But it was the Lords Marchers that counted. One after another of them had wrested from the Chow the title of _Wang_ or King; it was not enough for them to be dukes and marquises. Then came a time when a sort of Bretwalda-ship was established; to be wielded by whichever of them happened to be strongest--and generally to be fought for between whiles: a glorious and perpetual bone of contention. International law went by the board. The Chow domain, the duchies and marquisates, lay right in the path of the contestants--midmost of all, and most to be trampled. Was Tsin to march all round the world, when a mere scurry across neutral (and helpless) Chow would bring it at the desired throat of Ts'u?--A question not to be asked!--there at Honanfu sat the Chow king, head of the national religion, head of the state with its feudatories, receiving (when it suited them to pay it) the annual homage of all those loud and greedy potentates, who for the rest kicked him about as they pleased, and ordered each other to obey him,--for was he not still the son of Heaven, possessor of the Nine Tripods of sovereignty, the tripods of Ta Yu?--So the centuries passed, growing worse and worse ever, from the ninth to the sixth: an age of anarchy, bad government, disorder, crime and clash of ambitions: when there was a decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world;--and we know what manner of incarnation, at such times, is likely to happen. Conditions had outgrown the astral molds made for them in the last manvantara: the molds that had been made for a small homogeneous China. The world had expanded, and was no longer homogeneous: China herself was not homogeneous; and she found on all sides of her very heterogeneous Ts'ins, Tsins, Ts'is, Ts'us, Wus and Yuehs; each of whom, like so many Great Powers of our own times, had the best of intentions to partake of her sacramental body when God's will so should be.--Indeed, the situation was very much as we have seen it.