A LITTLE HISTORY OF CHINA
AND A Chinese Story
BY ALEXANDER BREBNER
PREFACE.
BEING engaged on a wider "Little History," it occurred to the Author that an expansion of the part therein relating to China might be of interest at a time like the present, when that Ancient Empire is about to enter on a new lease of life.
In his researches into matters Chinese, the Author came across an anonymous book, published in the last quarter of last century.
The editor of this book remarks in his Introduction that one can get more knowledge of the English people from a page of Fielding than from many formal histories or collections of letters containing the impressions of intelligent foreigners. Applying this principle to Chinese history, and assuming, perhaps somewhat rashly, a Chinese Fielding, he edits a translation of a Chinese novel, which came into his possession by a curious chance. It is called " The Pleasing History," and an adaptation of it for the benefit of modern readers follows the " Little History."
The translations quoted in the history are taken from Dr Legge's " Religions of China," and the English edition of the Abbe* Hue's " Christianity in China.
CONTENTS.
A LITTLE HISTORY OF CHINA
JAPAN
KOREA
THE PLEASING HISTORY
CHAPTER I.
CHINESE historians make the nucleus of the nation a wandering and settling in a region of the country somewhere within the present province of Shan-se. The Hoang-ho, or Yellow River, bounds two sides of this province ; and, as most of the nationalities of the world have been cradled in a river bed, it is likely enough that the Yellow River, perhaps nearer the sea than any part of the province of Shan-se, was the raison d'etre of that early segregation, which has grown and spread and become the Chinese Empire. Their language indicates that the people were originally pastoral and nomadic : their great shepherds became also " pastors of men," rulers of tribes.
The national histories supply genealogies going back millions of years ; it would take a long list of ordinary generations to fill all these centuries, but some of the ancient Chinese patriarchs lived thousands of years, and so simplified the matter from that point of view.
" The Book of Historical Documents " begins with the first of ten dynasties, all very wonderful. The eighth dynasty begins with a rationally-conceived monarch, called Yeu-chaou, that is, " the nest-having," who told the people how to make huts of the boughs of trees; next comes Suy-jin, "the fire-producer," who produced his fire in the archseologically orthodox way, by the rubbing together of two sticks. Then came the monarch Hoang-ti, who separated the people into tribes, giving each a name ; he discovered iron, and appointed certain days to show gratitude to heaven and earth, by offering the firstfruits of the latter. Then one Shin-noong, who invented the plough. There is also a king, whose wife unravelled the cocoon of the silkworm, and made cloth of it.
With the reign of Yaou, B.C. 2356, where Confucius begins his "Shoo-King," or "Book of History," there is a gain in definiteness. About this time the Calendar is said to have been regulated by the introduction of an intercalary year, to make up the difference between the lunar and solar years. Yaou encouraged commerce by the establishment of fairs ; and so anxious was he for the good of the nation, that he put aside his son and chose for his successor Shun, on account of the atter's virtues. The nation beginning to extend largely in the days of Yaou, now reaches as fur down the coast as the island of Formosa, and considerably westward of the longitude of Si-ngan-foo. Yu, while still only prime minister, had deepened the beds of rivers, not merely for the prevention of floods, or for irrigation, but also for the purposes of navigation ; and shipbuilding had by this time made considerable progress.
In the reign of Shun there occurred a flood, for his ability in mastering which, by inprovements in the bed of the Yellow River, Yu was chosen by Shun as his successor and with his reign, B.C. 2100, commenced the dynasty of Hea.
In the immediate successors of Yu the country was unfortunate, their sins culminating in one Kee. The people rose against him, B.C. 1776, establishing in the kingship Tang, their leader, the first of the Shang dynasty. In the reign of Tang the country enjoyed a restoration of peace and prosperity. His successors, however, proved failures, and the old programme recurred under Chow-sen, the last of the line about B.C. 1100. Chow-sen was a ruler not without ability and energy, but passionate and impulsive ; and his fall and that of his dynasty is attributed by the Chinese to the evil influence of a woman, his queen Kan-te. He built a large new palace for himself, with gates of jasper, the cost of which the people no doubt felt in increased taxation, and within his palace gave himself up to shameless dissoluteness. For any of his ministers who remonstrated with him on his evil ways he had only cruelties : he had a hollow brazen pillar heated to nearly red heat ; this he compelled them to embrace, while his wife and courtesans amused themselves by looking on at their dying agonies.
After considerable hesitation to take up arms a hesitation which to outsiders seems almost criminal Woo-Wang, the hereditary chief of the province of Tcheou or Chow, led an army against this royal maniac, who, when he heard of the defeat of his troops, shut himself up in his private apartments in the palace, with all his precious baubles about him, set fire to the place, and burned himself among the ruins. His empress, in splendid attire, went out to meet and, if possible, ingratiate herself with the victorious WooWang, but she was by his orders seized and executed.
Woo-Wang himself, and all his house, the rulers of Tcheou, were famous for their proper and equitable government of their people, and for their literary attainments ; culture in their state being at this time much higher than at the court of the central kingdom. Wan- Wang, the father of Woo-Wang, is said to have simplified the written language of the country.
After the death of Chow-sen, Woo-Wang, "the martial king," was called upon to occupy the throne as the first of the Chow dynasty. He ruled well in the central kingdom, but the civilisation was now spreading, and it was necessary to erect outlying authorities. His appointments to these governorships seem to have created jealousies and disputes, which naturally harassed and weakened the central authority, and the nation itself, relatively to outsiders. About B.C. 9#6, in the reign of Muh-Wang, the Tatars begin to make their flying inroads into the kingdom ; they were generally repulsed, and although the Chinese, the civilising people of Eastern Asia, were in many ways distracted, there seems little doubt that the outlying principalities were extending their borders and their influence. The Tatars were a kindred people to the Chinese, and might perhaps be looked on rather as sturdy Conservatives, living in old-time pastoral hardihood, than as a separate nation.
It was during the dynasty of Chow that Confucius was born in B.C. 551, in Tsow, in the province of Shan-tung. The existence of such a man as Confucius is proof that the nation had grown intellectually as well as materially, for he was not merely a natural thinker and man of wisdom, but a man who had studied, assimilated, and annotated the works of predecessors, and added to them. He had access to the royal library, and among the books he found there was " The Book of Changes," the work of Wan- Wang, written in prison, about B.C. 1150, during the troublous period preceding the fall of the Shang dynasty. Like most early philosophies, it is founded on some observation, and a recurrence to the natural from the merely formal and traditional ; but it wanders into baseless generalisation and mere verbiage. It has been called "a sexual system of the universe " : in it the first great cause set up in all things a male and female principle, represented in heaven and earth, sun and moon, etc.
The works of Confucius are " The Book of History," " The Book of the Odes," " The Spring and Autumn," " The Book of Rites," and others, written partly by himself and partly by his pupils.
" The Book of History " commences, as has been said, about B.C. 2400, comes down to near the author's own times, and contains nearly all we know of that period. Along with the history proper, it contains little dissertations on all sorts of subjects, in the form largely of conversations between the kings and their ministers. The nature of the didactic speeches of the ministers to the kings is very much what one would expect from a practical man speaking to his sovereign, as distinguished from a public teacher trying to convince the people or an assembly.
