苻坚

A ruler of the 氐 people, he governed with the help of the Han Chinese minister 王猛 and united the north by 376. In 383, against advice, he marched on the Eastern Jin, boasting that if every man in his army threw his whip into the Yangtze they could stop the river, 投鞭断流. A much smaller Jin force routed him at the Fei River, his empire fell apart, and two years later he was killed by one of his own generals.

The battle gave two idioms for panic: 草木皆兵, from his taking the trees on a hillside for enemy soldiers, and 风声鹤唳, from his fleeing troops, who heard the enemy in every gust of wind and every cry of a crane.