I’m leaving out a lot of details from Guan Zhong’s story, but I have two more legendary advisers to get to, so let’s keep moving. The next guy I want to cover is Yue (4) Yi (4), We don’t know the exact years of his life, but he lived during the Warring States period sometime in the 200s B.C. This period was more or less a continuation of the Spring and Autumn period of division. Yue Yi lived in the kingdom of Zhao (4) and began his career as an official there. But after the once powerful king of Zhao was starved to death in his own palace in a coup, Yue Yi left and went to the neighboring kingdom of Wei (4).
During this time, the small and weak kingdom of Yan (4) was being bullied by the powerful kingdom of Qi (2), to the point where the king of Yan (4) had to subjugate himself to Qi. But this king had grand ambitions and was courting men of talent. At that time, Yue Yi was sent by Wei as an envoy to the King of Yan (4). The King of Yan treated him as an honored guest and Yue Yi was convinced to remain in Yan and serve the king.
Meanwhile, the kingdom of Qi (2) kept getting stronger, to the point where its territory stretched for hundreds of miles (which was pretty big for the time), and for a while there, the king of Qi (2) actually called himself the emperor of the east. But this king was also arrogant and cruel toward his subjects, and in 284 B.C., the King of Yan (4) decided that the time had come to throw off his yoke and launch an attack on Qi.
At Yue Yi’s suggestion, Yan struck up an alliance with four other kingdoms. Yue Yi personally went to those kingdoms to secure the alliance, and then he commanded the combined armies of the five ally kingdoms.
Over the course of five years of warfare, Yue Yi and the ally forces defeated the army of Qi time and again and seized 70-some cities from Qi. It got to the point where Qi had only two cities left in its control. So the kingdom of Yan was riding high and enjoying prosperity and power like never before.
But Yue Yi was also smart enough to recognize that simply conquering cities by force was not a way to secure your hold on the newly won territories. If you don’t win the support of the local people, even if you conquered the entire kingdom of Qi, you would not be able to hold it. So instead of laying siege to the last two cities of Qi, he simply had his army surround them. Meanwhile, in the conquered territories, he made sure to respect and preserve the local customs and culture, and employed people who were well-known in those areas so as to earn the support of the locals.
But this plan would also turn out to be his undoing. In 279 BC, the King of Yan died, and his son came to the throne. Now this new king had had his differences with Yue Yi before he became king, and now he was persuaded by one of his advisers that Yue Yi was dragging his foot on taking the last two cities of Qi because he was trying to set himself up as the king of Qi. Growing suspicious, the new king of Yan decided to recall Yue Yi and put someone else in charge of the war. Yue Yi, recognizing which way the wind was blowing, feared for his life if he actually returned. So instead of going back to Yan, he fled to Zhao (4), one of the kingdoms in the alliance. Zhao (4) took him in and treated him extremely well so as to use his presence to keep the kingdoms of Yan and Qi on guard.
Yan’s war against Qi unraveled quickly after Yue Yi’s departure. Qi took advantage of his absence to launch a counterattack that drove the Yan army back until Qi had recovered all the cities it had lost. So all of Yan’s labor of the previous five years were for naught.
This setback made the new king of Yan regret his decision to replace Yue Yi, but at the same time, he was mad at Yue Yi for defecting to Zhao (4). So he sent a message to Yue Yi, in which the king simultaneously apologized for recalling him and admonished him for not coming home. Yue Yi responded with a famous letter in which he expressed his unwavering loyalty to the old king, and listed all of his grievances against the new king. The letter said that “Those who do good might not always be repaid in kind, and good beginnings do not ensure good endings.” This, he concluded, was reason enough to not serve a bad master and die an unjust death.
Brought to his senses by this letter, the king of Yan made Yue Yi’s son a high official in his court. Yue Yi, meanwhile, served as a diplomat between the kingdoms of Zhao and Yan and forged a strong connection between the two. However, he never would go home to Yan, dying in Zhao instead.
Alright, so that’s three down, and we have come to our final legendary adviser, Zhang Liang. He lived from 250 to 186 BC, and he was one of the top advisers for the Supreme Ancestor, the founding emperor of the Han (4) Dynasty.
Zhang Liang’s forefathers were high officials in one of the kingdoms of the latter stages of the Warring States period. But that kingdom, like everybody else, was vanquished by the kingdom of Qin (2), which united China under its first emperor and everyone’s favorite tyrant, Qin Shi (3) Huang (2). Deprived of a chance to follow in his forefathers’ footsteps and serve as an official for his home kingdom, Zhang Liang was hell bent on seeking revenge, so he devised a plot to assassinate Qin Shi Huang.
This assassination plan sounds a little kooky. Zhang Liang exhausted what money his family had to hire a strongman and made for him a hammer that weighed something like 130 pounds. Zhang Liang then managed to track down intel of the emperor’s whereabouts. At that time, Qin Shi Huang was making an inspection tour of the east. According to customs, the emperor’s chariot was pulled by six horses, while his officials’ chariots were pulled by four horses. So Zhang Liang’s plan was to have his strongman assassin lie in wait and then attack the guy in the six-horse chariot when the imperial procession passed.
So in the year 218 BC, this assassination attempt went down. As the emperor’s entourage passed, the assassin and Zhang Liang watched. There was just one problem: All the chariots were pulled by four horses. So Zhang Liang just instructed the assassin to attack the most-impressive looking chariot. The assassin sprang out and, wielding Thor’s hammer, clubbed to death the guy riding in that chariot. The assassin was immediately killed by the guards, but Zhang Liang slipped away in the chaos.