" Virtue," one says, " is the basis of good government ; and this consists, first, in procuring for the people the things necessary for their sustenance, . . . the ruler must also think of rendering them virtuous, and of preserving them from whatever can injure life and health." As to the duty of the people it says : " The services of love and reverence to parents when alive, and those of grief and sorrow for them when dead, these completely discharge the fundamental duty of living men." The hook " Spring and Autumn Annals " is said to he entirely the work of Confucius himself, to "bring the annals down to his own time, and to contain fearless judgments on events, but translations do not seem to bear out this Chinese judgment. " The Book of Rites " is attributed in its inception to one of the princely family, who founded the Chow dynasty of the Empire ; it was edited by Confucius.
There had long been bards throughout the land, both at the royal and princely courts, and many of their compositions were preserved in the king's library : from these Confucius made a selection, forming "The Book of Odes." They are simple, loyal, and domestic in sentiment ; pretty and kindly songs of pastoral peace, breathing of a religion of reverence untainted by philosophy. Occasionally songs of wandering, and of skill in the chase, and of gaieties of festive seasons vary the theme. There is little tragedy ; hardly any echoes, as of Olympus or Valhalla.
Confucius was during his life somewhat neglected, save by some reverent pupils ; but his books became in time, and continue to be, " The Law and the Prophets" to the Chinese, especially among the official and learned classes. He has had no more loyal followers than among the Manchu officials of a generation back. To a large extent, the government and religion of China have been made one by Confucius. "The Book of Kites " and " The Book of History " found them on altruism and ceremony. He announced the Golden Rule, and judged by the heart. His ideal of paternal sway was his model of kingship and government. He himself strictly performed the rites for the dead, and approved of them, but he said : " While we cannot do good to the living, how can we expect to do good to the dead > " Again, in a similar sense : " If we know so little of this world, is it likely we can know much of another which we have never seen ? "
A pension was granted to the family of Confucius, which the representative receives to this day. It is the only purely hereditary position in China, and the oldest in the world.
Confucius had an eminent contemporary, Lao-tsze, a profound thinker, of a different school. Confucius wanted no theory of the universe which was not available for government and social communion. Lao-tsze aimed rather at an absolute theory of tlie universe, and at the deduction therefrom of privnte ethics. He named his theory or principle " Tao " : the word literally means "way," but may be freely translated " the way of things." It had not so much in it of the idea of progressive change as the general idea, current to-day under the name Evolution, but the two ideas, Tao and Evolution, are very near akin. " When we grasp the Tao that was of olJ, so as to deal with the existences of the present, and are able to know the old beginnings, that is what is called having the clue of Tao." As a consequence of his idea of the potency of Tao, or " the way of things," he lauded one might almost say inaction rather than restraint, or selfdenial. " Common people," he said, " were full of discrimination, but he was like a country lout, for he drifted rather than behaved, so that he fell more easily into the ways of the great nursing mother nature, or the living principle, Tao." He goes on to speak of desiring nothing, doing nothing with a motive : " States are ruled by correction ; war is carried on by craft ; it is only by doing nothing that the kingdom can be made one's own."
" The incomplete becomes complete, the crooked becomes straight, the hollow becomes full, the wornout becomes new ; he who deserves little gets much ; he who desires much goes astray."
It might be paraphrased: "Only believe (in Tao) and you shall be saved." A few disciples kept his philosophy alive for a generation or two, but it latterly fell into the hands of magicians and diviners, and became one of the popular religions of China. Taoist priests and temples have gone on growing in numbers up to the present day, through varying fortune, but retain nothing of the original philosophy or ethics of Lao-tsze, only the name Taoism.
No doubt, the unsettledness of the times had much to do with the searches after a basis of conduct, which occupied the minds of men like Confucius and Lao-tsze, and later of Mencius. The impetus of their beginnings spread through succeeding generations and centuries of Chinese literature, distinguishing it from the Confucian collection in " The Book of Odes." The idea of personal morality is more diffused, and so follow "sturm und drang" periods. Demons and evil spirits interfere with the sweet course of nature. Social cataclysms occur, or are dreamt of, and tragedy walks the stage.
CHAPTER II.
TUE internal strifes still goiug on, and the hands of the Chow dynasty loosening on the sceptre, the strong man came to the fore, in the person of the Prince of Thsin, the governor of a large province in the northwest. He overpowered the other divisions of the kingdom, and in B.C. 225, under the name of Chaouseang-Wang, assumed the imperial sway, and founded the dynasty of Thsin or Tsing. Under his rule, and that of his successors, the warring states were gradually pacified and united.
His grandson, Che-Kwang-te, ascended the throne at the age of thirteen, and hecame the "first universal emperor." He chose Si-ngan-foo as his capital r and built there a splendid palace. He constructed roads and canals and handsome buildings, clearly indicating his popular and industrial leanings ; the canals served both purposes of irrigation and navigation. The Heung-noo Tatars, during his reign, were kept well in check in their native hills and grassy vales. On his return from an expedition against the Tatars, he was met by a rebellion in Ho-nan, led by some dissatisfied princelings, which his relatively welltrained troops soon put down. Thus twice victorious in quick succession, he undertook a new development in Chinese policy ; marching his expedition southwards, he subdued the hitherto neglected tribes of these regions, occupied their country, and became emperor of a China corresponding geographically to the China proper of to-day. He was the builder of the famous Great Wall of China. Beginning about B.C. 214, with the help of prisoners and other forced labour, he raised in a few years this remarkable if not very effective barrier between China and the Mongolian Tatars. The wall commences at the sea, near Peking, and extends to the Nan-shan mountains, a distance of about 1200 miles. Determined, perhaps, to have no more precedents quoted against him, he issued an edict for the burning of all the books in the country, excepting the works on divination, medicine, and husbandry ; that is, he excepted the popular and industrial books. This edict was carried out ruthlessly, but fortunately, in happier times for the books, a tolerably complete copy of Confucius was found embedded in the walls of his house, when it was pulled down about B.C. 140. The works of Laotsze came under the head of divination.
Che-Huang-te was himself enamoured of the diviners and magicians, who were often Taoist priests. They seem to have persuaded him into the belief in the possibility of his obtaining immortality on earth, and he paid dearly for draughts to procure eternal life On one occasion he sent away, under the direction of some diviner, a ship-load of young men and young women, to induce the gods to come down to the islands in the east, and bring with them the secrets of immortality.
On the death of Che-Huang-te, in B.C. 210, and his succession by a weak son, the pent-up discontent of curbed princelings broke out again, and after five years' fighting, the most successful general, Lew-Pang, was declared emperor in B.C. 206, and under the name of Kaou-te or Kaow-Hwang-te, he founded the Han dynasty. Kaou-te continued the edict against the books; his successor, however, set up a commission to see to their restoration, and gave every encouragement to literature : there was peace in the Empire, and trade improved. About this time paper was first made from mashed bamboo ; and Chinese ink and the camel's-hair pencil were invented. Though the professors of literature were at this time, no doubt, personally, sleek enough, their work is mostly somewhat plaintive piping. So that we may say the chief disturbers of the peace were these old enemies, the Iluung-noo Tatars. Beaten by the Chinese, these restless tribesmen turned their attention to the kingdom of Yue-che, which had grown up in the western extremity of the province of Shen-se, and, after much fighting, drove the inhabitants westward ; this state of affairs suggested an embassy from the emperor, offering an alliance with Yue-che ; but his ambassador was seized and imprisoned by the Heung-noo This embassy however, if not the first to introduce silk into Europe, did at least inaugurate some trade in that material.
