CHAPTER V.

PACIFICATION AND CONSOLIDATION

A.D.622-4

 

Although the battle of Ssu Shui really established the Tang dynasty in an unassailable supremacy, there still remained a considerable military task to be accomplished before the whole of China was pacified and consolidated under the authority of Chang An.

The south still flaunted its independence, fortified by the long tradition of partition which seemed to make a northern conquest unlikely. Hsiao Hsien, emperor of Liang, was the most notable pretender in these provinces. Descendant of the earlier emperors of Liang, who had reigned in the south from ad 503-555, he was no mere upstart adventurer, claiming the crown by virtue of military strength. Hsiao Hsien posed, and was accepted, in the south as the legitimate heir of an old dynasty, restored after a period of usurpation. His authority had been acknowledged over a very large area, the provinces of Hupei, Hunan, Kiangsi, Kuangtung and Kuangsi, in so far as these two latter were colonised by the Chinese.

Hsiao Hsien did not rule the south-east coast After the murder of Yang Ti, that area, comprising the south part of modern Kiangsu province, Chekiang and Fukien, had fallen to one Li Tzu-Tung, who at first placed his capital at Nanking.

In the summer of AD  621 orders were given for a general offensive against Hsiao Hsien, emperor of Liang. The Tang dynasty had already acquired the great inland province of Szechuan, which submitted without offering resistance soon after the fall of Ch’ang An. They thus controlled the upper waters of the Yangtze and Han rivets, which gave them the very great advantage of having the current with them in any operations against the territories of Liang, farther down stream.

Hsiao Hsien realised the danger to which his estates were exposed by the Tang occupation of Szechuan. As early as AD 619 he had been defeated in an unsuccessful attempt to force the Yangtze gorges and invade the province. Since then he had been too occupied suppressing minor revolts against his authority in Hunan to undertake major operations against his dangerous neighbours.

This inaction was most prejudicial to the cause of Liang, for it allowed the Tang generals to make lengthy and undisturbed preparations for the conquest of the lower river country. No warfare along the Yangtze river is possible without the command of the river in the naval sense. To secure this the Tang generals constructed a large war fleet of junks manned by Szechunanese watermen, who, since the upper river is the most dangerous stretch of the Yangtze, are the most skilful and intrepid navigators of all the riparian people. When all was ready the joint expedition was placed under the supreme command of U Ching with Li Hsiao-Kung Prince Chao as admiral in command of the fleet. Prince Chao, a cousin of Li Shih-Min, was the son of Li Shen-Tung Prince Huai An.

The emperor of Liang, though aware of the Tang preparations, did not believe that any invasion would be possible until the winter was for advanced, as the gorges and rapids would not be safely navigable until the low-water season had come. Prince Chao and Li Ching, who knew that Hsiao Hsien’s main strength was for away to the south, and would take many weeks to teach the Yangtze, decided to risk the perils of high-water navigation in order to achieve that most valuable of all advantages in war, surprise. Ching Chou, the Liang capital, might thus be taken before the Tang army from the south had reached the Yangtze valley.

 

 

It was in the tenth month, late autumn ad 621, when, though the falling river was still high, the dangers of the gorges were in some measure reduced, that Prince Chao with the fleet of 2000 war junks took the van, leaving Li Ching to follow with the army when the fleet had secured the passage of the narrow places. The surprise was complete. Prince Chao’s fleet crossed the rapids in safety; nor was the passage of the sombre gorges which divide Szechuan from Hupei disputed. Hsiao Hsien’s failure to guard this, one of the most easily defended positions in the world, which nature alone has rendered very difficult of access, was a monumental folly, fatal to his cause. Sailing triumphantly out into the flat valley of the middle Yangtze, Prince Quo seized the city of I Tu below the first gorge, a point only fifty miles above Ching Chou, the Liang capital.

The court of Liang, perturbed at the news of this unlooked- for invasion, hastily despatched the fleet up-river to block the advance of Prince Chao. The two fleets met in battle a few miles west of I Tu. Prince Chao skilfully used the advantage of the current which his upstream position gave him. Breaking through the Liang fleet he inflicted a crushing defeat, taking more than 300 of their ships and making a slaughter of more than 10,000 men. Nothing now stood between the Tang forces and the enemy capital. As soon as Li Ching with the army had passed the gorges and joined the fleet, the united Tang forces moved rapidly down river, arriving before Ching Chou, well in advance of the Liang southern army, which had to toil wearily upstream against the force of the strong Yangtze current.

