SHUN CHIH
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 San-kuei had therefore no alternative but to
acknowledge the Manchus definitively 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 their feet, in accordance with ancient custom.
Wu San-kuei was loaded with honours, among others with a triple-eyed
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 triple-eyed, 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 of Yünnan and Ss[)u]ch'uan.
There we shall meet him again.
The new Emperor, the ninth son of Abkhai, best known by his
year-title 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 far-reaching
political purport. The members of the Han-lin 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 peace; (6)
to disband the army, and (7) to punish corrupt officials.
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 One-Eyed 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 House of Ming should be put forward to resist
the rebels.
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 sought
sanctuary in monasteries, where they joined the Buddhist priesthood.
One more early attempt to re-establish 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 Nan-yang 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 Yünnan, from which he was finally expelled by Wu
San-kuei. He next fled to Burma, where in 1661 he was handed over to
Wu San-kuei, who had followed in pursuit; and he finally strangled
himself in the capital of Yünnan. 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
"An-tun" = Marcus Aurelius _Anton_inus, which reached China in A.D.
166. But because the tribute offered in this case contained no
jewels, consisting merely of ivory, rhinoceros-horn, tortoise-shell,
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 bought a trumpery collection of tribute
articles on the journey.
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 property, is a
story not altogether without romance.
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 waste of 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
granted.
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
conquered 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 art--actually one of the
six fine arts of China--by the aid of which their ancestors had
passed from the state of a petty tribal community to possession of
the greatest empire in the world.
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
Mings, and thus helped to establish the Great Pure dynasty.
One of the first cares to the authorities of a newly-established
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. 618-905); 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 revision, and (2) a body of
case-law 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 application of common sense.
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 breakfast-table, 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 one season from Foochow
alone.