THE MANCHU CONQUEST
OF CHINA
By F. W. WILLIAMS
Assistant Professor of Modern Oriental History, Yale University
Reprinted from The Journal of Race Development, Vol. 4,
No. 2, October, 1913 .
Reprinted from The Journal of Race Development,
Vol. 4, No. 2, November, 1913
THE MANCHU CONQUEST OF CHINA
By F. W. Williams, Assistant Professor of Modern Oriental
History, Yale University
The expulsion of the Tartar dynasty which ruled China
for two centuries and a half has excited the sympathetic
approval of the civilized world. That dynasty had been
tried in the balance and found wanting; under its rule the
largest and potentially the richest homogenous empire in
the world had been reduced to impotence by foreign powers,
its resources neglected, its people mistreated. A summary
of their shortcomings does not, however, set forth the mean¬
ing of the Manchu conquest of China, or explain the re¬
markable nature of their achievement. To estimate their
place in history fairly it is necessary to review the course
of that conquest and consider its effect upon the welfare
of the people whom the Manchus inadvertently rescued
from a condition bordering upon anarchy. A brief account
of the conquest and settlement of this northern race is all
that this paper contemplates. The expansion of China
under their rule, and the revived prestige of a mighty na¬
tion acquired from the exercise of a higher sense of racial
control than the Chinese themselves were capable of, are
subjects belonging to another chapter of this story. The
decadence of the Manchus—apparently an inevitable result
of their contact with a higher culture—should not blind us
to the extraordinary success of their great performance.
Nurhachu, the founder of the high fortune of this clan,
was born in 1559 in Hutuala, the capital of a small prin¬
cipality among the Great White Mountains, north of the
Korean border. Here his ancestors of the Aisin Gioro
(Golden Dynasty) had ruled for two centuries from the
time of their founders, one of the " Kings" of the Niijen
Tartars. The relationship of these peoples to the Kin and
other Tartar conquerors of northern China in the Sung
152
THE MANCHU CONQUEST OF CHINA
153
period is somewhat obscure, but they belong to the same
race that had been driven from China by the Mongols in
the thirteenth century and relapsed more or less into bar¬
barism in the wooded mountains between the Yalu and
Sungari Rivers. China under the Mings had been fairly
successful in holding them to the east of the Liao Valley
while protecting her own settlers in Laiotung by garrisons
in a line of border fortresses, but this fertile region was
often harassed by bands of Tartar robbers. It was in pur¬
suance of the characteristic policy of setting these preda¬
tory gangs upon one another that the empire finally en¬
gendered the genius of one of the great fighting chiefs of
Asiatic history and ultimately brought about its conquest
by his successors.
A khan of one of these tiny septs secured the help of the
Chinese frontier guard in laying siege to a town ruled by
a man who had married the granddaughter of Htien, chief¬
tain of Hutuala, Nurhachu's grandfather. The old man
hastened with his son and heir to assist the princess, but
being decoyed outside of the walls by a ruse of the Chinese
captain, both were slain together with most of the garrison.
Nurhachu thus became the head of his house at the age
of twenty-four. The Chinese officer appears to have ex¬
ceeded his instructions by embroiling the Bai, or Imperial
Frontier Count, in the murder of these clansmen, and Nur¬
hachu received the bodies of his father and grandsire as
well as presents of considerable value, together with inves¬
titure in his chieftainship and the title of Tu tuh—the same
as that now given to the military governors of the prov¬
inces. Instead, however, of surrendering the murderer of
his father the Chinese made him lord of all the Manchu
clans, which placed the young chief in a position of extreme
danger and caused him to devote his energies to attacking
his enemy and revenging himself upon the treacherous
Chinese. Three years later, by drilling and improving his
forces, he had so strengthened his position that the Chinese
thought it wise to deliver up his enemy Nikan for execu¬
tion, and to make a treaty that opened better trading facili¬
ties to his people. Next year, in 1587, he built Laocheng
154
F. W. WILLIAMS
a few miles from his ancestral capital, with a palace and
court after the Chinese manner, and governed so wisely as
to bring the five Manchu clans in a few years to recognize
him as king.