Throughout this comparing the two Tang commanders, though northerners, showed a remarkable grasp of the alien strategy of southern river warfare, in which the strong currents and seasonal fluctuations of the South China rivers have in all ages been factors of the highest importance.

At Ching Chou the Tang army found another Liang fleet awaiting them. Realising that any delay would be favourable to the enemy, who were anxiously awaiting the slow advance of their southern reinforcements, Li Ching at once gave battle. The story of I Tu was repeated before Ching Chou; the whole Liang fleet was captured or burnt, and the army driven routed into the walls of the city, which was then closely besieged. Ching Chou, being a strong city with a large garrison, it was feared that the siege would not be successful before the Liang southern army arrived. Li Ching therefore devised a stratagem by which he hoped to delay these advancing succours. Taking all the captured Liang ships, he cut them loose, so that, carried away by the current, they drifted down river.

The commanders of the Liang southern army, ignorant of the real situation up-river, could not conceal from their troops these grim evidences of disaster, which, floating down the broad waters of the Yangtze, seemed to tell of the total defeat of their sovereign and the fell of his capital. Discouragement and apprehension spread rapidly among the troops, while the generals hesitated to advance farther. One of these generals was Kao Shih-Lien, maternal uncle of Li Shih-Min’s consort, the Princess Chang-Sun. Kao had only submitted to Liang, because holding a position under the Sui dynasty in Annam, he found himself cut off in that remote appanage of the empire when the dynasty collapsed. The call to come north at the head of his troops provided him with an opportunity to submit to the new dynasty with which ae was connected by marriage. Kao Shih-Lien did not hesitate to avail himself of this chance.

While, paralysed by dissension and disaffection, the Liang army made no progress, Ching Chou, briskly assailed by the Tang army, seemed unlikely to stand a long siege. Hsiao Hsien, despairing at the unaccountable delay of his army, which he feared had deserted to the enemy, lost all hope. He decided to surrender to the Tang prince, although he was fully aware that such a step would cost him his life. The Liang emperor in this extremity showed a moral courage of which in his somewhat unjust administration he had hitherto even little proof. “Heaven”, he said, “does not favour Liang. Why for the sake of one man such as I should my people suffer further miseries?”.

He ordered the gates to be set open, and led out his court :o submit to the Tang generals. When brought into the presence of Prince Chao he still urged that the citizens of Liang be spared. “I alone should suffer death, the people lave done you no injury, you should therefore leave them in peace”, he said.

The Tang generals wisely followed this generous advice, realizing that a display of clemency would win the unresisting submissions of all the wide domains of Liang, whereas if Ching Zhou was abandoned to the soldiers, the other cities of the provinces would make a desperate stand in fear of a similar fate. This policy was folly justified by results. The southern cities, hearing of the capture of their sovereign and the lenient treatment of Ching Chou, made haste to surrender at the approach of the Tang forces. Even the great southern Liang army which had at last slowly pushed up the Yangtze awards Ching Chou, laid down its arms without fighting. Li Ching, travelling through the south as imperial commissioner, obtained the submission of even the remotest provinces of Liang, Annam and the valley of the West river.

The conquest of the south was completed in the last month of this victorious year (AD 621) by Tu Fu-Wei, the young viceroy of the south-east. He invaded the territory of Li Tzu-Tung, the emperor of the south-east coast, whom he defeated in battle not far from Nanking. Li Tzu-Tung was himself made a prisoner, and this disaster put an end to the resistance of his subjects. Tu Fu-Wei added the coastal provinces to the Tang empire without further fighting, Li Tzu-Tung, sent to Chang An, was at first spared, as he was not considered a formidable figure. But he unwisely tried to escape to the south, and being recaptured on the road, was brought back to Chang An and decapitated in the market­place.

This fate had already befallen Tou Chien-Te and Hsiao Hsien. The fate of the fallen emperor of Hsia provoked a rising in the north-east, his old country, which constituted the last serious internal menace which Shih-Min had to face.

The people of the eastern plain remained uncompromisingly hostile to the Tang dynasty, even when Ssu Shui had ruined their hopes. The death of their well-liked sovereign and the fate of Wang Shih-Chung bred a distrust of Tang promises which encouraged the irreconcilable element to make another bid for independence.

