Ancient China Simplified Part 6

As to the minor orthodox states grouped along the Yellow River, they seem to have s.h.i.+fted their capitals on very slight provocation; scarcely one of them remained from first to last in the same place. To take one as an instance, the state of Hu, an orthodox state belonging to the same clan name as Ts'i. The history of this petty princ.i.p.ality or barony is only exactly known from the time when Confucius' history begins, and it was continually being oppressed by Cheng and Ts'u, its more powerful neighbours; in 576, 533, 524 and onwards from that, there were incessant removals, so that even the native commentators say: "it was just like s.h.i.+fting a village, so superficial an affair was it." The accepted belles _lettres_ style (see p. 78) of saying "my country" is still the ancient _pi-yih_ or "unworthy village": the Empress of China once (about 190 B.C.) used this expression, even after the whole of China had been united, in order to reject politely the offer of marriage conveyed to her by a powerful Tartar king. The expression is particularly interesting, inasmuch as it recalls, as we have already pointed out, a time when the "country" of each feudal chief was simply his mud village and the few square miles of fields around it, which were naturally divided off from the next chief's territory by hills and streams. On the Burmo-Chinese frontier there are at this moment many Kakhyen "kings" of this kind, each of them ruling over his mountain or valley, and supreme in his own domain.

That there were walled cities in China (apart from the Emperor's, which, of course, would be "the city" par _excellence_) is plain from the language used at durbars, which were always held "outside the walls." In the _loess_ plains there could not have been any stone whatever for building purposes, and there is little, if any, specific mention of brick. Probably the walls were of adobe, i.e. of mud, beaten down between two rigid planks, removed higher as the wall dries below. This is the way most of the houses are still built in modern Peking, and perhaps also in most parts of China, at least where stone (or brick) is not cheaper; the "barbarian" parts of China are still the best built; for instance, CH'eNg-tu in Sz Ch'wan, Canton in the south. Hankow (Ts'u) is a comparatively poor place; Peking the dingiest of all.

c.h.i.n.kiang is a purely _loess_ country.

At the time of the unification of China, during the middle of the third century B.C., the Ts'in armies found it necessary to flood Ta-liang or "Great Liang," the capital of Ngwei (otherwise called Liang), corresponding to the modern K'ai-feng Fu, the Jewish centre in Ho Nan province: the waters of the Yellow River were allowed to flood the country (this was again done by the Tai-p'ing rebels fifty years ago, when the Jews suffered like other people, and lost their synagogue), the walls of which collapsed. It is evident that the ancient city walls could not have been such solid, brick-faced walls as we now see round Peking and Nanking, but simply mud ramparts.

CHAPTER XXIII

BREAK-UP OF CHINA

We must turn to unorthodox China once more, and see how it fared after Confucius' death. After only a short century of international existence, the vigorous state of Wu perished once for all in the year 473 B.C., and the remains of the ruling caste escaped eastwards in boats. When for the first time emba.s.sies between the j.a.panese and the Chinese became fairly regular, in the second and third centuries of our era, there began to be persistent statements made in standard Chinese history that the then ruling powers in j.a.pan considered themselves in some way lineally connected with a Chinese Emperor of 2100 B.C., and with his descendants, their ancestors, who, it was said, escaped from Wu to China. This is the reason why, in Chapter VII., we have suggested, not that the population of j.a.pan came from China, but that some of the semi-barbarous descendants of those ancient Chinese princes who first colonized the then purely barbarous Wu, finding their power destroyed in 473 B.C. by the neighbouring barbarous power of Yueh, settled in j.a.pan, and continued their civilizing mission in quite a new sphere. Many years ago I endeavoured, in various papers published in China and j.a.pan, to show that, apart from Chinese words adopted into j.a.panese ever since A.D. 1 from the two separate sources of North China by land and Central China by sea, there is clear reason to detect, in the supposed pure j.a.panese language, as it was anterior to those importations, an admixture of Chinese words adopted much earlier than A.D. 1, and incorporated into the current tongue at a time when there was no means or thought of "nailing the sounds down" by any phonetic system of writing. There is much other very sound Chinese historical evidence in favour of the migration view, and it has been best summarized in an excellent little work in German, by Rev. A. Tschepe, S.J., published in the interior of Shan Tung province only last year.

