colors being highly durable, while the glazing of the windows was so
neatly done that they were transparent as crystal. In the rear of the
palace were arranged the treasure-rooms, which contained a great store
of gold and silver bullion, pearls and precious stones, and valuable
plate. Here also were the family apartments of the emperor and his
wives. Opposite the grand palace stood another, very similar in design,
where dwelt his eldest son, the heir to the throne.
On the north side, between the palace and the adjoining wall, rose an
artificial mound of earth, a hundred paces high and a mile in circuit at
its base. Its slopes were planted with beautiful evergreen trees, which
had been transported thither, when well grown, by the aid of elephants.
This perpetual verdure gave it the appropriate name of the Green Mount.
An ornamental pavilion crowned the summit, which, in harmony with the
sides, was also made green. The view of the mount, with its ever-verdant
trees and the richly decorated building on its summit, formed a scene
delightful to the eyes of the emperor and the other inmates of the
palace. This hill still exists, and is yet known by its original title
of Kinshan, or the Green Mount.
The excavation made to obtain the earth for the mount was filled with
water from a small rivulet, forming a lake from which the cattle drank,
its overflow being carried by an aqueduct along the foot of the Green
Mount to fill another great and very deep excavation, made in the same
manner as the former. This was used as a fish-pond, containing fish in
large variety and number, sufficient to keep the table of the emperor
constantly supplied. Iron or copper gratings at the entrance and exit
prevented the escape of the fish along the stream. The pond was also
stocked with swans and other aquatic birds, and a bridge across its
width led from one palace to the other.
Such was the palace. The city was correspondingly great and prosperous,
and had an immense trade. A thousand pack-horses and carriages laden
with raw silk daily entered its gates, and within its workshops a vast
quantity of silk and gold tissues was produced. As Hoangti made himself
famous by the Great Wall, so Kublai won fame by the far more useful work
of the Great Canal, which was largely due to his fostering care, and has
ever since been of inestimable value to China, while the Wall never kept
out a Tartar who strongly desired to get over its threatening but
useless height.
Having said so much about the conditions of palace and capital, it may
be of interest to extract from Polo's narrative some account of the
method pursued in war during Kublai's reign. The Venetian attended a
campaign made by the emperor against one of his kinsmen named Nayan, who
had under him so many cities and provinces that he was able to bring
into the field an army of four hundred thousand horse. His desire for
sovereignty led him to throw off his allegiance, the more so as another
rebel against the Grand Khan promised to aid him with a hundred thousand
horsemen.
News of this movement soon reached Kublai, and he at once ordered the
collection of all the troops within ten days' march of Kambalu,
amounting in all to four hundred and sixty thousand men. By forced
marches these were brought to Nayan's territory in twenty-five days,
reaching there before the rebel prince had any warning of their
approach. Kublai, having given his army two days' rest, and consulted
his astrologers, who promised him victory, marched his army up the hill
which had concealed them from the enemy, the great array being suddenly
displayed to the astonished eyes of Nayan and his men.
Kublai took his station in a large wooden castle, borne on the backs of
four elephants, whose bodies were protected with coverings of thick
leather hardened by fire, over which were spread housings of cloth of
gold. His army was disposed in three grand divisions, each division
consisting of ten battalions of horsemen each ten thousand strong, and
armed with the great Mongol bow. The right and left divisions were
disposed so as to outflank the army of Nayan. In front of each battalion
were stationed five hundred infantry, who, whenever the cavalry made a
show of flight, were trained to mount behind them, and to alight again
when they returned to the charge, their duty being to kill with their
lances the horses of the enemy.
As soon as the order of battle was arranged, wind instruments of various
kinds and in great numbers were sounded, while the host of warriors
broke into song, as was the Tartar practice before engaging in battle.
The battle began with a signal from the cymbals and drums, the sound of
the instruments and the singing growing deafening. At the signal both
wings advanced, a cloud of arrows filling the air, while on both sides
numbers of men and horses fell. Their arrows discharged, the warriors
engaged in close combat with lances, swords, and iron-shod maces, while
the cries of men and horses were such as to inspire terror or rouse all
hearers to the battle-rage.
For a long time the fortune of the day remained undecided, Nayan's
people fighting with great zeal and courage. But at length their leader,
seeing that he was almost surrounded, attempted to save himself by
flight. He was made prisoner, however, and brought before Kublai, who
ordered him to be put to death on the spot. This was done by enclosing
him between two carpets, which were violently shaken until the spirit
departed from the body, the dignity of the imperial family requiring
that the sun and the air should not witness the shedding of the blood of
one who belonged to the royal stock.