Wang Shih-Chung had been brought to Chang An after the fall of Lo Yang. In view of the promise Shih-Min had once made to spare his life if he surrendered, and as he was not considered a dangerous pretender for whom the people of Honan would rise in revolt, Li Yuan granted the ex­emperor of Cheng his life. He and his son were degraded to the rank of common people, and exiled to a distant part of Szechuan province. The road the captives had to follow was long and difficult. The officer charged with escorting them to their place of banishment felt resentful at his wearisome task, which would take months of travel through inhospitable mountains. When the party reached a secluded village in the mountains south of Chang An, this officer forged a decree ordering the execution of the captives, and when he had put he unfortunate Wang Shih-Chung and his son to death, returned to court with a story that the prisoners had tried to escape. When the real facts were known the murderer was finished by being deprived of his office and made ineligible or further employment. But this lenient sentence did not reflect great credit on the good faith of the Tang emperor.

The prisoners taken at Ssu Shui, released at Chang An, tad witnessed the tragic fate of Tou Chien-Te, and heard the story of Wang Shih-Chung’s treacherous murder. On their return to their villages in the east they recounted these tales, and were heard with indignation by the disbanded soldiers and retired officers of the Hsia army. In all such revolutions he fall of one party turns into the street a host of officials and officers who served the fallen court. There was therefore no lack of malcontents in the territory which had belonged to the emperor of Hsia. Before many months had passed a group ff officers had raised a revolt, led by one Liu Hei-Te, a former general of Tou Chien-Te’s army.

The Tang court had not appreciated the strength of the hostility still felt by the people of the eastern plain. They were completely surprised by the vigorous support which the rebels obtained. Within a few weeks the rebel leader had taken several cities, and defeated a Tang force near Chi Chou, Hopei (Nan Chi Chou). The court, realising that the affair was serious, ordered the former viceroy of the east, Prince Huai An, to suppress the rebellion in conjunction with Lo I, governor of Yu Chou (Peking). Li Shen-Tung Prince Huai An had been in captivity at Kuang Ping Fu until the victory of Ssu Shui brought his release. He was not an outstandingly skillful general, but on this occasion he met with ill-luck which could scarcely have been foreseen.

It was already midwinter when the Tang army met Liu lei-Ta in battle near Jao Yang in Hopei, on the Hu To river thirty miles south east of Ho Chien Fu. Prince Huai An had 50,000 men, considerably more than his opponent. As the Tang army was superior, Prince Huai An had no hesitation in ordering an attack, especially as snow was failing, driven by a light wind towards the rebel army. Prince Huai An hoped to profit by this circumstance, which would embarrass the enemy. But on this day the stars in their courses fought for Liu Hei-Ta. At the height of the battle the wind changed, starting to blow violently in the opposite direction, driving the snow into the faces of die Tang soldiers. Liu Hei-Ta profited by this good fortune, winning a complete victory. The Tang army lost two-thirds of its strength, only Lo I’s corps drawing off intact to Yu Chou (Peking).

The loss of this battle was disastrous to the Tang cause. Liu Hei-Ta occupied all the cities in the north-east except Yu Chou. He was further reinforced by the revolt of Kao Kai-Tao, prince of Yen, who had formerly been an independent pretender, and had then submitted to the Tang dynasty. The Turks, pursuing their policy of helping the weaker parties, hastened to send assistance to the rebels. Marching south, Liu Hei-Ta defeated Li Shih-Chi near Kuang Ping Fu. After rapturing that city be retook Chang Te Fu and Wei Hui, and so re-established the old empire of Hsia.

These calamities forced Li Yuan to turn to Li Shih-Min, the guiding genius of the Tang cause, without whom everything always went awry. Appointed grand-general of the empire, ranking above all princes and ministers, with plenary powers as commander-in-chief and viceroy of the east, Shih-Min led the picked troops of his army along the eastern road. In the first month of AD 611 he crossed the Yellow river, and at the mere rumour of his approach the rebels abandoned Wei Hui and Chang Te Fu, felling back to protect Kuang Ping Fu, where they had established their capital. The aim of Shih-Min's strategy was to crush the rebels between his own force, coming from the south, and the northern army under Lo I, which was moving southwards from its base at Yu Chou (Peking). When these two Tang armies could make contact along the great northern road, which runs north from the Yellow river through Kuang Ping Fu to Yu Chou and Korea, the rebels would be pinned against the sea coast, cut off from their only allies, the Turks.

