Some idea of the limited population of very ancient China may be gained from a consideration of the oldest army computations. The Emperor was supposed to have six brigades, the larger vassals three, the lesser two, and the small ones one; but owing to the loose way in which a _Shi_, or regiment of 2,500 men, and a _Kun_, or brigade of 12,500 men, are alternately spoken of, the Chinese commentators themselves are rather at a loss to estimate how matters really stood after the collapse of the Emperor in 771: but though at much later dates enormous armies, counting up to half a million men on each side, stubbornly contended for mastery, at the period of which we speak there is no reason to believe that any state, least of all the imperial reserve, ever put more than 1000 chariots, or say, 75,000 men, into the field on any one expedition. Flags seem to have been in use very much as in the West. The founder of the Chou dynasty marched to the conquest of China carrying, or having carried for him, a yellow axe in the left, and a white flag in the right hand. In 660 one of the minor federal princes was crushed because he did not lower his standard in time; nearly a century later, this precedent was quoted to another federal prince when hard-pressed, in consequence of which a sub- officer "rolled up his master's standard and put it in its sheath." In 645 "the cavaliers under the ruler's flag "--defined to mean his body-guard--were surrounded by the enemy. During the fifth century B.C., when the coast provinces, having separated from the Ts'u suzerainty, were asserting their equality with the orthodox Chinese princes, and two rival "barbarian" armies were contending for the Shanghai region, one royal scion was indignant when he saw the enemy advance "with the flag captured in the last battle from his own father the general." Flags were used, not only to signal movements of troops during the course of battle, but also in the great hunts or battues which were arranged in peace times, not merely for sport, but also in order to prepare soldiers for a military life. For victories over the Tartars in 623, the Emperor presented the ruler of Ts'in with a metal drum; and it seems that sacrificing to the regimental drum before a fight was a very ancient custom, which has been carried down to the present day. In 1900, during the "Boxer" troubles, General (now Viceroy) Yiian Shi-k'ai is reported to have sacrificed several condemned criminals to his drum before setting out upon his march. [Illustration: Hilly County Dividing Wei Valley from Han Valley. 1. Si-ngan Fu is at the junction of the King River and Wei River. The encircled crosses mark the oldest and the newest Ts'in capitals; all other Ts'in capitals lay somewhere between the King and the Wei. 2. From 643 B.C. to 385 B.C. Ts'in was in occupation of the territory between the Yellow River and the River Loh, taken from Tsin and again lost to Tsin at those dates.] CHAPTER VII THE COAST STATES