A History of China Part 8

Such a union or federation can be conceived of, structurally, as a cone.

At the top point of the cone there was the person of the ruler of the federation. He was a member of the leading family or clan of the leading tribe (the two top layers of the cone). If we speak of the Toba as of Turkish stock, we mean that according to our present knowledge, this leading tribe (_a_) spoke a language belonging to the Turkish language family and (_b_) exhibited a pattern of culture which belonged to the type called above in Chapter One as "North-western Culture". The next layer of the cone represented the "inner circle of tribes", i.e. such tribes as had joined with the leading tribe at an early moment. The leading family of the leading tribe often took their wives from the leading families of the "inner tribes", and these leaders served as advisors and councillors to the leader of the federation. The next lower layer consisted of the "outer tribes", i.e. tribes which had joined the federation only later, often under strong pressure; their number was always much larger than the number of the "inner tribes", but their political influence was much weaker. Every layer below that of the "outer tribes" was regarded as inferior and more or less "unfree". There was many a tribe which, as a tribe, had to serve a free tribe; and there were others who, as tribes, had to serve the whole federation. In addition, there were individuals who had quit or had been forced to quit their tribe or their home and had joined the federation leader as his personal "bondsmen"; further, there were individual slaves and, finally, there were the large ma.s.ses of agriculturists who had been conquered by the federation. When such a federation was dissolved, by defeat or inner dissent, individual tribes or groups of tribes could join a new federation or could resume independent life.

Typically, such federations exhibited two tendencies. In the case of the Hsiung-nu we indicated already previously that the leader of the federation repeatedly attempted to build up a kind of bureaucratic system, using his bondsmen as a nucleus. A second tendency was to replace the original tribal leaders by members of the family of the federation leader. If this initial step, usually first taken when "outer tribes" were incorporated, was successful, a reorganization was attempted: instead of using tribal units in war, military units on the basis of "Groups of Hundred", "Groups of Thousand", etc., were created and the original tribes were dissolved into military regiments. In the course of time, and especially at the time of the dissolution of a federation, these military units had gained social coherence and appeared to be tribes again; we are probably correct in a.s.suming that all "tribes" which we find from this time on were already "secondary"

tribes of this type. A secondary tribe often took its name from its leader, but it could also revive an earlier "primary tribe" name.

The Toba represented a good example for this "cone" structure of pastoral society. Also the Hsiung-nu of this time seem to have had a similar structure. Incidentally, we will from now on call the Hsiung-nu "Huns" because Chinese sources begin to call them "Hu", a term which also had a more general meaning (all non-Chinese in the north and west of China) as well as a more special meaning (non-Chinese in Central Asia and India).

The Tibetans fell apart into two sub-groups, the Ch'iang and the Ti.

Both names appeared repeatedly as political conceptions, but the Tibetans, like all other state-forming groups of peoples, sheltered in their realms countless alien elements. In the course of the third and second centuries B.C. the group of the Ti, mainly living in the territory of the present Szechwan, had mixed extensively with remains of the Yueh-chih; the others, the Ch'iang, were northern Tibetans or so-called Tanguts; that is to say, they contained Turkish and Mongol elements. In A.D. 296 there began a great rising of the Ti, whose leader Ch'i Wan-nien took on the t.i.tle emperor. The Ch'iang rose with them, but it was not until later, from 312, that they pursued an independent policy. The Ti State, however, though it had a second emperor, very soon lost importance, so that we shall be occupied solely with the Ch'iang.

As the tribal structure of Tibetan groups was always weak and as leadership developed among them only in times of war, their states always show a military rather than a tribal structure, and the continuation of these states depended strongly upon the personal qualities of their leaders. Incidentally, Tibetans fundamentally were sheep-breeders and not horse-breeders and, therefore, they always showed inclination to incorporate infantry into their armies. Thus, Tibetan states differed strongly from the aristocratically organized "Turkish" states as well as from the tribal, non-aristocratic "Mongol"

states of that period.