In B.C. 121, the Emperor Woo-te sent an expedition against the Heung-noo, which defeated them, and the Chinese followed up the victory with colonisation, establishing their own institutions in the conquered provinces; and, gradually expelling the rebellious Heung-noo from Eastern Asia, left them round the east and north of the Caspian Sea. This emperor, like many of the great Chinese rulers, liked to get the most out of the priests of any religion or cult. He was quite favourable to the learned followers of Confucius, with their reasonable philosophies for the welfare of the nation; but he hankered after the Taoists too, in the search after immortality, a common earthly immortality.
The son of Woo-te succeeded him on the throne, and the country succeeded to comparative peace ; but the Han dynasty was waning in strength and power. After disturbances during a minority, about the beginning of our era, after rebellion and counterrebellion, the old line disappeared. The successful soldier got himself placed on the throne, and the eastern Han dynasty was begun by Kwang-woo-te in A.D. 25.
He was succeeded by Ming-te in A.D. 65. Iii this reign Buddhism was introduced into China from India. The following is a record of this event, by a Chinese historian, interesting as a record, and also as an example of Chinese history writing.
" In the year of the reign of Tchao-Wang, of the dynasty of the Tcheou (B.C. 1029), on the eighth day of the fourth moon, a light coming from the south-west illuminated the palace of the king. The monarch, beholding the splendour, interrogated concerning it the sages who were skilled in predicting the future. These presented to him the books wherein it was written that this prodigy would announce that a great saint had appeared in the west, and that in a thousand years after his birth, his religion would spread into these parts.
"In the 53rd year of his reign of Mou-Wang, which is that of the Black Ape, B.C. 951, on the 15th day of the second moon, Buddha manifested himself (i.e. died). A thousand and thirteen years afterwards, in the reign of Ming-te, of the dynasty of Han, in the seventh year of the reign of Yuug-Pia (A.D. 64), on the fifteenth day of the first moon, the king saw in a dream a man of the colour of gold, glittering like the sun, and whose stature was more than ten feet. Having entered the palace of the king, this man said : ' My religion will spread over these parts.' Next day the king questioned the sages. One of these, named Fou-y, opening the annals of the time of the Emperor Tchao-Wang of the dynasty of the Tcheou, pointed out the connection between the dream of the king and the narrative in the annals. The king consulted the ancient books, and having found the passage corresponding with the reign of Tchao-Wang, of the dynasty of the Tcheou, was filled with gladness. Thereupon he despatched the officers Tsa-In and Thsin-King, ' the man of letters,' Wang-Tsun, and fifteen other persons into the west, to obtain information respecting the doctrine of Buddha.
" In the 10th year (A.D. 67), Tsa-In and the rest having arrived in Central India, among the great Youei-Tchi, met with Kas'yamatanga and Tcho-Fa-Law, and procured a statue of Buddha, and books in the language of Fan (i.e. Sanscrit), and conveyed them on a white horse to the city of Yo-Lang. Matanga there translated the ' Sacred Book of Forty-two Articles.' Six years after, Tsa-In and Tcho-Fa-Law converted certain Tao-sse (Taoists) to Buddhism. Rising afterwards into celestial space, they caused the king to hear the following verses :
" ' The fox is not of the race of the lions. The lamp has not the brightness of the sun or moon. The lake cannot be compared with the sea : the hills cannot be compared with the lofty mountains.'
' ' ' The cloud of prayer spreading over the surface of the earth, its beneficial dew fecundating the germs of happiness, and the divine rites operating everywhere marvellous changes, all the nations will advance according to the laws of re-integration.' "
Buddhism in China, as in India, appealed to the people : the Buddhist temple was a place in which the crowds in populous places could gather themselves together. As the trade and industry of China grew, people came to have less permanence of abode and less convenience to keep up in their house a little room or corner even for the religious services to their ancestors. In the circumstances the priests, either Buddhists or Taoist, for a fee, took charge of the ancestor of the poor, or rather, took charge of the communications that took place between a man and his departed ancestors. As Buddhism became popular, rulers seeking popularity patronised it, and used the Buddhist priests and their flock as a foil to overweening officialism. Some time after this, the imperial harem seems to have been increasing in importance, for we hear (about A.D. 95) of the introduction of eunuchs to the Chinese court. -
Disturbances are occurring among the people, as witness the insurrection of the Yellow Caps. One Tchang-Kio, of the divining tribe, during the prevalence of a pestilence, persuaded the people that he could effect a cure : the cure was simple, a few magical words spoken over a drink of water; in this way he attained a popularity, probably at first quite innocent of treason. But loathe to dissipate his power, or let it pass away ineffective to the satisfaction of his own vanity, he started a rebellion among the people, and, with a rabble half a million strong behind him,
. openly aspired to supreme power. He had some little successes, but his followers were finally scattered by the regular troops with great slaughter. This uprising, however, proved the first of a series which began about A.D. 170, under weak emperors, and continued till A.D. 220, when the last of the line of Han was forced by the party of his prime minister, Tsao-tsao, to abdicate in favour of the latter's son Tsao-pe, who assumed the sceptre in that year. During these disturbances in the central kingdom, the various governors of the states were extending civilisation on their borders, as well as growing strong in themselves by good government.
The governors of two of the most nourishing of those states that comprising the present provinces Shen-se and Se-tchuen ; and that of Ou, a fertile and prosperous state, lying along the south-eastern bank of the Yang-tsze-Kiang from the Lake of Po Yang to the sea disputed the authority of Tsao-pe. Thus began the troublous period of the San-Kuo, or three kingdoms, which lasted over forty years, and was brought to an end by an outsider, a successful general of Tsao-pe, named Sze-ma-Yen, who, under the title of Woo-te, founded the dynasty of the "Western Tsin.
These years of disturbance seem to have been, like the troubled times of Confucius, characterised by a literary fermentation ; and their traditional heroes and their doings are favourite subjects for the plays and romances of later days. Woo-te began his rule with vigour, and after having restored order near home, he effected the complete subjugation of Ou. To do this he raised an army of 200,000 men, and built for its passage the first great bridge over the Yellow River.
During the reign of Woo-te, the capital was visited by an envoy from the Roman Emperor Theodosius, who may have suggested and designed the bridge.
The independent spirit abroad in China was such that no royal house could stand, unless administered by a powerful chief. Woo-te's son and successor did not fulfil this condition, and the country soon fell into disorder.
An able soldier of fortune, Lew-Yuen, himself of Tatar origin, obtained from the imperial court the appointment of commander-general of all the tribes of the Heung-noo Tatars. He inspired the confidence of the tribesmen, who rallied round his standard, for he now claimed to be the King of Han, being a descendant of that house on the female side. He established a firm and extending power, rivalling the house of Tsin. His successor, Lieou-tsong, marched on the capital; pretexts, in these troubled times, were not difficult to get. He was easily victorious, and imprisoned the emperor, treating both him.: -and his son with great indignity, and in the end cruelty. While this Han family increased in power, they allowed the Tsin dynasty to linger on on the imperial throne, but with little power. Disorder and bloodshed at court and among the people were common.