The ancient native names for Wu and Yiieh, according to the clumsy Confucian way of writing them, were something like _Keu-ngu_ and _O-viet_ (see Chapter VII.); but it is quite hopeless to attempt reconstruction of the exact sounds intended then to be expressed by syllables which, in Chinese itself, have quite changed in power. The power of Yueh was supreme after 473; its king was voted Protector by the federal princes, and in 472 he held a grand durbar at the "Lang-ya Terrace," which place is no longer exactly identifiable, but is probably nothing more than the German settlement at Kiao Chou; in 468 he transferred his capital thither, and it remained there for over a century, till 379: but his power, it seems, was almost purely maritime, and he never succeeded in obtaining a sure footing north of or even in the Hwai valley, the greater part of which he subsequently returned to Ts'u. It must be remembered that the Hwai then had a free course to the sea, and of a part of it, the now extinct Sui valley, the Yellow River took possession for several centuries up to 1851 A.D.

He also returned to Sung the territory Wu had taken from her, and made over to Lu 100 _li_ square (30 miles) to the east of the River Sz; to understand this it must be remembered, at the cost of a little iteration, that Sung and Lu were the two chief powers of the middle and lower Sz valley, which is now entirely monopolized by the Grand Ca.n.a.l.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP

1. The dotted lines mark the boundaries of modern Shen Si, Shan Si, Chih Li, Ho Nan, Shan Tung, An Hwei, and Kiang Su.

2. The names Chao, Ngwei, and Han show how Tsin was split up into three in 403 B.C.

3. The crosses (in the line of each name) show the successive capitals as Ts'in encroached from the west, the _last_ capital in each case having a circle round the cross.]

The imperial dynasty went from bad to worse; in 440 there were family intrigues, a.s.sa.s.sinations, and divisions. The imperial metropolis, which was towards the end about all the Emperors had left to them, was divided into two, each half ruled by an Eastern and a Western Emperor respectively; unfortunately, no literature has survived which might depict for us the life of the inhabitants during those wretched days. Meanwhile, the ambitious great families of Tsin very nearly fell under the dictators.h.i.+p of one of their number; in 452 he was himself annihilated by a combination of the others, and the upshot of it was that next year the three families that had crushed the dictator and, emerged victorious, divided up the realm of Tsin into three separate and practically independent states, called respectively Wei or Ngwei (the Shan Si parts), Han (the Ho Nan parts), and Chao (the Chih Li parts). The other ancient and more orthodox state of Wei, occupying the Yellow River valley to the west of Sung and Lu, was now a mere va.s.sal to these three Tsin powers, which had not quite yet declared themselves independent, and which had for the present left the old Tsin capital to the direct administration of the legitimate prince. It was only in the year 403 that the Emperor's administration formally declared them to be feudal princes. This year is really the next great turning-point in Chinese history, in order of date, after the flight of the Emperors from their old capital in 771 B.C.; and it is, in fact, with this year that the great modern historical work of Sz-ma Kw.a.n.g begins; it was published A.D. 1084, and brings Chinese events down to a century previous to that date.

As to the state of Ts'i, it also had fallen into evil ways. So early as 539 B.C., when the two philosophers Yen-tsz and Shuh Hiang had confided to each other their mutual sorrows (see Appendix No. 2), the former had predicted that the powerful local family of T'ien or Ch'en was slowly but surely undermining the legitimate princely house, and would certainly end by seizing the throne; one of the methods adopted by the supplanting family was to lend money to the people on very favourable terms, and so to manipulate the grain measures that the taxes due to the prince were made lighter to bear; in this ingenious and indirect way, all the odium of taxation was thrown upon the extravagant princes who habitually squandered their resources, whilst the credit for generosity was turned towards this powerful tax-farming family, which thus took care of its own financial interests, and at the same time secured the affections of the people. In 481 the ambitious T'ien Heng, _alias_ CH'eN Ch'ang, then acting as hereditary _maire du palais_ to the legitimate house, a.s.sa.s.sinated the ruling prince, an act so shocking from the orthodox point of view that Confucius was quite heartbroken on learning of it, notwithstanding that his own prince had narrowly escaped a.s.sa.s.sination at the hands of the murdered man's grandfather. It was not until the year 391, however, that the T'ien, or CH'eN, family, after setting up and deposing princes at their pleasure for nearly a century, at last openly threw off the mask and usurped the Ts'i throne: their t.i.tle was officially recognized by the Son of Heaven in the year 378.