To counter this menace Liu Hei-Ta was forced to divide his army. After some hesitation he left fair generals to oppose Lo I, taking command himself of the army which was covering Kuang Ping Fu. When Shih-Min’s forces approached this place, the small town of Ku Chou, ten miles north-east of Kuang Ping Fu, surrendered to the Tang commander. Shih-Min promptly put in a garrison, Ku Chou is  a point of strategical importance. With this city in his possession the Tang prince could command the road from Kuang Ping Fu to the north-east, towards Ho Chien Fu, from which district the rebel army drew their supplies.

Liu Hei-Ta also readied the importance of Ku Chou. He made a determined effort to recapture the city, but while he was occupied in this attempt, Shih-Min slipped round north of Kuang Ping Fu and captured the next large city on the northern road, Shun Te Fu. By this movement Kuang Ping Fu was surrounded. To complete the Tang success, news came that Lo I had beaten the northern rebel army and was marching south to join Shih-Min. Meanwhile Liu Hei-Ta was attacking Ku Chou with the greatest fury. The city was strongly defended by a water moat fifty paces wide. To overcome this obstacle Liu Hei-Ta started to construct causeways, which, when complete would enable him to use his rams on the wall.

Shih-Min could not yet spare the troops to make a full-scale attempt to relieve the place, as the investment of Kuang Ping Fu occupied large forces. Though more than one effort was made, the Tang army was unable to force the enemy siege lines and succour the town. A council was held it which Li Shih-Chi was of opinion that if Liu Hei-Ta completed his causeways, the town would fall. He believed, however, that if the garrison could be reinforced, Ku Chou could still hold out for some time. Lo Shih-Hsin, the young general who had left Wang Shih-Chung to join the Tang army, offered to force his way into the town with a small reinforcement of picked troops. This could be done, he said, if the garrison co-operated by making a sortie. The raiding party would attack at the same time and cut a way through to the city.

Shih-Min decided to attempt this plan, which was communicated to the garrison by signalling from a mound inside the Tang line The raid proved successful, the garrison co-operating as arranged, by making a sortie. In the confusion the former garrison commander cut his way out to the main Tang army, while Lo Shih-Hsin and his men gained the city. Shih-Min intended to make a grand assault on the rebel position within a few days, when his main force would have assembled. It was thus only necessary for Lo Shih-Hsin to hold Ku Chou a short time.

Unfortunately the weather turned unfavourable. It was now the depths of winter. A great northern gale sprang up bringing blinding snowstorms, which raged unabated for a week. To attack in the teeth of such a wind was to court the disaster which had overtaken Prince Huai An. Shih-Min was obliged to await better weather, but before the change came, Ku Chou fell. Liu Hei-Ta would have liked to enlist the heroic Lo Shih-Hsin in his service, but as the young man steadfastly refused to entertain such an idea, he was ordered to execution. Lo Shih-Hsin was then in his twentieth year. A few days later Shih-Min led the whole army to the attack, broke through, and forced Liu Hei-Ta to relinquish Ku Chou. But for Lo Shih-Hsin he came too late.

Although Liu Hei-Ta had been forced to give up this prize, he was not yet beaten. He encamped in the vicinity, guarding the north-east toad to Ho Chien Fu. The Tang army was divided into two camps, Li Shih Chi to the north of the Ming river, Shih-Min and Lo I to the south. The position of the Tang camps made it impossible for Liu Hei-Ta to communicate with Kwang Ping Fu, or assault one Tang camp without being exposed to attack from the other. Shih-Min prepared to pass the winter here, knowing that his own strength would not diminish with time, while that of the rebels depended on a tun of success.

Liu Hei-Ta, who appreciated this fact, was anxious to force a battle. The difficulty he encountered in getting supplies was another incentive to action. While the Tang army could draw an the resources of a whole empire, the rebels depended on the district of Ho Chien Fu, the only one which still remained entirely in their hands. As at Ssu Shui, and in the Kansu and Shansi campaigns, Shih-Min made delay and famine fight for him, forcing the enemy to engage when the moment which he had chosen arrived. This moment was the spring, when the weather could not by some strange trick change the fortune of the day, as at Jao Yang, and when the enemy’s supplies would be at their lowest. Meantime Shih-Min harried the enemy convoys which came up the river and burned their wagon trains.