One of the Han family, who had by this time changed their name to Tcheou, following the example of many established tyrannies, built himself a splendid palace, which is a short way of writing a long account of extortion and luxury ; and at his court maintained more than 10,000 persons, including gymnasts, diviners, priests, and fortune-tellers, but never a Chinese man of learning. Perhaps his most remarkable fancy was a cavalry regiment of the tallest and handsomest girls he could procure, and which he kept about him as a bodyguard without the palace, and as a retinue of attendants within it. In this luxury the house of Tcheou grew weak, rivals arose, and one reads of little but intrigue and murder; and ghastly Taoist priesthoods standing by with offers of immortal life for value received to temporarily repentant or even quite impenitent reprobates, whose likeliest desert were rather instant death. The maritime provinces are being ravished by pirates, and the landward peoples are no doubt having their unrecorded troubles.
It is curious that the rulers of the house of Tsin were also under the influence of this same glamour of a possible earthly immortality. Tsin-ngai-tai was so much under the spell that he would take nothing but draughts to procure it a diet on which he soon became unfit for business. In this plight the priests told him that he could not expect to arrive with every comfort at the beginning of his everlasting life, and so hoping tho poor man died. At other times the court was given over to dissoluteness, jealousies, and murders; sometimes a king kills a whole series of wives, at other times the queen, stung by jealousy, waits for her lord in his cups, and stifles him with the royal napery ; through weary records.
It is pleasant to find that there are regions of peace and industry throughout the land, and that in the midst of political disturbance one of the reigning princes, about A.D. 560, set up in Kin-tee-ching a factory of pottery and porcelain, which in time became an imperial institution, and continued to flourish down to modern times.
CHAPTER III.
AN able general at length appeared on the scene, in the person of Yang-kien, the Prince of Soui, in A.D. 585. After a series of brilliant achievements in the field, he united the north and the south, and assumed the imperial sceptre under the name of Ouen-ti, founding the house of Soui. He ruled for sixteen fairly peaceful years. He made no pretence to learning, but he took good care that the mandarins and doctors of law should be strictly impartial' in the administration of justice. He cleared the literary drones from the colleges, suppressing some altogether. Personally he was simplicity itself, even to plainness in dress. At the same time he could be generous to an able servant ; and while his economy enabled him to relieve the burdens of the poor, his treasury was always full.
His son and successor, Yang-ti, was of quite an opposite school. He held a magnificent court, encouraged learning, built splendid canals connecting the rivers, and so adding greatly to the convenience for traffic of these natural waterways, along which, in superb barges, he and his court passed from one capital to another ; and one can well believe the record that as he journeyed through his "flowery land," over the blue waters of the Yang-tsze-Kiang, and along one of his well-made canals, he invented that fine style of gardening in which the natural and artificial blend so prettily, and which has become so characteristic of the Chinese. All this meant taxes and popular discontent, and at last rebellion and general fighting, out of which rose Le-Yuen, who in 622 seized the throne, and, under the title of Kao-tsou, founded the Tang dynasty.
Le-Yuen had been an officer in the imperial service, and was assisted in his ambitious schemes not only by his son, but by his daughter, Li-chi, who, selling all her jewels, levied a body of troops, which became the famous Band of the Heroine. In seven years he consolidated and pacified all China, when he died, and was succeeded by his son, Li-chi-min, who took the name Tai-tsong, and was one of the most illustrious emperors of China a David in battle, and a Solomon on the judgment seat. He revised the law codes, which in China consist almost entirely of a penal code, obliterating many of the barbarous punishments. The calendar was purified of astronomical errors and astrological nonsense ; on these matters he may have been assisted by Xestorian Christians, who settled in China during his reign, who hailed from Syria, and were doubtless not without Chaldean lore.
The existence of an early Christian mission to China was not known until the year 1625, when an inscribed stone was found in an excavation outside the walls of the city of Si-ngan-foo, the capital of Shen-se. The gist of the inscription is the relation that, in A.D. 635, there came a man of eminent virtue, named Olopin, from Ta-Thsin (usual Chinese expression for the Roman empire), bringing sacred books with him. He was received by the emperor, who ordered him to translate these books, and finding them on examination to contain good doctrine, he permitted their publication. The emperor, in his declaration permitting the publication of this sacred book (that is, the New Testament) announces that it is the return of the true doctrine of Lao-tsze an intimation which no doubt had the sanction, if not the initiation, of the learned councillors of the emperor. The true followers of Confucius must have been happy during this reign, for the emperor would have nothing to do with auguries or magic. During his rule the Tatars were not only kept in check, but much of their territory was annexed, and good order established among the people.
Kao-tsong, the next sovereign, committed a fatal weakness. Having caught sight of one of the ladies of his father's household, he became infatuated with her beauty, and instead of allowing her, according to the usual custom, to be immured in a convent, he took her into his palace, where she soon began to devise and plot for supreme power. She stuck at no crime to gain her end, degrading, torturing, killing queen and councillors, with the assistance of a Taoist magician and a crafty eunuch. Chinese historians have little mercy on her, but she seems, when she finally arrived at power, to have governed with vigour and considerable success. She was happy in her choice of generals for her armies, and they kept the borders in order. She left her son emperor, and the troubles which followed are pointed to by Chinese writers as the natural result of the " Monstrous Eegiment of "Women." She died in 705. The eunuchs, a compact band, acquainted with court intrigues, now largely usurped the power of the Tang dynasty. Yueng-tsun, who succeeded in 713, was a well-meaning monarch, encouraging learning and liberality of thought. His armies, however, were unfortunate against the Khitans, and a Turkish soldier of fortune chased him from the throne. His son succeeding him, called in the aid of the Bokharans and others, and drove off his father's enemy ; but in the end sank under the influence of his harem and the eunuchs, and died in A.D. 762. For several reigns the eunuchs retained their influence at court, and fighting continued on the borders, especially of Thibet. The power of the eunuchs was destroyed by the second last emperor of this dynasty, Woo-tsung (841 847), who nearly extirpated them, as well as banishing Buddhists and Christians, and closing monasteries and nunneries. The next emperor, desirous of public favour, became a restorer of the religions, especially of Buddhism. But troubles followed on troubles, and the empire was ripe for a new dynasty, led by personal ability and vigour. The Tang period is famous for its literature. Printing from engraved blocks was invented during its sway, and was naturally followed by a diffusion of literary aptitude. The art of printing rapidly spread, and during the next dynasty, that of Sung (960-1127), the use of movable types was introduced. The first great monarch of the new line, Tai-tsou, was raised to the throne in 960. He quieted the warring tribes, except a rising one in Leao calling themselves Khitan, who occupied Pe-che-le. While literature flourished, and doubtless trade also, the people of the central kingdom were becoming less warlike, and the Tatars began to interfere in the national policy. The books of the period do not fail to denounce disgraceful acts of compromise with the Mongolians. Chin-tsong and his successor bought peace from the Tatars, and gave their chiefs daughters in marriage. A semi-independent state in the north, called the Kin, now took up arms against the Khitans; and China, never looking with a friendly eye on the latter, rashly helped the Kins, who, beating the Khitans, got into dispute with their Chinese allies. Peace was at first purchased by the Chinese, but the Kins returned, and in the end overran all Northern China.
