China and the Manchus ......................................................................................................................................1

The Manchus are descended from a branch of certain wild Tungusic nomads, who were known in the ninth

century as the Nuchens, a name which has been said to mean "west of the sea." The cradle of their race lay

at the base of the EverWhite Mountains, due north of Korea, and was fertilised by the head waters of the

In an illustrated Chinese work of the fourteenth century, of which the Cambridge University Library

possesses the only known copy, we read that they reached this spot, originally the home of the Sushen tribe,

as fugitives from Korea; further, that careless of death and prizing valour only, they carried naked knives

about their persons, never parting from them by day or night, and that they were as "poisonous" as wolves or

tigers. They also tattooed their faces, and at marriage their mouths. By the close of the ninth century the

Nuchens had become subject to the neighbouring Kitans, then under the rule of the vigorous Kitan chieftain,

Opaochi, who, in 907, proclaimed himself Emperor of an independent kingdom with the dynastic title of

Liao, said to mean "iron," and who at once entered upon that long course of aggression against China and

encroachment upon her territory which was to result in the practical division of the empire between the two

powers, with the Yellow River as boundary, K`aifeng as the Chinese capital, and Peking, now for the first

time raised to the status of a metropolis, as the Kitan capital. Hitherto, the Kitans had recognised China as

their suzerain; they are first mentioned in Chinese history in A.D. 468, when they sent ambassadors to court,

Turning now to China, the famous House of Sung, the early years of which were so full of promise of

national prosperity, and which is deservedly associated with one of the two most brilliant periods in Chinese

literature, was founded in 960. Korea was then forced, in order to protect herself from the encroachments of

China, to accept the hated supremacy of the Kitans; but being promptly called upon to surrender large tracts

of territory, she suddenly entered into an alliance with the Nuchens, who were also ready to revolt, and who

sent an army to the assistance of their new friends. The Nuchen and Korean armies, acting in concert,

inflicted a severe defeat on the Kitans, and from this victory may be dated the beginning of the Nu chen

power. China had indeed already sent an embassy to the Nuchens, suggesting an alliance and also a

combination with Korea, by which means the aggression of the Kitans might easily be checked; but during

the eleventh century Korea became alienated from the Nuchens, and even went so far as to advise China to

join with the Kitans in crushing the Nuchens. China, no doubt, would have been glad to get rid of both these

troublesome neighbours, especially the Kitans, who were gradually filching territory from the empire, and

For a long period China weakly allowed herself to be blackmailed by the Kitans, who, in return for a large

money subsidy and valuable supplies of silk, forwarded a quite insignificant amount of local produce, which

Early in the twelfth century, the Kitan monarch paid a visit to the Sungari River, for the purpose of fishing,

and was duly received by the chiefs of the Nuchen tribes in that district. On this occasion the Kitan

Emperor, who had taken perhaps more liquor than was good for him, ordered the younger men of the

company to get up and dance before him. This command was ignored by the son of one of the chiefs, named

Akuteng (sometimes, but wrongly, written Akuta), and it was suggested to the Emperor that he should devise

means for putting out of the way so uncompromising a spirit. No notice, however, was taken of the affair at

the moment; and that night Akuteng, with a band of followers, disappeared from the scene. Making his way

eastward, across the Sungari, he started a movement which may be said to have culminated five hundred

years later in the conquest of China by the Manchus. In 1114 he began to act on the offensive, and succeeded

in inflicting a severe defeat on the Kitans. By 1115 he had so far advanced towards the foundation of an

independent kingdom that he actually assumed the title of Emperor. Thus was presented the rare spectacle of

three contemporary rulers, each of whom claimed a title which, according to the Chinese theory, could only

belong to one. The style he chose for his dynasty was Chin (also read Kin), which means "gold," and which

some say was intended to mark a superiority over Liao (= iron), that of the Kitans, on the ground that gold is

not, like iron, a prey to rust. Others, however, trace the origin of the term to the fact that gold was found in

A small point which has given rise to some confusion, may fitly be mentioned here. The tribe of Tartars

hitherto spoken of as Nuchens, and henceforth known in history as the "Golden Dynasty," in 1035 changed

the word chen for chih, and were called Nuchih Tartars. They did this because at that date the word

chen was part of the personal name of the reigning Kitan Emperor, and therefore taboo. The necessity for

such change would of course cease with their emancipation from Kitan rule, and the old name would be

The victories of Akuteng over the Kitans were most welcome to the Chinese Emperor, who saw his late

oppressors humbled to the dust by the victorious Nuchens; and in 1120 a treaty of alliance was signed by

the two powers against the common enemy. The upshot of this move was that the Kitans were severely

defeated in all directions, and their chief cities fell into the hands of the Nuchens, who finally succeeded, in

1122, in taking Peking by assault, the Kitan Emperor having already sought safety in flight. When, however,

the time came for an equitable settlement of territory between China and the victorious Nuchens, the

Chinese Emperor discovered that the Nuchens, inasmuch as they had done most of the fighting, were

determined to have the lion's share of the reward; in fact, the yoke imposed by the latter proved if anything

more burdensome than that of the dreaded Kitans. More territory was taken by the Nuchens, and even larger

levies of money were exacted, while the same old farce of worthless tribute was carried on as before.

In 1123, Akuteng died, and was canonised as the first Emperor of the Chin, or Golden Dynasty. He was

succeeded by a brother; and two years later, the last Emperor of the Kitans was captured and relegated to

The new Emperor of the Nuchens spent the rest of his life in one long struggle with China. In 1126, the

Sung capital, the modern K`aifeng Fu in Honan, was twice besieged: on the first occasion for thirty three

days, when a heavy ransom was exacted and some territory was ceded; on the second occasion for forty days,

when it fell, and was given up to pillage. In 1127, the feeble Chinese Emperor was seized and carried off, and

by 1129 the whole of China north of the Yangtsze was in the hands of the Nuchens. The younger brother

of the banished Emperor was proclaimed by the Chinese at Nanking, and managed to set up what is known as

the southern Sung dynasty; but the Nuchens gave him no rest, driving him first out of Nanking, and then out

of Hangchow, where he had once more established a capital. Ultimately, there was peace of a more or less

permanent character, chiefly due to the genius of a notable Chinese general of the day; and the Nuchens had

The next seventy years were freely marked by raids, first of one side and then of the other; but by the close of

the twelfth century the Mongols were pressing the Nuchens from the north, and the southern Sungs were

seizing the opportunity to attack their old enemies from the south. Finally, in 1234, the independence of the

Golden Dynasty of Nuchens was extinguished by Ogotai, third son of the great Genghis Khan, with the aid

of the southern Sungs, who were themselves in turn wiped out by Kublai Khan, the first Mongol Emperor to

The name of this wandering people, whose territory covers such a huge space on the map, has been variously

derived from (1) moengel, celestial, (2) mong, brave, and (3) munku, silver, the last mentioned being favoured

by some because of its relation to the iron and golden dynasties of the Kitans and Nuchens respectively.

Three centuries and a half must now pass away before entering upon the next act of the Manchu drama. The

Nuchens had been scotched, but not killed, by their Mongol conquerors, who, one hundred and thirtyfour

years later (1368), were themselves driven out of China, a pure native dynasty being reestablished under the

style of Ming, "Bright." During the ensuing two hundred years the Nuchens were scarcely heard of, the

House of Ming being busily occupied in other directions. Their warlike spirit, however, found scope and

nourishment in the expeditions organised against Japan and Tanlo, or Quelpart, as named by the Dutch, a

large island to the south of the Korean peninsula; while on the other hand the various tribes scattered over a

portion of the territory known to Europeans as Manchuria, availed themselves of long immunity from attack

by the Chinese to advance in civilization and prosperity. It may be noted here that "Manchuria" is unknown

to the Chinese or to the Manchus themselves as a geographical expression. The present extensive home of the

Manchus is usually spoken of as the Three Eastern Provinces, namely, (1) Shengking, or Liaotung, or

Among the numerous small independent communities above mentioned, which traced their ancestry to the

Nuchens of old, one of the smallest, the members of which inhabited a tract of territory due east of what is

now the city of Mukden, and were shortly to call themselves Manchus,the origin of the name is not

known,produced, in 1559, a young hero who altered the course of Chinese history to such an extent that

for nearly three hundred years his descendants sat on the throne of China, and ruled over what was for a great

portion of the time the largest empire on earth. Nurhachu, the real founder of the Manchu power, was born in

1559, from a virile stock, and was soon recognised to be an extraordinary child. We need not linger over his

dragon face, his phoenix eye, or even over his large, drooping ears, which have always been associated by the

Chinese with intellectual ability. He first came into prominence in 1583, when, at twentyfour years of age,

he took up arms, at the head of only one hundred and thirty men, in connection with the treacherous murder

by a rival chieftain of his father and grandfather, who had ruled over a petty principality of almost

infinitesimal extent; and he finally succeeded three years later in securing from the Chinese, who had been

arrayed against him, not only the surrender of the murderer, but also a sum of money and some robes of

honour. He was further successful in negotiating a treaty, under the terms of which Manchu furs could be

exchanged at certain points for such Chinese commodities as cotton, sugar, and grain.

In 1587, Nurhachu built a walled city, and established an administration in his tiny principality, the

evenhanded justice and purity of which soon attracted a large number of settlers, and before very long he

had succeeded in amalgamating five Manchu States under his personal rule. Extension of territory by

annexation after victories over neighbouring States followed as a matter of course, the result being that his

growing power came to be regarded with suspicion, and even dread. At length, a joint attempt on the part of

seven States, aided by two Mongol chieftains, was made to crush him; but, although numerical superiority

was overpoweringly against him, he managed to turn the enemy's attack into a rout, killed four thousand men,

and captured three thousand horses, besides other booty. Following up this victory by further annexations, he

now began to present a bold front to the Chinese, declaring himself independent, and refusing any longer to

pay tribute. In 1604, he built himself a new capital, Hingking, which he placed not very far east of the

modern Mukden, and there he received envoys from the Mongolian chieftains, sent to congratulate him on his

At this period the Manchus, whose spoken words were polysyllabic, and not monosyllabic like Chinese, had

no written language beyond certain rude attempts at alphabetic writing, formed from Chinese characters, and

found to be of little practical value. The necessity for something more convenient soon appealed to the

prescient and active mind of Nurhachu; accordingly, in 1599, he gave orders to two learned scholars to

prepare a suitable script for his rapidly increasing subjects. This they accomplished by basing the new script

upon Mongol, which had been invented in 1269, by Baschpa, or 'Phagspa, a Tibetan lama, acting under the

direction of Kublai Khan. Baschpa had based his script upon the written language of the Ouigours, who were

descendants of the Hsiungnu, or Huns. The Ouigours, known by that name since the year 629, were once the

ruling race in the regions which now form the khanates of Khiva and Bokhara, and had been the first of the

tribes of Central Asia to have a script of their own. This they formed from the Estrangelo Syraic of the

Nestorians, who appeared in China in the early part of the seventh century. The Manchu written language,

therefore, is lineally descended from Syraic; indeed, the family likeness of both Manchu and Mongol to the

parent stem is quite obvious, except that these two scripts, evidently influenced by Chinese, are written

vertically, though, unlike Chinese, they are read from left to right. Thirtythree years later various

improvements were introduced, leaving the Manchu script precisely as we find it at the present day.

In 1613, Nurhachu had gathered about him an army of some forty thousand men; and by a series of raids in

various directions, he further gradually succeeded in extending considerably the boundaries of his kingdom.

There now remained but one large and important State, towards the annexation of which he directed all his

efforts. After elaborate preparations which extended over more than two years, at the beginning of which

(1616) the term Manchu (etymology unknown) was definitively adopted as a national title, Nurhachu, in

1618, drew up a list of grievances against the Chinese, under which he declared that his people had been and

were still suffering, and solemnly committed it to the flames,a recognised method of communication with

the spirits of heaven and earth. This document consisted of seven clauses, and was addressed to the Emperor

of China; it was, in fact, a declaration of war. The Chinese, who were fast becoming aware that a dangerous

enemy had arisen, and that their own territory would be the next to be threatened, at length decided to oppose

any further progress on the part of Narhachu; and with this view dispatched an army of two hundred thousand

men against him. These troops, many of whom were physically unfit, were divided on arrival at Mukden into

four bodies, each with some separate aim, the achievement of which was to conduce to the speedy disruption

of Nurhachu's power. The issue of this move was certainly not expected on either side. In a word, Nurhachu

defeated his Chinese antagonists in detail, finally inflicting such a crushing blow that he was left completely

master of the situation, and before very long had realised the chief object of his ambition, namely, the reunion

under one rule of those states into which the Golden Dynasty had been broken up when it collapsed before

It is almost a conventionalism to attribute the fall of a Chinese dynasty to the malign influence of eunuchs.

The Imperial court was undoubtedly at this date entirely in the hands of eunuchs, who occupied all kinds of

lucrative posts for which they were quite unfitted, and even accompanied the army, nominally as officials, but

really as spies upon the generals in command. One of the most notorious of these was Wei Chunghsien,

whose career may be taken as typical of his class. He was a native of Sunning in Chihli, of profligate

character, who made himself a eunuch, and changed his name to Li Chinchung. Entering the palace, he

managed to get into the service of the mother of the future Emperor, posthumously canonised as Hsi Tsung,

and became the paramour of that weak monarch's wetnurse. The pair gained the Emperor's affection to an

extraordinary degree, and Wei, an ignorant brute, was the real ruler of China during the reign of Hsi Tsung.

He always took care to present memorials and other State papers when his Majesty was engrossed in

carpentry, and the Emperor would pretend to know all about the question, and tell Wei to deal with it. Aided

by unworthy censors, a body of officials who are supposed to be the "eyes and ears" of the monarch, and

privileged to censure him for misgovernment, he gradually drove all loyal men from office, and put his

opponents to cruel and ignominious deaths. He persuaded Hsi Tsung to enrol a division of eunuch troops, ten

thousand strong, armed with muskets; while, by causing the Empress to have a miscarriage, his paramour

cleared his way to the throne. Many officials espoused his cause, and the infatuated sovereign never wearied

of loading him with favours. In 1626, temples were erected to him in all the provinces except Fuhkien, his

image received Imperial honours, and he was styled Nine Thousand Years, i.e. only one thousand less than

the Emperor himself, the Chinese term in the latter case being wan sui, which has been adopted by the

Japanese as banzai. All successes were ascribed to his influence, a Grand Secretary declaring that his virtue

had actually caused the appearance of a "unicorn" in Shantung. In 1627, he was likened in a memorial to

Confucius, and it was decreed that he should be worshipped with the Sage in the Imperial Academy. His

hopes were overthrown by the death of Hsi Tsung, whose successor promptly dismissed him. He hanged

himself to escape trial, and his corpse was disembowelled. His paramour was executed, and in 1629, nearly

three hundred persons were convicted and sentenced to varying penalties for being connected with his

Jobbery and corruption were rife; and at the present juncture these agencies were successfully employed to

effect the recall of a really able general who had been sent from Peking to recover lost ground, and prevent

further encroachments by the Manchus. For a time, Nurhachu had been held in check by his skilful

dispositions of troops, Mukden was strongly fortified, and confidence generally was restored; but the fatal

policy of the new general rapidly alienated the Chinese inhabitants, and caused them to enter secretly into

communication with the Manchus. It was thus that in 1621 Nurhachu was in a position to advance upon

Mukden. Encamping within a mile or two of the city, he sent forward a reconnoitring party, which was

immediately attacked by the Chinese commandant at the head of a large force. The former fled, and the latter

pursued, only to fall into the inevitable ambush; and the Chinese troops, on retiring in their turn, found that

the bridge across the moat had been destroyed by traitors in their own camp, so that they were unable to

reenter the city. Thus Mukden fell, the prelude to a series of further victories, one of which was the rout of

an army sent to retake Mukden, and the chief of which was the capture of Liaoyang, now remembered in

connection with the RussoJapanese war. In many of these engagements the Manchus, whose chief weapon

was the long bow, which they used with deadly effect, found themselves opposed by artillery, the use of

which had been taught to the Chinese by Adam Schaal, the Jesuit father. The supply of powder, however, had

a way of running short, and at once the pronounced superiority of the Manchu archers prevailed.

Other cities now began to tender a voluntary submission, and many Chinese took to shaving the head and

wearing the queue, in acknowledgment of their allegiance to the Manchus. All, however, was not yet over,

for the growing Manchu power was still subjected to frequent attacks from Chinese arms in directions as far

as possible removed from points where Manchu troops were concentrated. Meanwhile Nurhachu gradually

extended his borders eastward, until in 1625, the year in which he placed his capital at Mukden, his frontiers

reached to the sea on the east and to the river Amur on the north, the important city of Ningyuan being

almost the only possession remaining to the Chinese beyond the Great Wall. The explanation of this is as

An incompetent general, as above mentioned, had been sent at the instance of the eunuchs to supersede an

officer who had been holding his own with considerable success, but who was not a persona grata at court.

