China's Spring & Autumn Period

A History of Mankind (89)

Following the flight of the Zhou’s King Ping to Luoyang, in 771 BC, his dynasty effectively became hostage to numberless nobles who quickly divided the empire between them, while recognizing the dynasty’s nominal sovereignty over all of China – that is, the civilized territory “liberated” from barbarians to the north, south and west, where the Chinese language was written and Chinese customs respected.

With China in splendid isolation, in an era later to be called Spring and Autumn Period[1], a game of thrones was played by the nobles, jockeying for position, power and influence, taking territory off each other and occasionally coming together to select “hegemons” among their number, who served as representatives of the emperor at moments of crisis when the persistent wars threatened to spiral out of control. This led to a gradual concentration of power that, within two centuries, left the number of competing states at about a dozen.

King Ping himself was forced to exchange hostages with hot-tempered Duke Zhuang Gong of the Zheng region, an unheard-of breach of royal etiquette, and his son King Huan (r. 719-697 BC) was wounded by an arrow during a clash with Zheng’s troops – an incident that marked the final reduction of Zhou royalty to the status of nominal head of a well-delineated feudal system, only hinted at previously, in which kings had no real say over anything outside of their own court.

Chinese nobles saw themselves as a class standing apart, worthy of power and riches because of war-fighting prowess within the aristocratic code of battle[2]. Beyond this veil of aristocratic respectability, brutal murder was commonplace: in the Jin region, a century of struggle for power led to multi-generational vendettas. At one point, Duke Xian of Jin (r. 676-651 BC) slaughtered all of the descendants from previous Jin rulers he could find, looking to preempt any challenges to his power[3]. This worked, in a fashion: after Xian died, his four sons proceeded to kill each other[4], following their father’s example, until the last one, Duke Wen, came to power in 631 BC[5].

Other regions, including Zheng, faced similar situations. Warfare remained chariot-centric where the terrain allowed (which wasn’t always the case, since large parts of China are very rugged), with noblemen always fond of parading their fine vehicles; but a preference for larger armies, even if that involved allowing barely Sinicized peasants or not-so-reliable mercenaries into the ranks, became increasingly obvious.  

Competition also helped the Chinese display a gift for innovation that would be a rare constant for such an isolated society. In this era, special handles were invented for axes or daggers that hooked on to the enemy during charges or hand-to-hand combat, so they could be closer for the kill. Composite retroflex bows, perhaps borrowed from the steppe, became popular on Chinese battlefields, and also for that other main pursuit of the nobility: hunting, a popular pastime in a country that for millennia had an abundance of wild, dangerous beasts only paralleled by those in India or Sub-Saharan Africa, including various kinds of tigers.