About this time the western Mongolians were being marshalled into larger communities, especially under one Temugin, a noted leader, who afterwards changed his name to Ginghiz or Zingis, the famous Khan. The Kins now ruling in Northern China sought to obtain the usual tribute from certain Mongolian tribes, but the tribes boldly refused, and, allying themselves with others, marched under Temugin against the Kin government. The Chinese, now jealous of the Kins, assisted Ginghiz, who, with varying fortune, renewed the fight, till in 1213 he gained a decisive victory in a battle in which the Kin monarch was killed. His successor took up the fighting, but was driven gradually by the vigorous Ginghiz from the field, sheltering at last in his capital, which fell before the conqueror in 1220. Five years later, and one year before his death, Ginghiz was master of most of China, but the south still held out.
In these conquests Ginghiz relinquished the former Mongolian practice of exterminating conquered foes. His chiefs were about to carry out this practice, and turn the land, transformed by Chinese agriculture, back to grass again for their horses and flocks, but a Chinaman who was among the advisers of the victorious chief pointed out to him how much better it would be to maintain this industrious working people, and levy a tax on them for the upkeep of his armies. Ginghiz accepted this advice, and so Chinese civilisation was saved.
On his death, Ginghiz bestowed his power on Ogdai, his son by a Mongol wife, who governed the Kin kingdom that is, Xorthern China. He stayed at home himself, attending to the administration of peace ; while his armies, even as far as the lands east of the Caspian Sea, were conquering and gaining tribute. He quarrelled with his old allies, the Chinese of the south, still under the dynasty of Sung, but did not live to commence hostilities. He died in 1241, having done much to set up the Mongol power in China. His immediate successor died early, and was followed by Mangu, a son of Ogdai's brother Too-le, who continued the work of the suppression of Sung. On the death of Mangu in 1259, his brother Kublai ascended the throne. During his reign all enemies of the Mongol dynasty were swept away. He was emperor from the Frozen Sea to the Himalayas, and all the Mongol princes as far west as the Dnieper brought him tribute. The Chinese in the south did not give in too easily, but they had no leader able to stand against the genius of Kublai. Several princes of the dynasty of Sung, one after the other, were raised to the throne, and the people rallied round them, but in vain. Swept from the land, their last fight took place on the fleets. When beaten there, the king and his chief councillor jumped together into the sea, and so ended the house of Sung ; and another method of selfdestruction was represented at the conge of a Chinese royal house.
Gunpowder seems to have been used about the beginning of these Mongolian wars, probably in mortars.
The internal rule of the Sung dynasty in the south was, under the first emperors, characterised by the encouragement of letters. It was under orders from one of them that Se-ma-Houang compiled his digest of the Chinese annals, which has been translated into French by Mailla.
Xearer the close of the dynasty a great literary dispute convulsed the country. Tchu-hi, an eminent scholar, and plain, rough man of the hermit type, was called to court, and his commentaries on Confucius and the fathers were published. Disciples gathered round him, and a possible expansion of Chinese thought was hanging in the air. Some of the elders discovered heresy in the writings of Tchu-hi. The matter was taken before the 'board of learned doctors, and it was decreed that Confucius was, as heretofore, to be read without commentary. Tchu-hi was required to renounce his official dignities, some of his more ardent disciples were exiled, and others holding high office were deposed.
To return to Kublai, whom we left Emperor of China, we find him, while keeping his Mongolian soldiers about him and an immense entourage, patronising Chinese learning, as well as Buddhism and Taoism. It was during his reign that Marco PoJo visited China, from whose memoirs it would appear that Kublai was quite ready for the reception of Christianity ; but the Pope was unfortunate in the preachers he sent out with Marco. They took fright at some warlike rumours that cropped up on their journey to China, and returned to Rome. He conquered Thibet, but bestowed the power on the Buddhist high priest, the chief Llama. Kublai died in 1294, and was succeeded by his grandson Timur or Yuen-ching, who was followed by a Mongolian prince in 1307, under the name of "Woo-tsung. Then came Jin-tsung, who was captured by the old official Chinese classes, and who honoured Confucius and literary excellence, reintroduccd the old examinations for government appointments, and did what he could to amalgamate the two nations. His reign was peaceful and prosperous, but he was the last of the Mongol emperors who attended to their business. The last who sat on the throne was Shun-te, who in 1335 had to fly for his life from his rebellious subjects, led by a man who had begun life as a Buddhist novitiate, and then gone into the army, named Choo- Yuen- Chang.
CHAPTER IV.
Tins son of the people proved an able leader. He established settled government at home, and beat the troublesome Tatars back to their own land of grass ; he was victorious over the Mongols in Leaou-tung; and at last accepted the imperial crown as the first of the Ming dynasty. While still struggling in the beginning of his career with a few followers, he had luvn careful to repress mere robbery, but impressed his fellow-rebels with their duty to humanity, and during his reign he fulfilled this early promise of beneficence. He set up his capital at Nan-King, Peking being the home of the court of one of his younger sons, who, when he ascended the throne as third emperor of the Ming in 1408, transferred the imperial capital to that town, the heir in future holding his court at Nan-King.
Timour or Tamerlane, the great Tatar chief, who was rapidly reforming the Mongol power, and leading his tribes to victory, died about this time, while organising an expedition against China. Timour remains to this day the great hero of the Mongolian bards ; they sing his praises at the festivals of the wandering tribes all over the land of grass.
' ' We live in our vast plains tranquil and peaceful as sheep, yet our Hearts are fervent and full of life ; the memory of the golden age of Timour is ever present to our minds. Where is the chief who is to place Himself at our head, and render us once more great warriors? great Timour, will thy divine soul soon revive ? Return, return ; we await thee, Timour ! "
Yung-lo, the third emperor of the Ming, had to take in hand the Buddhists, grown aggressive under the favours rendered them by his father. He renewed an old law prohibiting Buddhism ; he made new conquests in Tatary, and added Tong-King and CochinChina to the empire ; he encouraged literature and the fine arts. During the next reign, that of Kung-ly, a great fire occurred in the palace, which melted together several kinds of precious metals, and from this mixture there were made a number of vases of fine workmanship, which are sought after and highly prized to this day. The next emperor was Seuentih, during whose reign Cochin-China re-emancipated herself. In the next reign the Tatars were again on the warpath.
The following reigns those of Ching-h\va and Hang-che (1465-1506) were quiet and peaceful. It was during these reigns that the Portuguese navigators rounded, for the first time, the Cape of Good Hope, and effected a landing on the coast of China.
In the reign of Chung-tih (1506-22) rebel princes distracted the central power, and in the reign of a successor, Kea-tsing, a Tatar army raided the province of Shen-se, and the fleets of the Japanese ravished the coasts. Tung-King (1567-73) had to bribe the Tatar general and grant favours to him, which had to be increased by his successor, Wan-lich (1573-1620). During these reigns the Japanese invaded Korea, killing and devastating, and then retiring.
The Portuguese obtained a settlement of a precarious nature at Macao, where they exchanged Indian gold and spices, and in time, no doubt, American gold, for the silks of China. Jesuit missionaries accompanied these voyages to Japan, India, and China ; and two of special eminence, Fathers Ricci and Schall, settled in China. The missionaries had great difficulties with the rival schools, especially with the Taoists and Buddhists. They found it necessary to appeal to the emperor for protection. In this appeal they were greatly aided through being able to produce a clock which kept correct time and struck the hours. In addition, they were mathematicians and astronomers, and were able to correct the Chinese calendar. They were made use of by the emperors, and Father Schall held high office, not only under the Ming dynasty, but under the dynasty of the Manchus, who followed them. While the missionaries were eminently successful personally, Christianity made no headway in China.