These extracts from the narrative of the Venetian traveller may be fitly
followed by a portion of Coleridge's remarkable dream-poem on the
subject of Kublai's palace. The poet, having been reading from
"Purchas's Pilgrimage" a brief description of the palace of the Great
Khan,--not the one above described, but a pleasure-retreat in another
section of his dominions,--fell asleep, and his dreams took the form of
an extended poem on the subject. On waking he hastened to write it down,
but was interrupted by a visitor in the midst of his task, and
afterwards found himself unable to recall another line of the poem, only
a shadowy image of which remained in his mind. The part saved is
strangely imaginative.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced,
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail;
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war.
_THE EXPULSION OF THE MONGOLS._
While the descendants of Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor, still held the
reins of power in China, there was born in humble life in that empire a
boy upon whose shoulders fortune had laid the task of driving the
foreigners from the soil and restoring to the Chinese their own again.
Tradition says that at his birth the room was several times filled with
a bright light. However that be, the boy proved to be gifted by nature
with a fine presence, lofty views, and an elevated soul, qualities sure
to tell in the troubled times that were at hand. When he was seventeen
years of age the deaths of his father and mother left him a penniless
orphan, so destitute of means that he felt obliged to take the vows of a
priest and enter the monastery of Hoangkiose. But the country was now in
disorder, rebels were in the field against the Mongol rule, and the
patriotic and active-minded boy could not long endure the passive life
of a bonze. Leaving the monastery, he entered the service of one of the
rebel leaders as a private soldier, and quickly showed such enterprise
and daring that his chief not only made him an officer in his force but
gave him his daughter in marriage.
The time was ripe for soldiers of fortune. The mantle of Kublai had not
fallen on the shoulders of any of his successors, who proved weak and
degenerate monarchs, losing the firm hold which the great conqueror had
kept upon the realm. It was in the year 1345 that Choo Yuen Chang, to
give the young soldier his full name, joined the rebel band. Chunti, one
of the weakest of the Mongol monarchs, was now upon the throne, and on
every side it was evident that the empire of Kublai was in danger of
falling to pieces under this incapable ruler. Fortune had brought its
protege into the field at a critical time.
Choo was not long in proving himself "every inch a soldier." Wherever he
fought he was victorious. In a year's time he had under him seven
hundred men of his own enlistment, and was appointed the lieutenant of
his chief. Soon after the latter died, and Choo took his place at the
head of the rebel band. In it enlisted another young man, Suta by name,
who was before many years to become China's greatest general and the
bulwark of a new dynasty.
Choo was now able to prove his powers on a larger scale. One of his
first exploits was the capture of the town of Hoyan, where he manifested
a high order of courage and political wisdom in saving the inhabitants
from rapine by his ill-paid and hungry soldiers. Here was a degree of
self-restraint and power of command which none of the Chinese leaders
had shown, and which seemed to point out Choo as the man destined to win
in the coming struggle for a rejuvenated China.
Meanwhile a rival came into the field who for a time threw Choo's
fortunes into the shade. This was a young man who was offered to the
people as a descendant of the dynasty of the Sungs, the emperors whom
the Mongol invaders had dethroned. His very name proved a centre of
attraction for the people, whose affection for the old royal house was
not dead, and they gathered in multitudes beneath his banner. But his
claim also aroused the fear of the Mongols, and a severe and stubborn
struggle set in, which ended in the overthrow of the youthful Sung and
the seeming restoration of the Mongol authority. Yet in reality the war
had only cleared the way for a far more dangerous adversary than the
defeated claimant of the throne.
Masked by this war, the strength and influence of Choo had steadily
grown, and in 1356 he made a daring and masterly move in the capture of
the city of Nanking, which gave him control of some of the wealthiest
provinces of the land. Here he showed the same moderation as before,
preserving the citizens from plunder and outrage, and proving that his
only purpose was to restore to China her old native government. With
remarkable prudence, skill, and energy he strengthened his position.
"The time has now come to drive the foreigners out of China," he said,
in a proclamation that was scattered far and wide and brought hosts of
the young and daring to his ranks. Elsewhere the so-called Chinese
patriots were no better than brigands, all the horrors of war descending
upon the districts they occupied and the cities which fell into their
hands. But where Choo ruled discipline and security prevailed, and as
far as his power reached a firm and orderly government existed.
Meanwhile the Mongols had a host of evils with which to contend. Rebel
leaders had risen in various quarters, some of them making more progress
than Choo, but winning the execration rather than the love of the people
by their rapine and violence. On the contrary, his power grew slowly but
surely, various minor leaders joining him, among them the pirate Fangkue
Chin, whose exploits had made him a hero to the people of the valley of
the Kiang. The events of the war that followed were too many to be here
detailed. Suffice it to say that the difficulties of the Mongol emperor
gradually increased. He was obliged to meet in battle a Mongol pretender
to his throne; Corea rose in arms and destroyed an army sent to subdue
it; and Chahan Timour, Chunti's ablest general, fell victim to an
assassin. Troubles were growing thick around his throne.
