old feudal ways--that he abandoned his own corrupt and ungrateful princ.i.p.ality, began his peripatetic teaching in the other orthodox states, composed a warning history full of lessons for future guidance, and established what we somewhat inaccurately call a "religion" for the political guidance of mankind.

CHAPTER VIII

FIRST PROTECTOR OF CHINA

The first of the so-called five hegemons or lords-protector of the federated Chinese Empire (after the collapse of the imperial power, and its consequent incapacity to protect the va.s.sal states from the raids of the Tartars and other barbarians) was the Lord of Ts'i, whose capital was at the powerful and wealthy city of Lin-tsz (lat. 37, long. 118 30'; still so called on the modern maps), in Shan Tung province. Neither the Yellow River nor the Grand Ca.n.a.l touched Shan Tung in those days, and Lin-tsz was evidently situated with reference to the local rivers which flow north into the Gulf of "Pechelee," so as to take full political advantage of the salt, mining, and fishing industries. A word is here necessary as to this Protector's pedigree: we have seen that his ancestor, thirteen generations back, had inspired with his counsels and courage the founder of the imperial Chou dynasty in 1122 B.C.; he had further given to the new Emperor a daughter of his own in marriage, had served him as premier, and had finally been enfeoffed in reward for his services as Marquess of Ts'i, the economic condition of which far-eastern princ.i.p.ality he had in a very few years by his energy as ruler mightily improved, notably with reference to the salt and fish industries, and to general commerce. The Yellow River, then flowing along the bed of what is now called the Chang River, and the sea, respectively, were the western and eastern limits of this state, which embraced to the north the salt flats now under the administration of a special Tientsin Commissioner, and extended south to the present Manchu Tartar-General's military garrison at Ts'ing-thou Fu. Of course, later on, during the five-hundred-year period of unrest, extensions and cessions of territory frequently took place, both within and beyond these vague limits, usually at the expense of Lu and other small orthodox states. Across the Yellow River, whose course northwards, as already stated, lay considerably to the west of the present channel, was the extensive state of Tsin; and south was the highly ritual and literary Weimar of China, the unwarlike princ.i.p.ality of Lu, destined in future times to be glorified by Confucius.

Scarcely anything is recorded of a nature to throw specific light upon the international development of these far-eastern parts. But in the year 894 B.C. the reigning prince of Ts'i was boiled alive at the Emperor's order for some political offence, and his successor thereupon moved his capital, only to be transferred back to the old place by his son thirty-five years later. The imperial flight of 842 naturally caused some consternation even in distant Ts'i, and in 827 the next Emperor on his accession commanded the reigning Marquess of Ts'i to a.s.sist in chastising the Western Tartars. When this last Emperor's grandson was driven from his old hereditary domain in 771, and the semi-Tartar ruler of Ts'in took possession of the same, as already narrated, Ts'i was still so inconsiderable a military power that even two generations after that event, in the year 706, it was fain to apply for a.s.sistance against Northern Tartar raids to one of the small Chinese princ.i.p.alities in the Ho Nan province. (Roughly speaking, "Northern Tartars" were Manchu-Mongols, and "Western Tartars" were Mongol-Turks.) In 690 the prince, whose sister had married the neighbouring ruler of Lu, made an armed attack by way of vengeance upon the descendant of the adviser who had counselled the Emperor to boil his ancestor alive in 894: his power was now so considerable that the Emperor commissioned him to act with authority in the matter of a disputed succession to a minor Chinese princ.i.p.ality. This was in the year 688 B.C., and it was the first instance of a va.s.sal acting as dictator or protector on behalf of the Emperor; only, however, in a special or isolated case. Two years later this prince of Ts'i was himself a.s.sa.s.sinated, and the disputes between his sons regarding the succession terminated with the advent to the throne of one of the great characters in Chinese history, who was magnanimous and politic enough to take as his adviser and premier a still greater character, and one that almost rivals Confucius himself in fame as an author, a statesman, a benefactor of China; and a moralist.

This personage, who, like most Chinese of the period, carried many names, is most generally known as the philosopher Kwan-tsz, and his chief writings have survived, in part at least, until our own day. He was, in fact, a distant scion of the reigning imperial family of Chou, and bore its clan name of _Ki_. Here it may be useful to state parenthetically that most prominent men in all the federated states seem to have belonged to a narrow aristocratic circle, among whose members the craft of government, the knowledge of letters, and the hereditary right to expect office, was inherent; at the same time, there was never at any date anything in the shape of a priestly or military caste, and power appears to have been always within the reach of the humblest, so long as the aspirant was competent to a.s.sert himself.

