98 IMPERIAL TEN. was to go in overwhelming force, flood everything before him, and suddenly fall on and take Ye, the Yen capital He was all the more in earnest as he foresaw that, if Yen got control of the Yellow Biver, on which Tsin was dependent for supplies, the days of Tsin were numbered As a preparatory step, he had his Tsingho * river fleet embarked on the Whangho, or Yellow Eiver. ELis counsel to rise en masse was, however, not adopted ; but all the troops he could muster he sent on to Hooloo city, which he seized, with its commandant, Moyoong Joong. He also defeated a force of 20,000 Yen men, though they fought desperately at Whangchung. Li, with his defeated army, fled to Gaoping, whose Taishow, however, revolted to Tsin; and Dung Dwan, with Tsin vanguard, defeated another Yen army. The Yen a/nns were as strong as ever, but the mind was gone. Tsang exerted himself to the utmost to stop Wun, but found his crippled resources utterly inadequate. He therefore sent urgent messengers to Chin for instant aid. Wun continued to press on, and, in July, got to Wooyang or Chaochang, receiving into his ranks one of Yen's generals, with all his division. On approaching Fangtow, both emperor Wei and prime minister Ping proposed, in their terror, to retire at once on Loongchung. But Woo Wang objected stoutly, protesting that it was time enough to think of retreat when they found it impossible to stem the advancing tide. Just before this storm burst so furiously, in 369, two hundred thousand Yen families retired to their northern homes because of the weakness of the central govern- ment ; for there was no strong man at the helm. They gave as their reason that the imperial family was so small in numbers and so limited in resources. This exodus from the far south, which shows how rapidly and largely the Yen population had grown, so affected the minister Gwan, who was unwell before, that he died. Thus, one by one, the true pillars of the Yen State were being removed, when only a regular succession of such men could have upheld the incohesive structura Though there were still good men among the Yen people, the mean minds in power preferred
- This Tsing river will be that of Eiangsoo, not the Shantung river.
