chinesegeography

The Feishui Campaign-Ending



Although Zhu Xu had been made a senior official in King Fu Jian's court, he secretly maintained his allegiance to the Eastern Jin. Once again finding himself in the Eastern Jin camp, he felt the thrill of finally returning home, so he told commanders Xie Shi and Xie Xuan everything he knew about the Qian Qin Kingdom. He proposed that they attack first, before Fu Jian's troops all made it into battle position.



Xie Shi and Xie Xuan did as Zhu Xu advised. They gave Liu Lao the order to raid Luojian, which he captured. The bad news made Fu Jian rather uneasy. He walked up to the watchtower to observe his enemy.



What he saw sent terror into his heart: across the river, the Eastern Jin camps were lined up neatly, indicating a calm readiness. Farther away in the Bagong Mountains, what were actually phantasmal shadowy trees, to King Fu Jian, suddenly also looked like soldiers under cover. Disheartened, Fu Jian told his men to keep watch. Meanwhile, Xie Shi and Xie Xuan were anxious to cross the Feishui River to engage their enemy. They sent Fu Jian a letter challenging him to withdraw from the northern banks, so that there would be enough space for them to cross the river and launch a battle.



Fu Jian did not want to give his enemy any idea that he was afraid. Besides, it might be good for him to allow the Eastern Jin to cross the river, and then he himself attempted a surprise attack while the enemy was halfway across.



At the agreed time, Fu Jian ordered his troops to fall back to clear enough room for his cavalry to launch a sudden attack on the Eastern Jin troops, who would be busy crossing the river. But things soon got out of control, after his soldiers, already fearful and sick of the war, broke into panicked, unstoppable flight.



Xie Xuan and his 8,000 cavalrymen quickly crossed the river and gave chase, completely destroyed King Fu Jian's army.



The battle at the Feishui River spelled doom for the Qian Qin. Fu Jian was killed by his officer, Yao Chang, in Luoyang, and his kingdom fell.

The Feishui Campaign-Sequel І



The last few years of Emperor Hui Di (r. 290-307) witnessed the mounting internal discontent and resentment, leading to riots and insurrections that ultimately contributed to the fall of his dynasty. Meanwhile, nationalities beyond China's northwestern frontiers began to pour in, taking advantage of the social and political instability of the Han. In the 136 years from AD 304-439, states founded by these nationalities rose and fell in northern China and Sichuan. It was a period of much confusion, when different peoples intermingled and interacted, considerably altering the ethnological map of China. Historians refer to this period as the period of the "Sixteen States," after the sixteen most significant states of these ethnic groups.



The Qian Qin (351-394) was one of those states. In 382 King Fu Jian of Qian Qin subdued all other states in northern China and established his dominance. In 383 King Fu Jian, despite his officials' counsel against it, rallied his million-strong army for a campaign against the Eastern Jin, which had retreated south of the Yangtze River. His army and fleet advanced triumphantly. Within a month, the pioneering troops arrived at the Huaihe River, standing by for an attack on Shouyang (today's Shouxian County, Anhui Province).



The good news from the front inflated Fu Jian's ego. Leaving his main force in Xiangcheng, he personally led a cavalry of 8,000 to Shouyang, anxious to destroy the Eastern Jin in a single battle.



Convinced the Eastern Jin was too weak to stand up against him, King Fu Jian dispatched an envoy through the front lines, with the view to calling on the enemy to surrender. But his envoy, named Zhu Xu, turned out to be an Eastern Jin commander who had been captured after surrender.