Chinese History - 403-221 BC - Contending States Period
The period between the transfer of the Zhou court to Luoyang in 770 BC and the unification of China under the First Emperor in 221 BC is divided into the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) and the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). In 479 BC, the outlying state of Ch'u, near the Yangtze River defeated a smaller state and triggered a bloody struggle that would stretch for two hundred years, a period called, appropriately, the Warring States. During this time power shifted to a number of regional states, which competed with each other for dominance until one, the Qin, prevailed.
The history of this period, which covers rather more than the last two centuries of the dynasty, is described in a work entitled Chan-kuo-tso, "Documents relating to the Contending States." The Contending States witnessed the most wretched times of Chinese history from a political point of view. Had there been a powerful neighbor on the Asiatic continent in those days, China would have been absorbed, as indeed she finally was, by one of her own princes. Public morality was at its lowest ebb; and yet some of the country's unforgotten patriots and some of its great philosophers flourished during this troublous period.
The reign of the Zhou emperor King-wang ended with the two southern states Wu and Yu6 at war with each other. During the reign of his successor Yiiftn-wang, T^ftn-t.aifri, frnp kinfrof Yii6, who had at first been utterly routed by the forces of his enemy, the king of Wu, succeeded in a final campaign in making an end of the Wu dynasty, and annexed its state to his dominions. After his defeat by the king of Wu, Kou-tsien had been allowed, as an act of grace, a little strip of territory.
During the years that followed his defeat "he slept on firewood and tasted gall," a phrase which has since come into common use for the expression of resentment at great humiliation coupled with the determination to take revenge. This phrase occurs in an edict of the Empress Dowager (October 2, 1901), where she refers to the period of trouble through which the imperial court had just passed after its exile to the western capital Si-an-fu. It is one of those historical allusions by which, through the mere insertion of a few words, a whole perspective of ideas is opened to the reader well versed in classical and historical literature, though seldom noticed by interpreters working with no better help than a secretary, who may or may not call attention to them.
And revenge Kou-tsien took when, a few years later, he rallied his forces and wiped out every trace of his old enemy. He was at first inclined to requite the generosity previously shown to him; but his minister advised him, for political reasons, to desist from the exhibition of such good nature lest the king of Wu might again turn upon him. The king of Wu thereupon committed suicide, and Kou-tsien, now master of the two kingdoms, became one of the most powerful supporters of Yuan-wang.
Under Chon-ting-wang (468-441 BC) internal troubles disorganized several of the once powerful states. Six grandees of the state of Tsin wrangled about supremacy; two of these were defeated and the remaining four divided their possessions. The duke himself had to take refuge in a neighboring state. The southern kingdom of Ch'u conquered two of the middle states. The one satisfactory feature in Chon-ting-wang's reign was the partly successful warfare of the states of Ts'in and Tsin against the Jung barbarians, probably Huns, who, with the exception of one tribe called I-k'ii, ceased to make inroads into China.
K'au-wang (440-426 BC), who was one of the younger sons of Chonting-wang, fought his way to the throne through two palace revolutions, in which two of his elder brothers fell victims. The rightful heir to the throne was the eldest son, who reigned just three months under the name of Ai-wang, when he was killed by his next brother, who reigned five months under the name Sst-wang, and who, in turn, was killed by K'au-wang, the third brother. In the state of Tsin the power of the reigning duke had dwindled to a mere nominal title, and the control of this important territory, which had been considerably increased in the course of generations by conquest among the neighboring barbarians, now lay chiefly in the hands of the three families of Han, Chau, and Wei.
Wei'-lie-wang (425-402 BC), K'au-wang's son, reigned twenty-four years. Three powerful families in Tsin were recognized by the emperor in 403 BC as the heads of so many feudal states. They are henceforth known in Chinese history as San-Tsin, "the Three Tsin States." Their chiefs had hitherto held the rank of marquis and were now officially confirmed as "Princes of the Empire." The emperor's weakness in raising the illegitimate usurpers to the highest positions in their territories marked a great epoch in the development of China. If the Son of Heaven had been reduced to a mere shadow for centuries up to this time, he had been at least the nominal head of his vassals. Now all tradition was broken.