The new general at once decided that no territory outside the Great Wall was to be held against the Manchus,

and gave orders for the immediate retirement of all troops and Chinese residents generally. To this command

the civil governor of Ningyuan, and the military commandant, sent an indignant protest, writing out an oath

with their blood that they would never surrender the city. Nurhachu seized the opportunity, and delivered a

violent attack, with which he seemed to be making some progress, until at length artillery was brought into

play. The havoc caused by the guns at close quarters was terrific, and the Manchus fled. This defeat was a

blow from which Nurhachu never recovered; his chagrin brought on a serious illness, and he died in 1626,

aged sixtyeight. Later on, when his descendants were sitting upon the throne of China, he was canonised as

T`ai Tsu, the Great Ancestor, the representatives of the four preceding generations of his family being

Nurhachu was succeeded by his fourth son, Abkhai, then thirtyfour years of age, and a tried warrior. His

reign began with a correspondence between himself and the governor who had been the successful defender

of Ningyuan, in which some attempt was made to conclude a treaty of peace. The Chinese on their side

demanded the return of all captured cities and territory; while the Manchus, who refused to consider any such

terms, suggested that China should pay them a huge subsidy in money, silk, etc., in return for which they

offered but a moderate supply of furs, and something over half a ton of ginseng (Panax repens), the famous

forked root said to resemble the human body, and much valued by the Chinese as a strengthening medicine.

This, of course, was a case of "giving too little and asking too much," and the negotiations came to nothing.

In 1629, Abkhai, who by this time was master of Korea, marched upon Peking, at the head of a large army,

and encamped within a few miles from its walls; but he was unable to capture the city, and had finally to

retire. The next few years were devoted by the Manchus, who now began to possess artillery of their own

casting, to the conquest of Mongolia, in the hope of thus securing an easy passage for their armies into China.

An offer of peace was now made by the Chinese Emperor, for reasons shortly to be stated; but the Manchu

terms were too severe, and hostilities were resumed, the Manchus chiefly occupying themselves in

devastating the country round Peking, their numbers being constantly swelled by a stream of deserters from

the Chinese ranks. In 1643, Abkhai died; he was succeeded by his ninth son, a boy of five, and was later on

canonised as T`ai Tsung, the Great Forefather. By 1635, he had already begun to style himself Emperor of

China, and had established a system of public examinations. The name of the dynasty had been "Manchu"

ever since 1616; twenty years later he translated this term into the Chinese word Ch`ing (or Ts`ing), which

means "pure"; and as the Great Pure Dynasty it will be remembered in history. Other important enactments of

his reign were prohibitions against the use of tobacco, which had been recently introduced into Manchuria

from Japan, through Korea; against the Chinese fashion of dress and of wearing the hair; and against the

practice of binding the feet of girls. All except the first of these were directed towards the complete

denationalisation of the Chinese who had accepted his rule, and whose numbers were increasing daily.

So far, the Manchus seem to have been little influenced by religious beliefs or scruples, except of a very

primitive kind; but when they came into closer contact with the Chinese, Buddhism began to spread its

In 1635 the Manchus had effected the conquest of Mongolia, aided to a great extent by frequent defections of

large bodies of Mongols who had been exasperated by their own illtreatment at the hands of the Chinese.

Among some ancient Mongolian archives there has recently been discovered a document, dated 1636, under

which the Mongol chiefs recognised the suzerainty of the Manchu Emperor. It was, however, stipulated that,

in the event of the fall of the dynasty, all the laws existing previously to this date should again come into

A brief review of Chinese history during the later years of Manchu progress, as described above, discloses a

state of things such as will always be found to prevail towards the close of an outworn dynasty. Almost from

the day when, in 1628, the last Emperor of the Ming Dynasty ascended the throne, national grievances began

to pass from a simmering and more or less latent condition to a state of open and acute hostility. The

exactions and tyranny of the eunuchs had led to increased taxation and general discontent; and the horrors of

famine now enhanced the gravity of the situation. Local outbreaks were common, and were with difficulty

suppressed. The most capable among Chinese generals of the period, Wu Sankuei, shortly to play a leading

part in the dynastic drama, was far away, employed in resisting the invasions of the Manchus, when a very

serious rebellion, which had been in preparation for some years, at length burst violently forth.

Li Tz{u}ch`eng was a native of Shensi, who, before he was twenty years old, had succeeded his father as

village beadle. The famine of 1627 had brought him into trouble over the landtax, and in 1629 he turned

brigand, but without conspicuous success during the following ten years. In 1640, he headed a small gang of

desperadoes, and overrunning parts of Hupeh and Honan, was soon in command of a large army. He was

joined by a female bandit, formerly a courtesan, who advised him to avoid slaughter and to try to win the

hearts of the people. In 1642, after several attempts to capture the city of K`ai feng, during one of which his

left eye was destroyed by an arrow, he at length succeeded, chiefly in consequence of a sudden rise of the

Yellow River, the waters of which rushed through a canal originally intended to fill the city moat and flood

out the rebels. The rise of the river, however, was so rapid and so unusually high that the city itself was

flooded, and an enormous number of the inhabitants perished, the rest seeking safety in flight to higher

By 1744, Li Tz{u}ch`eng had reduced the whole of the province of Shensi; whereupon he began to advance

on Peking, proclaiming himself first Emperor of the Great Shun Dynasty, the term shun implying harmony

between rulers and ruled. Terror reigned at the Chinese court, especially as meteorological and other portents

appeared in unusually large numbers, as though to justify the panic. The Emperor was in despair; the

exchequer was empty, and there was no money to pay the troops, who, in any case, were too few to man the

city walls. Each of the Ministers of State was anxious only to secure his own safety. Li Tz{u}ch`eng's

advance was scarcely opposed, the eunuch commanders of cities and passes hastening to surrender them and

save their own lives. For, in case of immediate surrender, no injury was done by Li to life or property, and

even after a short resistance only a few lives were exacted as penalty; but a more obstinate defence was

The Emperor was now advised to send for Wu Sankuei; but that step meant the end of further resistance to

the invading Manchus on the east, and for some time he would not consent. Meanwhile, he issued an Imperial

proclamation, such as is usual on these occasions, announcing that all the troubles which had come upon the

empire were due to his own incompetence and unworthiness, as confirmed by the droughts, famines, and

other signs of divine wrath, of recent occurrence; that the administration was to be reformed, and only

virtuous and capable officials would be employed. The near approach, however, of Li's army at length caused

the Emperor to realise that it was Wu Sankuei or nothing, and belated messengers were dispatched to

summon him to the defence of the capital. Long before he could possibly arrive, a gate of the southern city of

Peking was treacherously opened by the eunuch in charge of it, and the next thing the Emperor saw was his

capital in flames. He then summoned the Empress and the court ladies, and bade them each provide for her

own safety. He sent his three sons into hiding, and actually killed with his own hand several of his favourites,

rather than let them fall into the hands of the OneEyed Rebel. He attempted the same by his daughter, a

young girl, covering his face with the sleeve of his robe; but in his agony of mind he failed in his blow, and

only succeeded in cutting off an arm, leaving the unfortunate princess to be dispatched later on by the

Empress. After this, in concert with a trusted eunuch and a few attendants, he disguised himself, and made an

attempt to escape from the city by night; but they found the gates closed, and the guard refused to allow them

to pass. Returning to the palace in the early morning, the Emperor caused the great bell to be rung as usual to

summon the officers of government to audience; but no one came. He then retired, with his faithful eunuch,

to a kiosque, on what is known as the Coal Hill, in the palace grounds, and there wrote a last decree on the

lapel of his coat:"I, poor in virtue and of contemptible personality, have incurred the wrath of God on high.

My Ministers have deceived me. I am ashamed to meet my ancestors; and therefore I myself take off my

crown, and with my hair covering my face, await dismemberment at the hands of the rebels. Do not hurt a

single one of my people!" Emperor and eunuch then committed suicide by hanging themselves, and the Great

Li Tz{u}ch`eng made a grand official entry into Peking, upon which many of the palace ladies committed

suicide. The bodies of the two Empresses were discovered, and the late Emperor's sons were captured and

kindly treated; but of the Emperor himself there was for some time no trace. At length his body was found,

and was encoffined, together with those of the Empresses, by order of Li Tz{u}ch`eng, byandby to

Li Tz{u}ch`eng further possessed himself of the persons of Wu San kuei's father and affianced bride, the

latter of whom, a very beautiful girl, he intended to keep for himself. He next sent off a letter to Wu

Sankuei, offering an alliance against the Manchus, which was fortified by another letter from Wu

Sankuei's father, urging his son to fall in which Li's wishes, especially as his own life would be dependent

upon the success of the missions. Wu Sankuei had already started on his way to relieve the capital when he

heard of the events above recorded; and it seems probable that he would have yielded to circumstances and

persuasion but for the fact that Li had seized the girl he intended to marry. This decided him; he retraced his

It was not very long before Li Tz{u}ch`eng's army was in full pursuit, with the twofold object of destroying

Wu Sankuei and recovering Chinese territory already occupied by the Manchus. In the battle which ensued,

all these hopes were dashed; Li sustained a crushing defeat, and fled to Peking. There he put to death the

Ming princes who were in his hands, and completely exterminated Wu San kuei's family, with the exception

of the girl above mentioned, whom he carried off after having looted and burnt the palace and other public

buildings. Now was the opportunity of the Manchus; and with the connivance and loyal aid of Wu Sankuei,

Li Tz{u}ch`eng, who had officially mounted the Dragon Throne as Emperor of China nine days after his

capture of Peking, was now hotly pursued by Wu Sankuei, who had the good fortune to recover from the

rebels the girl, who had been taken with them in their flight, and whom he then married. Li Tz{u}ch`eng

retreated westwards; and after two vain attempts to check his pursuers, his army began to melt away. Driven

south, he held Wuch`ang for a time; but ultimately he fled down the Yangtsze, and was slain by local

Li was a born soldier. Even hostile writers admit that his army was wonderfully well disciplined, and that he

put a stop to the hideous atrocities which had made his name a terror in the empire, just so soon as he found

that he could accomplish his ends by milder means. His men were obliged to march light, very little baggage

being allowed; his horses were most carefully looked after. He himself was by nature calm and cold, and his

The back of the rebellion was now broken; but an alien race, called in to drive out the rebels, found

themselves in command of the situation. Wu Sankuei had therefore no alternative but to acknowledge the

Manchus definitely as the new rulers of China, and to obtain the best possible terms for his country. Ever

since the defeat of Li by the combined forces of Chinese and Manchus, it had been perfectly well understood

that the latter were to be supported in their bid for Imperial power, and the conditions under which the throne

was to be transferred were as follows:(1) No Chinese women were to be taken into the Imperial seraglio;

(2) the Senior Classic at the great triennial examination, on the results of which successful candidates were

drafted into the public service, was never to be a Manchu; (3) Chinese men were to adopt the Manchu dress,

shaving the front part of the head and plaiting the back hair into a queue, but they were to be allowed burial in

the costume of the Mings; (4) Chinese women were not to adopt the Manchu dress, nor to cease to compress

Wu Sankuei was loaded with honours, among others with a tripleeyed peacock's feather, a decoration

introduced, together with the "button" at the top of the hat, by the Manchus, and classed as single, double,

and tripleeyed, according to merit. A few years later, his son married the sister of the Emperor; and a few

years later still, he was appointed one of three feudatory princes, his rule extending over the huge provinces

The new Emperor, the ninth son of Abkhai, best known by his yeartitle as Shun Chih (favourable sway),

was a child of seven when he was placed upon the throne in 1644, under the regency of an uncle; and by the

time he was twelve years old, the uncle had died, leaving him to his own resources. Before his early death,

the regent had already done some excellent work on behalf of his nephew. He had curtailed the privileges of

the eunuchs to such an extent that for a hundred and fifty years to come,so long, in fact, as the empire was

in the hands of wise rulers,their malign influence was inappreciable in court circles and politics generally.

He left Chinese officials in control of the civil administration, keeping closely to the lines of the system

which had obtained under the previous dynasty; he did not hastily press for the universal adoption of Manchu

costume; and he even caused sacrificial ceremonies to be performed at the mausolea of the Ming Emperors.

One new rule of considerable importance seems to have been introduced by the Manchus, namely, that no

official should be allowed to hold office within the boundaries of his own province. Ostensibly a check on

corrupt practices, it is probable that this rule had a more farreaching political purport. The members of the

Hanlin College presented an address praying him (1) to prepare a list of all worthy men; (2) to search out

such of these as might be in hiding; (3) to exterminate all rebels; (4) to proclaim an amnesty; (5) to establish

The advice conveyed in the second clause of the above was speedily acted upon, and a number of capable

men were secured for the government service. At the same time, with a view to the full technical

establishment of the dynasty, the Imperial ancestors were canonised, and an ancestral shrine was duly

constituted. The general outlook would now appear to have been satisfactory from the point of view of

Manchu interests; but from lack of means of communication, China had in those days almost the connotation

of space infinite, and events of the highest importance, involving nothing less than the change of a dynasty,

could be carried through in one portion of the empire before their imminence had been more than whispered

in another. No sooner was Peking taken by the OneEyed Rebel, than a number of officials fled southwards

and took refuge in Nanking, where they set up a grandson of the last Emperor but one of the Ming Dynasty,

who was now the rightful heir to the throne. The rapidly growing power of the Manchus had been lost sight

of, if indeed it had ever been thoroughly realised, and it seemed quite natural that the representative of the

This monarch, however, was quite unequal to the fate which had befallen him; and, before long, both he

himself and his capital were in the hands of the Manchus. Other claimants to the throne appeared in various

places; notably, one at Hangchow and another at Foochow, each of whom looked upon the other as a usurper.

The former was soon disposed of, but the latter gradually established his rule over a wide area, and for a long

time kept the Manchus at bay, so hateful was the thought of an alien domination to the people of the province

in question. Towards the close of 1646, he too had been captured, and the work of pacification went on, the

penalty of death now being exacted in the case of officials who refused to shave the head and wear the queue.

Two more Emperors, both of Imperial Ming blood, were next proclaimed in Canton, one of whom strangled

himself on the advance of the Manchus, while the other disappeared. A large number of loyal officials, rather

than shave the front part of the head and wear the Manchu queue, voluntarily shaved the whole head, and

One more early attempt to reestablish the Mings must be noticed. The fourth son of a grandson of the Ming

Emperor Wan Li (died 1620) was in 1646 proclaimed Emperor at Nanyang in Honan. For a number of years

of bloody warfare he managed to hold out; but gradually he was forced to retire, first to Fuhkien and

Kuangtung, and then into Kueichou and Yunnan, from which he was finally expelled by Wu Sankuei. He

next fled to Burma, where in 1661 he was handed over to Wu Sankuei, who had followed in pursuit; and he

finally strangled himself in the capital of Yunnan. He is said to have been a Christian, as also many of his

adherents, in consequence of which, the Jesuit father, A. Koffler, bestowed upon him the title of the

Constantine of China. In view of the general character for ferocity with which the Manchus are usually

credited, it is pleasant to be able to record that when the official history of the Ming Dynasty came to be

written, a Chinese scholar of the day, sitting on the historical commission, pleaded that three of the princes

above mentioned, who were veritable scions of the Imperial stock, should be entered as "brave men" and not

as "rebels," and that the Emperor, to whose reign we are now coming, graciously granted his request.

In the year 1661 Shun Chih, the first actual Emperor of the Ch`ing dynasty, "became a guest on high." He

does not rank as one of China's great monarchs, but his kindly character as a man, and his magnanimity as a

ruler, were extolled by his contemporaries. He treated the Catholic missionaries with favour. The Dutch and

Russian embassies to his court in 1656 found there envoys from the Great Mogul, from the Western Tartars,

and from the Dalai Lama. China, in the days when her civilization towered above that of most countries on

the globe, and when her strength commanded the respect of all nations, great and small, was quite

accustomed to receive embassies from foreign parts; the first recorded instance being that of "Antun" =

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, which reached China in A.D. 166. But because the tribute offered in this case

contained no jewels, consisting merely of ivory, rhinoceroshorn, tortoiseshell, etc., which had been picked

up in Annam, some have regarded it merely as a trading enterprise, and not really an embassy from the

Roman Emperor; Chinese writers, on the other hand, suggest that the envoys sold the valuable jewels and

By the end of Shun Chih's reign, the Manchus, once a petty tribe of hardy bowmen, far beyond the outskirts

of the empire, were in undoubted possession of all China, of Manchuria, of Korea, of most of Mongolia, and

even of the island of Formosa. How this island, discovered by the Chinese only in 1430, became Manchu

The leader of a large fleet of junks, traders or pirates as occasion served, known to the Portuguese of the day

as Iquon, was compelled to place his services at the command of the last sovereign of the Ming dynasty, in

whose cause he fought against the Manchu invaders along the coasts of Fuhkien and Kuangtung. In 1628 he

tendered his submission to the Manchus, and for a time was well treated, and cleared the seas of other pirates.

