Here was a man who was not satisfied with petty feuds, but evidently had
higher objects in view. Roused by apprehension of danger, seven of the
neighboring chiefs gathered their forces, and with an army of thirty
thousand Niuche and Mongols invaded the territory of the daring young
leader. The odds against him seemed irresistible. He had but four
thousand men to oppose to this large force. But his men had been well
chosen and well trained, and they so vigorously resisted the onset of
the enemy that the principal Niuche chief was killed and the Mongol
leader forced to flee. At this juncture Noorhachu charged his foes with
such vigor that they were broken and put to flight, four thousand of
them being slain in the pursuit. A number of chiefs were taken
prisoners, while the spoils included several thousand horses and plaited
suits of armor, material of great value to the ambitious young victor.
Eight years passed before Noorhachu was ready for another move. Then he
conquered and annexed the fertile district of Hada, on the north. In
1607 he added to this the state of Hwifa, and in the following year that
of Woola. These conquests were preliminary to an invasion of Yeho, the
most powerful of the Niuche states. His first attack upon this important
district failed, and before repeating it he deemed it necessary to show
his strength by invading the Chinese province of Liautung. He had long
been preparing for this great enterprise. He had begun his military
career with a force of one hundred men, but had now an army forty
thousand strong, well drilled and disciplined men, provided with engines
of war, and of a race famed for courage and intrepidity. Their chief
weapon consisted of the formidable Manchu bow, while the horsemen wore
an armor of cotton-plaited mail which was proof against arrow or spear.
The invasion was preceded by a list of grievances drawn up against the
Chinese, which, instead of forwarding it to the Chinese court, Noorhachu
burnt in presence of his army, as an appeal to Heaven for the justice of
his cause.
The Chinese had supinely permitted this dangerous power to grow up among
their tributaries on the north. In truth, the Ming dynasty, which had
begun with the great Hongwou, had shared the fate of Chinese dynasties
in general, having fallen into decadence and decay. With a strong hand
at the imperial helm the Manchu invasion, with only a thinly settled
region to draw on for recruits, would have been hopeless. With a weak
hand no one could predict the result.
In 1618 the Manchus crossed their southern frontier and boldly set foot
on the soil of China, their movement being so sudden and unexpected that
the border town of Fooshun was taken almost without a blow. The army
sent to retake it was hurled back in defeat, and the strong town of
Tsingho was next besieged and captured. The progress of Noorhachu was
checked at this point by the clamor of his men, who were unwilling to
march farther while leaving the hostile state of Yeho in their rear. He
therefore led them back to their homes.
The Chinese were now thoroughly aroused. An army of more than one
hundred thousand men was raised and sent to attack Noorhachu in his
native realm. But it was weakly commanded and unwisely divided into
three unsupported sections, which the Manchus attacked and routed in
detail. The year's work was completed by the conquest and annexation of
Yeho, an event which added thirty thousand men to Noorhachu's resources
and completed the confederation of the Niuche clans, which had been his
original plan.
The old Chinese emperor was now near his life's end. But his last act
was one of his wisest ones, it being the appointment of Tingbi, a
leader of skill and resolution, to the command in Liautung. In a brief
time this energetic commander had placed the capital and the border
towns of the province in a state of defence and collected an army of one
hundred and eighty thousand men on the frontier. Two years sufficed to
make the province impregnable to Manchu attack. During this period of
energy Noorhachu wisely remained quiet. But the Chinese emperor died,
and was succeeded by his son, who quickly followed him to the grave. His
grandson, a boy of sixteen, succeeded, and the court enemies of Tingbi
now had him recalled and replaced by a man who had never seen a battle.