The year 403 BC marks an epoch in Chinese history, as regards both the course of events and the sources from which later historians draw their information. The period of the Contending States, as described in the Chan-kuo-ts'o, receives much additional light from the works of the minor philosophers living at the end of the Chou dynasty and from those of some later authors, including, of course, the Shi-ki of Ssu-ma Ch'ien. These are also the main sources for the sixty-one years preceding the elevation of the three Tsin usurpers. From this time, that is, from the year 403 BC - which is also the year from which some of the conflicting authorities date the period of the Contending States - starts the account of the T'ung-kien-kang-mu, the work of the great historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien, who submitted it to his emperor in 1066 AD.
The empire then consisted of fourteen states, the most powerful among which, Ts'in, Ch'u, Ts'i, Yen, Han, Chau, and Wei, became subsequently known as ts'i-hiung, "the Seven Heroes." Among these the boundary states of Ts'in, Chau, and Ch'u enjoyed the advantage of unlimited capability of extension at the expense of the foreign tribes surrounding China, and the same influences which at the close of the Shang dynasty had brought the duchy of Chou, with Won-wang and Wu-wang, into prominence, may have then been at work infusing into them some of the energetic spirit of their uncivilized warlike neighbors.
Ts'in and Ch'u were not, in the proper sense of the word, to be comprised among the kingdoms of the Middle. Their populations, though civilized by the Chinese, were different peoples. From the time when Tsin and Ts'i fell victims to internal dissensions, Ts'in and Ch'u became the leading actors in that drama that ended with the triumph of Ts'in and the establishment of the empire by Ts'in ShI-huang-ti in 221 BC. The revolution which finally led to the establishment of imperial China can be traced to the year 403 BC, and that this is the reason why Ssi-ma Kuang makes this year the starting point of his great history.
The main sources down to the end of the Ch'un-ts'iu period originate with writers of the Confucian school, who would not place on record facts and ideas at variance with their own views; and it is quite possible that ancient China, as represented by Confucian writers, would appear quite different if other sources existed.
The philosophers of the age show a tendency to apply their doctrines to practical state life. That unsteadiness, characteristic of political life in the fourth century B.C., which knew of no equilibrium among the contesting powers and which caused even conservative minds to become accustomed to the most unexpected changes in politics, was coupled with a hitherto unprecedented freedom of thought in the ranks of thinkers and writers. The most heretical views on state and private life were advanced and gained public adherence. Certain philosophers became the fashion, temporarily overshadowing the sages of old; and in the energy with which they tried to vindicate the creations of their minds, they parallel the political leaders of the Contending States.
Confucianism had to undergo a severe trial in those days; and the example set by Chinese princes, who could follow the barbaric custom of making a lacquered bowl out of a dead enemy's skull or don the uncanonical dress of northern foreigners, quite corresponded to the spirit of the age, which was characterized by ruthless contempt of the sacredness of tradition. To stick to tradition, to derive every blessing in life from one's ancestors, is the original Chinese principle; and the frequency of examples betraying disregard of this principle in political as well as in literary life may be looked upon as a symptom of elements originally not Chinese having temporarily gained the upper hand.
Four or five generations earlier the princes of the empire cultivated at least some sort of nominal loyalty toward the Son of Heaven. This feeling as regards the legitimacy of the emperor's position, which Confucius had tried to foster as best he could, had now given way to utter disregard of imperial rights. Had the house of Chou produced men of action able to assert themselves in this turmoil of mutual jealousies among the feudal states, there would have been room for a hero of history to perform great feats; but no such man arose. The emperor was now a mere shadow, and things took their own course before his eyes. There was constant warfare among the princes, who would form leagues against one another, changing the equilibrium of power from generation to generation.
All these political troubles were greatly augmented by the philosophers' custom of traveling about from court to court to tender advice. It had become the ambition of the learned classes to be connected somehow or other with political life; and the freedom with which it was possible to leave one's home in order to settle down in another state probably had an important share in the general decay which followed this period. In those days the fate of China lay much more in the hands of irresponsible adventurers than with the real heads of the several states, who allowed themselves to be persuaded by the clever tongues of ambitious strangers to plunge into adventures most dangerous to themselves and to the common welfare. These advisers had sometimes risen from the very lowest ranks of the people; becoming adherents of one of the several philosophic schools dominant at the time, they made use of a certain superiority in dialectics thus acquired in gratifying their ambition to rise to political influence.
As the Contending States in the last years of the Chou battled one another, one western state, the Ch'in, had become a well-ordered state with a large, well-trained army. By 230 BC the other Warring States had worn themselves down to a remaining six. Then the Ch'in armies moved eastward. Within the decade each of the six was conquered.
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