The Hsien-pi, according to our present knowledge, were under "Mongol"

leadership, i.e. we believe that the language of the leading group belonged to the family of Mongolian languages and that their culture belonged to the type described above as "Northern culture". They had, in addition, a strong admixture of Hunnic tribes. Throughout the period during which they played a part in history, they never succeeded in forming any great political unit, in strong contrast to the Huns, who excelled in state formation. The separate groups of the Hsien-pi pursued a policy of their own; very frequently Hsien-pi fought each other, and they never submitted to a common leadership. Thus their history is entirely that of small groups. As early as the Wei period there had been small-scale conflicts with the Hsien-pi tribes, and at times the tribes had some success. The campaigns of the Hsien-pi against North China now increased, and in the course of them the various tribes formed firmer groupings, among which the Mu-jung tribes played a leading part. In 281, the year after the demobilization law, this group marched south into China, and occupied the region round Peking. After fierce fighting, in which the Mu-jung section suffered heavy losses, a treaty was signed in 289, under which the Mu-jung tribe of the Hsien-pi recognized Chinese overlordship. The Mu-jung were driven to this step mainly because they had been continually attacked from southern Manchuria by another Hsien-pi tribe, the Yu-wen, the tribe most closely related to them. The Mu-jung made use of the period of their so-called subjection to organize their community in North China.

South of the Toba were the nineteen tribes of the Hsiung-nu or Huns, as we are now calling them. Their leader in A.D. 287, Liu Yuan, was one of the princ.i.p.al personages of this period. His name is purely Chinese, but he was descended from the Hun _shan-yu_, from the family and line of Mao Tun. His membership of that long-famous n.o.ble line and old ruling family of Huns gave him a prestige which he increased by his great organizing ability.

3 _Struggles for the throne_

We shall return to Liu Yuan later; we must now cast another glance at the official court of the Chin. In that court a family named Yang had become very powerful, a daughter of this family having become empress.

When, however, the emperor died, the wife of the new emperor Hui Ti (290-306) secured the a.s.sa.s.sination of the old empress Yang and of her whole family. Thus began the rule at court of the Chia family. In 299 the Chia family got rid of the heir to the throne, to whom they objected, a.s.sa.s.sinating this prince and another one. This event became the signal for large-scale activity on the part of the princes, each of whom was supported by particular groups of families. The princes had not complied with the disarmament law of 280 and so had become militarily supreme. The generals newly appointed in the course of the imperial rearmament at once entered into alliance with the princes, and thus were quite unreliable as officers of the government. Both the generals and the princes entered into agreements with the frontier peoples to a.s.sure their aid in the struggle for power. The most popular of these auxiliaries were the Hsien-pi, who were fighting for one of the princes whose territory lay in the east. Since the Toba were the natural enemies of the Hsien-pi, who were continually contesting their hold on their territory, the Toba were always on the opposite side to that supported by the Hsien-pi, so that they now supported generals who were ostensibly loyal to the government. The Huns, too, negotiated with several generals and princes and received tempting offers. Above all, all the frontier peoples were now militarily well equipped, continually receiving new war material from the Chinese who from time to time were co-operating with them.

In A.D. 300 Prince Lun a.s.sa.s.sinated the empress Chia and removed her group. In 301 he made himself emperor, but in the same year he was killed by the prince of Ch'i. This prince was killed in 302 by the prince of Ch'ang-sha, who in turned was killed in 303 by the prince of Tung-hai. The prince of Ho-chien rose in 302 and was killed in 306; the prince of Ch'engtu rose in 303, conquered the capital in 305, and then, in 306, was himself removed. I mention all these names and dates only to show the disunion within the ruling groups.

4 _Migration of Chinese_

All these struggles raged round the capital, for each of the princes wanted to secure full power and to become emperor. Thus the border regions remained relatively undisturbed. Their population suffered much less from the warfare than the unfortunate people in the neighbourhood of the central government. For this reason there took place a ma.s.s migration of Chinese from the centre of the empire to its periphery.

This process, together with the shifting of the frontier peoples, is one of the most important events of that epoch. A great number of Chinese migrated especially into the present province of Kansu, where a governor who had originally been sent there to fight the Hsien-pi had created a sort of paradise by his good administration and maintenance of peace.