Gradually, however, he became too powerful, and it was deemed necessary to restrain him by force. He was

finally induced to surrender to the Manchu general in Fuhkien; and having been made a prisoner, was sent to

Peking, with two of his sons by a Japanese wife, together with other of his adherents, all of whom were

executed upon arrival. Another son, familiar to foreigners under the name of Koxinga, a Portuguese

corruption of his title, had remained behind with the fleet when his father surrendered, and he, determined to

avenge his father's treacherous death, declared an implacable war against the Manchus. His piratical attacks

on the coast of China had long been a terror to the inhabitants; to such an extent, indeed, that the populations

of no fewer than eighty townships had been forced to remove inland. Then Formosa, upon which the Dutch

had begun to form colonies in 1634, and where substantial portions of their forts are still to be seen, attracted

his piratical eye. He attacked the Dutch, and succeeded in driving them out with great slaughter, thus

possessing himself of the island; but gradually his followers began to drop off, in submission to the new

dynasty, and at length he himself was reported to Peking as dead. In 1874, partly on the ground that he was

really a supporter of the Ming dynasty and not a rebel, and partly on the ground that "he had founded in the

midst of the waters a dominion which he had transmitted to his descendants, and which was by them

surrendered to the Imperial sway,"a memorial was presented to the throne, asking that his spirit might be

canonized as the guardian angel of Formosa, and that a shrine might be built in his honour. The request was

Consolidation of the empire thus won by the sword was carried out as follows. In addition to the large

Manchu garrison at Peking, smaller garrisons were established at nine of the provincial capitals, and at ten

other important points in the provinces. The Manchu commandant of each of the nine garrisons above

mentioned, familiar to foreigners as the Tartar General, was so placed in order to act as a check upon the civil

Governor or Viceroy, of whom he, strictly speaking, took precedence, though in practice their ranks have

always been regarded as equal. With the empire at peace, the post of Tartar General has always been a

sinecure, and altogether out of comparison with that of the Viceroy and his responsibilities; but in the case of

a Viceroy suspected of disloyalty and collusion with rebels, the swift opportunity of the Tartar General was

the great safeguard of the dynasty, further strengthened as he was by the regulation which gave to him the

custody of the keys to the city gates. Those garrisons, the soldiers of which were accompanied by their wives

and families, were from the first intended to be permanent institutions; and there until quite recently were to

be found the descendants of the original drafts, not allowed to intermarry with their Chinese neighbours, but

otherwise influenced to such an extent that their Manchu characteristics had almost entirely disappeared. In

one direction the Manchus made a curious concession which, though entirely sentimental, was nevertheless

well calculated to appeal to a proud though unconquered people. A rule was established under which every

Manchu high official, when memorializing the throne, was to speak of himself to the Emperor as "your

Majesty's slave," whereas the term accepted from every Chinese high official was simply "your Majesty's

servant." During the early years of Manchu rule, proficiency in archery was as much insisted on as in the

days of Edward III with us; and even down to a few years ago Manchu Bannermen, as they came to be called,

might be seen everywhere diligently practising the artactually one of the six fine arts of Chinaby the aid

of which their ancestors had passed from the state of a petty tribal community to possession of the greatest

The term Bannerman, it may here be explained, is applied to all Manchus in reference to their organization

under one or other of eight banners of different colour and design; besides which, there are also eight banners

for Mongolians, and eight more for the descendants of those Chinese who sided with the Manchus against the

One of the first cares to the authorities of a newlyestablished dynasty in China is to provide the country with

a properly authorized Penal Code, and this has usually been accomplished by accepting as basis the code of

the preceding rulers, and making such changes or modifications as may be demanded by the spirit of the

times. It is generally understood that such was the method adopted under the first Manchu Emperor. The code

of the Mings was carefully examined, its severities were softened, and various additions and alterations were

made; the result being a legal instrument which has received almost unqualified admiration from eminent

Western lawyers. It has, however, been stated that the true source of the Manchu code must be looked for in

the code of the T`ang dynasty (A.D. 618905); possibly both codes were used. Within the compass of

historical times, the country has never been without one, the first code having been drawn up by a

distinguished statesman so far back as 525 B.C. In any case, at the beginning of the reign of Shun Chih a

code was issued, which contained only certain fundamental and unalterable laws for the empire, with an

Imperial preface, nominally from the hand of the Emperor himself. The next step was to supply any necessary

additions and modifications; and as time went on these were further amended or enlarged by Imperial

decrees, founded upon current events,a process which has been going on down to the present day. The

code therefore consists of two parts: (1) immutable laws more or less embodying great principles beyond the

reach of revisions, and (2) a body of caselaw which, since 1746, has been subject to revision every five

years. With the publication of the Penal Code, the legal responsibilities of the new Emperor began and ended.

There is not, and never has been, anything in China of the nature of civil law, beyond local custom and the

Towards the close of this reign, intercourse with China brought about an economic revolution in the West,

especially in England, the importance of which it is difficult to realize sufficiently at this distant date. A new

drink was put on the breakfasttable, destined to displace completely the quart of ale with which even Lady

Jane Grey is said to have washed down her morning bacon. It is mentioned by Pepys, under the year 1660, as

"tee (a China drink)," which he says he had never tasted before. Two centuries later, the export of tea from

China had reached huge proportions, no less an amount than one hundred million lb. having been exported in

The Emperor Shun Chih was succeeded by his third son, known by his yeartitle as K`ang Hsi (lasting

prosperity), who was only eight years old at the time of his accession. Twelve years later the new monarch

took up the reins of government, and soon began to make his influence felt. Fairly tall and well proportioned,

he loved all manly exercises, and devoted three months annually to hunting. Large bright eyes lighted up his

face, which was pitted with smallpox. Contemporary observers vie with one another in praising his wit,

understanding, and liberality of mind. He was not twenty when the three feudatory princes broke into open

rebellion. Of these, Wu Sankuei, the virtual founder of the dynasty, who had been appointed in 1659, was

the chief; and it was at his instigation that his colleagues who ruled in Kuangtung and Fuhkien determined to

throw off their allegiance and set up independent sovereignties. Within a few months, K`ang Hsi found vast

portions of the empire slipping from his grasp; but though at one moment only the provinces of Chihli,

Honan, and Shantung were left to him in peaceable possession, he never lost heart. The resources of Wu

Sankuei were ultimately found to be insufficient for the struggle, the issue of which was determined partly

by his death in 1678, and partly by the powerful artillery manufactured for the Imperial forces by the Jesuit

missionaries, who were then in high favour at court. The capital city of Yunnan was taken by assault in 1681,

upon which Wu Sankuei's son committed suicide, and the rebellion collapsed. From that date the Manchus

decided that there should be no more "princes" among their Chinese subjects, and the rule has been observed

Under the Emperor K`ang Hsi a rearrangement of the empire was planned and carried out; that is to say,

whereas during the Mongol dynasty there had only been thirteen provinces, increased to fifteen by the Mings,

there was now a further increase of three, thus constituting what is known as the Eighteen Provinces, or

China Proper. To effect this, the old province of Kiangsan was divided into the modern Anhui and Kiangsu;

Kansuh was carved out of Shensi; and Hukuang was separated into Hupeh and Hunan. Formosa, which was

finally reconquered in 1683, was made part of the province of Fuhkien, and so remained for some two

hundred years, when it was erected into an independent province. Thus, for a time China Proper consisted of

nineteen provinces, until the more familiar "eighteen" was recently restored by the transfer of Formosa to

Japan. In addition to the above, the eastern territory, originally inhabited by the Manchus, was divided into

the three provinces already mentioned, all of which were at first organized upon a purely military basis; but

of late years the administration of the southernmost province, in which stands Mukden, the Manchu capital,

In 1677 the East India Company established an agency at Amoy, which, though withdrawn in 1681, was

reestablished in 1685. The first treaty with Russia was negotiated in 1679, but less than ten years later a

further treaty was found necessary, under which it was agreed that the river Amur was to be the

boundaryline between the two dominions, the Russians giving up possession of both banks. Thus

Yak`osa, or Albazin, was ceded by Russia to China, and some of the inhabitants, who appear to have been

either pure Russians or halfcastes, were sent as prisoners to Peking, where religious instruction was

provided for them according to the rules of the orthodox church. All the descendants of these Albazins

probably perished in the destruction of the Russian college during the siege of the Legations in 1900. Punitive

expeditions against Galdan and Arabtan carried the frontiers of the empire to the borders of Khokand and

Galdan was a khan of the Kalmucks, who succeeded in establishing his rule through nearly the whole of

Turkestan, after attaining his position by the murder of a brother. He attacked the Khalkas, and thus incurred

the resentment of K`ang Hsi, whose subjects they were; and in order to strengthen his power, he applied to

the Dalai Lama for ordination, but was refused. He then feigned conversion to Mahometanism, though

without attracting Mahometan sympathies. In 1689 the Emperor in person led an army against him, crossing

the deadly desert of Gobi for this purpose. Finally, after a further expedition and a decisive defeat in 1693,

Galdan became a fugitive, and died three years afterwards. He was succeeded as khan by his nephew,

Arabtan, who soon took up the offensive against China. He invaded Tibet, and pillaged the monasteries as far

as Lhasa; but was ultimately driven back by a Manchu army to Sungaria, where he was murdered in 1727.

The question of the calendar early attracted attention under the reign of K`ang Hsi. After the capture of

Peking in 1644, the Manchus had employed the Jesuit Father, Schaal, upon the Astronomical Board, an

appointment which, owing to the jealousies aroused, very nearly cost him his life. What he taught was hardly

superior to the astronomy then in vogue, which had been inherited from the Mongols, being nothing more

than the old Ptolemaic system, already discarded in Europe. In 1669, a Flemish Jesuit Father from Courtrai,

named Verbiest, was placed upon the Board, and was entrusted with the correction of the calendar according

Christianity was officially recognized in 1692, and an Imperial edict was issued ordering its toleration

throughout the empire. The discovery of the Nestorian tablet in 1625 had given a considerable impulse, in

spite of its heretical associations, to Christian propagandism; and it was estimated that in 1627 there were no

fewer than thirteen thousand converts, many of whom were highly placed officials, and even members of the

Imperial family. An important question, however, now came to a head, and completely put an end to the hope

that China under the Manchus might embrace the Roman Catholic faith. The question was this: May converts

to Christianity continue the worship of ancestors? Ricci, the famous Jesuit, who died in 1610, and who is the

only foreigner mentioned by name in the dynastic histories of China, was inclined to regard worship of

ancestors more as a civil than a religious rite. He probably foresaw, as indeed time has shown, that ancestral

worship would prove to be an insuperable obstacle to many inquirers, if they were called upon to discard it

once and for all; at the same time, he must have known that an invocation to spirits, coupled with the hope of

obtaining some benefit therefrom, is worship pure and simple, and cannot be explained away as an

Against the Jesuits in this matter were arrayed the Dominicans and Franciscans; and the two parties fought

the question before several Popes, sometimes one side carrying its point, and sometimes the other. At length,

in 1698, a fresh petition was forwarded by the Jesuit order in China, asking the Pope to sanction the practice

of this rite by native Christians, and also praying that the Chinese language might be used in the celebration

of mass. K`ang Hsi supported the Jesuits in the view that ancestral worship was a harmless ceremony; but

after much wrangling, and the dispatch of a Legate to the Manchu court, the Pope decided against the Jesuits

and their Imperial ally. This was too much for the pride of K`ang Hsi, and he forthwith declared that in future

he would only allow facilities for preaching to those priests who shared his view. In 1716, an edict was

issued, banishing all missionaries unless excepted as above. The Emperor had indeed been annoyed by

another ecclesiastical squabble, on a minor scale of importance, which had been raging almost

simultaneously round the choice of an appropriate Chinese term for God. The term approved, if not

suggested, by K`ang Hsi, and indisputably the right one, as shown by recent research, was set aside by the

Pope in 1704 in favour of one which was supposed for a long time to have been coined for the purpose, but

which had really been applied for many centuries previously to one of the eight spirits of ancient mythology.

In addition to his military campaigns, K`ang Hsi carried out several journeys of considerable length, and

managed to see something of the empire beyond the walls of Peking. He climbed the famous mountain,

T`aishan, in Shantung, the summit of which had been reached in 219 B.C. by the famous First Emperor,

burner of the books and part builder of the Great Wall, and where a century later another Emperor had

instituted the mysterious worship of Heaven and Earth. The ascent of T`aishan had been previously

accomplished by only six Emperors in all, the last of whom went up in the year 1008; since K`ang Hsi no

further Imperial attempts have been made, so that his will close the list in connexion with the Manchu

dynasty. It was on this occasion too that he visited the tomb of Confucius, also in Shantung.

The vagaries of the Yellow River, named "China's Sorrow" by a later Emperor, were always a source of great

anxiety to K`ang Hsi; so much so that he paid a personal visit to the scene, and went carefully into the various

plans for keeping the waters to a given course. Besides causing frequently recurring floods, with immense

loss of life and property, this river has a way of changing unexpectedly its bed; so lately as 1856, it turned off

at right angles near the city of K`ai feng, in Honan, and instead of emptying itself into the Yellow Sea about

K`ang Hsi several times visited Hangchow, returning to Tientsin by the Grand Canal, a distance of six

hundred and ninety miles. This canal, it will be remembered, was designed and executed under Kublai Khan

in the thirteenth century, and helped to form an almost unbroken line of water communication between

Peking and Canton. At Hangchow, during one visit, he held an examination of all the (socalled) B.A.'s and

M.A.'s, especially to test their poetical skill; and he also did the same at Soochow and Nanking, taking the

opportunity, while at Nanking, to visit the mausoleum of the founder of the Ming dynasty, who lies buried

near by, and whose descendants had been displaced by the Manchus. Happily for K`ang Hsi's complacency,

and he was unable to foresee another visit paid to that mausoleum two hundred and seven years later, under

The census has always been an important institution in China. Without going back so far as the legendary

golden age, the statistics of which have been invented by enthusiasts, we may accept unhesitatingly such

records as we find subsequent to the Christian era, on the understanding that these returns are merely

approximate. They could hardly be otherwise, inasmuch as the Chinese count families and not heads, roughly

allowing five souls to each household. This plan yields a total of rather over fifty millions for the year A.D.

156, and one hundred and five millions for the fortieth year of the reign of K`ang Hsi, 1701.

No record of this Emperor, however brief, could fail to notice the literary side of his character, and his

extraordinary achievements in this direction. It is almost paradoxical, though absolutely true, that two

Manchu Emperors, sprung from a race which but a few decades before had little thought for anything beyond

war and the chase, and which had not even a written language of its own, should have conferred more

benefits upon the student of literature than all the rest of China's Emperors put together. The literature in

question is, of course, Chinese literature. Manchu was the court language, spoken as well as written, for many

years after 1644, and down to quite recent times all official documents were in duplicate, one copy in Chinese

and one in Manchu; but a Manchu literature can hardly be said to exist, beyond translations of all the most

important Chinese works. The Manchu dynasty is an admirable illustration of the old story: conquerors taken

At this moment, the term "K`ang Tsi" is daily on the lips of every student of the Chinese language, native or

foreign, throughout the empire. This is due to the fact that the Emperor caused to be produced under his own

personal superintendence, on a more extensive scale and a more systematic plan than any previous work of

the kind, a lexicon of the Chinese language, containing over forty thousand characters, with numerous

illustrative phrases chronologically arranged, the spelling of each character according to the method

introduced by Buddhist teachers and first used in the third century, the tones, various readings, etc., etc.,

It would be tedious even to enumerate all the various literary undertakings conceived and carried out under

the direction of K`ang Hsi; but there are two works in particular which cannot be passed over. One of these is

the huge illustrated encyclopaedia in which everything which has ever been said upon each of a vast array of

subjects is brought into a systematized book of reference, running to many hundred volumes, and being

almost a complete library in itself. It was printed, after the death of K`ang Hsi, from movable copper types.

The other is, if anything, a still more extraordinary though not such a voluminous work. It is a concordance to

all literature; not of words, but of phrases. A student meeting with an unfamiliar combination of characters

can turn to its pages and find every passage given, in sufficient fullness, where the phrase in question has

The last years of K`ang Hsi were beclouded by family troubles. For some kind of intrigue, in which magic

played a prominent part, he had been compelled to degrade the Heir Apparent, and to appoint another son to

the vacant post; but a year or two later, this son was found to be mentally deranged, and was placed under

restraint. So things went on for several more years, the Emperor apparently unable to make up his mind as to

the choice of a successor; and it was not until the last day of his life that he finally decided in favour of his

fourth son. Dying in 1723, his reign had already extended beyond the Chinese cycle of sixty years, a feat

which no Emperor of China, in historical times, had ever before achieved, but which was again to be

The fourth son of K`ang Hsi came to the throne under the yeartitle of Yung Cheng (harmonious rectitude).

He was confronted with serious difficulties from the very first. Dissatisfaction prevailed among his numerous

brothers, at least one of whom may have felt that he had a better claim to rule than his junior in the family.