As to Ts'in ambitions, for a couple of centuries past there had been no further advance of conquest, at least in China. The hitherto almost unheard of state of Shuh (Sz Ch'wan) now begins to come prominently forward, and to contest with Ts'in mastery of the upper course of the Yang-tsz River. After being for 260 years in unchallenged possession of all territory west of the Yellow River, Ts'in once more lost this to Tsin (_i.e._ to Ngwei) in 385.

It was not until the other state of Wei, lower down the Yellow River, lost its individuality as an independent country that the celebrated Prince Wei Yang (see Chapter XXII.), having no career at home, offered his services to Ts'in, and that this latter state, availing itself to the full of his knowledge, suddenly shot forth in the light of real progress. We have seen in Chapter XX.

that an eminent lawyer and statesman of Ngwei, Ts'in's immediate rival on the east, had inaugurated a new legal code and an economic land system. This man's work had fallen under the cognizance of Wei Yang, who carried it with him to Ts'in, where it was immediately utilized to such advantage that Ts'in a century later was enabled to organize her resources thoroughly, and thus conquered the whole empire,

We have now arrived at what is usually called the Six Kingdom Period, or, if we include Ts'in, against whose menacing power the six states were often in alliance, the period of the Seven Kingdoms. These were the three equally powerful states of Ngwei, Han, and Chao (this last very Tartar in spirit, owing to its having absorbed nearly all the Turko-Tartar tribes west of the Yellow River mouth); the northernmost state of Yen, which seems in the same way to have absorbed or to have exercised a strong controlling influence over the Manchu-Corean group of tribes extending from the Liao River to the Chao frontier; Ts'u, which now had the whole south of China entirely to itself, and managed even to amalgamate the coast states of Yiich in 334; and finally Ts'i.

In other words, the orthodox Chinese princes, whose comparatively petty princ.i.p.alities in modern Ho Nan province had for several centuries formed a sort of c.o.c.k-pit in which Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, and Ts'u fought out their rivalries, had totally disappeared as independent and even as influential powers, and had been either absorbed by those four great powers (of which Tsin and Ts'i were in reconst.i.tuted form), or had become mere obedient va.s.sals to one or the other of them. In former times Tsin had been kinsman and defender; but now Tsin, broken up into three of strange clans, herself afforded an easy prey to Ts'in ambition; the orthodox states were in the defenceless position of the Greek states after Alexander had exhausted Macedon in his Persian wars, and when their last hope, Pyrrhus, had taught the Romans the art of war: they had only escaped Persia to fall into the jaws of Rome.

In the middle of the fourth century B.C. all six powers began to style themselves _w.a.n.g_, or "king," which, as explained before, was the t.i.tle borne by the Emperors of the Chou dynasty. Military, political, and literary activities were very great after this at the different emulous royal courts, and, however much the literary pedants of the day may have bewailed the decay of the good old times, there can be no doubt that life was now much more varied, more occupied, and more interesting than in the sleepy, respectable, patriarchal days of old. The "Fighting State" Period, as expounded in the _Chan-Kwoh Ts'eh,_ or "Fighting State Records," is the true period of Chinese chivalry, or knight- errantry.

CHAPTER XXIV

KINGS AND n.o.bLES

The emperors of the dynasty of Chou, which came formally into power in 1122 B.C., we have seen took no other t.i.tle than that of w.a.n.g, which is usually considered by Europeans to mean "king"; in modern times it is applied to the rulers of (what until recently were) tributary states, such as Loochoo, Annam, and Corea; to foreign rulers (unless they insist on a higher t.i.tle); and to Manchu and Mongol princes of the blood, and mediatized princes.