The territory ruled by this Chinese, first as governor and then in increasing independence, was surrounded by Hsien-pi, Tibetans, and other peoples, but thanks to the great immigration of Chinese and to its situation on the main caravan route to Turkestan, it was able to hold its own, to expand, and to become prosperous.

Other groups of Chinese peasants migrated southward into the territories of the former state of Wu. A Chinese prince of the house of the Chin was ruling there, in the present Nanking. His purpose was to organize that territory, and then to intervene in the struggles of the other princes. We shall meet him again at the beginning of the Hun rule over North China in 317, as founder and emperor of the first south Chinese dynasty, which was at once involved in the usual internal and external struggles. For the moment, however, the southern region was relatively at peace, and was accordingly attracting settlers.

Finally, many Chinese migrated northward, into the territories of the frontier peoples, not only of the Hsien-pi but especially of the Huns.

These alien peoples, although in the official Chinese view they were still barbarians, at least maintained peace in the territories they ruled, and they left in peace the peasants and craftsmen who came to them, even while their own armies were involved in fighting inside China. Not only peasants and craftsmen came to the north but more and more educated persons. Members of families of the gentry that had suffered from the fighting, people who had lost their influence in China, were welcomed by the Huns and appointed teachers and political advisers of the Hun n.o.bility.

5 _Victory of the Huns. The Hun Han dynasty (later renamed the Earlier Chao dynasty_)

With its self-confidence thus increased, the Hun council of n.o.bles declared that in future the Huns should no longer fight now for one and now for another Chinese general or prince. They had promised loyalty to the Chinese emperor, but not to any prince. No one doubted that the Chinese emperor was a complete nonent.i.ty and no longer played any part in the struggle for power. It was evident that the murders would continue until one of the generals or princes overcame the rest and made himself emperor. Why should not the Huns have the same right? Why should not they join in this struggle for the Chinese imperial throne?

There were two arguments against this course, one of which was already out of date. The Chinese had for many centuries set down the Huns as uncultured barbarians; but the inferiority complex thus engendered in the Huns had virtually been overcome, because in the course of time their upper cla.s.s had deliberately acquired a Chinese education and so ranked culturally with the Chinese. Thus the ruler Liu Yuan, for example, had enjoyed a good Chinese education and was able to read all the cla.s.sical texts. The second argument was provided by the rigid conceptions of legitimacy to which the Turkish-Hunnic aristocratic society adhered. The Huns asked themselves: "Have we, as aliens, any right to become emperors and rulers in China, when we are not descended from an old Chinese family?" On this point Liu Yuan and his advisers found a good answer. They called Liu Yuan's dynasty the "Han dynasty", and so linked it with the most famous of all the Chinese dynasties, pointing to the pact which their ancestor Mao Tun had concluded five hundred years earlier with the first emperor of the Han dynasty and which had described the two states as "brethren". They further recalled the fact that the rulers of the Huns were closely related to the Chinese ruling family, because Mao Tun and his successors had married Chinese princesses. Finally, Liu Yuan's Chinese family name, Liu, had also been the family name of the rulers of the Han dynasty. Accordingly the Hun Lius came forward not as aliens but as the rightful successors in continuation of the Han dynasty, as legitimate heirs to the Chinese imperial throne on the strength of relationship and of treaties.

Thus the Hun Liu Yuan had no intention of restoring the old empire of Mao Tun, the empire of the nomads; he intended to become emperor of China, emperor of a country of farmers. In this lay the fundamental difference between the earlier Hun empire and this new one. The question whether the Huns should join in the struggle for the Chinese imperial throne was therefore decided among the Huns themselves in 304 in the affirmative, by the founding of the "Hun Han dynasty". All that remained was the practical question of how to hold out with their small army of 50,000 men if serious opposition should be offered to the "barbarians".

Meanwhile Liu Yuan provided himself with court ceremonial on the Chinese model, in a capital which, after several changes, was established at P'ing-ch'eng in southern Shansi. He attracted more and more of the Chinese gentry, who were glad to come to this still rather barbaric but well-organized court. In 309 the first attack was made on the Chinese capital, Loyang. Liu Yuan died in the following year, and in 311, under his successor Liu Ts'ung (310-318), the attack was renewed and Loyang fell. The Chin emperor, Huai Ti, was captured and kept a prisoner in P'ing-ch'eng until in 313 a conspiracy in his favour was brought to light in the Hun empire, and he and all his supporters were killed.

