Scarcely anything is recorded of a nature to throw specific light upon the international development of these far-eastern parts. But in the year 894 B.C. the reigning prince of Ts'i was boiled alive at the Emperor's order for some political offence, and his successor thereupon moved his capital, only to be transferred back to the old place by his son thirty-five years later. The imperial flight of 842 naturally caused some consternation even in distant Ts'i, and in 827 the next Emperor on his accession commanded the reigning Marquess of Ts'i to assist in chastising the Western Tartars. When this last Emperor's grandson was driven from his old hereditary domain in 771, and the semi-Tartar ruler of Ts'in took possession of the same, as already narrated, Ts'i was still so inconsiderable a military power that even two generations after that event, in the year 706, it was fain to apply for assistance against Northern Tartar raids to one of the small Chinese principalities in the Ho Nan province. (Roughly speaking, "Northern Tartars" were Manchu-Mongols, and "Western Tartars" were Mongol-Turks.) In 690 the prince, whose sister had married the neighbouring ruler of Lu, made an armed attack by way of vengeance upon the descendant of the adviser who had counselled the Emperor to boil his ancestor alive in 894: his power was now so considerable that the Emperor commissioned him to act with authority in the matter of a disputed succession to a minor Chinese principality. This was in the year 688 B.C., and it was the first instance of a vassal acting as dictator or protector on behalf of the Emperor; only, however, in a special or isolated case. Two years later this prince of Ts'i was himself assassinated, and the disputes between his sons regarding the succession terminated with the advent to the throne of one of the great characters in Chinese history, who was magnanimous and politic enough to take as his adviser and premier a still greater character, and one that almost rivals Confucius himself in fame as an author, a statesman, a benefactor of China; and a moralist. This personage, who, like most Chinese of the period, carried many names, is most generally known as the philosopher Kwan-tsz, and his chief writings have survived, in part at least, until our own day. He was, in fact, a distant scion of the reigning imperial family of Chou, and bore its clan name of _Ki_. Here it may be useful to state parenthetically that most prominent men in all the federated states seem to have belonged to a narrow aristocratic circle, among whose members the craft of government, the knowledge of letters, and the hereditary right to expect office, was inherent; at the same time, there was never at any date anything in the shape of a priestly or military caste, and power appears to have been always within the reach of the humblest, so long as the aspirant was competent to assert himself.