United States or Turkmenistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In a few paragraphs let me summarize the history of that past age whose remnants Ts'in Shi Hwangti thus sought to sweep away. Yao adopted Shun for his successor; in whose reign for nine years China's Sorrow, that mad bull of waters, the Hoangho, raged incessantly, carrying the world down towards the sea.
This campaign began in the winter of 1257, when the troops were able to cross the frozen waters of the Hoangho, and the immense Mongol army was divided into three bodies, while Uriangkadai was ordered to march north and effect a junction with his old chief Kublai in Szchuen.
He turned the western angle of the Great Wall, and brought down his frontier to the river Hoangho. His light cavalry raided past the Chinese capital into the province of Szchuen, and returned laden with the spoil of countless cities. These successes were crowned by a signal victory over the emperor in person.
At last, banished by the prince whose minister he had been, he retired into the wilds, and was meditating at the tomb of Shun in Hupeh, in what was then the far south. There the Phoenix and the Dragon came to him, and bore him aloft, past the West Pole, past the Milky Way, past even the Source of the Hoangho, to the Gates of Heaven.
Then he reformed himself, and the robbers found his kingdom no place for them. In a body they crossed the Hoangho into Ts'in; and bequeathed to its policy their tendencies and aptitudes. Ts'in had come to be the strongest state in China. Next neighbor to the Huns, and half Hun herself, she had learned warfare in a school forever in session.
For many months he succeeded in baffling the attacks of Wanleh's general, and the siege might even have had to be raised if the latter had not conceived the idea of diverting the course of the river Hoangho, so that it might bear upon the walls of the fortress.
The Chinese crossed the Hoangho on a bridge of junks, and Tsinyuen, which Lissechi had made his capital, surrendered without a blow. Lissechi abandoned one fortress after another on the approach of Suta. Expelled from Shensi he hoped to find shelter and safety in the adjoining province of Kansuh, where he took up his residence at Lintao.
As the Hoangho divides this province into two parts, it was extremely difficult for the Wei ruler to defend the portion south of it, and when Wenti sent him his declaration of war, he replied, "Even if your master succeeds in seizing this province I shall know how to retake it as soon as the waters of the Hoangho are frozen."
They were home-loving, war-hating, quiet, stagnant, cunning perhaps, quite un-enterprising; they lived in the valley of the Hoangho, and had not discovered, or had forgotten, the Yangtse to the south of them, and the sea to the east.
It seemed as if in the course of a short time all the posts would be held by them, and that the natives of the provinces north of the Hoangho would be gradually driven out of the service. Naturally this marked tendency led to much agitation in the north, and a very bitter feeling was spreading when Suentsong and his minister took up the matter and proceeded to apply a sound practical remedy.
Word Of The Day