Liu Hei-Ta made one attempt to force the Tang army to fight, by attacking Li Shih-Chi’s camp. But he found that the army from Shih-Min’s camp so threatened his flank that he was obliged to break off the action. In this engagement Shih-Min and his young cousin, Prince Huai Yang (Li Tao-Hsuan), had a narrow escape, being surrounded till extricated by Yu-Chih Ching-Te and the heavy Tang cavalry. The two armies remained inactive for more than two months, while Shih-Min waited for warm weather.

During this delay the prince made certain preparations. He set his engineers to work higher up the Ming river, building a dam to take the whole flow of the river, but so constructed that it could be swiftly demolished and the flood water released. He gave orders that if the rebel army crossed the river to attack, the dam was to be broken. Shih-Min had no doubt that the enemy, when his supplies were exhausted, would give batik. Liu Hei-Ta had no hope if he ordered a retreat. He bad no base to retire upon, and his army, convinced that defeat was certain, would melt away.

Not long after, the rebel general, seeing the end of his supplies in sight, decided to risk all on a battle. Crossing the river he drew up his force in line, his army being about 20,000 strong. Shih-Min accepted the challenge. The Tang cavalry charged the rebel line and at first drove the enemy cavalry back upon their infantry. Liu Hei-Ta tallied his men and put up a stubborn resistance. Shih-Min gave orders for the dam to be broken, but it was dusk before the rebel army began to give way. At last, as day closed, one of the rebel generals said to Liu Hei-Ta, “Our troops are exhausted, and cannot break the Tang line. If you remain here you will perish in the rout. It would be best to fly while our line still holds; perhaps elsewhere we can raise another army”. The rebel general took this unworthy advice, quietly riding off with a handful of his staff, unnoticed by the army which he had abandoned to its fare.

Liu Hei-Ta, if he deserted his army, did so at the right moment. Hardly had he quitted the field, than the waters of the Ming, released from the broken dam, swept down upon the doomed army in a roaring flood. With the Tang army before them and the flooded river behind, the rebel army dissolved in panic. 10,000 fell by the sword and almost all those who escaped the Tang arms were drowned in the waters of the Ming river. The army of Liu Hei-Ta was annihilated.

The leader of the rebellion escaped to the Turks; while the authority of the Tang emperor was once more admitted throughout the north-east. Shih-Min moved through the southern districts of Shantung, where a local revolt in support of Liu Hei-Ta still remained unsuppressed. The fear of his name alone sufficed to bring these districts back to their allegiance, and such was the impression produced by the victory of the Ming river that Tu Fu-Wei decided he would be safer if he confirmed his allegiance to the Tang dynasty by visiting the court. When the country was pacified Shih-Min was recalled to Shensi to check, by his presence, the harassing inroads of the Turkish hordes.

Unfortunately the situation in the east changed for the worse once the prince had left these provinces. Liu Hei-Ta gathered a force of Turks, at the bead of which he reappeared in Hopei, and soon added reinforcements to his following. The hostility of the eastern provinces was still unappeased. The jealousies among the Tang generals left in the country facilitated a recrudescence of the rebellion. Ho Chien Fu fell once more into the hands of Liu Hei-Ta, who then moved south, gaining adherents as he went

At Chi Chou he was met by a Tang army under the young Prince Huai Yang (Li Tao-Hsuan), who had been given an older, more experienced, general as second in command. This officer, who was jealous of Li Tao-Hsuan’s rising reputation, treated the young prince as a boy (he was then nineteen), and hampered his actions. When the armies engaged, this subordinate left Prince Huai Yang unsupported, until, surrounded by enemies, he was slain in the melée. The rest of the Tang army, dispirited by this loss, fled at the attack of the enemy, who were completely victorious. Shih-Min was inconsolable at the death of Li Tao-Hsuan, for whom he had a particular affection. The youth was indeed one of the most attractive figures of the brilliant band who followed Shih-Min’s standard.

Liu Hei-Ta, believing that this victory would restore his fortunes, matched south, capturing the cities on his way. Even Kuang Ping Fu fell into his hands, abandoned by the improvident Li Yuan-Chi Prince Chi, Shih-Min’s youngest brother. After this success the rebel turned south-east to besiege Ta Ming Fu, but here fortune finally deserted him.