The result was what might have been expected. Noorhachu, who had been
waiting his opportunity, at once led his army across the borders (1621),
marching upon the strong town of Moukden, whose commandant, more brave
than wise, left the shelter of his walls to meet him in the field. The
result was a severe repulse, the Manchus entering the gates with the
fugitives and slaughtering the garrison in the streets. Three armies
were sent to retake Moukden, but were so vigorously dealt with that in a
few weeks less than half Tingbi's strong army remained. Liauyang, the
capital of the province, was next besieged and taken by storm, the
garrison falling almost to a man, among them Tingbi's incapable
successor meeting his death. No further resistance was made, the other
towns, with one exception, opened their gates, and in a brief time
Noorhachu completed the conquest of the province of Liautung.
Only one thing kept the Manchus from crossing the Great Wall and
invading the provinces beyond. This was the stronghold of Ningyuen,
which a Chinese officer named Chungwan had reinforced with a small
party, and which resolutely resisted all assaults. Noorhachu, not daring
to leave this fortified place in his rear, besieged it with a strong
army, making two desperate assaults upon its walls. But Chungwan,
assisted by some European cannon, whose noise proved more terrible to
the Manchus than their balls, held out so vigorously that for the first
time in his career the Manchu chief met with defeat. Disappointed and
sick at heart, he retraced his steps to Moukden, then his capital, there
to end his career, his death taking place in September, 1626.
Such was the adventurous life of the man who, while not conquering China
himself, made its conquest possible to his immediate successors, who
acknowledged his great deeds by giving him the posthumous title of
Emperor of China, the Manchu dynasty dating its origin back to 1616. His
son, Taitsong, who succeeded him, renewed the attack on Ningyuen, but
found the heroic Chungwan more than his match. A brilliant idea brought
him final success. Leaving the impregnable stronghold in his rear, he
suddenly marched to the Great Wall, which he crossed, and was far on the
road to Peking before Chungwan knew of his purpose. At once abandoning
the town, the Chinese general hurried southward, and, having the best
road, succeeded in reaching the capital in advance of the Manchus. But
he came only to his death. Tingbi, the one man feared by Noorhachu, had
been executed through the machinations of his enemies, and now Chungwan
suffered the same fate, Taitsong, not being able to defeat him in the
field, having succeeded in forming a plot against him in the palace.
But Peking, though in serious peril, was not taken. A truce was
arranged, and Taitsong drew off his troops--for reasons best known to
himself. He was soon back in China, but did not again attack Peking,
devoting himself to raids through the border provinces. In 1635 he
assumed the title of Emperor of China, in consequence of the seal of the
Mongol dynasty, which had been lost in Mongolia two centuries before,
being found and sent to him. But Ningyuen still held out, under an able
successor to Chungwan, and in September, 1643, this second of the Manchu
leaders came to his death. The conquest of China was reserved for a
later leader.
[Illustration: CHINESE GAMBLERS.]
_THE MANCHU CONQUEST OF CHINA._
Long years of misgovernment in China produced their natural result.
Evils stalked abroad while worthless emperors spent their days in luxury
at home. The land ceased to be governed, local rebellions broke out in a
dozen quarters, and the Manchu invasion was but one event in the series
of difficulties that environed the weakened throne. From the midst of
these small rebellions emerged a large one before which the Ming dynasty
trembled to its fall. Its leader, Li Tseching, was a peasant's son, who
had chosen the military career and quickly gained renown as a daring
horseman and skilful archer. In 1629 he appeared as a member of a band
of robbers, who were defeated by the troops, Li being one of the few to
escape. A year afterwards we hear of him as high in rank in a rebel band
almost large enough to be called an army. The leader dying after a few
years, Li succeeded him in command.
His progress to power was rapid, cunning and duplicity aiding him, for
often when in a dangerous situation he escaped by pretending a desire to
come to terms with the authorities. Other rebels rose, won victories,
and sank again; but Li held his own and steadily grew stronger, until,
in 1640, he was at the head of an army of nearly half a million of men
and in a position to aspire to the throne of Peking itself. Town after
town fell into his hands, frightful outrages being perpetrated in each,
for Li was a brigand in grain and merciless at heart. The efforts of the
emperor to overthrow him proved futile, the imperial army being sent
against him in four divisions, which he attacked and defeated in detail.