This feeling culminated in a plot to dethrone Yung Cheng, which was, however, discovered in time, and

resulted only in the degradation of the guilty brothers. The fact that among his opponents were native

Christians some say that the Jesuits were at the bottom of all the mischief naturally influenced the

Emperor against Christianity; no fewer than three hundred churches were destroyed, and all Catholic

missionaries were thenceforward obliged to live either at Peking or at Macao. In 1732 he thought of expelling

them altogether; but finding that they were enthusiastic teachers of filial piety, he left them alone, merely

These domestic troubles were followed by a serious rebellion in Kokonor, which was not fully suppressed

until the next reign; also by an outbreak among the aborigines of Kueichow and Yunnan, which lasted until

A Portuguese envoy, named Magalhaens (or Magaillans), visited Peking in 1727, bearing presents for the

Emperor; but nothing very much resulted from his mission. In 1730, in addition to terrible floods, there was a

severe earthquake, which lasted ten days, and in which one hundred thousand persons are said to have lost

their lives. In 1735, Yung Cheng's reign came to an end amid sounds of a further outbreak of the aborigines

in Kueichow. Before his death, he named his fourth son, then only fifteen, as his successor, under the regency

of two of the boy's uncles and two Grand Secretaries, one of the latter being a distinguished scholar, who was

entrusted with the preparation of the history of the Ming dynasty. Yung Cheng's name has always been

somewhat unfairly associated by foreigners with a bitter hostility to the Catholic priests of his day, simply

because he refused to allow them a free hand in matters outside their proper sphere. Altogether, it may be said

that he was a just and publicspirited ruler, anxious for his people's welfare. He hated war, and failed to carry

on his father's vigorous policy in Central Asia; nevertheless, by 1730, Chinese rule extended to the Laos

border, and the Shan States paid tribute. He was a man of letters, and completed some of his father's

Yung Cheng's successor was twentyfive years of age when he came to the throne with the yeartitle of

Ch`ien Lung (or Kien Long = enduring glory), and one of his earliest acts was to forbid the propagation of

Christian doctrine, a prohibition which developed between 1746 and 1785 into active persecution of its

adherents. The first ten years of this reign were spent chiefly in internal reorganization; the remainder, which

covered half a century, was almost a continuous succession of wars. The aborigines of Kueichow, known as

the Miao Tz{u}, offered a determined resistance to all attempts to bring them under the regular

administration; and although they were ultimately conquered, it was deemed advisable not to insist upon the

adoption of the queue, and also to leave them a considerable measure of self government. Acting under

Manchu guidance, chiefs and leading tribesmen were entrusted with important executive offices; they had to

keep the peace among their people, and to collect the revenue of local produce to be forwarded to Peking.

These posts were hereditary. On the death of the father, the eldest son proceeded to Peking and received his

appointment in person, together with his seal of office. Failing sons or their children, brothers had the right of

In 1741 the population was estimated by Pere Amiot, S.J., at over one hundred and fifty millions, as against

In 1753 there was trouble in Ili. After the death of Galdan II., son of Arabtan, an attempt was made by one,

Amursana, to usurp the principality. He was, however, driven out, and fled to Peking, where he was

favourably received by Ch`ien Lung, and an army was sent to reinstate him. With the subsequent settlement,

under which he was to have only one quarter of Ili, Amursana was profoundly dissatisfied, and took the

earliest opportunity of turning on his benefactors. He murdered the ManchuChinese garrison and all the

other Chinese he could find, and proclaimed himself khan of the Eleuths. His triumph was shortlived;

another army was sent from Peking, this time against him, and he fled into Russian territory, dying there soon

afterwards of smallpox. This campaign was lavishly illustrated by Chinese artists, who produced a series of

realistic pictures of the battles and skirmishes fought by Ch`ien Lung's victorious troops. How far these were

prepared under the guidance of the Jesuit Fathers does not seem to be known. About sixty years previously,

under the reign of K`ang Hsi, the Jesuits had carried out extensive surveys, and had drawn fairly accurate

maps of Chinese territory, which had been sent to Paris and there engraved on copper by order of Louis XIV.

In like manner, the pictures now in question were forwarded to Paris and engraved, between 1769 and 1774,

by skilled draughtsmen, as may be gathered from the lettering at the foot of each; for instanceGrave par J.

Kuldja and Kashgaria were next added to the empire, and Manchu supremacy was established in Tibet.

Burma and Nepal were forced to pay tribute, after a disastrous war (17661770) with the former country, in

which a Chinese army had been almost exterminated; rebellions in Ss{u}ch`uan (1770), Shantung (1777),

Early in the eighteenth century, the Turguts, a branch of the Kalmuck Tartars, unable to endure the

oppressive tyranny of their rulers, trekked into Russia, and settled on the banks of the Volga. Some seventy

years later, once more finding the burden of taxation too heavy, they again organized a trek upon a colossal

scale. Turning their faces eastward, they spent a whole year of fearful suffering and privation in reaching the

confines of Ili, a terribly diminished host. There they received a district, and were placed under the

jurisdiction of a khan. This journey has been dramatically described by De Quincey in an essay entitled

"Revolt of the Tartars, or Flight of the Kalmuck Khan and his people from the Russian territories to the

Frontiers of China." Of this contribution to literature it is only necessary to remark that the scenes described,

and especially the numbers mentioned, must be credited chiefly to the perfervid imagination of the essayist,

and also to certain not very trustworthy documents sent home by Pere Amiot. It is probable that about one

hundred and sixty thousand Turguts set out on that long march, of whom only some seventy thousand

In 1781, the Dungans (or Tungans) of Shensi broke into open rebellion, which was suppressed only after

huge losses to the Imperialists. These Dungans were Mahometan subjects of China, who in very early times

had colonized, under the name of Gaotchan, in Kansuh and Shensi, and subsequently spread westward into

Turkestan. Some say that they were a distinct race, who, in the fifth and sixth centuries, occupied the Tian

Shan range, with their capital at Harashar. The name, however, means, in the dialect of Chinese Tartary,

"converts," that is, to Mahometanism, to which they were converted in the days of Timour by an Arabian

Eight years later there was a revolution in CochinChina. The king fled to China, and Ch`ien Lung promptly

espoused his cause, sending an army to effect his restoration. This was no sooner accomplished than the chief

Minister rebelled, and, rapidly attracting large numbers to his standard, succeeded in cutting off the retreat of

the Chinese force. Ch`ien Lung then sent another army, whereupon the rebel Minister submitted, and

humbled himself so completely that the Emperor appointed him to be king instead of the other. After this, the

Annamese continued to forward tribute, but it was deemed advisable to cease from further interference with

The next trouble was initiated by the Gurkhas, who, in 1790, raided Tibet. On being defeated and pursued by

a Chinese army, they gave up all the booty taken, and entered into an agreement to pay tribute once every

The year 1793 was remarkable for the arrival of an English embassy under Lord Macartney, who was

received in audience by the Emperor at Jehol (= hot river), an Imperial summer residence lying about a

hundred miles north of Peking, beyond the Great Wall. It had been built in 1780 after the model of the palace

of the Panshen Erdeni at Tashilumbo, in Tibet, when that functionary, the spiritual ruler of Tibet, as opposed

to the Dalai Lama, who is the secular ruler, proceeded to Peking to be present on the seventieth anniversary

of Ch`ien Lung's birthday. Two years later, the aged Emperor, who had, like his grandfather, completed his

cycle of sixty years on the throne, abdicated in favour of his son, dying in retirement some four years after.

These two monarchs, K`ang Hsi and Ch`ien Lung, were among the ablest, not only of Manchu rulers, but of

any whose lot it has been to shape the destinies of China. Ch`ien Lung was an indefatigable administrator, a

little too ready perhaps to plunge into costly military expeditions, and somewhat narrow in the policy he

adopted towards the "outside barbarians" who came to trade at Canton and elsewhere, but otherwise a worthy

rival of his grandfather's fame as a sovereign and patron of letters. From the long list of works, mostly on a

very extensive scale, produced under his supervision, may be mentioned the new and revised editions of the

Thirteen Classics of Confucianism and of the TwentyFour Dynastic Histories. In 1772 a search was

instituted under Imperial orders for all literary works worthy of preservation, and high provincial officials

vied with one another in forwarding rare and important works to Peking. The result was the great descriptive

Catalogue of the Imperial Library, arranged under the four heads of Classics (Confucianism), History,

Philosophy, and General Literature, in which all the facts known about each work are set forth, coupled with

judicious critical remarks,an achievement which has hardly a parallel in any literature in the world.

Ch`ien Lung's son, who reigned as Chia Ch`ing (high felicitynot to be confounded with Chia Ching of the

Ming dynasty, 15221567), found himself in difficulties from the very start. The year of his accession was

marked by a rising of the White Lily Society, one of the dreaded secret associations with which China is, and

always has been, honeycombed. The exact origin of this particular society is not known. A White Lily

Society was formed in the second century A.D. by a certain Taoist patriarch, and eighteen members were

accustomed to assemble at a temple in modern Kiangsi for purposes of meditation. But this seems to have no

connexion with the later sect, of which we first hear in 1308, when its existence was prohibited, its shrines

destroyed, and its votaries forced to return to ordinary life. Members of the fraternity were then believed to

possess a knowledge of the black art; and later on, in 1622, the society was confounded by Chinese officials

in Shantung with Christianity. In the present instance, it is said that no fewer than thirty thousand adherents

were executed before the trouble was finally suppressed; from which statement it is easy to gather that under

whatever form the White Lily Society may have been originally initiated, its activities were now of a much

more serious character, and were, in fact, plainly directed against the power and authority of the Manchus.

Almost from this very date may be said to have begun that turn of the tide which was to reach its flood a

hundred years afterwards. The Manchus came into power, as conquerors by force of arms, at a time when the

mandate of the previous dynasty had been frittered away in corruption and misrule; and although to the

Chinese eye they were nothing more than "stinking Tartars," there were not wanting many glad enough to see

a change of rule at any price. Under the first Emperor, Shun Chih, there was barely time to find out what the

new dynasty was going to do; then came the long and glorious reign of K`ang Hsi, followed, after the thirteen

harmless years of Yung Cheng, by the equally long and equally glorious reign of Ch`ien Lung. The Chinese

people, who, strictly speaking, govern themselves in the most democratic of all republics, have not the

slightest objection to the Imperial tradition, which has indeed been their continuous heritage from remotest

antiquity, provided that public liberties are duly safeguarded, chiefly in the sense that there shall always be

equal opportunities for all. They are quick to discover the character of their rulers, and discovery in an

unfavourable direction leads to an early alteration of popular thought and demeanour. At the beginning of the

seventeenth century, they had tired of eunuch oppression and unjust taxation, and they naturally hailed the

genuine attempt in 1662 to get rid of eunuchs altogether, coupled with the persistent attempts of K`ang Hsi,

and later of Ch`ien Lung, to lighten the burdens of revenue which weighed down the energies of all. But

towards the end of his reign Ch`ien Lung had become a very old man; and the gradual decay of his powers of

personal supervision opened a way for the old abuses to creep in, bringing in their train the usual

The Emperor Chia Ch`ing, a worthless and dissolute ruler, never commanded the confidence of his people as

his great predecessors had done, nor had he the same confidence in them. This want of mutual trust was not

confined to his Chinese subjects only. In 1799, Hoshen, a high Manchu official who had been raised by

Ch`ien Lung from an obscure position to be a Minister of State and Grand Secretary, was suspected, probably

without a shadow of evidence, of harbouring designs upon the throne. He was seized and tried, nominally for

corruption and undue familiarity, and was condemned to death, being allowed as an act of grace to commit

In 1803 the Emperor was attacked in the streets of Peking; and ten years later there was a serious outbreak

organised by a secret society in Honan, known as the Society of Divine Justice, and alternatively as the White

Feather Society, from the badge worn by those members who took part in the actual movement, which

happened as follows. An attack upon the palace during the Emperor's absence on a visit to the Imperial tombs

was arranged by the leaders, who represented a considerable body of malcontents, roused by the wrongs

which their countrymen were suffering all over the empire at the hands of their Manchu rulers. By promises

of large rewards and appointments to lucrative offices when the Manchus should be got rid of, the collusion

of a number of the eunuchs was secured; and on a given day some four hundred rebels, disguised as villagers

carrying baskets of fruit in which arms were concealed, collected about the gates of the palace. Some say that

one of the leaders was betrayed, others that the eunuchs made a mistake in the date; at any rate there was a

sudden rush on the part of the conspirators, the guards at the gates were overpowered, every one who was not

wearing a white feather was cut down, and the palace seemed to be at the mercy of the rebels. The latter,

however, were met by a desperate resistance from the young princes, who shot down several of them, and

thus alarmed the soldiers. Assistance was promptly at hand, and the rebels were all killed or captured.

Immediate measures were taken to suppress the Society, of which it is said that over twenty thousand

Not one, however, of the numerous secret societies, which from time to time have flourished in China, can

compare for a moment either in numbers or organization with the formidable association known as the

Heaven and Earth Society, and also as the Triad Society, or Hung League, which dates from the reign of

Yung Cheng, and from first to last has had one definite aim,the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty.

The term "Triad" signifies the harmonious union of heaven (q.d. God), earth, and man; and members of the

fraternity communicate to one another the fact of membership by pointing first up to the sky, then down to

the ground, and last to their own hearts. The Society was called the Hung League, because all the members

adopted Hung as a surname, a word which suggests the idea of a cataclysm. By a series of lucky chances the

inner working of this Society became known about fifty years ago, when a mass of manuscripts containing

the history of the Society, its ritual, oaths, and secret signs, together with an elaborate set of drawings of flags

and other regalia, fell into the hands of the Dutch Government at Batavia. These documents, translated by Dr.

G. Schlegel, disclose an extraordinary similarity in many respects between the working of Chinese lodges and

the working of those which are more familiar to us as temples of the Ancient Order of Free and Accepted

Masons. Such points of contact, however, as may be discoverable, are most probably mere coincidences; if

not, and if, as is generally understood, the ritual of the European craft was concocted by Cagliostro, then it

follows that he must have borrowed from the Chinese, and not the Chinese from him. The use of the square

and compasses as symbols of moral rectitude, which forms such a striking feature of European masonry,

finds no place in the ceremonial of the Triad Society, although recognized as such in Chinese literature from

the days of Confucius, and still so employed in the everyday colloquial of China.

In 1816 Lord Amherst's embassy reached Peking. Its object was to secure some sort of arrangement under

which British merchants might carry on trade after a more satisfactory manner than had been the case

hitherto. The old Cohong, a system first established in 1720, under which certain Chinese merchants at

Canton became responsible to the local authorities for the behaviour of the English merchants, and to the

latter for all debts due to them, had been so complicated by various oppressive laws, that at one time the East

India Company had threatened to stop all business. Lord Amherst, however, accomplished nothing in the

direction of reform. From the date of his landing at Tientsin, he was persistently told that unless he agreed to

perform the kotow, he could not possibly be permitted to an audience. It was probably his equally persistent

refusal to do soa ceremonial which had been excused by Ch`ien Lung in the case of Lord Macartneythat

caused the Ministers to change their tactics, and to declare, on Lord Amherst's arrival at the Summer Palace,

tired and wayworn, that the Emperor wished to see him immediately. Not only had the presents, of which he

was the bearer, not arrived at the palace, but he and his suite, among whom were Sir George Stanton, Dr

Morrison, and Sir John Davids, had not received the trunks containing their uniforms. It was therefore

impossible for the ambassador to present himself before the Emperor, and he flatly refused to do so;

whereupon he received orders to proceed at once to the seacoast, and take himself off to his own country. A

curious comment on this fiasco was made by Napoleon, who thought that the English Government had acted

wrongly in not having ordered Lord Amherst to comply with the custom of the place he was sent to;

otherwise, he should not have been sent at all. "It is my opinion that whatever is the custom of a nation, and is

practised by the first characters of that nation towards their chief, cannot degrade strangers who perform the

In 1820 Chia Ch`ing died, after a reign of twentyfive years, notable, if for nothing else, as marking the

beginning of Manchu decadence, evidence of which is to be found in the unusually restless temper of the

people, and even in such apparent trifles as the abandonment of the annual hunting excursions, always before

carried out on an extensive scale, and presenting, as it were, a surviving indication of former Manchu

hardihood and personal courage. He was succeeded by his second son, who was already forty years of age,

and whose hitherto secluded life had illprepared him for the difficult problems he was shortly called upon to

Tao Kuang (glory of right principle), as he is called, from the style chosen for his reign, gave promise of

being a useful and enlightened ruler; at the least a great improvement on his father. He did his best at first to

purify the court, but his natural indolence stood in the way of any real reform, and with the best intentions in

the world he managed to leave the empire in a still more critical condition than that in which he had found it.

Five years after his accession, his troubles began in real earnest. There was a rising of the people in

Kashgaria, due to criminal injustice practised over a long spell of time on the part of the Chinese authorities.

The rebels found a leader in the person of Jehangir, who claimed descent from one of the old native chiefs,

formerly recognized by the Manchu Emperors, but now abolished as such. Thousands flocked to his standard;

and by the time an avenging army could arrive on the scene, he was already master of the country. During the

campaign which followed, his men were defeated in battle after battle; and at length he himself was taken

prisoner and forwarded to Peking, where he failed to defend his conduct, and was put to death.

The next serious difficulty which confronted the Emperor was a rising, in 1832, of the wild Miao tribes of

Kuangsi and Hunan, led by a man who either received or adopted the title of the Golden Dragon. At the

bottom of all the trouble we find, as usually to be expected henceforward, the secret activities of the

farreaching Triad Society, which seized the occasion to foment into open rebellion the dissatisfaction of the

tribesmen with the glaring injustice they were suffering at the hands of the local authorities. After some initial

massacres and reprisals, a general was sent to put an end to the outbreak; but so far from doing this, he seems

to have come off second best in most of the battles which ensued, and was finally driven into Kuangtung.

