| Weakening the People:...: |
The people of the state of Chu, who were alert and well-balanced and fast as a whirlwind, were, with their iron lances made of the steel from Yuan, as sharp as a bee's sting. As armour they wore the skin of sharks and the hide of rhinoceros, which are as strong as metal and stone. The Yangtze and the Han Rivers were its moats, and the Ru and the Ying its boundaries, the Forest of Deng was its screen, and the Wall of the Fang Mountains was its frontier. Yet when the army of Qin marched on Yen and Ying, it took those cities as easily as if it had been merely the shaking of a dead tree. Tang Mie met his death at Chui-sha, Zhuang Qiao rose in the interior, and Chu was divided into five parts. This was not because its territory was not large or that the population was not numerous, or that the armour and weapons and resources were not many, but the reason, that in fighting it did not win and in defending it was unable to hold its own, was due to the fact that it did not have law. |