From this time to the end of his reign his career was one
long succession of raids and conflicts brought about by the
jealousy of his neighbors and his own determination to
create an army that might become an instrument of his
vengeance upon the Chinese. As a fighting chieftain he
developed all those traits of elan, endurance and personal
bravery that are common enough in history to excite no
special surprise. He had the qualities of a Sivaji or a Skan-
derbeg, and these alone are sufficient to account for his
ultimate conquest of people of his own kind in the vast
wilderness between the Pacific, the Amur and the Mongolian
steppe, roughly half a million square miles. What arrests
attention, however, is the extraordinary capacity revealed
in this Berserker fighter for the administration of his con¬
quests and the assimilation of the sundry tribes within the
region. The prestige of his victories attracted the soldiers
of conquered tribes, who learned under a severe but gen¬
erous leader the advantages of discipline and union. By
1606 he had even aroused the admiration of the Mongols
beyond the Lao, whose Beiras sent him a complimentary
embassy. Ten years later he had assumed the style of
Tienming in his new capital at Hingking, and ruled his
domain with the panoply and circumstance of a Chinese
emperor. The assumption of this state was inevitably re¬
garded as a challenge by the Chinese, whose policy it had
always been to prevent the border tribes from uniting, and
to recognize no titles among them that were not bestowed
by the Ming suzerain. But Nurhachu revealed in his dar¬
ing plans the political genius which has been a character¬
istic of his race in all ages, and which European observers
have too often ignored. That race under various names
has impressed us with its fighting powers, its endurance
and its brutality; we have not recognized, however, its abil¬
ity to assimilate and control its conquered subjects by
methods which, barbarous and imperfect as they may some-
THE MANCHU CONQUEST OF CHINA
155
times appear, have, during the period of the Christian era
wrenched the government of every civilized Asiatic state
from its own people and governed them on the whole with
advantage. As Parthians, Mamluks, Mongols, Seljuk and
Ottoman Turks, to leave the lesser breeds unnamed, the
distant congeners of the Manchus have not only invaded
but repeatedly controlled all the civilized nations of the
continent. The history of China cannot be properly under¬
stood unless due notice is taken of the impact of her north¬
ern neighbors from the period of the great Ch'in to recent
times, nor can we afford to neglect the fact that her own
great dynasties and governing element have come from
those northern provinces which are chiefly peopled by de¬
scendants of a Tartar-Chinese intermixture.
Nurhachu, though he never entered China, stands as an
exponent of the highest qualities of his race, a creative
genius not only in strategy but in politics, the founder of
a great tradition capably maintained for two centuries by
his descendants, the establisher of a line of monarchs which
have been surpassed by no other ruling house during an
equal period in China.
The Chinese had reason for serious apprehension if Nur¬
hachu succeeded in his purpose of reducing all the Tartar
clans to his way. He had left them in no doubt as to
his intention, when this was accomplished, of driving them
behind the Great Wall, and in 1617 he published an open
defiance to them by drawing up and burning with sacri¬
ficial ceremonies a document known as the "Seven Hates,"
including amongst the charges their murder of his parents,
their interference with Manchu autonomy, their assistance
rendered to his enemies, their assassination of an envoy
and harassing of his farmers—"for all of which," he con¬
cludes, "I hate you with an intense hatred and now make
war against you." They took him at his word, for while
engaged, in 1619, in a war with the last of the Niijen states
that continued to resist him, a Chinese army of 200,000
was assembled at Mukden and marched in four divisions
against the little state of Hingking. With only 60,000 men
he proceeded, by the same tactics that Napoleon employed,
156
F. W. WILLIAMS
to attack each of these divisions with his whole force before
assistance could be got from the others. The result of the
five days' battle, known as that of Sahu, was a complete
and extraordinary victory for the Manchus and the anni¬
hilation of the Chinese army, with a loss of 45,000 men slain
on the field. Yet, though his success secured for him un¬
questioned authority over the Niijen tribes that had held
out against him, the Chinese troops soon recovered their
moral under an able general, who fortified the towns of
Liaotung so successfully that for two years Nurhachu did
not venture to attack him. The bravery of the Chinese
is noticeable throughout these campaigns. What defeated
them ultimately was the removal of energetic generals and
the unconscionable turpitude of the eunuch control under
which the Peking government had fallen. In 1621 Mukden
and Liaoyang with seventy walled cities were captured and
the Manchus for the first time established in control of the
whole territory which foreigners have ever since called by
their name. The Chinese never gave up the contest, but
they were badly led by dull and cowardly generals sent by
the palace politicians. Nevertheless the resistance was al¬
ways determined. They lost the country west of the Liao
down to the Great Wall, but regained most of it within
four years under a competent leader called Sun Cheng-
tsung, who fortified Shanhai kwan and Ningyuen. It was
in 1625, during this period when his military advance was
checked, that Nurhachu removed his palace from Liaoyang
to Mukden—his sixth capital—and built the imperial head¬
quarters which the dynasty has ever since regarded as its
home. The transfer of the administration from the orig¬
inal tribal valley to this thickly settled Chinese plain was
attended by a fuller adjustment of his government to the
Chinese system and by an imitation of Ming ceremonial at
his court. It was as natural for the princes to be educated
in Chinese letters as it was for the Frankish princes to write
Latin. Chinese culture was the only culture known to their
world, and it was impossible for a sovereign in eastern Asia
to set up his rule upon any other model or to hope for
acceptance by civilized subjects unless he adopted their
THE MANCHU CONQUEST OF CHINA
157
institutions. The Mongols had done so, and before the
Mongols every northern conqueror in China since China
began to be.