Meanwhile the Chinese clique of the Chin dynasty had hastened to make a prince emperor in the second capital, Ch'ang-an (Min Ti, 313-316) while the princes' struggles for the throne continued. n.o.body troubled about the fate of the unfortunate emperor in his capital. He received no reinforcements, so that he was helpless in face of the next attack of the Huns, and in 316 he was compelled to surrender like his predecessor.

Now the Hun Han dynasty held both capitals, which meant virtually the whole of the western part of North China, and the so-called "Western Chin dynasty" thus came to its end. Its princes and generals and many of its gentry became landless and homeless and had to flee into the south.

(C) The alien empires in North China, down to the Toba (A.D. 317-385)

1 _The Later Chao dynasty in eastern North China (Hun_; 329-352)

At this time the eastern part of North China was entirely in the hands of Shih Lo, a former follower of Liu Yuan. Shih Lo had escaped from slavery in China and had risen to be a military leader among detribalized Huns. In 310 he had not only undertaken a great campaign right across China to the south, but had slaughtered more than 100,000 Chinese, including forty-eight princes of the Chin dynasty, who had formed a vast burial procession for a prince. This achievement added considerably to Shih Lo's power, and his relations with Liu Ts'ung, already tense, became still more so. Liu Yuan had tried to organize the Hun state on the Chinese model, intending in this way to gain efficient control of China; Shih Lo rejected Chinese methods, and held to the old warrior-nomad tradition, making raids with the aid of nomad fighters. He did not contemplate holding the territories of central and southern China which he had conquered; he withdrew, and in the two years 314-315 he contented himself with bringing considerable expanses in north-eastern China, especially territories of the Hsien-pi, under his direct rule, as a base for further raids. Many Huns in Liu Ts'ung's dominion found Shih Lo's method of rule more to their taste than living in a state ruled by officials, and they went over to Shih Lo and joined him in breaking entirely with Liu Ts'ung. There was a further motive for this: in states founded by nomads, with a federation of tribes as their basis, the personal qualities of the ruler played an important part. The chiefs of the various tribes would not give unqualified allegiance to the son of a dead ruler unless the son was a strong personality or gave promise of becoming one. Failing that, there would be independence movements. Liu Ts'ung did not possess the indisputable charisma of his predecessor Liu Yuan; and the Huns looked with contempt on his court splendour, which could only have been justified if he had conquered all China. Liu Ts'ung had no such ambition; nor had his successor Liu Yao (319-329), who gave the Hun Han dynasty retroactively, from its start with Liu Yuan, the new name of "Earlier Chao dynasty" (304-329). Many tribes then went over to Shih Lo, and the remainder of Liu Yao's empire was reduced to a precarious existence. In 329 the whole of it was annexed by Shih Lo.

Although Shih Lo had long been much more powerful than the emperors of the "Earlier Chao dynasty", until their removal he had not ventured to a.s.sume the t.i.tle of emperor. The reason for this seems to have lain in the conceptions of n.o.bility held by the Turkish peoples in general and the Huns in particular, according to which only those could become _shan-yu_ (or, later, emperor) who could show descent from the Tu-ku tribe the rightful _shan-yu_ stock. In accordance with this conception, all later Hun dynasties deliberately disowned Shih Lo. For Shih Lo, after his destruction of Liu Yao, no longer hesitated: ex-slave as he was, and descended from one of the non-n.o.ble stocks of the Huns, he made himself emperor of the "Later Chao dynasty" (329-352).

Shih Lo was a forceful army commander, but he was a man without statesmanship, and without the culture of his day. He had no Chinese education; he hated the Chinese and would have been glad to make north China a grazing ground for his nomad tribes of Huns. Accordingly he had no desire to rule all China. The part already subjugated, embracing the whole of north China with the exception of the present province of Kansu, sufficed for his purpose.