The court had learned nothing from the failure of similar tactics in the
war with Noorhachu. After this pronounced success Li laid siege to
Kaifong, an important city which had once been the capital of China. He
was twice repulsed, but a third time returned to the siege, finally
succeeding through a rise in the Hoang-ho, which washed away the
defences of the city, drowned thousands of its people, and left it at
the mercy of the besieging troops.
Li's next effort was made against the city of Tunkwan, the most
formidable of Chinese fortresses. Situated in the mountains between the
provinces of Honan and Shensi, it was strong by position, while the
labor of centuries had added enormously to its strength. Here fortune
aided him, his army following into the city a fugitive force which had
been beaten outside. By this time the rebel chief had made himself so
dreadful a record by the massacres and outrages committed in conquered
cities that terror began to fill the minds of garrisons, and towns and
cities opened their gates to him without venturing resistance.
No longer a mere rebel chief, but master of more than a third of China,
and feared through all the rest, Li now assumed the title of emperor,
and, capturing every stronghold as he advanced, began his march upon
Peking, then a scene of unimaginable terror and confusion. The emperor,
who had hesitated to flee, found flight impossible when Li's great army
invested the capital. Defence was equally impossible, and the unhappy
weakling, after slaying all the women of the palace, ended the career of
the Ming dynasty by hanging himself. Li was quickly master of the city,
where the ancestral temple of the Mings was plundered and levelled with
the ground, and all the kinsmen of the royal family he could seize were
summarily put to death. Thus was completed the first phase of a
remarkable career, in which in a few years the member of a band of
robbers became master of the most populous empire of the earth. The
second phase was to be one of a decline in fortune still more rapid than
had been the growth of the first. And with it is connected the story of
the Manchu invasion and conquest of China.
We have seen in the preceding tale how the heroic Chungwan held the
fortress of Ningyuen against all the efforts of Noorhachu, the Manchu
chief. After his death Wou Sankwei, a man of equal valor and skill,
repelled Taitsong and his Manchus from its walls. This city, with the
surrounding territory, was all of Northern China that had not submitted
to Li, who now made earnest efforts by lavish promises to win Wou over
to his side. But in the latter he had to deal with a man who neither
feared nor trusted him, and to whose mind it seemed preferable that even
the Tartars should become lords of the empire than that it should be
left to the mercy of a brutal robber like Li Tseching.
Wou's position was a delicate and difficult one. The old dynasty was at
an end. Those loyal to it were powerless. He had no means of his own
enabling him to contend against the great force of Li. He must surrender
or call in foreigners to his aid. In this dilemma he made overtures to
the Manchus, asking their aid to put down the rebellion and restore
tranquillity to the empire,--seemingly with the thought that they might
be dispensed with when no longer of use.
Not for a moment did the Manchu leaders hesitate to avail themselves of
the promising offer. The man who for years had stood resolutely in the
way of their invasion of China was now voluntarily stepping from their
path, and even offering them his aid to accomplish their cherished
project. The powerful fortresses which had defied their strength, the
Great Wall which in Wou's hands might have checked their progress, had
suddenly ceased to be obstacles to their advance, and throughout the
camps and towns of the Tartars an enthusiastic response was made to the
inspiriting cry of "On to Peking!"
Wou Sankwei did not wait for their coming. Li had sent a strong force to
meet him, with instructions either to negotiate or to fight. Wou chose
the latter, and delivered battle with such energy and success that more
than twenty thousand of the opposing force were laid in death upon the
field, no quarter being given to the flying host. News of this perilous
reverse roused Li to vigorous action. Knowing nothing of the approach
of a Tartar army, he imagined that he had only Wou with whom to deal,
and marched against him in person with sixty thousand men, the pick of
his victorious army.