But what the Mongols learned of Chinese methods
during a half century of conflict, the Manchu acquired in
pursuing Nurhachu's sensible policy of providing several
millions of Chinese settlers in the Liao Valley with the gov¬
ernment to which they were accustomed, and habituating
their own clansmen to the language and order of a finer cul¬
ture than their own. It was this policy and their consistent
recognition of a superior system that enabled the Manchus
to retain their hold upon China after they had effected their
conquest. The conquest itself, it will be observed, was a
long struggle carried on chiefly through the agency of Chi¬
nese against Chinese until the country was too exhausted to
offer further resistance to the forces that stood for order.
At no time did the conquerors show superior generalship
or valor; in numbers their own fighting men were always
vastly inferior to the Chinese; in intellectual power they
were never their equals. Yet they succeeded through sheer
force of character, as the Ottomans have succeeded during
a much longer period in western Asia, in dominating a
people that were superior to them in every important qual¬
ity except that of leadership.
Nurhachu met his first and only serious check in attempt¬
ing the capture of Ningyuen, which was defended by a good
general and by cannon cast by Jesuit missionaries. He
died soon after this, in September, 1626, and was buried
in the great tomb outside of Mukden, which is still shown
to travelers. In accordance with Chinese custom his per¬
sonal name had been replaced by the reign title of Tien-
ming in 1616, when he assumed the dignity of emperor.
After the accession of his grandson to the throne in Peking
he was given the title of Taitsu, or Great Ancestor, by
which he is known in imperial histories.
His successor, a fourth son known as Taitsung, appears
to have been loyally supported by numerous brothers in
taking up the arduous work of carving out a kingdom and
pressing down upon China. The defense of the lower Liao
158
F. W. WILLIAMS
was, however, maintained with much persistence by the
Chinese, despite the corruption and divided councils of the
Ming government, that his way to the capital remained
closed, owing chiefly to the obstinate resistance of the two
strong fortresses of Ningyuen and Shanhai kwan. While he
cannot be granted the supreme place in the fortunes of his
family that belongs to Nurhachu, the task bequeathed to
him of advancing those fortunes beyond the ancestral do¬
main was hardly less difficult than that of winning its inde¬
pendence. His first achievement, the conquest of northern
Korea, whose loyalty to the Ming suzerain necessitated its
punishment to secure his southern frontier, was completed
in 1627. His other neighbors, the Mongols, presented a far
more serious problem, but within ten years, between 1626
and 1636, by a series of expeditions and negotiations, he
had succeeded in practically incorporating Kortsin into his
own domain and obtaining the suzerainty and tribute of
all inner Mongolia. Besides the obvious strategic necessity
of thus solidifying his own boundaries the control of Mon¬
golia permitted him to raid the whole northern tier of Chi¬
nese provinces across that vast border which has ever been
a source of their apprehension since the beginning of re¬
corded history. A great excursion in force was made in
1629 to the city of Peking itself, where the terrified court
was besieged for some weeks and the country around laid
waste, but the Chinese general with his army brought down
from Shanhai kwan was able to prevent an assault and the
capital was saved.
Taitsung died at the age of fifty-two in September, 1643,
and was succeeded by his ninth son, a child of five, while
the control of the Manchu dynasty passed into the hands
of the boy's uncle Dorgun. It was a critical moment in
the career of that dynasty, for dissension amongst the many
able and aspiring sons of Nurhachu would have involved
its ruin had a struggle amongst them for the succession be¬
gun. By continuing the fine in accordance with prescribed
Chinese custom, in the person of a heir of the next gen¬
eration, the internal peace of the warlike band was pre¬
served while their activity found ample scope in the sudden
THE MANCHU CONQUEST OF CHINA
159
and enormous expansion of their emprise in the conquest
of China.