The new ruler of Ts'i officially proclaimed himself Protector in the year 679 B.C., which is one of the fixed dates in Chinese history about which there is no cavil or doubt, He soon found himself embroiled in war with the Tartars, who were raiding both the state to his north in the Peking plain, and also the minor state, south of the Yellow River, that his predecessor has protected specially in 688. This was the state of Wei (imperial clan), through or near the capital town of which, near the modern Wei-hwei Fu, the Yellow River then ran northwards.

The way these successive Protectors of China afterwards exercised their preponderant influence in a general sense was this: When it appeared to them, or when any orthodox va.s.sal state complained to them, that injustice was being done; whether in matters of duty to the Emperor, right of succession, legitimacy of birth, great crime, or inordinate ambition; the recognized Protector summoned a durbar, usually somewhere within the territory of the central area, or China proper as previously defined, and consulted with the princes, his colleagues, as to what course should be pursued.

A distinction was drawn between "full-dress durbars" and "military durbars"; the etiquette in either case was very minute, and external behaviour at least was exquisitely courteous, though treachery was far from rare, and treaties never lasted long unbroken. But to return to the First Protector. Towards the end of his glorious reign of forty-three years the Marquess of Ts'i grew arrogant, vainglorious, and licentious, so much so that his western neighbour, the powerful state of Tsin, declined to attend the durbars. Of the other great powers Ts'in (to the west of Tsin) was much too far off to take active part in these parliaments; Ts'u was too busy in spreading civilization among the barbarous states or tribes south of the Yang-tsz. The Emperor was practically a _roi faineant_ by this time, and, curiously enough, less is known of what went on within his dominions or appanage after the western half of it fell to Ts'in in 771, than of what transpired in the territories of his three menacing va.s.sals to the north, north-west, and north-east, and of his half- civilized satrap to the south. The fact is, all four rising powers were now carefully engaged in watching each other, and in playing a profound political game around their prey. This prey was the eastern half of the Emperor's original domain (the western half now, since 771 B.C., belonging to Ts'in) and the dozen or so of purely Chinese, highly cultured, va.s.sal states making up the rest of modern Ho Nan province, together with small parts or wedges of modern Chih Li, Shan Tung, An Hwei, and Kiang Su. From first to last none of these ritual and literary states showed any real fight; there is hardly a single record of a really crushing victory gained by any one of them. The fighting instincts all lay with the new Chinese, that is, with the Chinese adventurers who had got their hand well in with generations of fighting against barbarians--Tartars, Tunguses, Annamese, Shans, and what not--and had invigorated themselves with good fresh barbarian blood. The fact is, the population of China had enormously increased; the struggle for life and food was keener; the old patriarchal appet.i.te for ritual was disappearing; the people were beginning to a.s.sert themselves against the land-owners; the land-owners were encroaching upon the power of the ruling princes; and China was in a parlous state.

CHAPTER IX

POSITION OF ENVOYS

It was a fixed rule in ancient China that envoys should be treated with courtesy, and that their persons should be held sacred, whether at residential courts, in durbar, or on the road through a third state. During the wars of the sixth century B.C. between Tsin in the north and Ts'u in the south, when these two powers were rival aspirants to the Protectorate of the original and orthodox group of princ.i.p.alities lying between them, and were alternately imposing their will on the important and diplomatic minor Chinese state of CHeNG (still the name of a territory in Ho Nan), there were furnished many ill.u.s.trations of this recognized rule. The chief reason for thus making a fighting-ground of the old Chinese princ.i.p.alities was that it was almost impossible for Ts'u to get conveniently at any of the three great northern powers, and equally difficult for Ts'in, Tsin, and Ts'i to reach Ts'u, without pa.s.sing through one or more Chinese states, mostly bearing the imperial clan name, and permission had to be asked for an army to pa.s.s through, unless the said Chinese state was under the predominancy of (for instance) Tsin or Ts'u. It was like Germany and Italy with Switzerland between them, or Germany and Spain with France between them. Another important old Chinese state was Sung, lying to the east of CHeNG. Both these states were of the highest caste, the Earl of CHeNG being a close relative of the Chou Emperor, and the Duke of Sung being the representative or religious heir of the remains of the Shang dynasty ousted by the Chou family in I 122 B.C., magnanimously reinfeoffed "in order that the family sacrifices might not be entirely cut off" together with the loss of imperial sway. In the year 595 B.C. Sung went so far as to put a Ts'u envoy to death, naturally much to the wrath of the rising southern power. Ts'u in turn arrested the Tsin envoy on his way to Sung, and tried in vain to force him to betray his trust. In 582 Tsin, in a fit of anger, detained the CHeNG envoy, and finally put him to death for his impudence in coming officially to visit Tsin after coquetting with Tsin's rival Ts'u.