Confucius in his history at first always alludes to the Emperor whilst living as _t'ien-w.a.n.g_, or "the heavenly king"; it is not until in speaking of the year 583 that he uses the old term _t'ien-tsz_, or "Son of Heaven," in alluding to the reigning Emperor. After an emperor's death he is spoken of by his posthumous name; as, for instance, Wu w.a.n.g, the "Warrior King,"

and so on: these posthumous names were only introduced (as a regular system) by the Chou dynasty.

The monarchs of the two dynasties Hia (2205-1767) and Shang (1766- 1123) which preceded that of Chou, and also the somewhat mythical rulers who preceded those two dynasties, were called _Ti_, a word commonly translated by Western nations as "Emperor." For many generations past the j.a.panese, in order better to a.s.sert _vis-a- vis_ of China their international rank, have accordingly made use of the hybrid expression "_Ti_-state," by which they seek to convey the European idea of an "empire," or a state ruled over by a monarch in some way superior to a mere king, which is the highest t.i.tle China has ever willingly accorded to a foreign prince; this royal functionary in her eyes is, or was, almost synonymous with "tributary prince." Curiously enough, this "dog- Chinese" (j.a.panese) expression is now being reimported into Chinese political literature, together with many other excruciating combinations, a few of European, but mostly of j.a.panese manufacture, intended to represent such Western ideas as "executive and legislative,"

"const.i.tutional," "ministerial responsibility," "party," "political view,"

and so on. But we ourselves must not forget, in dealing with the particular word "imperial," that the Romans first extended the military t.i.tle of imperator to the permanent holder of the "command," simply because the ancient and haughty word of "king" was, after the expulsion of the kings, viewed with such jealousy by the people of Rome that even of Caesar it is said that he did thrice refuse the t.i.tle, So the ancient Chinese Ti, standing alone, was at first applied both to Shang Ti or "G.o.d" and to his Vicar on Earth, the Ti or Supreme Ruler of the Chinese world. Even Lao-tsz (sixth century B.C.), in his revolutionary philosophy, considers the "king" or "emperor" as one of the moral forces of nature, on a par with "heaven,"

"earth," and "Tao (or Providence)." When we reflect what petty "worlds" the a.s.syrian, Egyptian, and Greek worlds were, we can hardly blame the Chinese, who had probably been settled in Ho Nan just as long as the Western ruling races had been in a.s.syria and Egypt respectively, for imagining that they, the sole recorders of events amongst surrounding inferiors, were the world; and that the incoherent tribes rus.h.i.+ng aimlessly from all sides to attack them, were the unreclaimed fringe of the world.

It does not appear clearly why the Chou dynasty took the new t.i.tle of w.a.n.g, which does not seem to occur in any t.i.tular sense previous to their accession: the Chinese attempts to furnish etymological explanation are too crude to be worth discussing. No feudal Chinese prince presumed to use it during the Chou _regime_ and if the semi-barbarous rulers of Ts'u, Wu, and Yiieh did so in their own dominions (as the Hw.a.n.g Ti, or "august emperor," of Annam was in recent times tacitly allowed to do), their federal t.i.tle in orthodox China never went beyond that of viscount. When in the fourth century B.C. all the powers styled themselves _w.a.n.g_, and were recognized as such by the insignificant emperors, the situation was very much the same as that produced in Europe when first local Caesars, who, to begin with, had been "a.s.sociates" of the Augustus (or two rival Augusti), a.s.serted their independence of the feeble central Augustus, and then set themselves up as Augusti pure and simple, until at last the only "Roman Emperor"

left in Rome was the Emperor of Germany.

It is not explained precisely on what grounds, when the first Chou emperors distributed their fiefs, some of the feudal rulers, as explained in Chapter VII., were made dukes; others marquesses, earls, viscounts, and barons. Of course these translated terms are mere makes.h.i.+fts, simply because the Chinese had five ranks, and so have we. In creating their new n.o.bility, the j.a.panese have again made use of the five old Chinese t.i.tles, except that for some reason they call Duke Ito and Duke Yamagata "Prince" in English.