The governor of that province was a loyal subject of the Chinese Chin dynasty, a man famous for his good administration, and himself a Chinese. After the execution of the Chin emperor Huai Ti by the Huns in 313, he regarded himself as no longer bound to the central government; he made himself independent and founded the "Earlier Liang dynasty", which was to last until 376. This mainly Chinese realm was not very large, although it had admitted a broad stream of Chinese emigrants from the dissolving Chin empire; but economically the Liang realm was very prosperous, so that it was able to extend its influence as far as Turkestan. During the earlier struggles Turkestan had been virtually in isolation, but now new contacts began to be established. Many traders from Turkestan set up branches in Liang. In the capital there were whole quarters inhabited only by aliens from western and eastern Turkestan and from India. With the traders came Buddhist monks; trade and Buddhism seemed to be closely a.s.sociated everywhere. In the trading centres monasteries were installed in the form of blocks of houses within strong walls that successfully resisted many an attack. Consequently the Buddhists were able to serve as bankers for the merchants, who deposited their money in the monasteries, which made a charge for its custody; the merchants also warehoused their goods in the monasteries. Sometimes the process was reversed, a trade centre being formed around an existing monastery. In this case the monastery also served as a hostel for the merchants. Economically this Chinese state in Kansu was much more like a Turkestan city state that lived by commerce than the agrarian states of the Far East, although agriculture was also pursued under the Earlier Liang.

From this trip to the remote west we will return first to the Hun capital. From 329 onward Shih Lo possessed a wide empire, but an unstable one. He himself felt at all times insecure, because the Huns regarded him, on account of his humble origin, as a "revolutionary". He exterminated every member of the Liu family, that is to say the old _shan-yu_ family, of whom he could get hold, in order to remove any possible pretender to the throne; but he could not count on the loyalty of the Hun and other Turkish tribes under his rule. During this period not a few Huns went over to the small realm of the Toba; other Hun tribes withdrew entirely from the political scene and lived with their herds as nomad tribes in Shansi and in the Ordos region. The general insecurity undermined the strength of Shih Lo's empire. He died in 333, and there came to the throne, after a short interregnum, another personality of a certain greatness, Shih Hu (334-349). He transferred the capital to the city of Yeh, in northern Honan, where the rulers of the Wei dynasty had reigned. There are many accounts of the magnificence of the court of Yeh. Foreigners, especially Buddhist monks, played a greater part there than Chinese. On the one hand, it was not easy for Shih Hu to gain the active support of the educated Chinese gentry after the murders of Shih Lo and, on the other hand, Shih Hu seems to have understood that foreigners without family and without other relations to the native population, but with special skills, are the most reliable and loyal servants of a ruler. Indeed, his administration seems to have been good, but the regime remained completely parasitic, with no support of the ma.s.ses or the gentry. After Shih Hu's death there were fearful combats between his sons; ultimately a member of an entirely different family of Hun origin seized power, but was destroyed in 352 by the Hsien-pi, bringing to an end the Later Chao dynasty.

2 _Earlier Yen dynasty in the north-east (proto-Mongol; 352-370), and the Earlier Ch'in dynasty in all north China (Tibetan; 351-394_)

In the north, proto-Mongol Hsien-pi tribes had again made themselves independent; in the past they had been subjects of Liu Yuan and then of Shih Lo. A man belonging to one of these tribes, the tribe of the Mu-jung, became the leader of a league of tribes, and in 337 founded the state of Yen. This proto-Mongol state of the Mu-jung, which the historians call the "Earlier Yen" state, conquered parts of southern Manchuria and also the state of Kao-li in Korea, and there began then an immigration of Hsien-pi into Korea, which became noticeable at a later date. The conquest of Korea, which was still, as in the past, a j.a.panese market and was very wealthy, enormously strengthened the state of Yen.