For this he was superseded, and two Commissioners dispatched to take charge of further operations. It

occurred to these officials that possibly persuasion might succeed where violence had failed; and accordingly

a proclamation was widely circulated, promising pardon and redress of wrongs to all who would at once

return to their allegiance, and pointing out at the same time the futility of further resistance. The effect of this

We are now reaching a period at which European complications began to be added to the more legitimate

worries of a Manchu Emperor. Trade with the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch, and the English, had

been carried on since the early years of the sixteenth century, but in a very haphazard kind of way, and under

many vexatious restrictions, bribery being the only effectual means of bringing commercial ventures to a

successful issue. So far back as 1680, the East India Company had received its charter, and commercial

relations with Chinese merchants could be entered into by British subjects only through this channel. Such

machinery answered its purpose very well for a long period; but a monopoly of the kind became out of date

as time went on, and in 1834 it ceased altogether. The Company was there for the sake of trade, and for

nothing else; and one of its guiding principles was avoidance of any acts which might wound Chinese

susceptibilities, and tend to defeat the object of its own existence. Consequently, the directors would not

allow opium to be imported in their vessels; neither were they inclined to patronize missionary efforts. It is

true that Morrison's dictionary was printed at the expense of the Company, when the punishment for a native

teaching a foreigner the Chinese language was death; but no pecuniary assistance was forthcoming when the

same distinguished missionary attempted to translate the Bible for distribution in China.

The Manchus, who had themselves entered the country as robbers of the soil and spoliators of the people,

were determined to do their best to keep out all future intruders; and it was for this reason that, suspicious of

the aims of the barbarian, every possible obstacle was placed in the way of those who wished to learn to

speak and read Chinese. This suspicion was very much increased in the case of missionaries, whose real

object the Manchus failed to appreciate, and behind whose plea of religious propagandism they thought they

detected a deeplaid scheme for territorial aggression, to culminate of course in their own overthrow; and

already in 1805 an edict had been issued, strictly forbidding anyone to teach even Manchu to any foreigner.

From this date (1834), any British subject was free to engage in the trade, and the Home Government sent out

Lord Napier to act as Chief Superintendent, and to enter into regular diplomatic relations with the Chinese

authorities. Lord Napier, however, even though backed by a couple of frigates, was unable to gain admission

to the city of Canton, and after a demonstration, the only result of which was to bring all business to a

standstill, he was finally obliged in the general interest to retire. He went to Macao, a small peninsula to the

extreme southwest of the Kuangtung province, famous as the residence of the poet Camoens, and there he

died a month later. Macao was first occupied by the Portuguese trading with China in 1557; though there is a

story that in 1517 certain Portuguese landed there under pretence of drying some tribute presents to the

Emperor, which had been damaged in a storm, and proceeded to fortify their encampment, whereupon the

local officials built a wall across the peninsula, shutting off further access to the mainland. It also appears

that, in 1566, Macao was actually ceded to the Portuguese on condition of payment of an annual sum to

The next few years were employed by the successors of Lord Napier in endeavours, often wrongly directed,

to establish working, if not harmonious, relations with the Chinese authorities; but no satisfactory point was

reached, for the simple reason that recent events had completely confirmed the officials and the people in

It is worth noticing here that Russia, with her conterminous and ever advancing frontier, has always been

regarded somewhat differently from the oversea barbarian. She has continually during the past three centuries

been the dreaded foreign bogy of the Manchus; and a few years back, when Manchus and Chinese alike

fancied that their country was going to be "chopped up like a melon" and divided among western nations, a

warning geographical cartoon was widely circulated in China, showing Russia in the shape of a huge bear

stretching down from the north and clawing the vast areas of Mongolia and Manchuria to herself.

Now, to aggravate the already difficult situation, the opium question came suddenly to the front in an acute

form. For a long time the import of opium had been strictly forbidden by the Government, and for an equally

long time smuggling the drug in increasing quantities had been carried on in a most determined manner until,

finally, swift vessels with armed crews, sailing under foreign flags, succeeded in terrorizing the native

revenue cruisers, and so delivering their cargoes as they pleased. It appears that the Emperor Tao Kuang, who

had sounded the various high authorities on the subject, was genuinely desirous of putting an end to the

import of opium, and so checking the practice of opiumsmoking, which was already assuming dangerous

proportions; and in this he was backed up by Captain Elliot (afterwards Sir Charles Elliot), now

Superintendent of Trade, an official whose vacillating policy towards the Chinese authorities did much to

precipitate the disasters about to follow. After a serious riot had been provoked, in which the foreign

merchants of Canton narrowly escaped with their lives, and to quell which it was necessary to call out the

soldiery, the Emperor decided to put a definite stop to the opium traffic; and for this purpose he appointed

one of his most distinguished servants, at that time Viceroy of Hukuang, and afterwards generally known as

Commissioner Lin, a name much reverenced by the Chinese as that of a true patriot, and never mentioned

even by foreigners without respect. Early in 1839, Lin took up the post of Viceroy of Kuangtung, and

immediately initiated an attack which, to say the least of it, deserved a better fate.

Within a few days a peremptory order was made for the delivery of all opium in the possession of foreign

merchants at Canton. This demand was resisted, but for a short time only. All the foreign merchants, together

with Captain Elliot, who had gone up to Canton specially to meet the crisis, found themselves prisoners in

their own houses, deprived of servants and even of food. Then Captain Elliot undertook, on behalf of his

Government, to indemnify British subjects for their losses; whereupon no fewer than twenty thousand two

hundred and ninetyone chests of opium were surrendered to Commissioner Lin, and the incident was

regarded by the Chinese as closed. On receipt of the Emperor's instructions, the whole of this opium, for

which the owners received orders on the Treasury at the rate of #120 per chest, was mixed with lime and salt

Lin's subsequent demands were so arbitrary that at length the English mercantile community retired

altogether from Canton, and after a futile attempt to settle at Macao, where their presence, owing to Chinese

influence with the Portuguese occupiers, was made unwelcome, they finally found a refuge at Hongkong,

then occupied only by a few fishermen's huts. Further negotiations as to the renewal of trade having fallen

through, Lin gave orders for all British ships to leave China within three days, which resulted in a fight

between two menof war and twentynine warjunks, in which the latter were either sunk or driven off

with great loss. In June, 1840, a British fleet of seventeen menofwar and twentyseven troopships arrived

at Hongkong; Canton was blockaded; a port on the island of Chusan was subsequently occupied; and Lord

Palmerston's letter to the Emperor was carried to Tientsin, and delivered there to the Viceroy of Chihli.

Commissioner Lin was now cashiered for incompetency; but was afterwards instructed to act with the

Viceroy of Chihli, who was sent down to supersede him. Further vexatious action, or rather inaction, on the

part of these two at length drove Captain Elliot to an ultimatum; and as no attention was paid to this, the

Bogue forts near the mouth of the Canton river were taken by the British fleet, after great slaughter of the

Chinese. In January, 1841, a treaty of peace was arranged, under which the island of Hongkong was to be

ceded to England, a sum of over a million pounds was to be paid for the opium destroyed, and satisfactory

concessions were to be made in the matter of official intercourse between the two nations. The Emperor

refused ratification, and ordered the extermination of the barbarians to be at once proceeded with. Again the

Bogue forts were captured, and Canton would have been occupied but for another promised treaty, the terms

of which were accepted by Sir Henry Pottinger, who now superseded Elliot. At this juncture the British fleet

sailed northwards, capturing Amoy and Ningpo, and occupying the island of Chusan. The further capture of

Chapu, where munitions of war in huge quantities were destroyed, was followed by similar successes at

Shanghai and Chinkiang. At the last mentioned, a desperate resistance was offered by the Manchu garrison,

who fought heroically against certain defeat, and who, when all hope was gone, committed suicide in large

numbers rather than fall into the hands of the enemy, from whom, in accordance with prevailing ideas and

with what would have been their own practice, they expected no quarter. The Chinese troops, as distinguished

from the Manchus, behaved differently; they took to their heels before a shot had been fired. This behaviour,

which seems to be nothing more than arrant cowardice, is nevertheless open to a more favourable

interpretation. The yoke of the Manchu dynasty was already beginning to press heavily, and these men felt

that they had no particular cause to fight for, certainly not such a personal cause as then stared the Manchus

in the face. The Manchu soldiers were fighting for their all: their very supremacy was at stake; while many of

the Chinese troops were members of the Triad Society, the chief object of which was to get rid of the alien

dynasty. It is thus, too, that we can readily explain the assistance afforded to the enemy by numerous

Cantonese, and the presence of many as servants on board the vessels of our fleet; they did not help us or

accompany us from any lack of patriotism, of which virtue Chinese annals have many striking examples to

show, but because they were entirely out of sympathy with their rulers, and would have been glad to see them

overthrown, coupled of course with the tempting pay and good treatment offered by the barbarian.

It now remained to take Nanking, and thither the fleet proceeded in August, 1842, with that purpose in view.

This move the Chinese authorities promptly anticipated by offering to come to terms in a friendly way; and in

a short time conditions of peace were arranged under an important instrument, known as the Treaty of

Nanking. Its chief clauses provided for the opening to British trade of Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and

Shanghai, at which all British subjects were to enjoy the rights of extraterritoriality, being subject to the

jurisdiction of their own officials only; also, for the cession to England of the island of Hongkong, and for the

payment of a lump sum of about five million pounds as compensation for loss of opium, expenses of the war,

etc. All prisoners were to be released, and there was a special amnesty for such Chinese as had given their

services to the British during the war. An equality of status between the officials of both nations was further

conceded, and suitable rules were to be drawn up for the regulation of trade. The above treaty having been

duly ratified by Tao Kuang and by Queen Victoria, it must then have seemed to British merchants that a new

and prosperous era had really dawned. But they counted without the everpresent desire of the great bulk of

the Chinese people to see the last of the Manchus; and the Triad Society, stimulated no doubt by the recent

British successes, had already shown signs of unusual activity when, in 1850, the Emperor died, and was

succeeded by his fourth son, who reigned under the title of Hsien Feng (or Hien Fong = universal plenty).

Hsien Feng came to the throne at the age of nineteen, and found himself in possession of a heritage which

showed evident signs of going rapidly to pieces. His father, in the opinion of many competent Chinese, had

been sincerely anxious for the welfare of his country; on the other hand, he had failed to learn anything from

the lessons he had received at the hands of foreigners, towards whom his attitude to the last was of the

bowwow order. On one occasion, indeed, he borrowed a classical phrase, and referring to the intrusions of

the barbarian, declared roundly that he would allow no man to snore alongside of his bed. Brought up in this

spirit, Hsien Feng had already begun to exhibit an antiforeign bias, when he found himself in the throes of a

struggle which speedily reduced the European question to quite insignificant proportions.

A clever young Cantonese, named Hung Hsiuch`uan, from whom great things were expected, failed, in

1833, to secure the first degree at the usual public examination. Four years later, when twentyfour years of

age, he made another attempt, only, however, to be once more rejected. Chagrin at this second failure brought

on melancholia, and he began to see visions; and later on, while still in this depressed state of mind, he turned

his attention to some Christian tracts which had been given to him on his first appearance at the examination,

but which he had so far allowed to remain unread. In these he discovered what he thought were

interpretations of his earlier dreams, and soon managed to persuade himself that he had been divinely chosen

In one sense this would only have been reversion to a former condition, for in ancient times a simple

monotheism formed the whole creed of the Chinese people; but Hung went much further, and after having

become head of a Society of God, he started a sect of professing Christians, and set to work to collect

followers, styling himself the Brother of Christ. Gradually, the authorities became aware of his existence, and

also of the fact that he was drawing together a following on a scale which might prove dangerous to the

public peace. It was then that force of circumstances changed his status from that of a religious reformer to

that of a political adventurer; and almost simultaneously with the advent of Hsien Feng to the Imperial power,

the longsmouldering discontent with Manchu rule, carefully fostered by the organization of the Triad

society, broke into open rebellion. A sort of holy war was proclaimed against the Manchus, stigmatized as

usurpers and idolaters, who were to be displaced by a native administration, called the T`ai P`ing (great

peace) Heavenly Dynasty, at the head of which Hung placed himself, with the title of "Heavenly King," in

"Our Heavenly King," so ran the rebel proclamations, "has received a divine commission to exterminate the

Manchus utterly, men, women, and children, with all idolaters, and to possess the empire as its true

sovereign. For the empire and everything in it is his; its mountains and rivers, its broad lands and public

treasuries; you and all that you have, your family, males and females alike, from yourself to your youngest

child, and your property, from your patrimonial estates to the bracelet on your infant's arm. We command the

services of all, and we take everything. All who resist us are rebels and idolatrous demons, and we kill them

without sparing; but whoever acknowledges our Heavenly King and exerts himself in our service shall have

full reward,due honour and station in the armies and court of the Heavenly Dynasty."

The T`aip`ings now got rid of the chief outward sign of allegiance to the Manchus, by ceasing to shave the

forepart of the head, and allowing all their hair to grow long, from which they were often spoken of at the

timeand the name still survivesas the longhaired rebels. Their early successes were phenomenal; they

captured city after city, moving northwards through Kuangsi into Hunan, whence, after a severe check at

Ch`angsha, the provincial capital, the siege of which they were forced to raise, they reached and captured,

among others, the important cities of Wuch`ang, Kiukiang, and Anch`ing, on the Yangtsze. The next stage

was to Nanking, a city occupying an important strategic position, and famous as the capital of the empire in

the fourth and fourteenth centuries. Here the Manchu garrison offered but a feeble resistance, the only troops

who fought at all being Chinese; within ten days (March, 1853) the city was in the hands of the T`aip`ings;

all Manchus,men, women, and children, said to number no fewer than twenty thousand,were put to the

sword; and in the same month, Hung was formally proclaimed first Emperor of the T`ai P`ing Heavenly

Dynasty, Nanking from this date receiving the name of the Heavenly City. So far, the generals who had been

sent to oppose his progress had effected nothing. One of these was Commissioner Lin, of opium fame, who

had been banished and recalled, and was then living in retirement after having successfully held several high

offices. His health was not equal to the effort, and he died on his way to take up his post.

After the further capture of Chinkiang, a feat which created a considerable panic at Shanghai, a force was

detached from the main body of the T`aip`ings, and dispatched north for no less a purpose than the capture

of Peking. Apparently a foolhardy project, it was one that came nearer to realization than the most sanguine

outsider could possibly have expected. The army reached Tientsin, which is only eighty miles from the

capital; but when there, a slight reverse, together with other unexplained reasons, resulted in a return (1855)

of the troops without having accomplished their object. Meanwhile, the comparative ease with which the

T`aip`ings had set the Manchus at defiance, and continued to hold their own, encouraged various outbreaks

in other parts of the empire; until at length more systematic efforts were made to put a stop to the present

Opportunity just now was rather on the side of the Imperialists, as the futile expedition to Peking had left the

rebels in a somewhat aimless state, not quite knowing what to do next. It is true that they were busy spreading

the T`aip`ing conception of Christianity, in establishing schools, and preparing an educational literature to

meet the exigencies of the time. They achieved the latter object by building anew on the lines, but not in the

spirit, of the old. Thus the Trimetrical Classic, the famous schoolboy's handbook, a veritable guide to

knowledge in which a variety of subjects are lightly touched upon, was entirely rewritten. The form, rhyming

stanzas with three words to each line, was preserved; but instead of beginning with the familiar Confucian

dogma that man's nature is entirely good at his birth and only becomes depraved by later environment, we

By 1857, Imperialist troops were drawing close lines around the rebels, who had begun to lose rather than to

gain ground. Anch`ing and Nanking, the only two cities which remained to them, were blockaded, and the

Manchu plan was simply to starve the enemy out. During this period we hear little of the Emperor, Hsien

Feng; and what we do hear is not to his advantage. He had become a confirmed debauchee, in the hands of a

degraded clique, whose only contribution to the crisis was a suggested issue of paper money and debasement

of the popular coinage. Among his generals, however, there was now one, whose name is still a household

word all over the empire, and who initiated the first checks which led to the ultimate suppression of the

rebellion. Tseng Kuofan had been already employed in high offices, when, in 1853, he was first ordered to

take up arms against the T`aip`ings. After some reverses, he entered upon a long course of victories by

which the rebels were driven from most of their strongholds; and in 1859, he submitted a plan for an advance

on Nanking, which was approved and ultimately carried out. Meanwhile, the plight of the besieged rebels in

Nanking had become so unbearable that something had to be done. A sortie on a large scale was accordingly

organized, and so successful was it that the T`aip`ings not only routed the besieging army, but were able to

regain large tracts of territory, capturing at the same time huge stores of arms and munitions of war. These

victories were in reality the deathblow to the rebel cause, for the brutal cruelty then displayed to the people

at large was of such a character as to alienate completely the sympathy of thousands who might otherwise

have been glad to see the end of the Manchus. Among other acts of desolation, the large and beautiful city of

Soochow was burnt and looted, an outrage for which the T`aip`ings were held responsible, and regarding

which there is a pathetic tale told by an eyewitness of the ruins; in this instance, however, if indeed in no

others, the acts of vandalism in question were committed by Imperialist soldiers.