The city was strongly held, and resisted all the rebel efforts for more than two months. Meanwhile a new Tang army Was approaching, commanded by the crown prince, Chien-Cheng.

The crown prince had never distinguished himself in warfare. While Shih-Min fought the wars of the empire, Chien-Cheng had spent his time at Chang An. If he now made an unaccustomed appearance in the field, it was due to the advice of Wei Cheng, who had become one of the officers of the crown prince’s household, and who, observing the fame of Shih-Min, urged his master to undertake a campaign which would win him some military reputation to offset the brilliant record of the younger prince. Wei Cheng, who had a very shrewd appreciation of the real situation in the east, knew that no great military skill was needed to disperse the heterogeneous rabble which now followed Liu Hei-Ta.

When the army approached Ta Ming Fu, the crown prince, acting on Wei Ching’s advice, published an amnesty, promising free pardon to all who deserted the rebel army; and to prove the sincerity of the offer, he released the political prisoners in the city gaols. Wei Ching realised that the picked troops of Hsia had perished at the Ming river. Liu Hei-Ta’s new following consisted mostly of proscribed criminals who had taken up arms to avoid the penalties which the law imposed on persons guilty of complicity in the late rebellion. He believed that once a sincere amnesty was made public, these people, who only wished to save their lives, would abandon the rebel cause.

His judgment was perfectly correct. The rebels had already suffered a defeat at the hands of the strong garrison of Ta Ming Fu. Now hearing of the advance of a new Tang army, against which they could not hope to stand for long, they hastened to avail themselves of the amnesty, and deserted in large numbers. The lack of food in the rebel camp was a further stimulus to the general defection. Liu Hei-Ta, unable to meet the Tang army, or even to maintain the blockade of Ta Ming Fu, was forced to retreat. He was held up at the bridge over the Wei river at Kuan Tao Hsien (on the Shantung-Hopei border), and there the Tang pursuit came upon him before the bridge could be repaired.

The rebel army was cut to pieces in trying to pass the river, and though Liu Hei-Ta himself escaped, he was a fugitive without supporters. Pursued by the Tang cavalry he arrived, exhausted and starving at Jao Yang, a city which had risen in his favour. Liu Hei-Ta was now too suspicious of his followers to trust the governor of this place, till with tears in his eyes that official invited him into the town to rest and take food. The rebel leader was justified in his first distrust. No sooner was he inside the walls, while still walking up the street, hastily eating the food which had been given him, than the treacherous governor had him seized, and delivered to the Tang pursuit. Liu Hei-Ta was executed in the market-place at Kuang Fing Fu in the first month of ad 625. With his death the rebellion which had so long devastated the north­east was finally pacified.

The last sparks of opposition to the Tang dynasty were extinguished in the next year (ad 624); in the north, by the death of Kao Kai-Tao, who was murdered by one of his generals; and in the south by the failure of the rebellion of a general of Tu Fu-Wei, who attempted to profit by his master’s absence at court. This general declared himself independent at Nanking. His forces were defeated at Wu Hu by the river fleet under Prince Chao (Li Hsiao-Kung), who captured Nanking. Li Shih-Chi completed the victory by pursuing the rebel till he met his death near Su Chou, in Kiangsu.

With the suppression of this rising the internal wars, which had raged incessantly since Yang Ti’s death, came to an end, and the Tang dynasty was acknowledged from Tibet to the sea, and from the Great Wall to Annam. Apart from the hostilities with the Turks on the northern frontier, and colonial wars in Central Asia undertaken in later years, the year 614 saw the dawn of a gran period of peace, which was to last nearly 130 years, nourishing the greatest epoch of Chinese art and culture.

This great achievement, the conquest of a vast empire in less than seven years, was the work of Li Shih-Min; nor can his father, Li Yuan, whom he had made emperor, be said to have contributed in any way to the glorious result. Left to himself, Li Yuan’s policy was weak, indecisive, and vacillating. Had it not been for the foresight, the determination, and the courage of Li Shih-Min, the Tang dynasty would never have triumphed over it rsivals, and China would have remained a chaos of warring states.

The military phase of Shih-Min’s career was now at an end. Then remained the more difficult task of maintaining by wise policy the unity won by the sword, and of recreating the machinery of civilised government which had perished in a long period of tumult and confusion.