All these irregular cases are severely blamed by the historians.

In 562 Ts'u turned the tables upon Tsin by putting the CHeNG envoy to death after the latter had concluded a treaty with Tsin.

Confucius joins, retrospectively of course, in the chorus of universal reprobation. In 560 Ts'u tried to play upon the Ts'i envoy a trick which in its futility reminds us strongly of the a.n.a.logous petty humiliations until recently imposed by China, whenever convenient occasion offered, upon foreign officials accredited to her. The Ts'i envoy, who was somewhat deformed in person, was no less an individual than the celebrated philosopher Yen-tsz, a respected acquaintance of Confucius (though, of course, much his senior), and second only to Kwan-tsz amongst the great administrative statesmen of Ts'i. The half-barbarous King of Ts'u concocted with his obsequious courtiers a nice little scheme for humiliating the northern envoy by indicating to him the small door provided for his entry into the presence, such as the Grand Seigneurs in their hey-day used to provide for the Christian amba.s.sadors to Turkey. Yen-tsz, of course, at once saw through this contemptible insult and said: "My master had his own reasons for selecting so unworthy an individual as myself for this mission; yet if he had sent me on a mission to a dog-court, I should have obeyed orders and entered by a dog-gate: however, it so happens that I am here on a mission to the King of Ts'u, and of course I expect to enter by a gate befitting the status of that ruler." Still another prank was tried by the foolish king: a "variety entertainment" was got up, in which one scene represented a famished wretch who was being belaboured for some reason.

Naturally every one asked: "What is that?" The answer was: "A Ts'i man who has been detected in thieving." Yen-tsz said: "I understand that the best fruits come from Ts'u, and they say we northern men cannot come near the quality of their peaches. We are honest simpletons, too, and do not look natural on the variety stage as thieves. The true rogue, like the true peach, is a southern speciality. I did see rogues on the stage, it is true, but none of them looked like a Ts'i man; hence I asked, 'What is it?'" The king laughed sheepishly, and, for a time at least, gave up taking liberties with Yen-tsz.

In 545, when Ts'u for the moment had the predominant say over CHeNG's political action, it was insisted that the ruler of CHeNG should come in person to pay his respects: this was after a great Peace Conference, held at Sung, on which occasion Tsin and Ts'u arranged a _modus operandi_ for their respective subordinate or allied va.s.sals. There was no help for it, and the Earl accordingly went. The minister in attendance was Tsz-ch'an-a very great name indeed in Chinese history; he was a lawyer, statesman, "democratic conservative," sceptic, and philosopher, deeply lamented on his death alike by the people of CHeNG, and by his friend or correspondent Confucius of Lu state. The Chinese diplomats then, as now, had the most roundabout ways of pointing a moral or delicately insinuating an innuendo. On arrival at the outskirts of the capital, instead of building the usual das for formalities and sacrifices, Tsz-ch'an threw up a mean hut for the accommodation of his mission, saying: "Altars are built by great states when they visit small ones as a symbol of benefits accorded, and by way of exhortation to continue in virtuous ways."

Four years later Ts'u sent a mission of menacing size to CHeNG, ostensibly to complete the carrying out of a marriage agreed upon by treaty between Ts'u and CHeNG. Tsz-ch'an insisted that the bows and arrows carried by the escort should be left outside the city walls, adding: "Our poor state is too small to bear the full honour of such an escort; erect your altar das outside the wall for the service of the ancestral sacrifices, and we will there await your commands about the marriage."

In 538, when Ts'u was, for the first time, holding a durbar as recognized Protector, being at the time, however, on hostile terms with her former va.s.sal, Wu, the King of Ts'u committed the gross outrage of seizing the ruler of a petty state, who was then present at the durbar, because that ruler had married (being himself of eastern barbarian descent) a princess of Wu. The following year, when two very distinguished statesmen from the territory of his secular enemy Tsin came on a political mission, the King of Ts'u consulted his premier about the advisability of castrating the one for a harem eunuch, and cutting off the feet of the other for a door-porter. "Your Majesty can do it, certainly,"

was the reply, "but how about the consequences?" This was the occasion, mentioned in Chapter VI., on which the king was reminded how many great private families there were in Tsin quite capable of raising a hundred chariots apiece.