It is with the T`aip`ing rebellion that we associate likin, a tax which has for years past been the bugbear of

the foreign merchant in China. The term means "thousandthpart money," that is, the thousandth part of a

tael or Chinese ounce of silver, say one cash; and it was originally applied to a tax of one cash per tael on all

sales, said to have been voluntarily imposed on themselves by the people, as a temporary measure, with a

view to make up the deficiency in the landtax caused by the rebellion. It was to be set apart for military

purposes onlyhence its common name, "wartax"; but it soon drifted into the general body of taxation, and

became a serious impost on foreign trade. We first hear of it in 1852, as collected by the Governor of

Shantung; to hear the last of it has long been the dream of those who wish to see the expansion of trade with

Tseng Kuofan was now (1860) appointed Imperial War Commissioner as well as Viceroy of the Two Kiang

(= provinces of Kiangsi and Kiangsu + Anhui). He had already been made a bataru, a kind of order instituted

by the first Manchu Emperor Shun Chih, as a reward for military prowess; and had also received the Yellow

Riding Jacket from the Emperor Hsien Feng, who drew off the jacket he was himself wearing at the time, and

placed it on the shoulders of the loyal and successful general. In 1861 he succeeded in recapturing Anch`ing

and other places; and with this city as his headquarters, siege was forthwith laid to Nanking.

The Imperialist forces were at this juncture greatly strengthened by the appointments, on Tseng's

recommendation, of two notable men, Tso Tsungt`ang and Li Hungchang, as Governors of Chehkiang and

Kiangsu respectively. Assistance, too, came from another and most unexpected quarter. An American

adventurer, named Ward, a man of considerable military ability, organized a small force of foreigners, which

he led to such purpose against the T`aip`ings, that he rapidly gathered into its ranks a large if motley crowd

of foreigners and Chinese, all equally bent on plunder, and with that end in view submitting to the discipline

necessary to success. A long run of victories gained for this force the title of the Ever Victorious Army; until

at length Ward was killed in battle. He was buried at Sungkiang, near Shanghai, a city which he had retaken

from the T`aip`ings, and there a shrine was erected to his memory, and for a long timeperhaps even

now offerings were made to his departed spirit. An attempt was made to replace him by another American

named Burgevine, who had been Ward's second in command. This man, however, was found to be incapable

and was superceded; and in 1863 Major Gordon, R.E., was allowed by the British authorities to take over

command of what was then an army of about five thousand men, and to act in cooperation with Tseng

Kuofan and Li Hungchang. Burgevine shortly afterwards went over to the rebels with about three hundred

Gordon's appointment to the work which will always be associated with his name, was speedily followed by

disastrous results to the T`ai p`ings. The Ever Victorious troops, who had recently been worsted in more

than one encounter with their now desperate enemies, began to retrieve their reputation, greatly stimulated by

the regular pay which Gordon always insisted upon. Towards the close of the year, the siege of Soochow

ended in a capitulation on terms which Gordon understood to include a pardon for the eight T`aip`ing

"princes" engaged in its defence. These eight were hurriedly decapitated by order of Li Hung chang, and

Gordon immediately resigned, after having searched that same night, so the story goes, revolver in hand, for

Li Hungchang, whose brains he had determined to blow out on the spot. The Emperor sent him a medal and

a present of about #3,000, both of which he declined; and Imperial affairs would again have been in a bad

way, but that Gordon, yielding to a sense of duty, agreed to resume command. Foreign interests had begun to

suffer badly; trade was paralysed; and something had to be done. Further successes under Gordon's leadership

reduced the T`aip`ings to their last extremity. Only Nanking remained to be captured, and that was already

fully invested by Tseng Kuofan. Gordon therefore laid down his command, and was rewarded with the title

of Provincial CommanderinChief, and also with the bestowal of the Yellow Riding Jacket. A month or so

later (July, 1864), Nanking was carried by storm, defended bravely to the last by the only remaining "prince,"

the Heavenly King himself having taken poison three weeks beforehand. This prince escaped with the new

king, a boy of sixteen, who had just succeeded his father; but he was soon caught and executed, having first

been allowed time to write a short history of the movement from the T`aip`ing point of view. The boy

shared his fate. The Imperial edicts of this date show clearly what a sense of relief came over the Manchu

court when once it could be said definitively that the great rebellion was over. On the other hand, there were

not wanting some foreigners who would have liked to see the Manchus overthrown, and who severely blamed

the British Government for helping to bolster up a dynasty already in the last stage of decay; for it seems to

be an indubitable fact that but for British intervention, the rebellion would ultimately have succeeded in that

During a great part of the last eight years described above, an ordinary observer would have said that the

Manchus had already sufficient troubles on hand, and would be slow to provoke further causes of anxiety. It

is none the less true, however, that at one of the most critical periods of the rebellion, China was actually at

war with the very power which ultimately came to the rescue. In 1856 the Viceroy of Canton, known to

foreigners as Governor Yeh, a man who had gained favour at the Manchu court by his wholesale butchery of

real and suspected rebels, arrested twelve Chinese sailors on board the "Arrow," a Chineseowned vessel

lying at Canton, which had been licensed at Hongkong to sail under the British flag, and at the same time the

flag was hauled down by Yeh's men. Had this been an isolated act, it is difficult to see why very grave

circumstances need have followed, and perhaps Justin McCarthy's condemnation of our Consul, Mr

(afterwards Sir Harry) Parkes, as "fussy," because he sent at once to Hongkong for armed assistance, might in

such case be allowed to stand unchallenged; but it must be remembered that Yeh was all the time refusing to

foreigners rights which had been already conceded under treaty, and that action such as Parkes took, against

an adversary such as Yeh, was absolutely necessary either to mend or end the situation. Accordingly, his

action led to what was at first an awkward state of reprisals, in which some American menofwar joined for

grievances of their own; forts being attacked and occupied, the foreign houses of business at Canton being

burned down, and rewards offered for foreigners' heads. In January, 1857, an attempt was actually made in

Hongkong to get rid of all foreigners at one fell stroke, in which plot there is no doubt that the local officials

at Canton were deeply implicated. The bread was one day found to be poisoned with arsenic, but so heavily

that little mischief was done. The only possible end to this tension was war; and by the end of the year a joint

British and French force, with Lord Elgin and Baron Gros as plenipotentiaries, was on the spot. Canton was

captured after a poor resistance; and Governor Yeh, whose enormous bulk made escape difficult, was

captured and banished to Calcutta, where he died. On the voyage he sank into a kind of stupor, taking no

interest whatever in his new surroundings; and when asked by Alabaster, who accompanied him as

interpreter, why he did not read, he pointed to his stomach, the Chinese receptacle for learning, and said that

there was nothing worth reading except the Confucian Canon, and that he had already got all that inside him.

After his departure the government of the city was successfully directed by British and French authorities,

Lord Elgin then decided to proceed forth, in the hope of being able to make satisfactory arrangements for

future intercourse; but the obstructive policy of the officials on his arrival at the Peiho compelled him to

attack and capture the Taku forts, and finally, to take up his residence in Tientsin. The lips, as the Chinese

say, being now gone, the teeth began to feel cold; the court was in a state of panic, and within a few weeks a

treaty was signed (June 26, 1858) containing, among other concessions to England, the right to have a

diplomatic representative stationed in Peking, and permission to trade in the interior of China. It would

naturally be supposed that Lord Elgin's mission was now ended, and indeed he went home; the Emperor,

however, would not hear of ratifications of the treaty being exchanged in Peking, and in many other ways it

was made plain that there was no intention of its stipulations being carried out. There was the example of

Confucius, who had been captured by rebels and released on condition that he would not travel to the State of

Wei. Thither, notwithstanding, he continued his route; and when asked by a disciple if it was right to violate

By June, 1859, another AngloFrench force was at the mouth of the Peiho, only to find the Taku forts now

strongly fortified, and the river staked and otherwise obstructed. The allied fleet, after suffering considerable

damage, with much loss of life, was compelled to retire, greatly to the joy and relief of the Emperor, who at

last saw the barbarian reduced to his proper status. It was on this occasion that Commander Tatnell of the

U.S. navy, who was present, strictly speaking, as a spectator only, in complete violation of international law,

of which luckily the Chinese knew nothing at that date, lent efficient aid by towing boatloads of British

marines into action, justifying his conduct by a saying which will always be gratefully associated with his

By August, 1860, thirteen thousand British troops, seven thousand French, and two thousand five hundred

Cantonese coolies, were ready to make another attempt. This time there were no frontal attacks on the forts

from the seaward; capture was effected, after a severe struggle, by land from the rear, a feat which was

generally regarded by the Tartar soldiery as most unsportsmanlike. High Manchu officials were now

hurriedly dispatched from Peking to Tientsin to stop by fair promises the further advance of the allies; but the

British and French plenipotentiaries decided to move up to T`ungchow, a dozen miles or so from the capital.

It was on this march that Parkes, Loch, and others, while carrying out orders under a flag of truce, were

treacherously seized by the soldiers of Sengkolinsin, the Manchu prince and general (familiar to the

British troops as "Sam Collinson"), who had just experienced a severe defeat at the taking of the Taku forts.

After being treated with every indignity, the prisoners, French and English, numbering over thirty in all, were

forwarded to Peking. There they were miserably tortured, and many of them succumbed; but events were

moving quickly now, and relief was at hand for those for whom it was not already too late. Sengkolinsin

and his vaunted Tartar cavalry were completely routed in several encounters, and Peking lay at the mercy of

the foreigner, the Emperor having fled to Jehol, where he died in less than a year. Only then did Prince Kung,

a younger brother of Hsien Feng, who had been left to bear the brunt of foreign resentment, send back, in a

state too terrible for words, fourteen prisoners, less than half the original number of those so recently

captured. Something in the form of a punitive act now became necessary, to mark the horror with which this

atrocious treatment of prisoners by the Manchu court was regarded among the countrymen of the victims.

Accordingly, orders were given to burn down the Summer Palace, appropriately condemned as being the

favourite residence of the Emperor, and also the scene of the unspeakable tortures inflicted. This palace was

surrounded by a beautiful pleasance lying on the slope of the western hills, about nine miles to the

northwest of Peking. Yuanming Yuan, or the "Bright Round Garden," to give it its proper name, had been

laid out by the Jesuit fathers on the plan of the Trianon at Versailles, and was packed with valuable porcelain,

old bronzes, and every conceivable kind of curio, most of which were looted or destroyed by the infuriated

The ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin (1858) was now completed, and before the end of the year the allied

forces were gone, save and except garrisons at Tientsin and Taku, which were to remain until the indemnity

On the death of the Emperor, a plot was concocted by eight members of the extreme antiforeign party at

Court, who claimed to have been appointed Regents, to make away with the Empress Dowager, the

concubine mother, known as the Western Empress, of the fiveyearold child just proclaimed under the title

of Chi Hsiang (good omen), and also the late Emperor's three brothers, thus securing to themselves complete

control of the administration. Prince Kung, however, managed to be "first at the fire," and in accordance with

the Chinese proverb, was therefore "first with his cooking." Having got wind of the scheme, in concert with

the two Empresses Dowager, who had secured possession of the Emperor, he promptly caused the

conspirators to be seized. Two of them, Imperial princes, were allowed to commit suicide, and the others

were either executed or banished, while Prince Kung and the two Empresses formed a joint regency for the

direction of public affairs, after changing the style of the reign from Chi Hsiang to T`ung Chih (united rule).

The position of these two Empresses was a curious one. The Empress Dowager par excellencefor there is

only one legal wife in China had no children; a concubine had provided the heir to the throne, and had in

consequence been raised to the rank of Western Empress, subordinate only to the childless Eastern Empress.

Of the latter, there is nothing to be said, except that she remained a cipher to the end of her life; of the

concubine, a great deal has been said, much of which is untrue. Taken from an ordinary Manchu family into

the palace, she soon gained an extraordinary influence over Hsien Feng, and began to make her voice heard

in affairs of State. Always on the side of determined measures, she had counselled the Emperor to remain in

Peking and face the barbarians; she is further believed to have urged the execution of Parkes and Loch, the

order luckily arriving too late to be carried out. For the next three years the Regents looked anxiously for the

final collapse of the T`aip`ings, having meanwhile to put up with the hateful presence of foreign diplomats,

now firmly established within the Manchu section of the city of Peking. No sooner was the great rebellion

entirely suppressed (1864), than another rising broke out. The Nienfei, or Twist Rebels, said to have been so

called because they wore as a badge turbans twisted with grease, were mounted banditti who, here today

and gone tomorrow, for several years committed much havoc in the northern provinces of China, until

Turkestan was the next part of the empire to claim attention. A son and successor of Jehangir, ruling as vassal

of China at Khokand, had been murdered by his lieutenant, Yakoob Beg, who, in 1866, had set himself up as

Ameer of Kashgaria, throwing off the Manchu yoke and attracting to his standard large numbers of

discontented Mahometans from all quarters. His attack upon the Dunganis, who had risen on their own

account and had spread rebellion far and wide between the province of Shensi and Kuldja, caused Russia to

step in and annex Kuldja before it could fall into his hands. Still, he became master of a huge territory; and in

1874 the title of Athalik Ghazi, "Champion Father," was conferred upon him by the Ameer of Bokhara. He is

also spoken of as the Andijani, from Andijan, a town in Khokhand whence he and many of his followers

came. Luckily for the Manchus, they were able to avail themselves of the services of a Chinese general

whose extraordinary campaign on this occasion has marked him as a commander of the first order. Tso

Tsungk`ang, already distinguished by his successes against the T`iap`ings and the Nienfei, began by

operations, in 1869, against the Mahometans in Shensi. Fighting his way through difficulties caused by local

outbreaks and mutinies in his rear, he had captured by 1873 the important city of Suchow in Kansuh, and by

1874 his advanceguard had reached Hami. There he was forced to settle down and raise a crop in order to

feed his troops, supplies being very uncertain. In 1876 Urumtsi was recovered; and in 1877, Turfan,

Harashar, Yarkand, and Kashgar. At this juncture, Yakoob Beg was assassinated, after having held Kashgaria

for twelve years. Khoten fell on January 2, 1878. This wonderful campaign was now over, but China had lost

Kuldja. A Manchu official, named Ch`unghou, who was sent to St Petersburg to meet Russian diplomats on

their own ground, the main object being to recover this lost territory, was condemned to death on his return

for the egregious treaty he had managed to negotiate, and was only spared at the express request of Queen

Victoria; he will be mentioned again shortly. His error was afterwards retrieved by a young and brilliant

official, son of the great Tseng Kuofan, and later a familiar figure as the Marquis Tseng, Minister at the

The year 1868 is remarkable for a singular episode. The Regents and other high authorities in Peking decided,

at whose instigation can only be surmised, to send an embassy to the various countries of Europe and

America, in order to bring to the notice of foreign governments China's right, as an independent Power, to

manage her internal affairs without undue interference from outside. The mission, which included two

Chinese officials, was placed under the leadership of Mr Burlingame, American Minister at Peking, who, in

one of his speeches, took occasion to say that China was simply longing to cement friendly relations with

foreign powers, and that within some few short years there would be "a shining cross on every hill in the

Burlingame died early in 1870, before his mission was completed, and only four months before the Tientsin

Massacre threw a shadow of doubt over his optimistic pronouncements. The native population at Tientsin had

been for some time irritated by the height to which, contrary to their own custom, the towers of the Roman

Catholic Cathedral had been carried; and rumours had also been circulated that behind the lofty walls and

dark mysterious portals of the Catholic foundling hospital, children's eyes and hearts were extracted from still

warm corpses to furnish medicines for the barbarian pharmacopoeia. On June 21, the cathedral and the

establishment of sisters of mercy, the French Consulate, and other buildings, were pillaged and burnt by a

mob composed partly of the rowdies of the place and partly of soldiers who happened to be temporarily

quartered there. All the priests and sisters were brutally murdered, as also the French Consul and other

foreigners. For this outrage eighteen men were executed, a large indemnity was exacted, and the

superintendent of trade, the same Manchu official whose subsequent failure at St Petersburg has been already

In 1872 T`ung Chih was married, and in the following year took over the reins of government. Thereupon,

the foreign Ministers pressed for personal interviews; and after much obstruction on the part of the Manchu

court, the first audience was granted. This same year saw the collapse of the Panthays, a tribe of Mahometans

in Yunnan who, so far back as 1855, had begun to free themselves from Chinese rule. They chose as their

leader an able coreligionist named Tu Wenhsiu, who was styled Sultan Suleiman, and he sent agents to

Burma to buy arms and munitions of war; after which, secure in the natural fortress of Tali, he was soon

master of all western Yunnan. In 1863 he repulsed with heavy loss two armies sent against him from the

provincial capital; but the end of the T`aip`ing rebellion set free the whole resources of the empire against

him, and he remained inactive while the Imperialists advanced leisurely westwards. In 1871 he tried vainly to

obtain aid from England, sending over his son, Prince Hassan, for that purpose. The following year saw the

enemy at the gates of Tali, and by and by there was a treacherous surrender of an important position. Then a

promise of an amnesty was obtained at the price of Tu's head, and an enormous indemnity. On January 15,

1873, his family having all committed suicide, the Sultan passed for the last time through the crowded streets

of Tali on his way to the camp of his victorious adversary. He arrived there senseless, having taken poison

before setting forth. His corpse was beheaded and his head was forwarded to the provincial capital, and

His conqueror, whose name is not worth recording, was one of those comparatively rare Chinese monsters

who served their Manchu masters only too well. Eleven days after the Sultan's death, he invited the chief men

of the town to a feast, and after putting them all to death, gave the signal for a general massacre, in which

In 1874 the Japanese appear on the scene, adding fresh troubles to those with which the Manchus were

already encompassed. Some sailors from the Loochoo Islands, over which Japanese sovereignty had been

successfully maintained, were murdered by the savages on the east coast of Formosa; and failing to obtain

redress, Japan sent a punitive expedition to the island, and began operations on her own account, but

In 1875 the Emperor T`ung Chih died of smallpox, and with his death the malign influence of his mother

comes more freely into play. The young Empress was about to become a mother; and had she borne a son,

her position as mother of the baby Emperor would have been of paramount importance, while the

grandmother, the older Empress Dowager, would have been relegated to a subordinate status.