Not until a little later, when j.a.pan's trade relations were diverted to central China, did Korea's importance begin to diminish. Although this "Earlier Yen dynasty" of the Mu-jung officially entered on the heritage of the Huns, and its regime was therefore dated only from 352 (until 370), it failed either to subjugate the whole realm of the "Later Chao"

or effectively to strengthen the state it had acquired. This old Hun territory had suffered economically from the anti-agrarian nomad tendency of the last of the Hun emperors; and unremunerative wars against the Chinese in the south had done nothing to improve its position. In addition to this, the realm of the Toba was dangerously gaining strength on the flank of the new empire. But the most dangerous enemy was in the west, on former Hun soil, in the province of Shensi--Tibetans, who finally came forward once more with claims to dominance. These were Tibetans of the P'u family, which later changed its name to Fu. The head of the family had worked his way up as a leader of Tibetan auxiliaries under the "Later Chao", gaining more and more power and following. When under that dynasty the death of Shih Hu marked the beginning of general dissolution, he gathered his Tibetans around him in the west, declared himself independent of the Huns, and made himself emperor of the "Earlier Ch'in dynasty" (351-394). He died in 355, and was followed after a short interregnum by Fu Chien (357-385), who was unquestionably one of the most important figures of the fourth century. This Tibetan empire ultimately defeated the "Earlier Yen dynasty" and annexed the realm of the Mu-jung. Thus the Mu-jung Hsien-pi came under the dominion of the Tibetans; they were distributed among a number of places as garrisons of mounted troops.

The empire of the Tibetans was organized quite differently from the empires of the Huns and the Hsien-pi tribes. The Tibetan organization was purely military and had nothing to do with tribal structure. This had its advantages, for the leader of such a formation had no need to take account of tribal chieftains; he was answerable to no one and possessed considerable personal power. Nor was there any need for him to be of n.o.ble rank or descended from an old family. The Tibetan ruler Fu Chien organized all his troops, including the non-Tibetans, on this system, without regard to tribal membership.

Fu Chien's state showed another innovation: the armies of the Huns and the Hsien-pi had consisted entirely of cavalry, for the nomads of the north were, of course, hors.e.m.e.n; to fight on foot was in their eyes not only contrary to custom but contemptible. So long as a state consisted only of a league of tribes, it was simply out of the question to transform part of the army into infantry. Fu Chien, however, with his military organization that paid no attention to the tribal element, created an infantry in addition to the great cavalry units, recruiting for it large numbers of Chinese. The infantry proved extremely valuable, especially in the fighting in the plains of north China and in laying siege to fortified towns. Fu Chien thus very quickly achieved military predominance over the neighbouring states. As we have seen already, he annexed the "Earlier Yen" realm of the proto-Mongols (370), but he also annihilated the Chinese "Earlier Liang" realm (376) and in the same year the small Turkish Toba realm. This made him supreme over all north China and stronger than any alien ruler before him. He had in his possession both the ancient capitals, Ch'ang-an and Loyang; the whole of the rich agricultural regions of north China belonged to him; he also controlled the routes to Turkestan. He himself had a Chinese education, and he attracted Chinese to his court; he protected the Buddhists; and he tried in every way to make the whole country culturally Chinese. As soon as Fu Chien had all north China in his power, as Liu Yuan and his Huns had done before him, he resolved, like Liu Yuan, to make every effort to gain the mastery over all China, to become emperor of China. Liu Yuan's successors had not had the capacity for which such a venture called; Fu Chien was to fail in it for other reasons. Yet, from a military point of view, his chances were not bad. He had far more soldiers under his command than the Chinese "Eastern Chin dynasty" which ruled the south, and his troops were undoubtedly better. In the time of the founder of the Tibetan dynasty the southern empire had been utterly defeated by his troops (354), and the south Chinese were no stronger now.