It appears that envoys, at least in Lu, were hereditary in some families, just as other families provided successive generations of ministers. A Lu envoy to Tsin, who carried a very valuable gem- studded girdle with him, had very great pressure put upon him by a covetous Tsin minister who wanted the girdle. The envoy offered to give some silk instead, but he said that not even to save his life would he give up the girdle. The Tsin magnate thought better of it; but it is remarkable how many cases of sordid greed of this kind are recorded, all pointing to the comparative absence of commercial exchanges, or standards of value between the feudal states.

Ts'u seems to have thoroughly deserved Yen-tsz's imputations of treachery and roguery. At the great Peace Conference held outside the Sung capital in 546, the Ts'u escort was detected wearing cuira.s.ses underneath their clothing. One of the greatest of the Tsin statesmen, Shuh Hiang (a personal friend of Yen-tsz, Confucius, and Tsz-ch'an) managed diplomatically to keep down the rising indignation of the other powers and representatives present by pooh-poohing the clumsy artifice on the ground that by such treachery Ts'u simply injured her own reputation in the federation to the manifest advantage of Tsin: it did not suit Tsin to continue the struggle with Ts'u just then. Then there was a squabble as to precedence at the same Peace Conference; that is, whether Tsin or Ts'u had the first right to smear lips with the blood of sacrifice: here again Shuh Hiang tactfully gave way, and by his conciliatory conduct succeeded in inducing the federal princes to sign a sort of disarmament agreement. This is one of the numerous instances in which Confucius as an annalist tries to _menager_ the true facts in the interests of orthodoxy.

Even the more fully civilized state of Ts'i attempted an act of gross treachery, when in 500 B.C. the ruler of Lu, accompanied by Confucius as his minister in attendance, went to pay his respects.

But Confucius was just as sharp as Yen-tsz and Tsz-ch'an, his friends, neighbours, and colleagues: he at once saw through the menacing appearance of the barbarian "dances" (introduced here, again, as a "variety entertainment"), and by his firm behaviour not only saved the person of his prince, but shamed the ruler of Ts'i into disclaiming and disavowing his obsequious fellow- practical jokers. Yen-tsz was actually present at the time, in attendance upon his own marquis; but it is nowhere alleged that he was responsible for the disgraceful manoeuvre. As a result T'si was obliged to restore to Lu several cities and districts wrongfully annexed some years before, and Lu promised to a.s.sist Ts'i in her wars.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP

1. The River Sz still starts at Sz-shui (cross in circle; means "River Sz"), and runs past Confucius' town, K'iih-fu, into the Ca.n.a.l in two branches. But in Confucius' time what is now the Ca.n.a.l continued to be the River Sz, down to its junction with the Hwai. The River I starts still from I-shui (also a cross in circle; means "River I"), pa.s.ses I-thou, and used to join the Sz (now the Ca.n.a.l) at the lower cross in a circle. The neck (dotted) of the Hwai embouchure no longer exists, and the Lake Hung-tseh now dissipates itself into lakelets and ca.n.a.ls. The Wu fleets, by sailing up the Hwai, Sz, and I, could get up to Lu, and threaten Ts'i.

2. In Confucius' time the Yellow River turned north near the junction of the Emperor's territory with Cheng: it pa.s.sed through Wei, and there divided. Its main branch, after coursing through part of the River Wei bed, left it and took possession of the River Chang bed. Up to 602 B.C. the secondary branch took the more easterly dotted line (the present Yellow River, once the River Tsi); but after 602 B.C. it cut through Hing, followed the Wei, and took the line of the present Ca.n.a.l. Hing was a Tartar-harried state contested by Ts'i and Tsin: it fell at last to Tsin.

3. The capitals of Ts'i, Wei, Ts'ao, Cheng, Sung, Ch'en, Ts'ai (three) are marked with encircled crosses. K'iih-fu, the capital of Lu, is marked with a small circle. In 278 B.C. the Ts'u capital was moved east to Ch'en. In 241 B.C., under pressure of Ts'in, the Ts'u capital had to be moved to the double black cross on the south bank of the Hwai.]

