account of
them and their doings seemed indispensable to our work.

_THE FOUNDER OF THE CHINESE EMPIRE._

In the year 246 B.C. came to the throne of China the most famous of all
the monarchs of that ancient empire, the celebrated Hoangti,--Tsin Chi
Hoang-ti, or "first sovereign emperor of the Tsins," to give him his
full title. Various stories are told by Chinese historians of the origin
of this great monarch, they denying that he was of royal blood. They say
that he was the son of a woman slave who had been bought by the emperor,
and that the boy's real father was a merchant, her former master. This
story, whether true or false, gave the young emperor much trouble in
later years. His mother, after he came to the throne, grew so dissipated
that he was forced to punish her lover and banish her. And the merchant,
his reputed father, being given a place at court, became eager for a
higher position, and sought to influence the emperor by hints and
whisperings of the secret hold he possessed over him. Hoangti was not
the man to be dealt with in such a fashion, and the intriguing merchant,
finding a storm of vengeance coming, poisoned himself to escape a worse
fate.

Such are the stories told of the origin of the famous emperor. They may
not be true, for the historians hated him, for reasons yet to be given,
and made the most of anything they could say against him. All we are
sure of is that he ascended the throne at the youthful age of thirteen,
and even at that age quickly made his influence widely felt. What lay
before him was practically the conquest of China, whose great feudal
lords were virtually independent of the throne, and had, not long
before, overwhelmed the imperial armies.

Fortunately for the young emperor, the great princes, having no fear of
a boy, either disbanded their forces or quarrelled among themselves, two
of the most powerful of them declaring war upon each other. Taking
advantage of these dissensions, Hoangti gained, step by step, the
desired control of his foes. Ouki, a great general in the interest of
the princes, was disgraced by the aid of bribery and falsehood, several
of the strong cities of the princes were seized, and when they entered
the field against the emperor their armies, no longer led by the able
Ouki, were easily defeated. Thus steadily the power of the youthful
monarch increased and that of his opponents fell away, the dismembered
empire of China slowly growing under h