Meanwhile the internal condition of the Chinese empire
had become desperate under a long series of famines and
rebellions which had utterly paralyzed its economic re¬
sources and brought about a general anarchy. It is impos¬
sible to decide whether under such loosely organized agen¬
cies as that of China the general prevalence of distress is
a cause or a consequence of political disturbance. When
thickly populous agricultural communities are reduced to
starvation the people will inevitably break up into robber
bands and prey upon each other to the confusion of all
civil administration. No government can reduce the dis¬
order unless provisions can be obtained to satisfy the needs
of those made desperate by want; but a bad government
may by its inefficiency aggravate the starving people and
succumb to the forces of disruption thus let loose. It is
notable that in the history of China no great upheaval has
occurred without its concomitant of famine. In the third
decade of the seventeenth century the northern provinces
were visited by an unusually severe drought which was so
badly met by venal officials that multitudes took to the
mountains and attacked the roads and villages. In addi¬
tion to these natural causes weakening authority in an im¬
perfectly articulated domain, increased taxation and recur¬
ring levies of troops to meet the Manchus began in 1621
to arouse angry opposition in the western provinces. Re¬
volts broke out which were painfully and only partly sub¬
dued. By 1631 the robber bands throughout all the inland
provinces had swelled to great armies under redoubtable
captains, whose successes encouraged the able-bodied to en¬
list under their banners and live upon the spoil of captured
cities. At the end of another decade Li Tsu-cheng, a Shansi
leader, after many vicissitudes, had become the greatest of
them all, and with an army composed of nearly a million
needy adventurers he was swarming, in 1641, over the fam¬
ine-stricken province of Honan toward Peking. Despite the
impotence of the imperial government in this score of years
of carnage it is remarkable that the various rebel armies
160
F. W. WILLIAMS
met with obstinate resistance in many cities. There was
no systematic opposition, yet owing to the indomitable
spirit in defending their own which characterizes the Chi¬
nese people, as well as to the lack of organization among the
rebels, the agony was long continued. The contrast be¬
tween the Chinese rebel Li and the Manchu Nurhachu is
suggestive as typical of the differing genius of the two races.
It has often been said that the Chinese were conquered
because they were unwarlike. They showed, on the con¬
trary, a persistent fighting eagerness both before and after
the Manchu irruption that ranks them among the martial
people of the world. They failed both in rebellion and in
defense because they could produce no leader capable of
consolidating and fixing an orderly system of control. The
Manchus succeeded, though they had to borrow and adapt
the system of their enemy, because they know how to make
themselves obeyed.
Peking was surrounded by the rebel host in February,
1644, and fell through sheer cowardice on the part of its
defenders, lost to all sense of loyalty and shame through
generations of eunuch control. The last of the Ming em¬
perors, incapable to the end of any resolute action, com¬
mitted suicide as the rebels poured over the deserted walls,
and the city and palace—perhaps the richest storehouse of
valuables at that time in the world—was given over to
slaughter and pillage. Li put on the imperial yellow and
reigned for one day in the palace, when he was called away
to the north by a sudden and unexpected danger. Wu
San-kwei, the ablest Chinese general that the herculean
struggle against the Tartars had produced, preferring a
Manchu Hwangti to a rebel upstart, called upon Dorgun
to join him in avenging his dead sovereign. The Manchu
army was hurried down to Shanhai kwan, Wu and his army
were constrained to shave the forehead and adopt the Tar¬
tar queue, and preparations made for an advance upon the
capital. But Li, who knew the value of keeping the aggres¬
sive, was upon them with his great host ere their forces
had left the Wall. His defeat in the terrific battle that
ensued before Shanhai kwan was due, it would appear, to
THE MANCHU CONQUEST OF CHINA
161
his carelessness in scouting, for, unaware of the Manchus
drawn up among the hills on his flank, the rebels were dis¬
concerted by their sudden advance just as they were wear¬
ing out Wu's troops by mere weight of numbers. Their
route was followed up by Wu, while Dorgun and his sol¬
diers hurried on to the dismantled capital. He placed his
nephew the Emperor Shunchih upon the Dragon Throne,
removing the seat of his government from Mukden as soon
as the devastation of the rebel Li could be repaired.
