The Curse of the Hound: A Political Assassination That Shaped Three Kingdoms

The story of Wei’s downfall begins with an eerie political murder centuries earlier that left an indelible mark on the ruling families of the Three Jins (Han, Zhao, and Wei). During the Spring and Autumn period, the powerful Jin minister Zhao Dun met a grisly end when a mysterious hound—reportedly bred by a minor official named Tu’an Gu—leaped from nowhere to tear out his heart during a court recess. This supernatural-seeming assassination triggered the Zhao clan’s decline and eventual revenge, ultimately leading to the partition of Jin among the three families.

For generations afterward, the Three Jins developed polarized attitudes toward dogs. While Han and Wei royalty became obsessed with breeding supernatural hounds, the Zhao kings maintained an almost pathological hatred of canines—a cultural scar from their ancestor’s violent demise. By the Warring States period, Wei’s mastiffs (獒, standing over four chi tall) had become legendary across the contending states, eclipsing even the Zhou royal hunting dogs and Han’s famed black “Lu” hounds.

The Dog King Ascends: Wei Jia’s Canine Obsession

When Prince Jia of Wei was twelve, his father King Jingmin tested his administrative potential by letting him choose any government office to supervise. The boy prince unhesitatingly selected the “Yu Ren” department—responsible for royal hunting grounds and their kennels. For eighteen years as crown prince, Jia transformed a modest hunting dog enclosure into the spectacular “Mastiff Palace,” breeding what would become the Wei Mastiff breed through ruthless eugenics: only dogs standing four chi (about 92cm) when seated earned the mastiff title.

Upon ascending the throne in 243 BCE, King Jia of Wei (now Wei Jia) elevated dog breeding to statecraft. He personally interviewed every noble or merchant seeking to purchase a mastiff, rejecting buyers he deemed unworthy regardless of their offers. Each sale concluded with a macabre ritual—the departing mastiff would be allowed to kill and devour an unarmed swordsman as a farewell “banquet,” with the weeping king escorting the dog to the palace gates.

The Siege of Daliang: When Dogs Outranked Generals

As Qin forces encircled Wei’s capital Daliang in 225 BCE, the crisis revealed how canine obsession had rotted Wei’s governance. When Prime Minister Shi Cheng and General Daliang urgently sought an audience to warn of Qin’s plan to flood the city by diverting the Hong Canal, they were stopped by a kennel official—a low-ranking clerk reeking of dogs who arrogantly demanded: “When has our king ever not been occupied with mastiff affairs?”

The subsequent war council descended into farce. General Daliang advocated sending troops to defend the canal banks, but Wei Jia countered with delusional confidence: “Daliang’s walls are thick, our granaries full. We can hold out ten years like tiny Jimo held six!” When the general warned that floodwaters wouldn’t wait for royal dreams, the king had an epiphany—not about military strategy, but about dogs:

“Divine soldiers! Mastiffs! I’ll deploy five hundred mastiffs to patrol the Hong Canal day and night!”

The elderly prime minister, despite his reputation for sycophancy, could only stare in stunned silence as the king celebrated this tactical breakthrough.

The Waters Rise: A Kingdom’s Humiliating End

Qin commander Wang Ben executed the flooding strategy with chilling precision. Under famed hydrologist Zheng Guo’s guidance, Qin troops widened the Hong Canal’s inlets near Guangwu Mountain over five days. When Wei finally sent 30,000 cavalry to disrupt the engineering works, Qin ambushed them with crossbow volleys in the darkness, slaughtering 2,000 and wounding 16,000—including General Daliang, who died with an arrow embedded near his heart.

As waters rose around Daliang’s mighty walls, the city’s collapse was as much moral as physical. Prime Minister Shi Cheng fled after leaving a scathing note: “When a king loves dogs more than men, when loyal generals find no door for their service—is this not Wei’s tragedy?” The floodwaters infiltrated everything—wells overflowed, grain sprouted in storage, bricks dissolved into mud. After three months, Daliang’s legendary fortifications melted into sludge, leaving its dog-obsessed king to surrender from a city that no longer had walls.

Legacy of the Dog King: Lessons from Wei’s Fall

Wei Jia’s final lament—”I ruled Wei as king for three years, but as dog king for eighteen!”—epitomizes how aristocratic eccentricities consumed Warring States kingdoms from within. Historian Yao Jia later reflected how each late Wei ruler had a fatal obsession: King Hui with jewels, King Xiang with stallions, King Ai with craftsmen, King Zhao with warriors, King Anxi with beauties, and King Jingmin with alchemy. But Wei Jia’s canine mania uniquely disabled state functions during existential crisis.

The flooding of Daliang marked more than military defeat—it demonstrated how ruling-class decadence could physically dissolve a civilization’s infrastructure. Qin’s subsequent restraint in minimizing civilian casualties during the flooding (per King Zheng’s orders) contrasted starkly with Wei’s elite detachment, foreshadowing the philosophical differences between Legalist statecraft and crumbling Zhou feudalism.

For later dynasties, Wei’s fall became a cautionary tale about rulers who prioritize personal whims over governance—a warning echoed in Tang poet Bai Juyi’s lines: “How did the Six Kingdoms perish? Their lords treasured dogs and horses more than the worthy.” Today, archaeologists still debate whether Daliang’s unusually rapid structural collapse resulted from the flood’s unique chemistry with its mortar or if—as some ancient texts suggest—the king’s neglect of maintenance played a role. Either way, the image of a mastiff-besotted monarch watching his capital dissolve remains one of history’s most vivid metaphors for misplaced priorities.