The size of the fiefs had something to do with it in China; the pedigree of the feoffees probably more; imperial clandom perhaps most of all. The sole state ruled by a duke in his own intrinsic right from the first was Sung, a small princ.i.p.ality on the northernmost head-waters of the River Hwai, corresponding to the modern Kwei-t&h Fu: probably it was because this duke fulfilled the sacrificial and continuity duties of the destroyed dynasty of Shang that he received extraordinary rank; just as, in very much later days, the Confucius family was the only non-Manchu to possess "ducal" rank, or, as the j.a.panese seem to hold in German style, "princely" rank. But it must be remembered that the Chou emperors had imperial dukes within their own appanage, precisely as cardinals, or "princes of the Church," are as common around Rome as they are scarce among the spiritually "feudal" princes of Europe; for feudal they once practically were.

Confucius' petty state of Lu was founded by the Duke of Chou, brother of the founder posthumously called the Wu w.a.n.g, or the "Warrior King": for many generations those Dukes of Lu seem to have resided at or near the metropolis, and to have a.s.sisted the Emperors with their advice as counsellors on the spot, as well as to have visited at intervals and ruled their own distant state, which was separated from Sung by the River Sz and by the marsh or lakes through which that river ran. Yet Lu as a state had only the rank of a marquisate ruled by a marquess.

Another close and influential relative of the founder or "Warrior King" was the Duke of Shao, who was infeoffed in Yen (the Peking plain), and whose descendants, like those of the Duke of Chou, seem to have done double duty at the metropolis and in their own feudal appanage. Confucius' history scarcely records anything of an international kind about Yen, which was a petty, feeble region, dovetailed in between Tsin and Ts'i, quite isolated, and occupied in civilizing some of the various Tartar and Corean barbarians; but it must have gradually increased in wealth and resources like all the other Chinese states; for, as we have seen in the last chapter, the Earls of Yen blossomed out into Kings at the beginning of the fourth century B.C., and the philosopher Mencius, when advising the King of Ts'i, even strongly recommended him to make war on the rising Yen power. The founder of Ts'i was the chief adviser of the Chou founder, but was not of his family name; his ancestors--also the ancestors later on claimed by certain Tartar rulers of China--go back to one of the ultra-mythical Emperors of China; his descendants bore, under the Chou dynasty, the dignity of marquess, and reigned without a break until, as already related, the T'ien or Ch'en family, emanating from the orthodox state of Ch'en, usurped the throne. Ts'i was always a powerful and highly civilized state; on one occasion, in 589 B.C., as mentioned in Chapter VI., its capital was desecrated by Tsin; and on another, a century later, the overbearing King of Wu invaded the country. After the t.i.tle of king was taken in 378 B.C., the court of Ts'i became quite a fas.h.i.+onable centre, and the gay resort of literary men, scientists, and philosophers of all kinds, Taoists included.

Tsin, like Ts'i, was of marquess rank, and though its ruling family was occasionally largely impregnated with Tartar blood by marriage, it was not much more so than the imperial family itself had sometimes been, The Chinese have never objected to Tartars _qua_ Tartars, except as persons who "let their hair fly,"

"b.u.t.ton their coats on the wrong side," and do not practise the orthodox rites; so soon as these defects are remedied, they are eligible for citizens.h.i.+p on equal terms. There has never been any race question or colour question in China, perhaps because the skin is yellow in whichever direction you turn; but it is difficult to conceive of the African races being clothed with Chinese citizens.h.i.+p.

Wei was a small state lying between the Yellow River as it now is and the same river as it then was: it was given to a brother of the founder of the Chou dynasty, and his subjects, like those of the Sung duke, consisted largely of the remains of the Shang dynasty; from which circ.u.mstance we may conclude that the so- called "dynasties," including that of Chou, were simply different ruling clans of one and the same people, very much like the different Jewish tribes, of which the tribe of Levi was the most "spiritual": that peculiarity may account for the universal unreadiness to cut off sacrifices and destroy tombs, an outrage we only hear of between barbarians, as, for instance, when Wu sacked the capital of Ts'u. We have seen in Chapter XII. that a reigning duke even respected at least some of the sacrificial rights of a traitor subject.

