A Eurasian Tale Part 1: The Manifold Paths of Heaven
The 4th Century BCE was a tumultuous one in China – where once the Zhou dynasty had provided a central authority ruling under the divine mandate of heaven, it seemed it had fallen out of favour. Former vassals now styled themselves as kings; many of them ruling states that were on the fringes of civilization – Chu, Shu, Ba, Qin. As the ability of the Zhou to command those outside their immediate proximity inexorably waned, the ambitions of former Dukes and Marquises grew. If the Mandate was no longer in the hands of the Zhou, perhaps theirs would be the hands to grasp it? Unlike the ascension of the ancient Zhou Dynasty over that of Shang, the situation in China had grown vastly more complex. A Thousand Schools had arisen in a unique philosophical blossoming, and the philosophies spawned during this period had taken root across China as wandering scholars plied their knowledge to rulers desperate to gain an edge over their rivals.
The Middle Kingdoms:
The civilized peoples of the Yellow River Basin called themselves the Xi, and shared a common tongue and culture, but still existed under different states. The two easternmost of these were Yan and Qi. Yan was the northernmost of all the Warring States, bordering the Gojoseon Kingdom in Korea as well as the wild barbarian tribes of the north, whilst Qi held the Shangdong Peninsula.
The first stirrings that would mark this period of war were with the division of the state of Wei in 371 BCE. A powerful state in the centre of the Middle Kingdom, Marquess Wu died without a successor and the states of Han and Zhao that had been subservient to Wei rose up in rebellion and forged their own independent states. Skirmishes between Wei and Zhao drew in the powerful state of Qi based in the Shandong Peninsula, and two decisive defeats at Guiling and Maling forced Wei to submit and accept territorial losses to the victorious Zhao-Qi alliance. This initial conflict showed the two key features that would mostly characterise the rest of the war – alliances between states to take down more formidable foes, and set-piece battles rather than total war.
First blood in the war was drawn in the centre, and whilst Qi stood triumphant, the dominant power in the heartland of the Xi, its neighbours watched and recalculated. As the kings of Yan would later remark, the Warring States found unity only through the destruction of greater threats. And their greatest threats lay on the periphery of Xi civilization.
The Fringe States:
There were two states amongst all others that stood out – Qi in the West and Chu in the South. Chu was even then the largest of all the states. Having prospered under the guidance of the proto-Legalist philosopher Wu Qi, they had defeated the Wu and Yue states neighbouring them and were more than twice the size and population of any one other state. However, after the death of King Dao, jealous nobles assassinated Wu Qi, desecrating the King’s corpse in the attempt, and the ensuing purge of the nobility by the vengeful new king Su weakened the state. Still, none of the Xi states believed they could win a war by themselves against Great Chu, and whilst alliances against the state were being drafted, none were coming to fruition – the obvious leader of such an alliance would be the state of Qi, and that was unacceptable to Wei or Yan.
The only threat remaining to Chu lay within the other fringe Kingdom. Qin had recently bloodied its nose with a failed attack on the Sichuanese kingdom of Shu, but reorganized itself under the guidance of chancellor Shang Yang to become a fearsome militarized state, comprised not only of ethnic Xi, but also of Rong and Di tribesmen. Whilst other states were encumbered by supply lines, soldiers of the Qin lived off the land, and fought with an almost fanatical fury as the harsh punishments of Legalism towards failure proved to be a tremendous incentive. Their defeat against Shu had been in part due to Chu support for the Sichuanese kingdom, and under Duke Xiao, Qin attacked the weakened Chu, scoring great victories against the larger power. However, they were unable to completely defeat Chu, and agreed to a ceasefire having made massive gains. By the middle of the 4th Century BC, Qin was the strongest of the Warring States. However, once again the death of the monarch left Shang Yang without a patron, and with the ire of the nobility. Unlike Wu Qi, he escaped Qin along with his disciples, to continue to apply the lessons that had made Qin such a force to be reckoned with.
Beyond the Borders:
Beyond the great Warring States, there were foreign states that were influenced by their neighbours. Shu in Sichuan had been awakened to the danger of the Qin, and courted a disciple of Shang Yang to help modernise their nation. Though their flirtation with Legalism would be brief, they did apply some of its lessons to allow them to finally conquer their rival of Ba and unite Sichuan under their rule. Shu was relatively remote and not considered a serious player in the Warring States period, but would take part in it just the same due to its proximity to a powerful state.
Further to the East, the defeated State of Yue had its nobles drift south. In the very southeast region of the land, Minyue was formed, whilst at the mouth of the Pearl River Nan Yue would eventually rise. The Yue states were not ethnically Chinese, but shared more in common with the Viet peoples of Southeast Asia. Unlike Shu, the Yue states did not involve themselves further the wars to the north.
The Grand Alliances:
In the latter years of the 4th Century, two alliance pacts arose in the Xia states. Qi and Zhao, the former of which had preserved the independence of the latter when it attacked Wei faced against Wei, Han and Yan. Han had been less lucky than its fellow breakaway state, and had been brought again under the nominal control of Wei. The conflict between the two alliances would be a defining moment within the period, and actions such as Yue Yi’s daring raid of Qi, the Yan general almost toppling the ancient kingdom would become the stuff of folklore later. However, the war was inconclusive, achieving nothing more than a waste of lives, and only minor territorial changes occurred. Yan faced an incursion by nomadic tribes from the North that forced it to recall its armies to defend there, whilst an attack by Chu on Qi provoked the Wei to shockingly come to the aid of their enemy to maintain a balance of power and repulse Chu. An attack by Qin on Wei shortly afterwards was similarly repulsed with the aid of Zhao and Han, the former having successfully incorporated a substantial cavalry wing into their army. The threats posed by Qin and Chu were too great to be ignored, but as the two giants licked their wounds the temporary alliances faded, and war returned to the Zhao, Qi, Wei, Han and Yan.
To the south, a collaboration between Shu and Chu caused a great defeat to Qin in 326 BCE, and Chu regained almost all of their territory. Aside from the Sichuanese performing well enough to cause one Chu general to comment “They fight almost as the men of Chu do; with crossbow and spear they acquitted themselves well and with great discipline”, the campaign was noticeable for the support of the former Chu peasantry in Qin-occupied areas. Having been treated as harshly as the rest of the Qin Kingdom, they resented their overlords and wished for the return of the rule of Great Chu. Their firm holding to an identity even after being conquered was being played out on a smaller scale across the land – whilst recognising themselves as of the same culture, more and more people of a certain state would identify themselves first and foremost with that state. The ideal of a single people unified under a single Emperor was disappearing, and the Mandate of Heaven was being replaced with a manifold paths , each trodden by a separate Kingdom.
What would only truly be realised by the beginning of the third century was already apparent now to those who cared to look: no longer did the states seek to conquer one another for the goal of forging a successor to the Zhou> Instead, simply for their own ambitions, much smaller than that reunion of all the states. Only in floundering Qin did a man exist with that ambition - King Zhaoyi, inheritor of a state on the brink of ruin and beset by a formidable alliance, set about with a renewed vigour and successfully forced the Chu and Shu to accede to a treaty restoring the borders to those prior to Qin's assault on Chu. Regarding the state of the land and the reason for Qin's defeat at the hands of Zhao and Wei, he sent forth a retainer with an instruction - to journey west to the lands of the Tocharians and there lobby for allies.
What he would find on his Journey to the West was far beyond the expectations even of Zhaoyi.
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I'm not lying when I say this is going to be epic scale. Big PoDs await for Alexander's Empire and the Mauryan Empire to go along with this (hopefully plausible) Disunited China and that... Well, that's just the beginning.