CHAPTER X

THE SECOND PROTECTOR

We must now go back a little. The first of the so-called Five Tyrants, or the Five successive Protectors of orthodox China, had died in 643, his philosopher and friend, Kwan-tsz, having departed this life a little before him. Their joint t.i.tle to fame lies in the fact that "they saved China from becoming a Tartar province,"

and even Confucius admits the truth of this--a most important factor in enabling us to understand the motive springs of Chinese policy. Under these circ.u.mstances the Duke of Sung, who, as we have seen, had special moral pretensions to leadership on account of his being the direct lineal representative of the Shang dynasty which perished in 1122 B.C., immediately put forward a claim to the hegemony. He rather prejudiced his reputation, however, by committing the serious ritual offence of "warring upon Ts'i's mourning," that is, of engaging the allies in hostilities with the late Protector's own country whilst his body lay unburied, and his sons were still wrangling over the question of succession. The Tartars, however, came to the rescue of, and made a treaty with, Ts'i--this is only one of innumerable instances which show how the northern Chinese princes of those early days were in permanent political touch with the horse-riding nomads. The orthodox Duke of Sung, dressed in his little brief authority as Protector, had the temerity to "send for" the ruler of Ts'u to attend his first durbar. (It must be remembered that the "king" in his own dominions was only "viscount" in the orthodox peerage of ruling princes.) The result was that the King unceremoniously took his would-be protector into custody at the durbar, and put in a claim to be Protector himself. During the military operations connected with this political manoeuvre, the Duke of Sung was guilty of the most ridiculous piece of ritual chivalry; highly approved, it is true, by the literary pedants of all subsequent ages, but ruinous to his own worldly cause. The Ts'u army was crossing a difficult ford, and the Duke's advisers recommended a prompt attack. "It is not honourable," said the Duke, "to take advantage even of an enemy in distress." "But," said his first adviser, "war is war, and its only object is to punish the foe as severely and promptly as possible, so as to gain the upper hand, and establish what you are fighting for."

Meanwhile important events had been going on in the marquisate of Tsin, which, during the thirty-five years' hegemony of Ts'i, had been engaged in extending its territory in all directions, in fighting Ts'in, and in annexing bordering Tartar tribes. At its greatest development Tsin practically comprised all between the Yellow River in its turns south, east, and north; but, though probably half its population was Tartar, it never ceased to be "orthodox" in administrative principle. The energetic but licentious ruler of Tsin had married a Tartar wife in addition to his more legitimate spouse (daughter of the late Protector, Marquess of Ts'i); or, rather, he took two wives, the one being sister of the other, but the younger sister brought him no children. Before this he had already married two sisters of quite a different Tartar tribe, and each of his earlier wives had brought him a son. His last pair of Tartar lady-loves gained such a strong hold upon his affections that he was induced by the mother, being the elder sister of the two, to nominate her own son as his heir to the exclusion of the three elder brethren, who were sent on various flimsy pretexts to defend the northern frontiers against the more hostile Tartars. To complicate matters, the Marquess's legitimate or first spouse, the Ts'i princess, besides bearing a son, had also given him a daughter, who had married the powerful ruler of Ts'in to the west. Thus not only were Ts'in and Tsin both half-Tartar in origin and sympathy, but at this period three out of four of the Tsin possible heirs were actually sons of Tartar women. The legitimate heir, whose mother was of Ts'i origin, and, who himself was a man of very high character, ended the question so far as he was concerned, by committing dutiful suicide; the three sons by Tartar mothers succeeded to the throne one after the other, but in the inverse order of their respective ages. The story of the wanderings of the eldest brother, who did not come to the throne until he was sixty-two years of age, is one of the most interesting and romantic episodes in the whole history of China; and, even with the unfamiliar proper names, would make a capital romantic novel, so graphically and naturally are some of the scenes depicted. First he threw himself heart and soul into Tartar life, joined the rugged hors.e.m.e.n in their internecine wars, married a Tartar wife, and gave her sister to his most faithful henchman; then, hearing of the death of the Ts'i premier, Kwan- tsz, he vowed he would go to Ts'i and try to act as political adviser in his place. Hospitably received by the Marquess of Ts'i, he was presented with a charming and sensible Ts'i princess, who for five years exercised so enervating an influence upon his virility, ambition, and warlike ardour, that he had to be surrept.i.tiously smuggled away from the gay Ts'i capital whilst drunk, by his Tartar father-in-law and by his chief Chinese henchman and brother-in-law. Then he commenced a series of visits to the petty orthodox courts which separated Ts'i from Ts'u.