In the year 1366, Choo, after vanquishing some leaders who threatened
his position, among them his late pirate ally Fangkue Chin, saw that the
time had arrived for a vigorous effort to expel the foreign rulers, and
set out at the head of his army for a general campaign, at the same time
proclaiming to the people that the period was at hand for throwing off
the Mongol yoke, which for nearly a century had weighed heavily upon
their necks. Three armies left Nanking, two of them being sent to subdue
three of the provinces of the south, a result which was achieved without
a blow, the people everywhere rising and the Mongol garrisons vanishing
from sight,--whether by death or by flight history fails to relate. The
third army, under Suta, Choo's favorite general, marched towards Peking,
the Mongol garrisons, discouraged by their late reverses, retreating as
it advanced.
At length the great Mongol capital was reached. Within its walls reigned
confusion and alarm. Chunti, panic-stricken at the rapid march of his
enemies, could not be induced to fight for his last hold upon the empire
of China, but fled on the night before the assault was made. Suta at
once ordered the city to be taken by storm, and though the Mongol
garrison made a desperate defence, they were cut down to a man, and the
victorious troops entered the Tartar stronghold in triumph. But Suta,
counselled by Choo to moderation, held his army firmly in hand, no
outrages were permitted, and the lives of all the Mongols who submitted
were spared.
The capture of Peking and the flight of Chunti marked the end of the
empire of the Mongols in China. War with them still went on, but the
country at large was freed from their yoke, after nearly a century of
submission to Tartar rule. Elsewhere the vast empire of Genghis still
held firm. Russia lay under the vassalage of the khans. Central and
Southern Asia trembled at the Mongol name. And at the very time that the
Chinese were rising against and expelling their invaders, Timour, or
Tamerlane, the second great conqueror of his race, was setting out from
Central Asia on that mighty career of victory that emulated the deeds
of the founder of the Mongol empire. Years afterwards Timour, after
having drowned Southern Asia in a sea of blood, returned to Samarcand,
where, in 1415, he ordered the collection of a great army for the
invasion of China, with which he proposed to revenge the wrongs of his
compatriots. The army was gathered; it began its march; the mountains of
Khokand were reached and passed; threats of the coming danger reached
and frightened China; but on the march the grim old conqueror died, and
his great expedition came to an end. All that reached China to represent
the mighty Timour was his old war-horse, which was sent as a present
four years afterwards when an embassy from Central Asia reached Peking.
With the fall of the Mongols in China the native rule was restored, but
not with it the old dynasty. Choo, the conqueror, and a man whose
ability and nobleness of mind had been remarkably displayed, was
everywhere looked upon as the Heaven-chosen successor to the throne, the
boy who had begun his career as a penniless orphan having risen through
pure power of intellect and loftiness of soul to the highest position in
the realm. He was crowned emperor under the title of Hongwou, and
instituted the Ming dynasty, which held the throne of China until three
centuries afterwards, when another strange turn in the tide of affairs
again overthrew Chinese rule and brought a new dynasty of Tartar
emperors to the throne.
As regards the reign of Hongwou, it may here be said that he proved one
of the ablest monarchs China ever knew, ruling his people with a just
and strong hand, and, by the aid of his able general Suta, baffling
every effort of the Mongols to regain their lost dominion. Luxury in the
imperial administration was brought to an end, the public money was used
for its legitimate purpose, and even some of the costly palaces which
the Mongol emperors had built were destroyed, that the people might
learn that he proposed to devote himself to their good and not to his
own pleasure. Steps were taken for the encouragement of learning, the
literary class was elevated in position, the celebrated Hanlin College
was restored, and the great book of laws was revised. Schools were
opened everywhere, orphanages and hospitals were instituted, and all
that could be was done for the relief of the sick and the poor.
All this was performed in the midst of bitter and unceasing wars, which
for nearly twenty years kept Suta almost constantly in the field. The
Mongols were still strong in the northwest, Chungti continued to claim
imperial power, and the army was kept steadily employed, marching from
victory to victory under the able leadership of Suta, who in his whole
career scarcely learned the meaning of defeat. His very appearance on
the field on more than one occasion changed the situation from doubt to
victory. In time the Mongols were driven beyond the Great Wall, the
ex-emperor died, and the steppes were invaded by a great army, though
not a successful one, Suta meeting here his first and only reverse. The
war ended with giving the Chinese full control of all the cultivated
country, while the Tartars held their own in the desert. This done,
Suta returned to enjoy in peace the honors he had won, and soon after
died, at the age of fifty-four years, thirty of which had been spent in
war.
