Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/24

 Prince had been long no secret, and he now found himself for the first time under arrest. The stake for which he had been playing was too high, however, to be relinquished without an effort; and, great as were the difficulties surrounding him, he succeeded in corrupting his guards and making his escape. He soon arrived at the court of Ts'in, bringing with him the Princess—for such she may now be styled—and her son, now a growing lad; where, we need scarcely say, he was enthusiastically received by the King and the heir-apparent, and loaded with gifts and honours.

Then commenced a series of triumphs on the part of the King of Ts'in, followed in each case by massacres of the most wholesale and horrible description. Forty thousand prisoners of war were beheaded in Han and ninety thousand in Chao. Like a swarm of hungry locusts, the troops of Ts'in found lands as the garden of Eden before them which they left a desolate wilderness; nothing escaped their devastations, and the terror of them spread over the whole country. In despair, the King, or Emperor as he has been called, of Chou, ordered a blind attack to be made upon the advancing army by the other princes in a body, but it was too late; and, convinced of the infatuation of his design, he went of his own accord and tendered his submission to his conquering vassal. That monarch received his suzerain with condescension, accepted his humble apologies for the past, and took possession of thirty-six of his towns and thirty thousand soldiers. From this moment the dynasty of Chou may be said to have become extinct. Although the empire was not actually brought under the sway of a single sceptre, the power of the state of Ts'in was growing so rapidly