Consequently,it may now be said, having regard to subsequent happenings,the death of the Empress

followed that of her husband at an indecently short interval, for no particular reason of health; and the old

Empress Dowager became supreme. In order to ensure her supremacy, she had previously, on the very day of

the Emperor's death, caused the succession to be allotted, in utter violation of established custom, to a first

cousin, making him heir to the Emperor Hsien Feng, instead of naming one of a lower generation who, as

heir to T`ung Chih, would have been qualified to sacrifice to the spirit of his adopted father. Thus, the late

Emperor was left without a son, and his spirit without a ministrant at ancestral worship, the only consolation

being that when a son should be born to the new Emperor (aged four), that child was to become son by

adoption to his late Majesty, T`ung Chih. Remonstrances, even from Manchus, were soon heard on all sides;

but to these the Empress Dowager paid no attention until four years afterwards (1879), on the occasion of the

deferred funeral of the late Emperor, when a censor, named Wu K`otu, committed suicide at the

mausoleum, leaving behind him a memorial in which he strongly condemned the action of the two Empresses

Dowager, still regarded officially as joint regents, and called for a rearrangement of the succession, under

which the late Emperor would be duly provided with an heir. Nothing, however, came of this sacrifice, except

promises, until 1900. A son of Prince Tuan, within a few months to espouse the Boxer cause, was then made

heir to his late Majesty, as required; but at the beginning of 1901, this appointment was cancelled and the

spirit of the Emperor T`ung Chih was left once more unprovided for in the ancestral temple. The first cousin

in question, who reigned as Kuang Hsu (= brilliant succession), was not even the next heir in his own

generation; but he was a child of four, and that suited the plans of the Empress Dowager, who, having

appointed herself Regent, now entered openly upon the career for which she will be remembered in history.

What she would have done if the Empress had escaped and given birth to a son, can only be a matter of

In 1876 the first resident Envoy ever sent by China to Great Britain, or to any other nation, was accredited to

the Court of St James's. Kuo Sungtao, who was chosen for the post, was a fine scholar; he made several

attempts on the score of health to avoid what then seemed to all Chinese officialsno Manchu would have

been sentto be a dangerous and unpleasant duty, but was ultimately obliged to succeed. It was he who, on

his departure in 1879, said to Lord Salisbury that he liked everything about the English very much, except

The question of railways for China had long been simmering in the minds of enterprising foreigners; but it

was out of the question to think that the Government would allow land to be sold for such a purpose;

therefore there would be no sellers. In 1876 a private company succeeded in obtaining the necessary land by

buying up connecting strips between Shanghai and Woosung at the mouth of the river, about eight miles in

all. The company then proceeded to lay down a miniature railway, which was an object of much interest to

the native, whose amusement soon took the form of a trip there and back. Political influence was then

brought to bear, and the whole thing was purchased by the Government; the rails were torn up and sent to

The suppression of rebellion in Turkestan and Yunnan has already been mentioned; also the retrocession of

Kuldja, which brings us down to the year 1881, when the Eastern Empress died. Death must have been more

or less a relief to this colourless personage, who had been entirely superseded on a stage on which by rights

she should have played the leading part, and who had been terrorized during her last years by her more

In 1882 there were difficulties with France over Tongking; these, however, were adjusted, and in 1884 a

convention was signed by Captain Fournier and Li Hungchang. A further dispute then arose as to a breach

of the convention by the Chinese, and an etat de represailles followed, during which the French destroyed the

Chinese fleet. After the peace which was arranged in 1885, a few years of comparative tranquillity ensued;

Japan, in earlier centuries contemptuously styled the Dwarfnation, and always despised as a mere imitator

and brainpicker of Chinese wisdom, now swims definitively into the ken of the Manchu court. The

Formosan imbroglio had been forgotten as soon as it was over, and the recent rapid progress of Japan on

Western lines towards national strength had been ignored by all Manchu statesmen, each of whom lived in

hope that the deluge would not come in his own time. So far back as 1885, in consequence of serious troubles

involving much bloodshed, the two countries had agreed that neither should send troops to Korea without due

notification to the other. Now, in 1894, China violated this contract by dispatching troops, at the request of

the king of Korea, whose throne was threatened by a serious rebellion, without sufficient warning to Japan,

and further, by keeping a body of these troops at the Korean capital even when the rebellion was at an end. A

disastrous war ensued. The Japanese were victorious on land and sea; the Chinese fleet was destroyed; Port

Arthur was taken; and finally, after surrendering Weihaiwei (1895), to which he had retired with the

remnant of his fleet, Admiral Ting, well known as "a gallant sailor and true gentleman," committed suicide

together with four of his captains. Li Hungchang was then sent to Japan to sue for peace, and while there he

was shot in the cheek by a fanatical member of the Soshi class. This act brought him much sympathyhe

was then seventy two years old; and in the treaty of Shimonoseki, which he negotiated, better terms perhaps

were obtained than would otherwise have been the case. The terms granted included the independence of

Korea, for centuries a tributepaying vassal of China, and the cession of the island of Formosa. Japan had

occupied the peninsula on which stands the impregnable fortress of Port Arthur, and had captured the latter in

a few hours; but she was not to be allowed to keep them. A coalition of European powers, Russia, Germany,

and FranceEngland refused to joindecided that it would never do to let Japan possess Port Arthur, and

forced her to accept a money payment instead. So it was restored to Chinafor the moment; and at the same

time a republic was declared in Formosa; but of this the Japanese made short work.

The following year was marked by an unusual display of initiative on the part of the Emperor, who now

ordered the introduction of railways; but in 1897 complications with foreign powers rather gave a check to

these aspirations. Two German Catholic priests were murdered, and as a punitive measure Germany seized

Kiaochow in Shantung; while in 1898 Russia "leased" Port Arthur, and as a counterblast, England thought it

advisable to "lease" Weihaiwai. So soon as the Manchu court had recovered from the shock of these

events, and had resumed its normal state of torpor, it was rudely shaken from within by a series of edicts

which peremptorily commanded certain reforms of a most far reaching description. For instance, the great

public examinations, which had been conducted on much the same system for seven or eight centuries past,

were to be modified by the introduction of subjects suggested by recent intercourse with Western nations.

There was to be a university in Peking, and the temples, which cover the empire in all directions, were to be

closed to religious services and opened for educational purposes. The Manchus, indeed, have never shown

any signs of a religious temperament. There had not been, under the dynasty in question, any such wave of

devotional fervour as was experienced under more than one previous dynasty. Neither the dreams of

Buddhism, nor the promises of immortality held out by the Taoists, seem to have influenced in a religious, as

opposed to a superstitious sense, the rather Boeotian mind of the Manchu. The learned emperors of the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries accepted Confucianism as sufficient for everyday humanity, and did

all in their power to preserve it as a quasiState religion. Thus, Buddhism was not favoured at the expense of

Taoism, nor vice versa; Mahometanism was tolerated so long as there was no suspicion of disloyalty;

Christianity, on the other hand, was bitterly opposed, being genuinely regarded for a long time as a cloak for

To return to the reforms. Young Manchus of noble family were to be sent abroad for an education on wider

lines than it was possible to obtain at home. This last was in every way a desirable measure. No Manchu had

ever visited the West; all the officials previously sent to foreign countries had been Chinese. But other

At the back of this reform movement was a small band of earnest men who suffered from too much zeal,

which led to premature action. A plot was conceived, under which the Empress Dowager was to be arrested

and imprisoned; but this was betrayed by Yuan Shihk`ai, and she turned the tables by suddenly arresting and

imprisoning the Emperor, and promptly decapitating all the conspirators, with the exception of K`ang

Yuwei, who succeeded in escaping. He had been the moving spirit of the abortive revolution; he was a fine

scholar, and had completely gained the ear of the Emperor. The latter became henceforth to the end of his life

a person of no importance, while China, for the third time in history, passed under the dominion of a woman.

There was no secret about it; the Empress Dowager, popularly known as the Old Buddha, had succeeded in

terrorizing every one who came in contact with her, and her word was law. It was said of one of the Imperial

princes that he was "horribly afraid of her Majesty, and that when she spoke to him he was on tenterhooks,

All promise of reform now disappeared from the Imperial programme, and the recent edicts, which had raised

premature hope in this direction, were annulled; the old regime was to prevail once more. The weakness of

this policy was emphasized in the following year (1899), when England removed from Japan the stigma of

extraterritorial jurisdiction, by which act British defendants, in civil and criminal cases alike, now became

amenable to Japanese tribunals. Japan had set herself to work to frame a code, and had trained lawyers for the

administration of justice; China had done nothing, content that on her own territory foreigners and their

lawsuits, as above, should be tried by foreign Consuls. One curious edict of this date had for its object the

conferment of duly graded civil rank, the right to salutes at official visits, and similar ceremonial privileges,

upon Roman Catholic archbishops, bishops, and priests of the missionary body in China. The Catholic view

was that the missionaries would gain in the eyes of the people if treated with more deference than the

majority of Chinese officials cared to display towards what was to them an objectionable class; in practice,

The autumn of this year witnessed the beginning of the socalled Boxer troubles. There was great unrest,

especially in Shantung, due, it was said, to illfeeling between the people at large and converts to

Christianity, and at any rate aggravated by recent foreign acquisitions of Chinese territory. It was thus that

what was originally one of the periodical antidynastic risings, with the usual scion of the Ming dynasty as

figurehead, lost sight of its objective and became a bloodthirsty antiforeign outbreak. The story of the

siege of the Legations has been written from many points of view; and most people know all they want to

know of the two summer months in 1900, the merciless bombardment of a thousand foreigners, with their

women and children, cooped up in a narrow space, and also of the awful butchery of missionaries, men,

women, and children alike, which took place at the capital of Shansi. Whatever may have been the origin of

the movement, there can be little doubt that it was taken over by the Manchus, with the complicity of the

Empress Dowager, as a means of getting rid of all the foreigners in China. Considering the extraordinary

position the Empress Dowager had created for herself, it is impossible to believe that she would not have

been able to put an end to the siege by a word, or even by a mere gesture. She did not do so; and on the relief

of the Legations, for a second time in her life she had accompanied Hsien Feng to Jehol in 1860she

sought safety in an ignominious flight. Meanwhile, in response to a memorial from the Governor of Shansi,

she had sent him a secret decree, saying, "Slay all foreigners wheresoever you find them; even though they be

prepared to leave your province, yet they must be slain." A second and more urgent decree said, "I command

that all foreigners, men, women, and children, be summarily executed. Let not one escape, so that my empire

may be purged of this noisome source of corruption, and that peace may be restored to my loyal subjects."

The first of these decrees had been circulated to all the high provincial officials, and the result might well

have been an indiscriminate slaughter of foreigners all over China, but for the action of two Chinese officials,

who had already incurred the displeasure of the Empress Dowager by memorializing against the Boxer

policy. These men secretly changed the word "slay" into "protect," and this is the sense in which the decree

was acted upon by provincial officials generally, with the exception of the Governor of Shansi, who sent a

second memorial, eliciting the second decree as above. It is impossible to say how many foreigners owe their

lives to this alteration of a word, and the Empress Dowager herself would scarcely have escaped so easily as

she did, had her cruel order been more fully executed. The trick was soon discovered, and the two heroes,

Yuan Ch`ang and Hsu Chingch`eng, were both summarily beheaded, even though it was to the former that

the Empress Dowager was indebted for information which enabled her to frustrate the plot against her life in

Now, at the very moment of departure, she perpetrated a most brutal crime. A favourite concubine of the

Emperor's, who had previously given cause for offence, urged that his Majesty should not take part in the

flight, but should remain in Peking. For this suggestion the Empress Dowager caused the miserable girl to be

thrown down a well, in spite of the supplications of the Emperor on her behalf. Then she fled, ultimately to

Hsian Fu, the capital of Shensi, and for a year and a half Peking was rid of her presence. In 1902, she came

back with the Emperor, whose prerogative she still managed to usurp. She declared at once for reform, and

took up the cause with much show of enthusiasm; but those who knew the Manchu best, decided to "wait and

see." She began by suggesting intermarriage between Manchus and Chinese, which had so far been

prohibited, and advised Chinese women to give up the practice of footbinding, a custom which the ruling race

had never adopted. It was henceforth to be lawful for Manchus, even of the Imperial family, to send their

sons abroad to be educated,a step which no Manchu would be likely to take unless forcibly coerced into

doing so. Any spirit of enterprise which might have been possessed by the founders of the dynasty had long

since evaporated, and all that Manchu nobles asked was to be allowed to batten in peace upon the Chinese

The direct issue of the emperors of the present dynasty and of their descendants in the male line, dating from

1616, are popularly known as Yellow Girdles, from a sash of that colour which they habitually wear. Each

generation becomes a degree lower in rank, until they are mere members of the family with no rank whatever,

although they still wear the girdle and receive a trifling allowance from the government. Thus, beggars and

even thieves are occasionally seen with this badge of relationship to the throne. Members of the collateral

branches of the Imperial family wear a red girdle, and are known as Gioros, Gioro being part of the

As a next step in reform, the examination system was to be remodelled, but not in the one sense in which it

would have appealed most to the Chinese people. Examinations for Manchus have always been held

separately, and the standard attained has always been very far below that reached by Chinese candidates, so

that the scholarship of the Manchu became long ago a byword and a joke. Now, in 1904, it was settled that

entry to an official career should be obtainable only through the modern educational colleges; but this again

applied only to Chinese and not to Manchus. The Manchus have always had wisdom enough to employ the

best abilities they could discover by process of examination among the Chinese, many of whom have risen

from the lowest estate to the highest positions in the empire, and have proved themselves valuable servants

and staunch upholders of the dynasty. Still, in addition to numerous other posts, it may be said that all the fat

sinecures have always been the portion of Manchus. For instance, the office of Hoppo, or superintendent of

customs at Canton (abolished 1904), was a position which was allowed to generate into a mere opportunity

for piling a large fortune in the shortest possible time, no particular ability being required from the holder of

Then followed a mission to Europe, at the head of which we now find a Manchu of high rank, an Imperial

Duke, sent to study the mysteries of constitutional government, which was henceforth promised to the people,

so soon as its introduction might be practicable. In the midst of these attractive promises (19045) came the

RussoJapanese war, with all its surprises. Among other causes to which the Manchu court ascribed the

success of the Japanese, freedom from the opium vice took high rank, and this led to really serious

enactments against the growth and consumption of opium in China. Continuous and strenuous efforts of

philanthropists during the preceding half century had not produced any results at all; but now it seemed as

though this weakness had been all along the chief reason for China's failures in her struggles with the

barbarian, and it was to be incontinently stamped out. Ten years' grace was allowed, at the end of which

period there was to be no more opiumsmoking in the empire. One awkward feature was that the Empress

Dowager herself was an opiumsmoker; the difficulty, however, was got over by excluding from the

application of the edict of 1906 persons over sixty years of age. Whatever may be thought of the wisdom of

this policy, which so far has chiefly resulted in the substitution of morphia, cocaine, and alcohol, the

thoroughness and rapidity with which it has been carried out, can only command the admiration of all; of

The health of the Emperor, never very good, now began to fail, and by 1908 he was seriously ill; in this same

year, too, there were signs that the Empress Dowager was breaking up. Her last political act of any

importance, except the nomination of the heir to the throne, was to issue a decree confirming the previous

promise of constitutional government, which was to come into full force within nine years. Not many weeks

later the Emperor died (November 14), the Empress Dowager having already, while he lay dying, appointed

one of his nephews, a child barely three years old, to succeed him, in the vain hope that she would thus enjoy

a further spell of power until the child should be of age. But on the following day the Empress Dowager also

died; a singular coincidence which has been attributed to the determination of the eunuchs and others that the

Emperor should not outlive his aunt, for some time past seen to be "drawing near the wood," lest his

The Regency devolved upon the Emperor's father, but was not of very long duration. There was a show of

introducing constitutional reform under the guise of provincial and national assemblies intended to control

the government of the empire; but after all, the final power to accept or reject their measures was vested in

the Emperor, which really left things very much as they had been. The new charter was not found to be of

much value, and there is little doubt that the Manchus regarded it in the light of what is known in China as a

"dummy document," a measure to be extolled in theory, but not intended to appear in practice. Suddenly, in

September 1911, the great revolution broke out, and the end came more rapidly than was expected.

It must not be imagined that this revolution was an inspiration of the moment; on the contrary, it had been

secretly brewing for quite a long time beforehand. During that period a few persons familiar with China may

have felt that something was coming, but nobody knew exactly what. Those who accept without reservation

the common statement that there is no concealment possible in a country where everybody is supposed to

have his price, and that due notice of anything important is sure to leak out, must have been rather astonished

when, without any warning, they found China in the throes of a wellplanned revolution, which was over,

with its object gained, almost as soon as the real gravity of the situation was realized. It is true that under the

Manchus access to official papers of the most private description was always to be obtained at a moderate

outlay; it was thus, for instance, that we were able to appreciate the inmost feelings of that grim old Manchu,

Wojen, who, in 1861, presented a secret memorial to the throne, and stated therein that his loathing of all

foreigners was so great that he longed to eat their flesh and sleep on their skins.