The death of the great general did not leave China free from warlike
commotion. There were rebellious risings both in the south and in the
north, but they all fell under the power of Hongwou's victorious arms,
the last success being the dispersal of a final Mongol raid. The closing
eight years of the emperor's reign were spent in peace, and in 1397 he
died, after an administration of thirty years, in which he had freed
China from the last dregs of the Mongol power, and spread peace and
prosperity throughout the realm.
_THE RISE OF THE MANCHUS._
Twice had a Tartar empire been established in China, that of the Kin
dynasty in the north, and that of their successors, the Mongols, over
the whole country. A third and more permanent Tartar dynasty, that of
the Manchus, was yet to come. With the striking story of the rise and
progress of these new conquerors we are now concerned.
In the northeast of China, beyond the Great Wall and bordering on Corea,
lies the province of Liautung. Northward from this to the Amur River
extends the eastern section of the steppes, known on modern maps as
Manchuria. From these broad wilds the Kins had advanced to their
conquest of Northern China. To them they fled for safety from the Mongol
arms, and here lost their proud name of Kin and resumed their older and
humbler one of Niuche. For some five centuries they remained here
unnoticed and undisturbed, broken up into numerous small clans, none of
much strength and importance. Of these clans, which were frequently in a
state of hostility to one another, there is only one of interest, that
of the Manchus.
The original seat of this small Tartar clan lay not far north of the
Chinese border, being on the Soodsu River, about thirty miles east of
the Chinese city of Moukden. Between the Soodsu and Jiaho streams, and
south of the Long White Mountains, lies the valley of Hootooala, a
location of rugged and picturesque scenery. This valley, protected on
three sides by water and on the fourth by a lofty range of mountains,
the whole not more than twelve miles long, formed the cradle of the
Manchu race, the narrow realm from which they were to emerge to victory
and empire. In a certain respect it resembled the native home of the
Mongols, but was far smaller and much nearer the Chinese frontier.
In this small and secluded valley appeared, about the middle of the
fourteenth century, when the emperor Hongwou was fighting with the
Mongols, a man named Aisin Gioro. Tradition attributes to him a
miraculous birth, while calumny asserts that he was a runaway Mongol;
but at any rate he became lord of Hootooala and ancestor of its race of
conquerors. Five generations from him came a chief named Huen, who ruled
over the same small state, and whose grandson, Noorhachu by name, born
in 1559, was the man upon whom the wonderful fortunes of the Manchus
were to depend. Like many other great conquerors, his appearance
predicted his career. "He had the dragon face and the phoenix eye; his
chest was enormous, his ears were large, and his voice had the tone of
the largest bell."
He began life like many of the heroes of folk-lore, his step-mother,
when he was nineteen years of age, giving him a small sum of money and
turning him out into the world to seek his fortune. She repented
afterwards, and bade him come home again or accept further aid, but the
proud youth refused to receive from her any assistance, and determined
to make his own way in the world.
Noorhachu first came into notice in 1583. In that year Haida, chief of a
small district south of Hootooala, made an attack, assisted by the
Chinese, on some neighboring clans. One of these was governed by a
relative of the old Manchu chief Huen, who, with his son and a small
force, hurried to his aid and helped him to defend his town. Haida and
his allies, finding the place too strong for them, enticed a part of the
garrison outside the walls, and then fell upon and treacherously
massacred them. Among the slain were Huen and his son.
This brutal murder left Noorhachu chief of his clan, and at the same
time filled him with a fierce desire for revenge, both upon Haida and
upon the Chinese. He was forced to bide his time, Haida gaining such
influence with his allies that he was appointed by them chief of all the
Niuche districts. This act only deepened the hatred of Noorhachu, who
found himself made one of the vassals of the murderer, while many of his
own people left him and attached themselves to the fortunes of Haida.
Fortunately for the youthful chief, the Chinese did not strongly support
their nominee, and Noorhachu pursued his rival so persistently that the
assassin did not feel safe even within his stockaded camp, but several
times retreated for safety into Liautung. The Chinese at length, tired
of supporting a man without the courage to defend himself, seized him
and handed him over to Noorhachu, who immediately put him to death.
The energy and success of Noorhachu in this scheme of vengeance gave him
a high reputation among the Niuche. He was still but twenty-seven years
of age, but had probably laid out his life-work, that of making himself
chief of a Niuche confederacy, and employing his subjects in an invasion
of Chinese soil. It is said that he had sworn to revenge his father's
death by the slaughter of two hundred thousand Chinese.
He began by building himself a stronghold. Selecting a site in the plain
where water was abundant, he built a town and surrounded it with a
triple wall. This done, he began the work of uniting the southern clans
under his sway, a task which proved easy, they being much impressed by
his victory over Haida. This peaceful progress was succeeded by a
warlike movement. In 1591 he suddenly invaded the district of
Yalookiang, which, taken by surprise, was forced to submit to his arms.