The important state of CHeNG, lying to the eastward of the imperial reserve, was only founded in the ninth century B.C. by one of the then Emperor's sons; to get across to each other, the great states north and south of the orthodox nucleus had usually to "beg road" of CHeNG, which territory, therefore, became a favourite fighting-ground; the rulers were earls. Ts'ao (earls) and Ts'ai (marquesses) were small states to the north and south of CHeNG, both of the imperial family name. The state of CH'eN was ruled by the descendants of the Emperor Shun, the monarch who preceded the Hia dynasty, and who, as stated before, is supposed to have been buried in the (modern) province of Hu Nan, south of the Yang-tsz River: they were marquesses. These three last-named states were always bones of contention between Tsin and Ts'u, on the one hand, and between Ts'i and Ts'u on the other. The remaining feudal states are scarcely worth special mention as active partic.i.p.ators in the story of how China fought her way from feudalism to centralization; most of their rulers were viscounts or barons in status, and seem to have owed, or at least been obliged to pay, more duty to the nearest great feudatory than direct to the Emperor.

No matter what the rank of the ruler, so soon as he had been supplied with a posthumous name (expressing, in guarded style, his personal character) he was known to history as "the Duke So-and- So." Even one of the Rings of Ts'u, is courteously called "the Duke Chw.a.n.g" after his death, because as a federal prince he had done honour to the courtesy t.i.tle of viscount. Princes or rulers not enjoying any of the five ranks were, if orthodox sovereign princes over never so small a tract, still called posthumously, "the Duke X."

Hence Western writers, in describing Confucius' master and the rulers of other feudal states, often speak of "the Duke of Lu," or "of Tsin"; but this is only an accurate form of speech when taken subject to the above reserves.

CHAPTER XXV

Va.s.sALS AND EMPEROR

The relations which existed between Emperor and feudal princes are best seen and understood from specific cases involving mutual relations. The Chou dynasty had about 1800 nominal va.s.sals in all, of whom 400 were already waiting at the ford of the Yellow River for the rendezvous appointed by the conquering "Warrior King"; thus the great majority must already have existed as such before the Chou family took power; in other words, they were the va.s.sals of the Shang dynasty, and perhaps, of the distant Hia dynasty too.

The new Emperor enfeoffed fifteen "brother" states, and forty more having the same clan-name as himself: these fifty-five were presumably all new states, enjoying mesne-lord or semi-suzerain privileges over the host of insignificant princ.i.p.alities; and it might as well be mentioned here that this imperial clan name of _Ki_ was that of all the ultra-ancient emperors, from 2700 B.C. down to the beginning of the Hia dynasty in 2205 B.C. Fiefs were conferred by the Chou conqueror upon all deserving ministers and advisers as well as upon kinsmen. The more distant princes they enfeoffed possessed, in addition to their distant satrapies, a village in the neighbourhood of the imperial court, where they resided, as at an hotel or town house, during court functions; more especially in the spring, when, if the world was at peace, they were supposed to pay their formal respects to the Emperor.

The tribute brought by the different feudal states was, perhaps euphemistically, a.s.sociated with offerings due to the G.o.ds, apparently on the same ground that the Emperor was vaguely a.s.sociated with G.o.d. The Protectors, when the Emperors degenerated, made a great show always of chastising or threatening the other va.s.sals on account of their neglect to honour the Emperor.

Thus in 656 the First Protector (Ts'i) made war upon Ts'u for not sending the usual tribute of sedge to the Emperor, for use in clarifying the sacrificial wine. Previously, in 663, after a.s.sisting the state of Yen against the Tartars, Ts'i had requested Yen "to go on paying tribute, as was done during the reigns of the two first Chou Emperors, and to continue the wise government of the Duke of Shao." In 581, when Wu's pretensions were rising in a menacing degree, the King of Wu said: "The Emperor complains to me that not a single _Ki_ (_i.e._ not a single closely-related state) will come to his a.s.sistance or send him tribute, and thus his Majesty has nothing to offer to the Emperor Above, or to the Ghosts and Spirits."

