3/31/2023 0 Comments Jing clothes![]() ![]() According to events at the time, Dukang (督亢) (in present-day Hebei Province) was the first part of the Yan state that the Qin wanted, by reason of its fertile farmland. Jing Ke agreed to go to Qin and pretend to be a nobleman begging for mercy. In 228 BC, the Qin army was already at the Zhao capital of Handan, and was waiting to approach the state of Yan. The expectation in either case was that Qin would be left disorganized, enabling the other remaining major states to unite against its conquest. The plan involved either kidnapping the king and forcing him to release the territories from his control or failing this, killing him. There Jing Ke accepted the hospitality of Prince Dan, who, as a last resort, decided to send an assassin against the King of Qin. ![]() A youxia named Tian Guang (田光) first introduced him to Prince Dan. His homeland of Wey was annexed by Qin in 239 BC, and Jing Ke fled to Yan. He was of the clan name Qing ( 庆氏) of the ancestral name Jiang (姜姓) and a distant descendant of Wukui of Qi, had good education and was proficient in the art of the sword. Jing Ke originally came from the minor Wey state. In exchange for peace, King Xi of Yan had earlier forced his son Crown Prince Dan to be held a diplomatic hostage in the Qin, but Prince Dan returned knowing that Qin was far stronger than Yan and would attack it sooner or later. Zhao's northeastern neighbor, the Yan state was next in line to be threatened by Qin expansion. Two years later, the once-formidable Zhao state was also conquered in 236 BC. The Qin army, having already achieved absolute military supremacy over the other states since 260 BC, first successfully annihilated the state of Han, the weakest of the Seven Warring States. In 230 BC, the Qin state began conquering other states as part of King Zheng's ambition to unify the country under one rule. ![]() His story is told in the chapter titled Biographies of Assassins (刺客列傳) in Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian. As a retainer of Crown Prince Dan of the Yan state, he was infamous for his failed assassination attempt on King Zheng of the Qin state, who later became Qin Shi Huang, the Qin Dynasty's first emperor (from 221 BC to 210 BC). Jing Ke (died 227 BC) was a youxia during the late Warring States period of Ancient China. In the middle is the dagger, sticking out of the column, and the opened box with the head inside. The King of Qin is on the left, Qin Wuyang is kneeling in the middle, and Jing Ke, on the right, has been seized. This mural shows Jing Ke's assassination attempt. ![]()
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