Military kings holding a large population under sway were only too glad of the assistance of Taoists, Buddhists, or any other established power.
The Tatars were in possession of Leaou-tung when the emperor died of a broken heart, and in the same year the Manchu Tatar prince Teen-ning declared himself independent. The emperor was succeeded by his son Tai-chang, who fell ill, and on the advice of his medicine man drank the water of immortality and died. The next emperor was Teen-Ke, and to him succeeded Tsung-ching, who disappeared in one of those tragic glares which have so often enlightened the page of Chinese history. Peking was surrounded by the troops of a rebellious chief, Li-tse-tching, and in flames, when the emperor, dreading the fate of his daughter, drew his sword, and putting one hand over his eyes, attempted to kill her, but only cut off her hand, then -strangled himself. Through all this fire and looting and massacre, the indomitable Father Schall, the Jesuit, missionary, held on his course.
The victorious usurper at Peking now led his armies against a brother rebel. The latter retiring from his position, requested the aid of the Manchu prince Teen-ning. This aid was readily given, and the allies were successful. The Manchu prince then marched on Peking, where he restored the troubled city to muchneeded order, was well received, and, acting with great consideration, gradually assumed sole authority. Among his other appointments to office, he made Father Schall chief of the doctors of celestial literature. Being seized with mortal sickness, he appointed his son, then a boy, his successor (1644), in whom began the Manchu dynasty still reigning in China. His royal name was Shun-che, and the dynasty was called Ta-tsung. The good Schall was a constant companion and adviser of the young emperor. The emperor's un?le Ama-Wang, the actual ruler, was also a friend of Schall ; but the empress-mother was too devoted a Buddhist to allow of these friendships opening a way for the spread of Christianity.
CHAPTER V.
THE Manchu conquerors kept as many as possible of the Chinese mandarins in their civil functions, but set up a class of military mandarins entirely of their own race. They also limited the period of the office of the civil governors of districts. They marked their conquest in another way, in some senses a very drastic one, and indicative of their power ; they made the Chinese adopt the Manchu costume, and even the Manchu style of wearing the hair. The shaved head and long pigtail, now so characteristic of the Chinaman, had to take the place of the luxuriant black locks which had been the pride of the sons of the " Flowery Land."
It has been noted that while the Manchu warriors conquered the Chinese armies, the Chinese people, agriculturalists, and merchants gradually entered in great numbers into Manchuria, and by cunning and settled diligence in business, possessed the land, ousting the pastoral inhabitants.
In 1677 a small English vessel sent from Formosa to Amoy, on the Chinese coast, landed there, and set up a storehouse or factory, as it was then called. The articles chiefly in request were flowered damasks and silks, hut this ship had also orders to expend $100 on tea.
The Manchu dynasty had established peace on land, the pirates under Koxinga were amenable to reason, and the power of the Dutch fleet was waning, so that circumstances were favourable to British trade, and that of tea, in particular, made great advances.
The first check it received was the imposition of a duty of five shillings in the pound. Then in 1705 the Malays set on fire the factory at Amoy, killing or burning the few English residents there. At Canton the trade began to give indications of the importance it was yet to attain at that port. In 1703, 105,000 Ibs. of tea were exported thence. By 1715 the trade had become established, a regular fleet of British teaships arriving at stated seasons for their freights.
The next emperor was Kang-he, an able and industrious monarch, alike in administration and in the battlefield. In literary and scientific matters he was assisted by the Jesuits, whom he befriended. Thibet was drawn closer to the empire by the appointment of resident military mandarins at the populous centres. Warren Hastings, when Governor-General of India, endeavoured, about 1780, to open trade between India and Thibet ; but was informed that in all external matters Thibet could not act without the sanction of China. It was during this reign that the great earthquake occurred at Peking, said to have been fatal to several hundred thousand people. Kang-he died from a cold contracted during one of his great hunting expeditions, having reigned for sixty years over a peaceful empire. His son succeeded to a short reign, and uneventful. In the reign of Keen-lung, the next emperor (1735-1795), the Mohammedans in the empire rebelled, but were put down successfully, and many were massacred. He was a restless monarch, with a lust for conquest, marching his armies into nearly all the adjoining countries, but without much permanent success. In India he was fairly successful almost up to the British frontier, having beaten the Gourkhas and the Kepaulese. He wrote long poems and histories, chiefly glorifying his military campaigns. His expedition against the Meaou-tsze, or Highlanders of China, was only partially successful, for it failed to follow the clans to their mountain retreat. These Highlanders still remain, the only Chinamen who do not wear the Manchu dress and queue. He was also unfortunate in his expedition against the rebellious Formosans. Lord Anson visited Canton in 1742, but although he was treated with pomp and favour, he could get no concessions for the tea merchants.
The high rates of interest on loans paid in China induced British merchants to make advances to the Chinese, and the failure of the Chinese to repay was the cause of frequent disputes. An Englishman, MiFlint, endeavoured to make his complaint at headquarters at Peking ; hut before getting half way he was dragged back, and only liberated on condition of leaving the country altogether, his offence being simply intrusion into the central kingdom. The emperor in the end ordered repayment of principal and interest, but forbade the traffic for the future.
In 1792 the British Government, at the request of the East India Company, sent out Lord Macartney at the head of an embassy. The visit was friendly enough, but no concessions were obtained.
At the age of eighty-five Keen-lung resigned in favour of his son, Kea-King. Kea-King soon sank into indolent and luxurious habits, and during his reign the peace of the empire was disturbed by sects or brotherhoods, who incited to insurrection. A rising in Shan-tung spread over the neighbouring provinces, and lasted for eight years, until it was suppressed by troops called in from Tatary. From these sects or clubs sprang the Triad Society, the members of which, like freemasons, recognise one another by secret symbols. During this reign a systematic piracy sprang up. The force of these corsairs was at one time estimated at 70,000 men, navigating 1800 ships. The Chinese imperial navy was repeatedly beaten off in attacking them ; but at last, on the death of their famous queen, they split up among themselves, and both crews and leaders were absorbed in the national navy.
In 1804 and 1805 the tea ships of the East India Company were armed, and had often to fight off the French and Dutch fleets to get their cargoes through. In 1808 Admiral Drury landed a body of troops at Macao, for the French fleet was lying off Jaffa a proceeding which irritated the Chinese officials. Again, in 1814, H.M.S. Doris, having captured the American ship Hunter, and brought her into Macao Eoads, the Chinese objected, and threatened to stop the tea trade by way of retaliation. The English Minister, Sir George Stanton, however, made a firm stand. The result was the first appearance of any concession granted to the merchants, the Chinese hitherto pretending to a total disregard for the continuance of the trade. An embassy under Lord Amherst in 1816 was anything but a success, and Peking, as a source of relief or redress to the merchants, was given up as hopeless.
From near the end of the last century a trade in opium (chiefly contraband) had grown up between China and British India. The central government of China issued proclamations against it; but the mandarins and the people had alike fallen a prey to its charms, and even the Chinese revenue-cutters were used by the officials to bring the smuggled drug from the ships in the roadstead up to Canton.