But possession of the capital was far from giving the new
dynasty control of the empire. China continued for nearly
a score of years in armed revolt against her foreign con¬
querors, whose unity and steadfast policy, rather than any
proficiency in arms, at length brought them victory. At
the outset of this obstinate struggle the odds were enor¬
mously against them. The resources of the natives in men
and materials were greatly superior to their own; their base,
the Yellow River basin and the Great Plain, had been rav¬
aged by years of famine and rebellion from which the south¬
ern provinces had suffered but little; loyalty to the Ming
dynasty, despite its abuses, still inspired the educated class
everywhere; and finally, the elements of disorder long since
set loose under the robber rebellion gave free vent to that
centrifugal tendency within the vast empire which has ever
disposed its various provinces to fall apart, when opportuni¬
ties offered, into separate governments under local adventur¬
ers. Had the fallen dynasty produced one resolute master
of men capable of choosing and controlling his ministers it
could at least have held the land south of the Yangtse and
divided China into two kingdoms as in the days of the
Sung. But China seemed to be impotent in begetting a
single administrator worthy of the name; she fell at last
under the domination of an inferior race because the genius
of her people was unable to meet the first requirement of
a true national life. Whether this failure was due to de¬
terioration of moral fiber, the result of a civilization grown
too old to revive, the future alone will show.
The Manchu regent found his first great work at hand
in setting up the machinery of government in Peking and
THE JOURNAL OF RACE DEVELOPMENT, VOL. 4, NO. 2, 1913
162
F. W. WILLIAMS
restoring order in two of the "home provinces," Shansi and
Honan; the other, Shantung, dispersed Li's rebel officials
but remained for some time loyal to the Ming claimant.
Li Tsu-cheng himself had to be pursued by Wu San-kwei
and defeated in eight great battles during eighteen months
before he ended his own life, a discredited fugitive in Hupeh.
Dorgun very shrewdly proclaimed amnesty to all who would
acknowledge his authority, and their old titles and emolu¬
ments to members of the old imperial household, even re¬
storing the Ming tombs west of Peking and sacrificing to
the manes of their former emperors. Many accepted his
terms, but the family was large and produced a succession
of futile aspirants to the throne—names to conjure with
amongst a proud and loyal people, but all alike cowardly
and trivial, unworthy even of sympathy in the disasters
which infallibly crowned their recalcitrance. Five of these
deserve mention for the trouble they created. A grandson
of the famous old Emperor Wanli, known by his title of
Fu Wang, was promptly recognized as emperor in the Yangtse
and coast provinces, and established in Nanking, the orig¬
inal capital of his dynasty A victim of the weakness
which marked all the degenerates of that dynasty, he gave
his days to dancing girls and the business of restoring its
fortune to one Ma Shu-ying, perhaps the most rapacious
and unprincipled monster of these distressful times, ignoring
the advice and devotion of his minister Shu Ko-fa, a noble
contrast to the favorite. Shantung, deserted by Ming in¬
competency, was promptly subdued, and Nanking capitu¬
lated after the flight and surrender of the pretender. About
the same time another army conquered Hupeh province,
and Manchu supremacy obtained throughout the country
north of the Yangtse. Had it not involved the compul¬
sory change of head-dress to the plaited queue, that suprem¬
acy might have been supported with less contumacy on the
part of the Chinese. The ordinance was enforced with
vigor, presumably because the Manchus found it necessary
amid frequent defections to insist upon some visible sign
of submission among the natives, but the imposition of
such a test upon a vain and self-sufficient people like the
THE MANCHU CONQUEST OF CHINA
163
Chinese reveals their incapacity to understand the mind
of a more subtle race when its amour propre is concerned.