This large force, perhaps three times the number that the loyal leader
could put in the field, reached Wou's station on the river Lanho before
the vanguard of the Manchus had appeared. It was obviously Wou's policy
to defer the action, but Li gave him no opportunity, making at once an
impetuous attack, his line being formed in the shape of a crescent, with
the design of overlapping the flanks of the foe. Skilled and experienced
as Wou was, the smallness of his force made him unable to avoid this
movement of his enemy, who, from a hill where he had taken his station
to overlook the battle, had the satisfaction of seeing the opposing army
completely surrounded by his numerous battalions. Wou and his men fought
with desperate courage, but it was evident that they could not long hold
out against such odds. Fortunately for them, at this critical moment a
strong Manchu corps reached the field, and at once made a furious charge
upon the nearly victorious troops. This diversion caused a complete
change in the situation. Li's troops, filled with terror at the vigorous
and unexpected assault, broke and fled, pursued by their foes with such
bloodthirsty fury that thirty thousand of them were slain. Li escaped
with a few hundred horsemen from the disastrous field which was to prove
the turning-point in his career.
The delayed Manchus soon after appeared in numbers, and Wou lost no time
in following up his signal success. Peking was quickly reached, and
there, on the eastern ramparts, the victor was greeted with the
spectacle of his father's head on the wall, Li having thus wreaked what
vengeance he could upon his foe. It was an unwise act of ferocity, since
it rendered impossible any future reconciliation with his opponent.
Li made no effort to defend the city, but fled precipitately with all
the plunder he could convey. Wou, marching round its walls, pressed hard
upon his track, attacking his rear-guard in charge of the bulky
baggage-train, and defeating it with the slaughter of ten thousand
troops. Li continued to retreat, collecting the garrisons he had left in
various cities as he fled, until, feeling strong enough to hazard
another battle, he took his stand near the city of Chingtung. Wou did
not hesitate to attack. Eighty thousand Manchus had joined him, and
abundant Chinese levies had raised his forces to two hundred thousand
men. The battle was fierce and obstinate, Li fighting with his old skill
and courage, and night closed without giving either party the victory.
But under cover of the darkness the rebel leader, having lost forty
thousand men, including some of his ablest officers, deemed it necessary
to resume his retreat.
The remainder of Li's career may be briefly told. Wou followed him with
unyielding persistency, fighting at every opportunity and being always
the victor in these encounters. This rapid flight, these repeated
defeats, at length so discouraged the rebel troops that on Li's making a
final stand they refused to fight, and insisted on coming to terms with
their pursuer. Finding that all was at an end, Li fled to the
neighboring mountain region with a small body of men, and there returned
to the robber state from which he had emerged. But his foe was
implacable; pursuit was kept up, his band lost heavily in various
encounters, and at length, while on a foraging trip in search of food,
he was surprised in a village by a superior force. A sharp combat
followed, in which Li was the first to fall, and his head was carried in
triumph to the nearest mandarin.
Thus ended the career of a remarkable man. Whatever the Chinese thought
of the Manchus, they could not but detest the cruel bandit whom they
supplanted, and who, but for their aid and the courage of a single
opponent, would have placed himself upon the throne of China.
Wou Sankwei, having rid himself of his great enemy, now became anxious
for the departure of his allies. But he soon found that they had no
intention of leaving Peking, of which they were then in full control. At
their head was Taitsong's young son, still a child, yet already giving
evidence of much sagacity. His uncle, Prince Dorgan,--or Ama Wang
(Father Prince), as his nephew called him,--was made regent, and
hastened to proclaim the youth emperor of China, under the name of
Chuntche. Every effort was made to obtain the support of Wou Sankwei:
honors and titles were conferred upon him, and the new government showed
such moderation and sound judgment in dealing with the people as to win
him to its support,--especially as no Chinese candidate for the throne
appeared whose ability promised to equal that of the young Manchu
prince.
The Manchus, indeed, were far from being rulers of the kingdom as yet.
They held only a few provinces of the north, and a prince of the late
native dynasty had been set up in the south, with his capital at
Nanking. Had he been a capable ruler, with qualities suited to call Wou
Sankwei to his support and enlist the energies of the people, the tide
of Manchu conquest would very probably have been stayed. But he proved
worthless, and Nanking was soon in the hands of his foes, its officials
being spared, but required to shave their heads,--the shaved head and
the pigtail of the modern Chinaman being the badge of submission to
Tartar supremacy.