In 1820 Kea-King died, and was succeeded by Taou-Kwang. Kea-King left behind him a badlygoverned and disaffected people, to whom the new emperor, in the first moments of his reign, gave some hopes of better things.
Probably a corrupt officialism was too much for him, and he too went in for pleasure and its mean excitements. Insurrections and seditious societies were the order of the day.
Traders in the Canton River, British and others, were still subject to impositions and unfair treatment, and not allowed to trade directly with the people, but only through the Kongs, or intermediaries appointed by the Chinese governor of the province. Messrs Mathieson . and Innes made several attempts to open trade at other ports, and were sometimes successful ; in fact, things looked all right for their enterprise, until the mandarins began to interfere and burn the houses of those who had traded with the strangers; some poor natives were even cruelly beaten for merely looking at the barbarian ships.
In 1833 the monopoly of the East India Company came to an end, and three commissioners were appointed to watch the conduct of the British traders.
They were Lord Napier, Mr Plowden, and Mr Davis. Difficulties of rites and formalities arose. Napier had his case written out and distributed in leaflet form, after the Chinese fashion. He was answered by the Chinese officials in a counter notice, wherein they called him a barbarian slave and an outside savage. Shots were exchanged between the British warships and the forts, and the tea-trade was stopped. Trade was opened again on very much the old footing, and Davis, who had now become superintendent, followed a quiescent policy looking after the British traders, and leaving the Chinese officials alone.
This policy was maintained by his successor, Robinson. In time a change came over the British home policy, which became more marked on the accession of Lord Palmerston to power. Mr Elliot is appointed superintendent, with a deputy, and on the understanding that he is to go to Canton and open communications with the Chinese. With tact and an appearance of submission, Elliot got into Canton, and into some kind of communication with the mandarins, when a new element of discord intervened in the opium question.
The excessive secret import of opium, and consequent payment for it in Syce silver, the standard coin of the empire, appreciated the coin to the great inconvenience of the ordinary trade of the country.
This, with the baneful effects of the drug itself, led to the promulgation of an imperial edict prohibiting the import of opium. Elliot in the end, although the official Chinese of the province were busy at the time smuggling opium in large quantities, was ordered by the Chinese governor to require the ships to give up all their opium at a. place and time to be appointed. This was one part of a mutual agreement, and it was carried out; the merchants and Elliot at the same time leaving Canton, after depositing claims for payment and for damages in the proper quarter.
Various bickerings went on between the parties, until, in March 1840, Lord John Russell sent out a fleet, which blockaded Canton. Various ports along the coasts were also blockaded or bombarded, and attempts made to communicate direct with the emperor. The Chinese temporised and retracted ; the fleet again operated, and all the forts in the River Canton were reduced. Whereupon the Chinese agreed to open the port to trade, to pay $6,000,000 indemnity, and to cede entirely the island of Hong-Kong to Britain. But in a few days crowds of Chinese began to appear on the scene ; English troops were again landed, and Canton evacuated by the Tatar soldiers.
In the meantime the home government had sent out Sir Henry Pottinger to replace Mr Elliot. More troops of Tatar soldiers arrived, and the British again took active measures, defeating and punishing the Chinese soldiery. The former imperial commissioner was recalled and disgraced, and a new treaty arranged, the Chinese agreeing to pay $20,000,000, cede HongKong, and open to trade Canton, Amoy, Fou-tcheoufou, Ming-po, and Shang-hai. This treaty was signed in August 1842. It should be noted that the exclusive spirit shown by the Chinese government in no way accords with the wishes of the Chinese people, who were always found friendly and open to trade.
The state of the army as described by Hue, who was about this time travelling through China, may well account for its total collapse before very small bodies of English troops. In fact it seems quite likely that the East Indian Company, if they had thought of it, instead of bargaining with official rascals about duties on tea, might have taken China.
We have seen how part of the official class guarded for selfish interest their country ; the following from the Abbe Hue will illustrate another cause of national coherence, in the midst of many appearances of imminent dissolution :
" Ty-kouo-!N"gan," the leader of the party with which Hue, Gabet, and his friends travelled, "getting more and more unwell, we thought it our duty to speak to him seriously on the subject of his soul and eternity. Our previous conversations on the way had sufficiently enlightened him as to the principal truths of Christianity. Nothing now remained but to make him clearly perceive his position, and convince him of the urgency of entering frankly and fully into the path of salvation. Ty-kouo-Xgan entirely concurred with us, admitting our observations to be replete with reason. He himself spoke with great eloquence on the brevity and frailty of human life, of worldly vanities, of the impenetrability of God's decrees, of the importance of salvation, of the truth of the Christian religion, and of the obligation of all mankind to embrace it. He said to us on all these subjects some very sensible and some very touching things but when it came to the point, to the practical result, to the declaring himself Christian, there was a dead stand : he must absolutely wait until he returned to his family and had abdicated his mandarinate. It was in vain that we represented the danger he incurred by postponing this important matter ; all was useless ' So long as I am a mandarin of the emperor, I cannot serve the Lord of Heaven ' ; and he had this absurd idea so deep in his brain, that it was impracticable to dislodge it." Foolish Abbo Hue ! " this absurd idea " was loyalty, not without a touch of chivalry, " that cheap defence of nations."
CHAPTER VI.
ANY family influence in the government of China which may have survived the Mongolian conquerors, and cropped up again under weaker rulers, was finally extirpated by the Manchu government. In China now, in addition to the military Manchus, there are but two divisions of the people the magistracy and the commonalty. "Wealth, without power and learning, is supposed to be held in contempt. It is true that outsiders have'observed that learning being the road to power of the official and magisterial order, learning thereby has a way of handing over to power the riches of the unlearned. In other words, the quan, or, as he is now called by Europeans, the mandarin, or, as he would be called in the Confucian philosophy, the father of a particular administrative family, small or large, takes care that the surplus wealth of private enterprise shall somehow reach his coffers.
The official class is composed of candidates who have passed examinations in the knowledge of the ancient books. This examination system came into use gradually. From the earliest ages the kings were the reputed fonts of learning. Mencius (B.C. 330) says : " Good laws are not equal to gaining the people by good instruction. Good laws the people fear; good instruction the people loVe." From these successful candidates are ultimately appointed the men who form the councils which advise the emperor. The emperor is absolute sovereign, is entitled "Son of Heaven," and holds communion with the supreme deity on his own account, and on behalf of his people. With the lesser deities the people may hold direct communication, but with the supreme ancestral god of the empire only through the emperor.
The emperor is assisted by a small cabinet with a president, and there are six supreme tribunals or departments of state, charged with the care respectively of the provinces ; the revenue ; ancient usages, religious rites and ceremonies, and the temples ; the army and navy ; the administration of justice ; and lastly, public works, mines, bridges, canals, etc. There is a president of each of these boards, who lays their decisions before the cabinet or grand council, who in their turn present them to the emperor. There is also a board of censors, a sort of inspecting department, whose duty is to keep a watch over all the officials of the empire, and another board which keeps a watch over the various members of the imperial family, and reports to the emperor.