Against them the north had these a.s.sets: the possession of the best northern tillage, the control of the trade routes, and "Chinese" culture and administration. At the time, however, these represented only potentialities and not tangible realities. It would have taken ten to twenty years to restore the capacities of the north after its devastation in many wars, to reorganize commerce, and to set up a really reliable administration, and thus to interlock the various elements and consolidate the various tribes. But as early as 383 Fu Chien started his great campaign against the south, with an army of something like a million men. At first the advance went well. The hors.e.m.e.n from the north, however, were men of the mountain country, and in the soggy plains of the Yangtze region, cut up by hundreds of water-courses and ca.n.a.ls, they suffered from climatic and natural conditions to which they were unaccustomed. Their main strength was still in cavalry; and they came to grief. The supplies and reinforcements for the vast army failed to arrive in time; units did not reach the appointed places at the appointed dates. The southern troops under the supreme command of Hsieh Hsuan, far inferior in numbers and militarily of no great efficiency, made surprise attacks on isolated units before these were in regular formation. Some they defeated, others they bribed; they spread false reports. Fu Chien's army was seized with widespread panic, so that he was compelled to retreat in haste. As he did so it became evident that his empire had no inner stability: in a very short time it fell into fragments. The south Chinese had played no direct part in this, for in spite of their victory they were not strong enough to advance far to the north.

3 _The fragmentation of north China_

The first to fall away from the Tibetan ruler was a n.o.ble of the Mu-jung, a member of the ruling family of the "Earlier Yen dynasty", who withdrew during the actual fighting to pursue a policy of his own. With the vestiges of the Hsien-pi who followed him, mostly cavalry, he fought his way northward into the old homeland of the Hsien-pi and there, in central Hopei, founded the "Later Yen dynasty" (384-409), himself reigning for twelve years. In the remaining thirteen years of the existence of that dynasty there were no fewer than five rulers, the last of them a member of another family. The history of this Hsien-pi dynasty, as of its predecessor, is an unedifying succession of intrigues; no serious effort was made to build up a true state.

In the same year 384 there was founded, under several other Mu-jung princes of the ruling family of the "Earlier Yen dynasty", the "Western Yen dynasty" (384-394). Its nucleus was nothing more than a detachment of troops of the Hsien-pi which had been thrown by Fu Chien into the west of his empire, in Shensi, in the neighbourhood of the old capital Ch'ang-an. There its commanders, on learning the news of Fu Chien's collapse, declared their independence. In western China, however, far removed from all liaison with the main body of the Hsien-pi, they were unable to establish themselves, and when they tried to fight their way to the north-east they were dispersed, so that they failed entirely to form an actual state.

There was a third attempt in 384 to form a state in north China. A Tibetan who had joined Fu Chien with his followers declared himself independent when Fu Chien came back, a beaten man, to Shensi. He caused Fu Chien and almost the whole of his family to be a.s.sa.s.sinated, occupied the capital, Ch'ang-an, and actually entered into the heritage of Fu Chien. This Tibetan dynasty is known as the "Later Ch'in dynasty"

(384-417). It was certainly the strongest of those founded in 384, but it still failed to dominate any considerable part of China and remained of local importance, mainly confined to the present province of Shensi.

Fu Chien's empire nominally had three further rulers, but they did not exert the slightest influence on events.

With the collapse of the state founded by Fu Chien, the tribes of Hsien-pi who had left their homeland in the third century and migrated to the Ordos region proceeded to form their own state: a man of the Hsien-pi tribe of the Ch'i-fu founded the so-called "Western Ch'in dynasty" (385-431). Like the other Hsien-pi states, this one was of weak construction, resting on the military strength of a few tribes and failing to attain a really secure basis. Its territory lay in the east of the present province of Kansu, and so controlled the eastern end of the western Asian caravan route, which might have been a source of wealth if the Ch'i-fu had succeeded in attracting commerce by discreet treatment and in imposing taxation on it. Instead of this, the bulk of the long-distance traffic pa.s.sed through the Ordos region, a little farther north, avoiding the Ch'i-fu state, which seemed to the merchants to be too insecure. The Ch'i-fu depended mainly on cattle-breeding in the remote mountain country in the south of their territory, a region that gave them relative security from attack; on the other hand, this made them unable to exercise any influence on the course of political events in western China.

Mention must be made of one more state that rose from the ruins of Fu Chien's empire. It lay in the far west of China, in the western part of the present province of Kansu, and was really a continuation of the Chinese "Earlier Liang" realm, which had been annexed ten years earlier (376) by Fu Chien. A year before his great march to the south, Fu Chien had sent the Tibetan Lu Kuang into the "Earlier Liang" region in order to gain influence over Turkestan. As mentioned previously, after the great Hun rulers Fu Chien was the first to make a deliberate attempt to secure cultural and political overlordship over the whole of China.

