hrone of South China was unable, however,
to maintain his position; he had not sufficient backing. He was at war
with the new rulers in the northern empire, and his own army, which was
not very large, melted away; above all, he proceeded with excessive
harshness against the helpers who had gained access for him to the
Liang, and thereafter he failed to secure a following from among the
leading cliques at court. In 552 he was driven out by a Chinese army led
by one of the princes and was killed.

The new emperor had been a prince in the upper Yangtze region, and his
closest associates were engaged there. They did not want to move to the
distant capital, Nanking, because their private financial interests
would have suffered. The emperor therefore remained in the city now
called Hankow. He left the eastern territory in the hands of two
powerful generals, one of whom belonged to the Ch'en family, which he no
longer had the strength to remove. In this situation the generals in the
east made themselves independent, and this naturally produced tension at
once between the east and the west of the Liang empire; this tension was
now exploited by the leaders of the Chou state then in the making in the
north. On the invitation of a clique in the south and with its support,
the Chou invaded the present province of Hupei and in 555 captured the
Liang emperor's capital. They were now able to achieve their old
ambition: a prince of the Chou dynasty was installed as a feudatory of
the north, reigning until 587 in the present Hankow. He was permitted to
call his quasi-feudal territory a kingdom and his dynasty, as we know
already, the "Later Liang dynasty".

5 _The Ch'en dynasty_ (A.D. 557-588) _and its ending by the Sui_

The more important of the independent generals in the east, Ch'en
Pa-hsien, installed a shadow emperor, forced him to abdicate, and made
himself emperor. The Ch'en dynasty which thus began was even feebler
than the preceding dynasties. Its territory was confined to the lower
Yangtze valley. Once more cliques and rival pretenders were at work and
prevented any sort of constructive home policy. Abroad, certain
advantages were gained in north China over the Northern Ch'i dynasty,
but none of any great importance.

Meanwhile in the north Yang Chien had brought into power the Chinese Sui
dynasty. It began by liquidating the quasi-feudal state of the "Later
Liang". Then followed, in 588-9, the conquest of the Ch'en empi