Conquest of Wu by Jin

The Jin commanders Yang Hu and, after him, Du Yu had long prepared the conquest, and Wang Jun spent years building a war fleet in Yi province (Sichuan); Wu officers warned Sun Hao and barred the Yangtze gorges with iron chains and spikes. In the winter of 279–280 Sima Yan sent more than 200,000 men, according to the sources, along six routes: Sima Zhou from Xiapi towards Tuzhong, Wang Hun from Shouchun, Wang Rong against Wuchang, Hu Fen against Xiakou, Du Yu against Jiangling, and Wang Jun and Tang Bin downstream from Yi province. Wang Jun’s fleet left Chengdu in the first lunar month of 280, and in March it burned through the chains in the Xiling Gorge with great oil-soaked torches carried on rafts; in April Du Yu took Jiangling, and the Wu cities of the middle Yangtze surrendered one after another.

Wang Jun’s fleet sailed on to Jianye. On 1 May 280 Sun Hao, bound and with a coffin carried behind him as a sign of submission, surrendered to him at Shitou; he was taken to Luoyang and made Marquis of Guiming, “the marquis who resigned himself to fate”. According to the Book of Jin, Jin took over four provinces, 43 commanderies and 313 counties with 523,000 households and 2.3 million people. It was the first successful crossing of the Yangtze by a large invading army in Chinese history. The unity did not last: after Sima Yan’s death in 290 the War of the Eight Princes and the risings of the northern peoples cost the Jin the north in the early 4th century.