A succession of new emperors was set up, but all met the same fate, and
in the end the millions of China fell under the Manchu yoke, and the
ancient empire was once more subjected to Tartar rule. The emperor
Chuntche died young, and his son, Kanghi, came to the throne when but
nine years of age. He was destined to reign for more than sixty years
and to prove himself one of the best and greatest of the emperors of
China.
We cannot close without a mention of the final events in the career of
Wou Sankwei, to whom China owed her Manchu dynasty. Thirty years after
he had invited the Manchus into the country, and while he was lord of a
large principality in the south, he was invited by the emperor to visit
Peking, an invitation which he declined on the plea of old age, though
really because he feared that Tartar jealousy of his position and
influence lay behind it.
Envoys were sent to him, whom he treated with princely courtesy, though
he still declined to visit the court, and plainly stated his reasons.
The persistence of the emperor at length drove him into rebellion, in
which he was joined by others of the Chinese leaders, and for a time the
unwisdom of Kanghi in not letting well enough alone threatened his
throne with disaster. One by one, however, Wou's allies were put down,
until he was left alone to keep up the war. The Manchus hesitated,
however, to attack him, knowing well his great military skill. But
disunion in his ranks did what the Tartar sword could not effect. Many
of his adherents deserted him, and the Chinese warrior who had never
known defeat was brought to the brink of irretrievable disaster. From
this dilemma death extricated him, he passing away at the head of his
men without the stigma of defeat on his long career of victory. In the
end his body was taken from the tomb and his ashes were scattered
through the eighteen provinces of China, to testify that no trace
remained of the man whom alone the Manchus had wooed and feared.
_THE CAREER OF A DESERT CHIEF._
In looking upon a modern map of the empire of China, it will be seen to
cover a vast area in Asia, including not only China proper but the wide
plains of Mongolia and the rock-bound region of Thibet. Yet no such map
could properly have been drawn two hundred years ago. Thibet, while a
tributary realm, was not then a portion of China, while the Mongolian
herdsmen were still the independent warriors and the persistent enemies
of China that they had been from time immemorial. It is to the Manchu
emperors that the subjection of these countries and their incorporation
in the Chinese empire are due. To-day the far-reaching territory of the
steppes, the native home of those terrible horsemen who for ages made
Europe and Asia tremble, is divided between the two empires of China and
Russia, and its restless hordes are held in check by firm and powerful
hands, their period of conquest at an end.
It was to two of the Manchu monarchs, Kanghi and Keen Lung,--whose
combined reigns covered more than a hundred and twenty years,--that the
subjection of these long turbulent regions was due, enabling China to
enter the nineteenth century with the broad territorial expanse now
marked on our maps. The story of how the subjection of the nomads came
about is a long one, much too long for the space at our command, yet a
brief synopsis of its leading events will prove of interest and
importance to all who desire to follow the successive steps of Chinese
history.
Kanghi, the second Manchu emperor, and one of the greatest of the rulers
of China, having completed the conquest of the Chinese themselves,
turned his attention to the nomadic hordes who threatened the
tranquillity of his reign. He was one of their own race, a man of Tartar
blood, and many of the desert tribes were ready to acknowledge his
supremacy, among them the Khalkas, who prided themselves on direct
descent from Ghengis and his warriors, but had lost all desire to rule
the earth and were content to hold their own among the surrounding
tribes. They dwelt on those streams which had watered the birthplace of
the Mongol tribe, and their adhesion to the Manchu cause kept all the
Mongols quiet.
But west of these dwelt another nomad race, the Calmucks, divided into
four hordes, of which the Eleuths were by no means content to yield to
Chinese or Manchu control. Their independence of spirit might have been
of little importance but that it was sustained by an able and ambitious
leader, who not only denied Kanghi's supremacy but disputed with him the
empire of the steppes.