27* LAW AND FREEDOM IN HISTORY

cipal competitors for the prize of hegemony in the Sinic World.1 In the
post-Confucian Sinic episode, again, the series of cycles had an overture
in which the historically significant warfare took the form of civil war;
and in the course of the first subsequent regular cycle the severity of the
incidence of War upon Society was accentuated, in the Sinic World like-
wise, by appalling increases in the effectiveness of weapons,2 in the
ruthlessness with which non-combatants, as well as defeated com-
batants, were treated,3 and in the magnitude of the political prizes of
victory and penalties of defeat.4 After it had exacerbated the evils of
War to this intolerable degree, the Sinic episode was terminated, like
the Hellenic, by the establishment of an oecumenical peace through the
elimination of all the contending Powers except one single surviving victor .

A chronological analysis of this post-Confucian episode of Sinic his-
tory reveals a series consisting of an overture and two subsequent cycles
with respective wave-lengths of 78, 86, and 112 years.5 In the overture
the Leitmotiv was the break-up of the state of Tsin into three successor-
states ; in the first of the two ensuing cycles it was the abortive attempt
of one of Tsin's three successor-states, Wei, to play the part of arch-
aggressor Power; in the next cycle it was the assumption of the arch-
aggressor's part by the state of Ts'in with such success that this cycle
ended in the political unification of the Sinic World through the over-
throw, by Ts'in, of all other Powers in the Sinic international arena.

In the overture (currebat 497^419 B.C.) the most significant bouts of
warfare took the form of civil wars.

1 See IV. iv. 66 and V. vi. 292-3. Tsin's principal rival during this earlier chapter of
Sinic history had been Ch'u.

2 The adoption of the Eurasian Nomad military weapons, equipment, and tactics at
the turn of the fourth and third centuries B.C. by Chao, a successor-state of Tsin which
had inherited Tsin's wardenship of an anti- Nomad march, has been noticed in III. iii.
167, n. i. This Sinic technical military innovation was the counterpart, in post-Con-
fucian Sinic history, of the adoption of new weapons by the Romans during the Hanni-
balic War and of the application to War of the new driving forces of Democracy and
Industrialism in the Modern Western World in the seventh decade of the nineteenth
century of the Christian Era (see IV. iv. 151-2). It is significant that the Sinic state that
was the first to make this revolution in its military technique during the Sinic General
War of 333-247 B.C. should also have been the state that, at a later stage of the same
war, successfully repulsed the attacks of the state of Ts'in, which, by that time, had
established its military ascendancy over all other Powers in the Sinic World. Chao's
successful resistance to Ts'in's repeated attempts to conquer her during the years 270-
258 B.C. caused this general war to end in an inconclusive peace and postponed the
political unification of the Sinic World by force of Ts'in's arms for half a centur

, . nsscen etces, vo. ern an epzg 1930,

194.

ro, H.: La Chine Antique (Paris 1927, Boccard), pp. 390-1, quoted in V.
observation that, during the post-Confucian paroxysm of a Sinic Time

century (from
270 B.C. to 221 B.C.).

3 See Franke, O.: Geschichte des Chinesischen Retches, vol. i (Berlin and Leipzig 1930,
de Gruyter), p. 194

+ See Masp6ro,

vi. 295, for the obs ,

of Troubles, the contending states were fighting for existence, as distinct from the smaller
stakes of independence or hegemony for which they had fought during the pre-Con-
fucian paroxysm. Franke points out, however, in op. cit., vol. i, p. 178, that the con-
ventional restriction of the term 'the Period of Contending States' to the post-Confucian
paroxysm is an arbitary misnomer, considering that the murder of no less than 36 princes
and the destruction of no less than 52 states between the years 722 and 481 B.C. is
recorded by Confucius in his annals of that period of Sinic history. The post-Confucian
series of war-and-i --------- ' --------- ^ ' " • " ' *

the first great war between Tsin and" Ch'u (Ig^eblzfa7634-62% B*.cA."

5 See Table III, opposite.

6 This year, which saw the outbreak of the great civil war (gerebatur 497-490 B.C.) in