It actually contains about four hundred of the names which occur most frequently.
About two hundred and twenty years before Christ, the feudal system came to an end.

One aggressive state gradually swallowed up all the others; and under the rule of its sovereign, China became once more an empire, and such it has ever since remained.

But although always an empire, the throne, during the past two thousand years, has passed many times from one house to another.
The extraordinary man who led his state to victory over each rival in turn, and ultimately mounted the throne to rule over a united China, finds his best historical counterpart in Napoleon.

He called himself the First Emperor, and began by sending an army of 300,000 men to fight against an old and dreaded enemy to the north, recently identified beyond question with the Huns.

He dispatched a fleet to search for some mysterious islands off the coast, thought by some to be the islands which form Japan.