The second pretender, called the Tang Wang, once a
Ming prince of Nanyang, found temporary support in
Kiangsi and Fuhkien, but it melted away through the per¬
fidy and incompetence of his generals. His brother Yii
Ngao established the imperial pageant in Canton after his
destruction in December, 1646, but the city was soon cap¬
tured by a surprise and he killed himself in the presence
of the Chinese traitor who made him prisoner. A fourth
Ming, known as the Lu Wang, had ere this set up as an
opposition emperor in Chehkiang, where, partly through
the assistance of pirates, he regained all of Fuhkien between
1648 and 1650; but he fell foul of Koxinga's ambitions and
was drowned in 1653 at Amoy. The last aspirant for Ming
leadership, Yowliang the Kwei Wang, a great-grandson of
Wanli, was proclaimed emperor in Kwangsi as a rival of
Yii Ngao He was utterly worthless, like the rest, but the
strength of Chinese hostility to the Manchus was revealed
in 1648, when after being chased into Yunnan, a sudden
resurgence of opposition throughout the whole of China
swept the seven southern provinces and Szchuen under his
allegiance, and the Regent was confronted with the task
of reconquering the greater portion of the empire. To add
to his difficulties a famine again exhausted the north, the
Mongols got out of hand and raided over the Wall, the
Mohammedans rose in Kansuh, and bandits swarmed in
every province. In this new crisis of their affairs the daunt¬
less Wu San-kwei was given the chief command, and very
slowly the Ming supporters were pushed back by their own
countrymen until the cowardly Kwei Wang fled over the
Yunnan border into Burma, to be surrendered in 1661 by
the Burmese and die by his own hand a captive of the great
general.
The year 1661 marks the first lull in the secular resist¬
ance of China to the imposition of foreign rule. The coun¬
try was conquered but not convinced. In the general
wreckage of seventeen years of war it had exhausted its
resources without developing a commander fit to excite an
164
F. W. WILLIAMS
enduring loyalty or unite the diverse desires of different
sections. Under the apathy that ensued after this bitter
experience the Manchus very prudently encouraged recon¬
struction by appointing Chinese officials chosen according
to the ancient tests throughout the empire, and China re¬
turned sensibly though sullenly to her age-old life of toil
under her new masters. Ten years before this date Dorgun
the Regent had died, leaving Shunchi to direct the imperial
policy in person at the age of twelve. We do not hear
much of his intellectual endowments, but he had been
nurtured in a household of sturdy kinsmen and he must
have matured early to have employed his talents success¬
fully at this age. He did in 1661 in his twenty-fourth
year, leaving the empire to a son eight years old whose
reign name Kanghsi is one of the most brilliant in Chinese
history.
The Manchus were not ungrateful to the Chinese gen¬
erals who had enabled them to win an empire. Wu San-
kwei, whose pursuit of the Kwei Wang had completed the
crowning performance of that great conquest, was given
the title of prince and made absolute lord of the two prov¬
inces of Yunnan and Kweichow, with his own army and
entire control of the civil appointments and revenues of the
territory. Two other generals, both Liaotung men, were
in like manner created princes of the maritime provinces
of Kwangtung and Fuhkien, from which, as from Wu's
domain, all the Manchu soldiery was withdrawn. Judged
by the event this method of rewarding their services seems
imprudent, but amid the multitude of traitors that must
have made China appear to these Tartars as infected with
perjury, these men had resisted the temptations to which
others had succumbed and remained loyal to the end. Their
honors were awarded in proportion to the magnitude of
their efforts. But Prince Wu, either because he wearied of
his sovereign state in a remote province, or because he was
apprehensive of the imperial plans to reduce his army, after
accumulating stores and revenues revolted in 1674, soon
after the young Kanghsi had assumed control of the gov¬
ernment. With him arose also the Prince Kung of Fuhkien;
THE MANCHU CONQUEST OF CHINA
165
and in a few weeks the empire was once more ablaze with
insurrection, officials everywhere surrendering their cities
and the people gladly removing their queues. Six provinces
turned against their Manchu masters; a seventh, Kwang-
tung, remained neutral because its old Prince, Shang Ko-si
was loyal, but his son Chu-sin, a drunkard, accepted the
title of Great Commander from Wu, assumed the old Chi¬
nese headdress and made his aged father a prisoner. The
latter died in 1676, and Chu-sin, rather alarmed at Wu's
attitude toward him, made his peace with Kanghsi. The
other rebel prince (of Fuhkien) after some serious fighting,
was pardoned and re-employed by the Manchus in 1677,
but was subsequently executed in Peking, a fitting end for
his cruelty and crimes. The defection of these coast prov¬
inces, though badly led, was heartily endorsed by their
inhabitants whose hatred of the Manchus has never much
abated, and a considerable Manchu army had to be em¬
ployed in bringing them to order. Wu San-kwei raged up
and down the western provinces, where his armies at one
time had possession of Shensi and even threatened Peking.
