Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/30

 Here he was again victorious, though in consideration of the fact that the King of that state repudiated all knowledge of the plot, and decapitated his son, the Prince of Tan, for being its prime instigator, he left him in temporary possession of his throne. He then, after a brief campaign, succeeded in annihilating the state of Wei; and flushed by his continued triumphs, set on foot a final attack upon the state of Chou. He first despatched an army of two hundred thousand men, under the leadership of Li Hsin; but this force proving terribly insufficient, he entrusted the famous general Wang Ts'ien with another army three times as numerous, and sent him to the relief of his vanquished colleague. In less than a year the entire principality was subdued, and, owing to the moderation of Wang Ts'ien, with comparatively little carnage. This achieved, the King of Ts'in gave the coup-de-grâce to the King of Yen, and assumed possession of his state. Seeing the desperate condition of affairs, the King of Tsi came with all his family, in very humble guise, and offered his submission too; upon which the King of Ts'in, now master of the whole of China, allowed him, with unusual clemency, to escape into a barren wilderness, where he died of hunger and destitution. The conqueror then assumed the title of Shih Huang Ti, or the First Emperor, and ordained that all his successors should call themselves Second Emperor, Third Emperor, and so on, from that time forward and for ever.

The events above recapitulated have brought us to the year 221 B.C., being the twenty-sixth year of his reign and