People say China has 5,000 years of history. But we’re going to skip the first 2,000 years, which was basically gods fighting other gods.
So we skip forward to the Shang and Zhou period. The Zhou king blitzed the Shang capital while Shang’s main army was away. (He was so afraid after winning that he couldn’t sleep.) Then, because the land was too big to manage, he gave out parts of it to family and friends. And when they became too powerful, the Zhou kings tried to take them back. They usually failed, and sometimes died in the attempt. As a result, Zhou land shrank, and these feudal states slowly swallowed up the smaller ones until King You of Zhou was killed. This marked the start of the Spring and Autumn period.
The guy who plotted the Zhou king’s death brought his own grandson to Luoyang and said, look, the Zhou king is still alive, it’s my grandson. I know it’s a different guy, but they share the same surname, hehe… At first people still listened to him, but then Duke Huan of Qi showed up. From then on, the Zhou king became irrelevant to the story. The story was now about five very powerful lords. Then Confucius was born, and he got very angry somehow because someone dared to have 64 people dancing. How dared they. After Duke Wen of Jin died, his men split the state of Jin into three pieces. And then it was the Summer and Winter Warring States period.
At first, the State of Wei was the top dog. But they were surrounded by everyone else, which meant anyone could attack them at will. Then Qi wanted to be top dog but got tired. Chu also wanted to be top dog, but their location sucked. Qin also wanted to be top dog, and… they pulled it off. Mostly thanks to a very, very harsh legal system.
There’s also Yan, which almost destroyed Qi. But when Qi was down to 2 cities, they managed to recover, thanks to the fact that the Yan king was an idiot. (During the Warring States period, if you lose, 99% of the time it was because your king was an idiot.) And Han, the weakest state. And Zhao, the second strongest state, thanks to advanced technology like foreign-style clothes and horseback archers.
By this point, basically only Zhao could still go toe-to-toe with Qin. Then Zhao got greedy and took a piece of land between itself and Qin, and Qin sent in troops. What followed was one of the bloodiest battles in Chinese history. The Zhao king replaced a capable general with an inexperienced one, thanks to the Law of Idiot Kings. And 400,000 Zhao men were buried alive because of a stupid decision by their commander. Some garbage time followed, and then Qin started wiping out the other states.
Qin first went for Han. The war was boring because it went almost too smoothly. Then Qin went after what was left of Zhao, and Zhao managed to win several battles thanks to a general called Li Mu. But the Law of Idiot Kings stated that Zhao was going to lose. Qin bribed a Zhao officer, and the Zhao king had Li Mu killed. And Zhao was destroyed. In Tennessee, we say fool me once, shame on you. Fool me… you can’t get fooled again.
Then Wang Jian’s lesser-known son, Wang Ben, conquered Wei by drowning their capital in a flood. The Yan king sent in an assassin, Jing Ke, to kill the Qin king. Unfortunately, Jing Ke had probably watched too much Looney Tunes. He and the Qin king ran around a palace pillar like Bugs Bunny, and the assassination attempt failed. Some genius told the Yan king, this was your son’s idea. Just kill your son and send his head over, and the King of Qin will definitely forgive you. Well, the Qin king did not forgive him. So Yan was destroyed too.
Chu was a big state in the south. When it came to Chu, general Wang Jian demanded 600,000 troops for the campaign. The Qin king said no way, and a younger general said he could do it with 200,000. So the Qin king gave him 200,000 men, which went down the toilet. Then the Qin king went back to Wang Jian and said, fine, here’s your 600,000 troops. As for Qi, you just A-moved your army over, and before the fight even began, they GG’d on their own.