The guiding spirit of the movement, Sun Yatsen, is a native of Kuangtung, where he was born, not very far

from Canton, in 1866. After some early education in Honolulu, he became a student at the College of

Medicine, Kongkong, where he took his diploma in 1892. But his chief aim in life soon became a political

one, and he determined to get rid of the Manchus. He organized a Young China party in Canton, and in 1895

made an attempt to seize the city. The plot failed, and fifteen out of the sixteen conspirators were arrested and

executed; Sun Yatsen alone escaped. A year later, he was in London, preparing himself for further efforts by

the study of Western forms of government, a very large reward being offered by the Chinese Government for

his body, dead or alive. During his stay there he was decoyed into the Chinese Legation, and imprisoned in an

upper room, from which he would have been hurried away to China, probably as a lunatic, to share the fate of

his fifteen fellowconspirators, but for the assistance of a woman who had been told off to wait upon him. To

her he confided a note addressed to Dr Cantlie, a personal friend of long standing, under whom he had

studied medicine in Hongkong; and she handed this to her husband, employed as waiter in the Legation, by

whom it was safely delivered. He thus managed to communicate with the outer world; Lord Salisbury

More a revolutionary than ever, he soon set to work to collect funds which flowed in freely from Chinese

sources in all quarters of the world. At last, in September 1911, the train was fired, beginning with the

province of Ss{u}ch`uan, and within an incredibly short space of time, half China was ablaze. By the middle

of October the Manchus were beginning to feel that a great crisis was at hand, and the Regent was driven to

recall Yuan Shihk`ai, whom he had summarily dismissed from office two years before, on the conventional

plea that Yuan was suffering from a bad leg, but really out of revenge for his treachery to the late Emperor,

which had brought about the latter's arrest and practical deposition by the old Empress Dowager in 1898.

To this summons Yuan slily replied that he could not possibly leave home just then, as his leg was not yet

well enough for him to be able to travel, meaning, of course, to gain time, and be in a position to dictate his

own terms. On the 30th October, when it was already too late, the baby Emperor, reigning under the

"I have reigned for three years, and have always acted conscientiously in the interests of the people, but I

have not employed men properly, not having political skill. I have employed too many nobles in political

positions, which contravenes constitutionalism. On railway matters someone whom I trusted fooled me, and

thus public opinion was opposed. When I urged reform, the officials and gentry seized the opportunity to

embezzle. When old laws are abolished, high officials serve their own ends. Much of the people's money has

been taken, but nothing to benefit the people has been achieved. On several occasions edicts have

promulgated laws, but none of them have been obeyed. People are grumbling, yet I do not know; disasters

"The Ss{u}ch`uan trouble first occurred; the Wuch`ang rebellion followed; now alarming reports come

from Shansi and Hunan. In Canton and Kiangsi riots appear. The whole empire is seething. The minds of the

people are perturbed. The spirits of our nine late emperors are unable properly to enjoy sacrifices, while it is

"All these are my own fault, and hereby I announce to the world that I swear to reform, and, with our soldiers

and people, to carry out the constitution faithfully, modifying legislation, developing the interests of the

people, and abolishing their hardshipsall in accordance with the wishes and interests of the people. Old

Nowhere else in the world is the belief that Fortune has a wheel which in the long run never fails to "turn and

lower the proud," so prevalent or so deeplyrooted as in China. "To prosperity," says the adage, "must

succeed decay,"a favourite theme around which the novelist delights to weave his romance. This may

perhaps account for the tame resistance of the Manchus to what they recognized as inevitable. They had

enjoyed a good span of power, quite as lengthy as that of any dynasty of modern times, and now they felt that

their hour had struck. To borrow another phrase, "they had come in with the roar of a tiger, to disappear like

On November 3, certain regulations were issued by the National Assembly as the necessary basis upon which

a constitution could be raised. The absolute veto of the Emperor was now withdrawn, and it was expressly

stated that Imperial decrees were not to override the law, though even here we find the addition of "except

in the event of immediate necessity." The first clause of this document was confined to the following

On November 8, Yuan Shihk`ai was appointed Prime Minister, and on December 3, the new Empress

"The Regent has verbally memorialized the Empress Dowager, saying that he has held the Regency for three

years, and his administration has been unpopular, and that constitutional government has not been

consummated. Thus complications arose, and people's hearts were broken, and the country thrown into a state

of turmoil. Hence one man's mismanagement has caused the nation to suffer miserably. He regrets his

repentance is already too late, and feels that if he continues in power his commands will soon be disregarded.

He wept and prayed to resign the regency, expressing the earnest intention of abstaining in the future from

politics. I, the Empress Dowager, living within the palace, am ignorant of the state of affairs but I know that

rebellion exists and fighting is continuing, causing disasters everywhere, while the commerce of friendly

nations suffers. I must enquire into the circumstances and find a remedy. The Regent is honest, though

ambitious and unskilled in politics. Being misled, he has harmed the people, and therefore his resignation is

accepted. The Regents seal is cancelled. Let the Regent receive fifty thousand taels annually from the

Imperial household allowances, and hereafter the Premier and the Cabinet will control appointments and

administration. Edicts are to be sealed with the Emperor's seal. I will lead the Emperor to conduct audiences.

The guardianship of the holy person of the Emperor, who is of tender age, is a special responsibility. As the

time is critical, the princes and nobles must observe the Ministers, who have undertaken a great

responsibility, and be loyal and help the country and people, who now must realize that the Court does not

object to the surrender of the power vested in the throne. Let the people preserve order and continue business,

On January 1, 1912, Sun Yatsen entered the republican capital, Nanking, and received a salute of

twentyone guns. He assumed the presidency of the provisional government, swearing allegiance, and taking

an oath to dethrone the Manchus, restore peace, and establish a government based upon the people's will.

These objects accomplished, he was prepared to resign his office, thus enabling the people to elect a president

of a united China. The first act of the provisional government was to proclaim a new calendar forthwith,

"To all friendly nations,Greeting. Hitherto irremediable suppression of the individual qualities and the

national aspirations of the people having arrested the intellectual, moral, and material development of China,

the aid of revolution was invoked to extirpate the primary cause. We now proclaim the consequent overthrow

of the despotic sway of the Manchu dynasty, and the establishment of a republic. The substitution of a

republic for a monarchy is not the fruit of transient passion, but the natural outcome of a longcherished

desire for freedom, contentment, and advancement. We Chinese people, peaceful and lawabiding, have not

waged war except in selfdefence. We have borne our grievance for two hundred and sixtyseven years with

patience and forbearance. We have endeavoured by peaceful means to redress our wrongs, secure liberty, and

ensure progress; but we failed. Oppressed beyond human endurance, we deemed it our inalienable right, as

well as a sacred duty, to appeal to arms to deliver ourselves and our posterity from the yoke to which we have

for so long been subjected. For the first time in history an inglorious bondage is transformed into inspiring

freedom. The policy of the Manchus has been one of unequivocal seclusion and unyielding tyranny. Beneath

it we have bitterly suffered. Now we submit to the free peoples of the world the reasons justifying the

revolution and the inauguration of the present government. Prior to the usurpation of the throne by the

Manchus the land was open to foreign intercourse, and religious tolerance existed, as is shown by the writings

of Marco Polo and the inscription on the Nestorian tablet at Hsian Fu. Dominated by ignorance and

selfishness, the Manchus closed the land to the outer world, and plunged the Chinese into a state of benighted

mentality calculated to operate inversely to their natural talents, thus committing a crime against humanity

and the civilized nations which it is almost impossible to extirpate. Actuated by a desire for the perpetual

subjugation of the Chinese, and a vicious craving for aggrandizement and wealth, the Manchus have

governed the country to the lasting injury and detriment of the people, creating privileges and monopolies,

erecting about themselves barriers of exclusion, national custom, and personal conduct, which have been

rigorously maintained for centuries. They have levied irregular and hurtful taxes without the consent of the

people, and have restricted foreign trade to treaty ports. They have placed the likin embargo on merchandise,

obstructed internal commerce, retarded the creation of industrial enterprises, rendered impossible the

development of natural resources, denied a regular system of impartial administration of justice, and inflicted

cruel punishment on persons charged with offences, whether innocent or guilty. They have connived at

official corruption, sold offices to the highest bidder, subordinated merit to influence, rejected the most

reasonable demands for better government, and reluctantly conceded socalled reforms under the most urgent

pressure, promising without any intention of fulfilling. They have failed to appreciate the anguishcausing

lessons taught them by foreign Powers, and in process of years have brought themselves and our people

beneath the contempt of the world. A remedy of these evils will render possible the entrance of China into the

family of nations. We have fought and have formed a government. Lest our good intentions should be

misunderstood, we publicly and unreservedly declare the following to be our promises:

"The treaties entered into by the Manchus before the date of the revolution, will be continually effective to

the time of their termination. Any and all treaties entered into after the commencement of the revolution will

be repudiated. Foreign loans and indemnities incurred by the Manchus before the revolution will be

acknowledged. Payments made by loans incurred by the Manchus after its commencement will be repudiated.

Concessions granted to nations and their nationals before the revolution will be respected. Any and all

granted after it will be repudiated. The persons and property of foreign nationals within the jurisdiction of the

republic will be respected and protected. It will be our constant aim and firm endeavour to build on a stable

and enduring foundation a national structure compatible with the potentialities of our longneglected country.

We shall strive to elevate the people to secure peace and to legislate for prosperity. Manchus who abide

peacefully in the limits of our jurisdiction will be accorded equality, and given protection.

"We will remodel the laws, revise the civil, criminal, commercial, and mining codes, reform the finances,

abolish restrictions on trade and commerce, and ensure religious toleration and the cultivation of better

relations with foreign peoples and governments than have ever been maintained before. It is our earnest hope

that those foreign nationals who have been steadfast in their sympathy will bind more firmly the bonds of

friendship between us, and will bear in patience with us the period of trial confronting us and our

reconstruction work, and will aid the consummation of the farreaching plans, which we are about to

undertake, and which they have long vainly been urging upon our people and our country.

"With this message of peace and goodwill the republic cherishes the hope of being admitted into the family

of nations, not merely to share its rights and privileges, but to cooperate in the great and noble task of

The next step was to displace the threecornered Dragon flag, itself of quite modern origin, in favour of a

new republican emblem. For this purpose was designed a flag of five stripes,yellow, red, blue, white,

black,arranged at right angles to the flagstaff in the above order, and intended to represent the five

racesChinese, Manchus, Mongols, Tibetan, Mussulmansgathered together under one rule.

On February 12, three important edicts were issued. In the first, the babyemperor renounces the throne, and

approves the establishment of a provisional republican government, under the direction of Yuan Shih k`ai,

in conjunction with the existing provisional government at Nanking. In the second, approval is given to the

terms under which the emperor retires, the chief item of which was an annual grant of four million taels.

Other more sentimental privileges included the retention of a bodyguard, and the continuance of sacrifices to

the spirits of the departed Manchu emperors. In the third, the people are exhorted to preserve order and abide

Simultaneously with the publication of these edicts, the last scene of the drama was enacted near Nanking, at

the mausoleum of the first sovereign of the Ming dynasty (A.D. 13681644). Sun Yatsen, as provisional

first president, accompanied by his Cabinet and a numerous escort, proceeded thither, and after offering

sacrifice as usual, addressed, though a secretary, the following oration to the tablet representing the names of

"Of old the Sung dynasty became effete, and the Kitan Tartars and Yuan dynasty Mongols seized the

occasion to throw this domain of China into confusion, to the fierce indignation of gods and men. It was then

that your Majesty, our founder, arose in your wrath from obscurity, and destroyed those monsters of iniquity,

so that the ancient glory was won again. In twelve years you consolidated the Imperial sway, and the

dominions of the Great Yu were purged of pollution and cleansed from the noisome Tartar. Often in history

has our noble Chinese race been enslaved by petty frontier barbarians from the north. Never have such

glorious triumphs been won over them as your Majesty achieved. But your descendants were degenerate, and

failed to carry on your glorious heritage; they entrusted the reins of government to bad men, and pursued a

shortsighted policy. In this way they encouraged the ambitions of the eastern Tartar savages (Manchus), and

fostered the growth of their power. They were thus able to take advantage of the presence of rebels to invade

and possess themselves of your sacred capital. From a bad eminence of glory basely won, they lorded it over

this most holy soil, and our beloved China's rivers and hills were defiled by their corrupting touch, while the

people fell victims to the headman's axe or the avenging sword. Although worthy patriots and faithful

subjects of your dynasty crossed the mountain ranges into Canton and the far south, in the hope of redeeming

the glorious Ming tradition from utter ruin, and of prolonging a thread of the old dynasty's life, although men

gladly perished one after the other in the forlorn attempt, heaven's wrath remained unappeased, and mortal

designs failed to achieve success. A brief and melancholy page was added to the history of your dynasty, and

"As time went on, the law became ever harsher, and the meshes of its inexorable net grew closer. Alas for our

Chinese people, who crouched in corners and listened with startled ears, deprived of power of utterance, and

with tongues glued to their mouths, for their lives were past saving. Those others usurped titles to fictitious

clemency and justice, while prostituting the sacred doctrines of the sages: whom they affected to honour.

They stifled public opinion in the empire in order to force acquiescence in their tyranny. The Manchu

despotism became so thorough and so embracing that they were enabled to prolong their dynasty's existence

by cunning wiles. In Yung Cheng's reign the Hunanese Chang Hsi and Tseng Ching preached sedition against

the dynasty in their native province, while in Chia Ch`ing's reign the palace conspiracy of Lin Ching

dismayed that monarch in his capital. These events were followed by rebellions in Ss{u}ch`uan and Shensi;

under Tao Kuang and his successor the T`aip`ings started their campaign from a remote Kuangsi village.

Although these worthy causes were destined to ultimate defeat, the gradual trend of the national will became

manifest. At last our own era dawned, the sun of freedom had risen, and a sense of the rights of the race

animated men's minds. In addition the Manchu bandits could not even protect themselves. Powerful foes

encroached upon the territory of China, and the dynasty parted with our sacred soil to enrich neighbouring

nations. The Chinese race of today may be degenerate, but it is descended from mighty men of old. How

should it endure that the spirits of the great dead should be insulted by the everlasting visitation of this

"Then did patriots arise like a whirlwind, or like a cloud which is suddenly manifested in the firmament. They

began with the Canton insurrection; then Peking was alarmed by Wu Yueh's bomb (1905). A year later Hsu

Hsilin fired his bullet into the vitals of the Manchu robberchief, En Ming, Governor of Anhui. Hsiung

Chengchi raised the standard of liberty on the Yangtsze's banks; rising followed rising all over the empire,

until the secret plot against the Regent was discovered, and the abortive insurrection in Canton startled the

capital. One failure followed another, but other brave men took the place of the heroes who died, and the

empire was born again to life. The bandit Manchu court was shaken with pallid terror, until the cicada threw

off its shell in a glorious regeneration, and the present crowning triumph was achieved. The patriotic crusade

started in Wuch`ang; the four corners of the empire responded to the call. Coast regions nobly followed in

their wake, and the Yangtsze was won back by our armies. The region south of the Yellow River was lost to

the Manchus, and the north manifested its sympathy with our cause. An earthquake shook the barbarian court

of Peking, and it was smitten with a paralysis. Today it has at last restored the government to the Chinese

people, and the five races of China may dwell together in peace and mutual trust. Let us joyfully give thanks.

How could we have attained this measure of victory had not your Majesty's soul in heaven bestowed upon us

your protecting influence? I have heard say that the triumphs of Tartar savages over our China were destined

never to last longer than a hundred years. But the reign of these Manchus endured unto double, ay, unto

treble, that period. Yet Providence knows the appointed hour, and the moment comes at last. We are initiating

the example to Eastern Asia of a republican form of government; success comes early or late to those who

strive, but the good are surely rewarded in the end. Why then should we repine today that victory has tarried

"I have heard that in the past many wouldbe deliverers of their country have ascended this lofty mound

wherein is your sepulchre. It has served to them as a holy inspiration. As they looked down upon the

surrounding rivers and upward to the hills, under an alien sway, they wept in the bitterness of their hearts, but

today their sorrow is turned into joy. The spiritual influences of your grave at Nanking have come once

more into their own. The dragon crouches in majesty as of old, and the tiger surveys his domain and his

ancient capital. Everywhere a beautiful repose doth reign. Your legions line the approaches to the sepulchre;

a noble host stands expectant. Your people have come here today to inform your Majesty of the final

victory. May this lofty shrine wherein you rest gain fresh lustre from today's event, and may your example

inspire your descendants in the times which are to come. Spirit! Accept this offering!"

We are told by an eyewitness, Dr Lim Boonkeng, that when this ceremony was over, Sun Yatsen turned

to address the assembly. "He was speechless with emotion for a minute; then he briefly declared how, after

two hundred and sixty years, the nation had again recovered her freedom; and now that the curse of Manchu

domination was removed, the free peoples of a united republic could pursue their rightful aspirations. Three

cheers for the president were now called for, and the appeal was responded to vigorously. The cheering was

taken up by the crowds below, and then carried miles away by the thousands of troops, to mingle with the

The Sheng wu chi (a history of the earlier wars under the Manchu dynasty). 1822.