So long as he lived there seemed to be a magic in the old
warrior's name that paralyzed the troops brought against
him. All his campaigning was carried on in the enemy's
country, and though he was presently driven out of Shensi
and the two Kwang, he died holding his own in Hunan,
while none dared to attack his base in the southwest. Dur¬
ing four years this indefatigable fighter had wrenched nearly
half of China from Manchu control and maintained his
upstart government upon the resources of the least produc¬
tive portion of the empire. Kanghsi, who inherited the
physical vigor of his great ancestors, was with difficulty
dissuaded from taking charge of the campaign against this
formidable rival in person. His counsellors were probably
justified in their fears of losing Peking in an emeute if he
left the capital, but his resolution in the crisis and the re¬
sources at his command—chiefly in the better fighting qual¬
ities of the Mongols and northern Chinese troops—eventu¬
ally achieved a hard-earned victory over all his foes in 1681.
Wu had succumbed to an illness in 1678; his grandson and
166
F. W. WILLIAMS
successor, Shu-fan, was beheaded upon the fall of his capi¬
tal Yunnan, and his head hung upon one of the city gates
of Peking. The rebellion had failed, and the emperor could
congratulate himself that he had accomplished what was
necessary for establishing his autocracy, the disarming of
the vassal princes. So long as they retained their heredi¬
tary powers the Manchu was little more than the feudal
suzerain of China. Their revolt was a declaration of the
right of the Chinese to rule themselves, and in this sense
these eight years were the concluding act in the bloody
drama begun in 1644. To insure the future Kanghsi abol¬
ished the title of Wang except as bestowed upon members
of the imperial clan, nor was it made hereditary even
amongst these.
In the settlement of the country Manchu troops were quar¬
tered in permanent garrisons in a score of the more impor¬
tant cities of the empire. These "bannermen" were for¬
bidden to intermarry with the Chinese or to engage in any
occupation except that of arms. So long as these warriors
were regularly exercised in their profession under the great
military emperors, chasing bandits or campaigning in Cen¬
tral Asia, they remained a valid defence to the throne. But
they never constituted an important element in the forces
of the empire.1 In later times, becoming utterly demoral¬
ized through inaction, compelled to remain aliens in spirit
as well as in race to the industrious Chinese who surrounded
them and to whom they represented the yoke of a foreign
master, they sank into forlorn and useless drones whose
descendants were the first victims of the Chinese revolution
of 1911. This was Kanghsi's reply to the intransigeants of
China. He was logical, perhaps, but time, a profounder
logician, proved it to be fallacious. The conquest had not
in reality been effected by Manchu braves or even by Man¬
chu wisdom, nor could the Manchus ever retain their hold
upon China merely by the valor of their men. Their at-
1In Chienlung's reign there were 45,500 Manchu bannermen disposed
in twenty towns of China Proper, 8,750 near Peking and 15,000 in eight
garrisons in Turkestan, besides about 100,000 guarding the imperial palace.
The total Chinese army was 662,000, besides 700,000 provincial troops.
THE MANCHU CONQUEST OF CHINA
167
tack was begun at an opportune moment, when a long
period of Ming misrule and her reduced vitality had so dis¬
tracted China as to admit of her capital being taken by a
coup de main. The importance of Nurhachu's work of
training and preparation was fully revealed in this initial
success and in the admirable temper of his successors, as
they employed all the factors in their favor while pushing
the conquest through to an end. But these factors were
for the most part Chinese: the hopeless incapacity of the
Ming pretenders, the willingness of the Chinese to fight for
the foreigners, the schisms that separated north from south,
faction from faction, province from province, the indomita¬
ble fortitude of a courageous people when once enlisted in
their cause. It was the Chinese themselves who completed
the conquest of China for the Manchus; it was the Chinese
who suffered them to rule because they adopted their cul¬
ture and institutions and took the natives into partnership
in the management of the empire. No disposition of Man-
chu garrisons at strategic centers could have long upheld
that rule or prevented insurrections had the Tartars de¬
parted from their policy and managed their great estate
selfishly. And who shall say that those who, for fear or
favor, cast their lot with the Manchus decided unwisely for
their country? The sovereigns of China never had a broad¬
er sense of empire or a clearer idea of the physical confines
and defences of that empire than under Kanghsi, the great¬
est of her modern emperors, whose expansion of her boun¬
daries and increase of her prestige made her a greater power
than ever before and strong enough to save her from sub¬
jugation by the predatory states of a newly awakened
Europe.
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