served a particular
clique to which some of the emperor's wives belonged. The scholars, that
is to say the ministers, together with members of the ministries and the
administrative staff, served the interests of another clique. The
struggles grew more and more sanguinary in the middle of the second
century A.D. It soon proved that the group with the firmest hold in the
provinces had the advantage, because it was not easy to control the
provinces from a distance. The result was that, from about A.D. 150,
events at court steadily lost importance, the lead being taken by the
generals commanding the provincial troops. It would carry us too far to
give the details of all these struggles. The provincial generals were at
first Ts'ao Ts'ao, Lue Pu, Yuean Shao, and Sun Ts'e; later came Liu Pei.
All were striving to gain control of the government, and all were
engaged in mutual hostilities from about 180 onwards. Each general was
also trying to get the emperor into his hands. Several times the last
emperor of the Later Han dynasty, Hsien Ti (190-220), was captured by
one or another of the generals. As the successful general was usually
unable to maintain his hold on the capital, he dragged the poor emperor
with him from place to place until he finally had to give him up to
another general. The point of this chase after the emperor was that
according to the idea introduced earlier by Wang Mang the first ruler of
a new dynasty had to receive the imperial seals from the last emperor
of the previous dynasty. The last emperor must abdicate in proper form.
Accordingly, each general had to get possession of the emperor to begin
with, in order at the proper time to take over the seals.

By about A.D. 200 the new conditions had more or less crystallized.
There remained only three great parties. The most powerful was that of
Ts'ao Ts'ao, who controlled the north and was able to keep permanent
hold of the emperor. In the west, in the province of Szechwan, Liu Pei
had established himself, and in the south-east Sun Ts'e's brother.

But we must not limit our view to these generals' struggles. At this
time there were two other series of events of equal importance with
those. The incessant struggles of the cliques against each other
continued at the expense of the people, who had to fight them and pay
for them. Thus, after A.D. 150 the distress of the country population
grew beyond all limits. Conditions were as disastrous as in the time of
Wa