Although himself a Tibetan, he never succ.u.mbed to the temptation of pursuing a "Tibetan" policy; like an entirely legitimate ruler of China, he was concerned to prevent the northern peoples along the frontier from uniting with the Tibetan peoples of the west for political ends. The possession of Turkestan would avert that danger, which had shown signs of becoming imminent of late: some tribes of the Hsien-pi had migrated as far as the high mountains of Tibet and had imposed themselves as a ruling cla.s.s on the still very primitive Tibetans living there. From this symbiosis there began to be formed a new people, the so-called T'u-yu-hun, a hybridization of Mongol and Tibetan stock with a slight Turkish admixture. Lu Kuang had considerable success in Turkestan; he had brought considerable portions of eastern Turkestan under Fu Chien's sovereignty and administered those regions almost independently. When the news came of Fu Chien's end, he declared himself an independent ruler, of the "Later Liang" dynasty (386-403). Strictly speaking, this was simply a trading State, like the city-states of Turkestan: its basis was the transit traffic that brought it prosperity. For commerce brought good profit to the small states that lay right across the caravan route, whereas it was of doubtful benefit, as we know, to agrarian China as a whole, because the luxury goods which it supplied to the court were paid for out of the production of the general population.

This "Later Liang" realm was inhabited not only by a few Tibetans and many Chinese, but also by Hsien-pi and Huns. These heterogeneous elements with their divergent cultures failed in the long run to hold together in this long but extremely narrow strip of territory, which was almost incapable of military defence. As early as 397 a group of Huns in the central section of the country made themselves independent, a.s.suming the name of the "Northern Liang" (397-439). These Huns quickly conquered other parts of the "Later Liang" realm, which then fell entirely to pieces. Chinese again founded a state, "West Liang" (400-421) in western Kansu, and the Hsien-pi founded "South Liang" (379-414) in eastern Kansu. Thus the "Later Liang" fell into three parts, more or less differing ethnically, though they could not be described as ethnically unadulterated states.

4 _Sociological a.n.a.lysis of the two great alien empires_

The two great empires of north China at the time of its division had been founded by non-Chinese--the first by the Hun Liu Yuan, the second by the Tibetan Fu Chien. Both rulers went to work on the same principle of trying to build up truly "Chinese" empires, but the traditions of Huns and Tibetans differed, and the two experiments turned out differently. Both failed, but not for the same reasons and not with the same results. The Hun Liu Yuan was the ruler of a league of feudal tribes, which was expected to take its place as an upper cla.s.s above the unchanged Chinese agricultural population with its system of officials and gentry. But Liu Yuan's successors were national reactionaries who stood for the maintenance of the nomad life against that new plan of transition to a feudal cla.s.s of urban n.o.bles ruling an agrarian population. Liu Yuan's more far-seeing policy was abandoned, with the result that the Huns were no longer in a position to rule an immense agrarian territory, and the empire soon disintegrated. For the various Hun tribes this failure meant falling back into political insignificance, but they were able to maintain their national character and existence.

Fu Chien, as a Tibetan, was a militarist and soldier, in accordance with the past of the Tibetans. Under him were grouped Tibetans without tribal chieftains; the great ma.s.s of Chinese; and dispersed remnants of tribes of Huns, Hsien-pi, and others. His organization was militaristic and, outside the military sphere, a militaristic bureaucracy. The Chinese gentry, so far as they still existed, preferred to work with him rather than with the feudalist Huns. These gentry probably supported Fu Chien's southern campaign, for, in consequence of the wide ramifications of their families, it was to their interest that China should form a single economic unit. They were, of course, equally ready to work with another group, one of southern Chinese, to attain the same end by other means, if those means should prove more advantageous: thus the gentry were not a reliable a.s.set, but were always ready to break faith. Among other things, Fu Chien's southern campaign was wrecked by that faithlessness.

When an essentially military state suffers military defeat, it can only go to pieces. This explains the disintegration of that great empire within a single year into so many diminutive states, as already described.