Several of them were rude and neglectful to this unfortunate prince in distress; but Sung was an exception, for Sung ambition, as above narrated, had been roughly checked by Ts'u, and Sung now wished to make overtures to Tsin instead, and to conciliate a prince who was as likely as not to come to the throne of Tsin. In 637 the prince reached the court of Ts'u, whose ruler had quite recently begun to take formal and official rank as a "civilized"

federal prince. Meanwhile, news came that his brother (by his own mother's younger sister) was dead; this younger brother had taken refuge in Ts'in during the reign of his youngest brother (the one born of the last Tartar favourite), and had, after that brother's death, been most generously a.s.sisted to the throne in turn by the ruler of Ts'in, on the understanding, however, that Tsin should cede to Ts'in all territory on the right bank of the Yellow River, i.e. in the modern province of Shen Si: but the new Tsin ruler had been persuaded by his courtiers to go back on this humiliating bargain, in consequence of which war had been declared by Ts'in upon Tsin, and the faithless ruler of Tsin had been for some time a prisoner of war in Ts'in; but, regaining his throne through the influence of his half-sister, the wife of the Ts'in ruler, had died in harness in 637 B.C. This deceased ruler's young son was not popular, and Ts'in was now instrumental in welcoming the refugee back from Ts'u, and in leading him in triumph, after nineteen years of adventurous wandering, to his own ancestral throne; his rival and nephew was killed.

All orthodox China seemed to feel now that the interesting wanderer, after all his experiences of war, travel, Tartars, Chinese, barbarians, and politics, was the right man to be Protector. But it was first necessary for Tsin to defeat Ts'u in a decisive battle; a war had arisen between Tsin and Ts'u out of an attempt on the part of CHeNG (one of the orthodox Chinese states that had been uncivil to the wanderer), to drag in the preponderant power of Ts'u by way of shielding itself from punishment at Tsin's hands for past rude behaviour. The Emperor sent his own son to confer the status of "my uncle" upon him,--which is practically another way of saying "Protector" to a kinsman,--and in the year 632 accordingly a grand durbar was held, in which the Emperor himself took part. The Tsin ruler, who had summoned the durbar, and had even "commanded the presence" of the Emperor, was the guiding spirit of the meeting in every respect, except in the nominal and ritualistic aspect of it; nevertheless, he was prudent and careful enough scrupulously to observe all external marks of deference, and to make it appear that he was merely acting as mouthpiece to the puppet Emperor; he even went the length of dutifully offering to the Emperor some Ts'u prisoners, and the Emperor in turn "graciously ceded" to Tsin the imperial possessions north of the Yellow River.

Thus Ts'in and Tsin each in turn clipped the wings of the Autocrat of All the Chinas, so styled.

During these few unsettled years between the death of the first real Protector in 643 and the formal nomination by the Emperor of the second in 632, Ts'u and Sung had, as we have seen, both attempted to a.s.sert their rival claims. A triangular war had also been going on for some time between Ts'i and Ts'u, the bone of contention being some territory of which Ts'i had stripped Lu; and there was war also between Tsin and Ts'i, Tsin and Ts'in, and Tsin and Ts'u, which latter state always tried to secure the a.s.sistance of Ts'in when possible. From first to last, there never was, during the period covered by Confucius' history, any serious war between Tartar Ts'in and barbarian Ts'u; rather were they natural allies against orthodox China, upon which intermediate territory they both learned to fix covetous eyes.

The situation is too involved, in view of the uncouthness of strange names and the absence of definite frontiers--changing as they did with the result of each few years' campaigning--to make it possible to give a full, or even approximately intelligible, explanation of each move. But the following main features are incontestable:--Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, and Ts'u were growing, progressive, and aggressive states, all of them strongly tinged with foreign blood, which foreign blood was naturally a.s.similated the more readily in proportion to the power, wealth, and culture of the a.s.similating orthodox nucleus. The imperial domain was an extinct political volcano, belching occasional fumes of threatening, sometimes noxious, but not ever fatally suffocating smoke, always without fire. "The Hia," that is, the federation of princes belonging to pure Hia, or (as we now say) "Chinese" stock, were evidently unwarlike in proportion to the absence of foreign blood in their veins; but they were all of them equally _ruses_, and all of them past-masters in casuistic diplomacy.

Trade, agriculture, literature, and even law, were now quite active, and (as we shall gradually see in these short chapters) China was undoubtedly beginning to move, as, after 2500 years of a second "ritual" sleep, she is again now moving, at the beginning of the twentieth century A.D.

CHAPTER XI

RELIGION