Later, however, Zhang Liang found out that, oops, he had killed the wrong guy. Qin Shi Huang, being the cruel egomaniac that he was, had made many enemies and had been on the receiving end of numerous assassination attempts. So by the time it was Zhang Liang’s turn to take a shot at the emperor, Qin Shi Huag was well-prepared. He had put four horses on all the chariots in his entourage and constantly changed which one he rode in. Thus thwarted but never identified, Zhang Liang took an alias and disappeared into obscurity.
That was not the end of Zhang Liang’s story, but rather the beginning. One day, as he was crossing a bridge, an old man walked past him. As he passed, the old man intentionally dropped one of his shoes off the bridge. He then turned and said to Zhang Liang, in a rather patronizing tone, “Son, go fetch that me, would ya?”
Zhang Liang was taken aback a bit by this, but he suppressed his displeasure and dutifully retrieved the shoe. The old man then raised his foot and told Zhang Liang to put the shoe back on. Zhang Liang felt like punching this guy for his disrespectful manners, but he had lived through so many hardships at that point that he had been humbled enough to tolerate this insult. So he kneeled and carefully put the shoe on the old man’s foot. Then, without a word of thanks, the old man laughed and walked away, leaving Zhang Liang on the bridge, probably thinking, “What the heck just happened?”
But momentarily, the old man came back on the bridge and told Zhang Liang, “You are worthy of being my pupil.” He then told Zhang Liang to meet him at the bridge at dawn in five days. He did not explain further, but Zhang Liang, despite having no idea what this was all about, nonetheless kneeled and thanked him respectfully.
So five days passed, and Zhang Liang rushed to the bridge at dawn. But lo and behold, the old man had arrived early and was waiting for him. When he saw Zhang Liang, the old man admonished him, “How can you be late to a meeting with an elder? Come back again in five days.” And then the old guy left.
Five days later, Zhang Liang returned, but the old man had pulled same stunt on him yet again. So Zhang Liang was told to come back in another five days. Now, a lot of people probably would’ve just said the heck with this, but Zhang Liang did not. Instead, five days later, he went to the bridge at MIDNIGHT and waited until dawn. This time, at last, his commitment and forbearance impressed the old man, who handed him a book and told him, “Ten years from now, the empire will be in chaos. Use this book to help build a new kingdom.” And then he left.
Zhang Liang took a look and saw that he had been given a copy of The Six Secret Teachings, a legendary treatise on military and political strategy that was supposedly written by — guess who — Jiang Ziya, the first of our illustrious advisers. Of course, this book was almost certainly written by someone else who then attributed it to Jiang Ziya for some extra credibility and marketing power. But the important thing was that this was a must-read book if you wanted to be the kind of adviser who helps found empires. From that point on, Zhang Liang devoted himself to its study.
Nine years passed, and Qin Shi Huang died. His son ascended to the throne, but he inherited a less-than-stable empire, and rebellions rose up all through the land. Zhang Liang himself gathered 100-some people and declared that he was rebelling against the Qin dynasty. Of course, you can’t really do much with 100 people, so Zhang Liang was on his way to join up with one of the larger rebellions when he ran into a group of rebels led by a lowly precinct magistrate named Liu (2) Bang (1).
Zhang Liang and Liu Bang hit it off immediately. Zhang Liang offered up plenty of advice to Liu Bang, and Liu Bang often heeded this advice. So if you were Zhang Liang, here wa a guy who respected you and did what you told him to do, so why go anywhere else? Zhang Liang threw in his lot with Liu Bang, who, as it turned out, would become known as the Supreme Ancestor and found the Han (4) Dynasty.
I can go into immense details here about all the things that Zhang Liang did for Liu Bang, but this supplemental episode is already approaching full-episode length, so I’ll just summarize. Zhang Liang’s strategies proved to be instrumental in first helping Liu Bang play a key role in toppling the Qin dynasty, then in saving Liu Bang’s hide when he was threatened by Xiang (4) Yu (3), the strongest of the rebel leaders, who began vying against each other once the Qin was out of the way. Zhang Liang then provided crucial advice to help Liu Bang begin the campaign that eventually defeated Xiang Yu and made Liu Bang the undisputed ruler of the land.
Unlike some of his colleagues, Zhang Liang was smart enough to know when to walk away. After the Han was founded, he began to stay home more and more on the excuse of being sick, gradually removing himself from the presence of Liu Bang, now ruler of the empire. Liu Bang tried to reward Zhang Liang for his contributions by giving him a huge fiefdom, but Zhang Liang declined, asking only for the county where he and Liu Bang first met. Eventually, Zhang Liang turned into a recluse, leaving the outside world behind altogether to pursue the Daoist path. After he died of natural causes in in 186 B.C., he was posthumously named a marquis. This was a far better fate than what befell some of Liu Bang’s other top officials, as Liu Bang was the distrustful sort who, upon securing power, began to suspect, purge, and execute the people who helped him get that power.
So that covers the four legendary advisers to whom Zhuge Liang is compared in the novel. I hope this gives you a better idea of how high a praise such comparisons are, and a better understanding of some key figures in Chinese history. I’ll see you next time on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast. Thanks for listening.
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