Land thus received in va.s.salage from the Emperor could not, or ought not to, be alienated without imperial sanction. Thus in 711 B.C. two states (both of the _Ki_ surname, and thus both such as ought to have known better) effected an exchange of territory; one giving away his accommodation village, or hotel, at the capital; and the other giving in exchange a place where the Emperor used to stop on his way to Ts'i when he visited Mount T'ai-shan, then, as now, the sacred resort of pilgrims in Shan Tung. Even the Emperor could not give away a fief in joke. This, indeed, was how the second Chou Emperor conferred the (extinct or forfeited) fief of Tsin upon a relative. But just as

_Une reine d'Espagne ne regarde pas par la fenetre,_

so an Emperor of China cannot jest in vain. An attentive scribe standing by said: "When the Son of Heaven speaks, the clerk takes down his words in writing; they are sung to music, and the rites are fulfilled." When, in 665 B.C., Ts'i had driven back the Tartars on behalf of Yen, the Prince of Yen accompanied the Prince of Ts'i back into Ts'i territory. The Prince of Ts'i at once ceded to Yen the territory trodden by the Prince of Yen, on the ground that "only the Emperor can, when accompanying a ruling prince, advance beyond the limits of his own domain." This rule probably refers only to war, for feudal princes frequently visited each other. The rule was that "the Emperor can never go out," i.e. he can never leave or quit any part of China, for all China belongs to him. It is like our "the King can do no wrong."

The Emperor could thus neither leave nor enter his own particular territory, as all his va.s.sals' territory is equally his. Hence his "mere motion" or pleasure makes an Empress, who needs no formal reception into his separate appanage by him. If the Emperor gives a daughter or a sister in marriage, he deputes a ruling prince of the Ki surname to "manage" the affair; hence to this day the only name for an imperial princess is "a publicly managed one." A feudal prince must go and welcome his wife, but the Emperor simply deputes one of his appanage dukes to do it for him. In the same way, these dukes are sent on mission to convey the Emperor's pleasure to va.s.sals. Thus, in 651 B.C., a duke was sent by the Emperor to a.s.sist Ts'in and Ts'i in setting one of the four Tartar-begotten brethren on the Tsin throne (see Chapter X.). In 649 two dukes (one being the hereditary Duke of Shao, supposed to be descended from the same ancestor as the Earl reigning in the distant state of Yen) were sent to confer the formal patent and sceptre of invest.i.ture on Tsin. The rule was that imperial envoys pa.s.sing through the va.s.sal territory should be welcomed on the frontier, fed, and housed; but in 716 the fact that Wei attacked an imperial envoy on his way to Lu proves how low the imperial power had already sunk.

The greater powers undoubtedly had, nearly all of them, cl.u.s.ters of va.s.sals and clients, and it is presumed that the total of 1800, belonging, at least nominally, to the Emperor, covered all these indirect va.s.sals. Possibly, before the dawn of truly historical times, they all went in person to the imperial court; but after the _debacle_ of 771 B.C., the Emperor seems to have been left severely alone by all the va.s.sals who dared do so. So early as 704 B.C. a reunion of princelets va.s.sal to Ts'u is mentioned; and in the year 622 Ts'u annexed a region styled "the six states,"

admittedly descended from the most ancient ministerial stock, because they had presumed to ally themselves with the eastern barbarians; this was when Ts'u was working her way eastwards, down from the southernmost headwaters of the Hwai River, in the extreme south of Ho Nan. It was in 684 that Ts'u first began to annex the petty orthodox states in (modern) Hu Peh province, and very soon nearly all those lying between the River Han and the River Yang- tsz were swallowed up by the semi-barbarian power. Ts'u's relation to China was very much like that of Macedon to Greece. Both of the latter were more or less equally descended from the ancient and somewhat nebulous Pelasgi; but Macedon, though imbued with a portion of Greek civilization, was more rude and warlike, with a strong barbarian strain in addition. Ts'u was never in any way "subject" to the Chou dynasty, except in so far as it may have suited her to be so for some interested purpose of her own. In the year 595 Ts'u even treated Sung and Cheng (two federal states of the highest possible orthodox imperial rank) as her own va.s.sals, by marching armies through without asking their permission. As an ill.u.s.tration of what was the correct course to follow may be taken the case of Tsin in 632, when a Tsin army was marching on a punitory expedition against the imperial clan state of Ts'ao; the most direct way ran through Wei, but this latter state declined to allow the Tsin army to pa.s.s; it was therefore obliged to cross the Yellow River at a point south of Wei-hwei Fu (as marked on modern maps), near the capital of Wei, past which the Yellow River then ran.