The Daze Village Uprising (Chinese: 大澤鄉起義, July 209 BC - December 209 BC) was the first uprising against Qin rule following the death of Qin Shi Huang.
Chen Sheng and Wu Guang were both army officers who were ordered to lead their bands of commoner soldiers north to participate in the defense of Yuyang (漁陽). However, they were stopped halfway in Anhui province by a severe rainstorm and flooding. The harsh Qin laws stated that anyone late to show up for government jobs will be executed, regardless of the nature of the delay. Chen and Wu realized that they could never make it on time and decided to organize a band that would rebel against the government, that they would die fighting for their freedom rather than by execution. They became the center of armed uprisings all over China, and in a few months their strength congregated to around ten thousand men, composed mostly of discontent peasants. But on the battlefield, they were no match for the highly professional Qin soldiers and the uprising was in trouble in less than a year. Wu was the victim of infighting among the rebel generals, while Chen was betrayed by one of his guards and assassinated. However, they set up the example that was to be followed by Liu Bang and Xiang Yu. Their spirit is best summed up in Chen's quote "王侯將相寧有種乎" (wáng hóu jiāng xiāng níng yǒu zhǒng hu), meaning that every man, regardless of birth, has the chance to become someone with great power if he exerts himself. The uprising was started in Daze Village which translates into "Big Swamp Village". In the beginning of the uprising,Chen Sheng and Wu Guang recruited 900 villagers to be a patrol.
Famous quotes containing the words daze, village and/or uprising:
“A daze had come over his mind, he had another centre of consciousness. In his breast, or in his bowels, somewhere in his body, there had started another activity.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Every day or two I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homoeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Ours is the old, old story of every uprising race or class or order. The work of elevation must be wrought by ourselves or not at all.”
—Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904)