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Wu Qi
Warring States general from Wey who served Lu, Wei and Chu, held the West River against Qin, and was shot down by Chu nobles after reforming Chu for King Dao
At dusk on a hilltop, a large tent stands open with a table holding a map marked with small stones inside, a saddled horse tethered outside, and fire stands burning; campfires dot the river plain below, and one tiny sentry stands on the slope.
Also known as Wu Zi
Wu Qi came from Zuoshi in Wey; his teacher Master Zeng broke with him when he skipped his mother's funeral. The Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) says that when Lu hesitated to make him general because his wife came from Qi, he killed her to prove his loyalty and then defeated the Qi army. Marquis Wen of Wei then made him governor of the West River region, where he took five Qin towns and shared his soldiers' food and hardships. Pushed out under Marquis Wu, he fled to Chu, where King Dao made him chief minister; he tightened the laws, cut idle posts and the stipends of distant royal kin, and Chu expanded south and absorbed Chen and Cai. When King Dao died in 381 BC the nobles attacked him; he threw himself on the king's body, and because their arrows also struck the corpse, King Su later wiped out over seventy families. The Han catalogue lists his book in forty-eight chapters; the surviving Wuzi has six.
Life and times
Dates c. 440 BCE–381 BCE