Each province has a governor-general, a governor, a treasurer, a suh-commissioner, a literary chancellor, and a chief justice, six taotais of equal rank, a numher of prefects, and 'a large numher of district or county rulers, according to the size of the province. Every town and village has its governing hody. The governing hody of the town or village is subordinate to the county chief, he to the prefect, the latter to the taotai, and so on to the governor-general. Each of the high officers has a number of officials attached to himself.
All officers are supposed to be appointed by the emperor on the recommendation of the Board of Ceremonies, according to their merits as displayed in the great literary examination. The members of the Board of Ceremonies are, however, capable of recommending officers whose literary degrees have been bought. Although the salaries attached to the various, offices are very small, mandarins of China retire as men of wealth and substance through the corrupt gains of office.
The extortion of officials is of course a great check on private enterprise, and while not denying the possibility of evil in extremes of capitalism in the West, it is well to note the disastrous effect on industrial progress in China of the prohibition of the able and diligent man from infecting others with his ability and energy. The marshals of industry make and preserve order without cost to the state, and do it without the use of the bamboo. In China there are few large employers of labour. Nearly all the law of the country is a code of punishments, and the bamboo is omnipresent. The bamboo, inflicted on the offender with his face flat on the ground, is the main instrument throughout this vast empire of criminal justice. Blows vary from ten to a hundred. Strangulation is considered the mildest form of capital punishment, and is inflicted for want of piety towards parents, the sowing of discord among relatives, and theft above the value of 40. The severer forms of the death penalty beheading and hacking to pieces deliberately are reserved for the crimes of treason and parricide. The barbarous system of extracting evidence or confession by torture is practised with severity. Imprisonment and the canyue are the punishments that may be inflicted by the elders of the village, or court of first instance. The cangue is a heavy slab of wood, which is placed like a collar round the prisoner's neck, wearing which he has to stand in a public place for days and weeks, or even months. The prisons of China are filthy dens.
The torture which has crept into the practice of Chinese courts is against the law, and is an instance of the power which has been arrogated by officialdom. It is applied not only for the extraction of confessions from accused persons, but also to force evidence from witnesses. The barbarous and rude cruelty of the tortures practised is hardly credible. In civil cases the state of matters is little better. The applicant for justice has to begin by bribing the underlings to pro. cure the attention of the mandarin that is to say, to show him a place about the yamen or court-house where he can wait on his knees for the passage of that official, who, when he receives the application, appoints a day for investigation. At the taking of evidence it is not unusual to have torture employed, and as in Chinese courts of law there is frequently bribery and corruption, a man will naturally think twice before he gives evidence, unless he knows who has given the largest bribe.
Another tool, which Chinese authority makes large use of for the government of the people, is quite as effective in the way of intellectual and industrial stagnation and degradation that is, organised superstition. The soul of industrial progress is an appeal to the laws or methods of nature, and implies the institution and spread of a knowledge not contained in the books of the schools and the priests ; therefore the schoolmen and the priests oppose it. We have already seen how an intelligent commentary on Confucius was prohibited ; how it would fare with any kind of quite independent line of thought may be judged from that. In the religions of most of the early nations there was contained a reverence of letters, which, as usual, became a superstition. One form still extant of this Chinese superstitious reverence for letters is the care they take of any scrap of paper on which there has been writing ; it is wicked to throw away such a piece of paper, or use it as a wrapper. All bits of wastepaper that have had any letters written on them are carefully collected and burnt ; the spirit of the words thus passes through fire back to heaven, and the ashes are thrown into the river. Mrs Gray writes from Canton : " The Chinese certainly are a people given to superstition, but yet one cannot but admire the way they carry out what they profess. For instance, every night and morning lamps are lighted before the ancestral altars, joss-sticks are placed on the altars and before each shop in a queer little place made for the purpose on the ground, cut out of the stone projections. In front of the shops you will see three lighted joss-sticks at the dawn and at the setting of the sun. Religious worship is also much observed in the boats. The sampan we always employ (a small boat with a broad beam enclosed by a mat roof over the centre, propelled by two oars, and by a very powerful scull astern, generally kept in motion by a woman) has a small altar erected in the stern of the boat, which is covered by a sliding door by day. Morning and night the little door is withdrawn, and you see the miniature altar, crowded with effigies of the household gods, tiny tablets for ancestral worship made in wood painted red, bearing gilt characters signifying the names of the deceased ancestors, offerings of fruits and flowers, and little zinc ornaments. Incense-sticks are burnt night and morning on this altar at the bow of the boat, and at the entrance of the covered part where passengers sit."
That is the general and ordinary religion of the people. In addition to this there are many gods and goddesses, each with a temple and an annual festival. There is, for instance, the god Sheng-Wong, "The Protector of Walled Cities." He has a temple in every city, and a festival on the 27th day of the seventh month of the Chinese year. On that day the people flock to the temple, and the chief official of the city worships the god there, and kow-toics to his image on behalf of the people. The sick resort to this festival to receive the blessing of the god. Large quantities of prayer-sticks are purchased in the temple. Two seals, bearing the god's name, belong to the temple ; one is of silver and one of jadestone. Devotees can have articles of clothing stamped with those seals at a cheap rate with the jadestone, but for a fine gift with the silver one. The stamped article is taken home, and preserved as a charm against epidemics and other evils.
Then there is the goddess Kura-Fa, also with a temple and annual festival. She is more especially the tutelary deity of women and children. " At this festival men and women come to return thanks to the goddess for the gift of children which she is supposed to have granted them during the past year. Women, too, come to beseech her to give them children, and so to prevent their husbands from taking other wives. I saw many little ones in the temple, and learnt that they had been brought by their mothers to be presented to the goddess to receive her blessing. We were not fortunate enough to see many ladies ; they had most probably visited the temple very early in the morning, to escape the crowd that would later in the day besiege it. The women I saw were of the lower orders, but amongst them, during our visit to the temple, were two ladies beautifully dressed (they always come to this festival in their richest robes to do honour to the goddess), who looked shy and nervous, and who shrank into a corner with their attendants to wait until the altar was not so crowded. They seized a favourable moment, presented their offerings of fruit, flowers, and cakes, worshipped the goddess, and then retired." Arch, deacon Gray writes : " When I was visiting a Taoist temple, a father brought his son to the priests who were lodged in it, saying that the child was possessed of a devil. Having consulted the idol, the priests informed him that there were no fewer than five devils in the body of his son, but that they were prepared to expel them all on payment of a certain sum." The father agreed, and the priests produced five eggs, into each one of which they alleged they had sent a devil, and so disposed of the five.
Then every great river has a river-dragon, much feared and worshipped by the many dwellers on the rivers, who are engaged in the transport work of the country. A storm is caused by the stirring about of this dragon, and indeed a glimpse of his tail above the surface, as he turns, often heralds a coming storm.
The State, too, affords a quantity of ceremonial worship in the name of Confucius. Every town has at least one temple in honour of the almost deified sage ; the larger towns have several. Services are held in his honour twice a month, and there are special services throughout the empire in the middle months of spring and autumn, attended with great solemnity by all the mandarins, civil and military. At Pekin the worship is led by the emperor himself, and in the chief towns of the provinces by the governor-general. For two days preceding the ceremony the mandarins ought to fast. On the eve of the great day incense is lit on the altar in the temple. A solemn procession, \vith bands of music, brings a bullock, sheep, and pigs, which are, with all proper formalities, laid upon the altar; also flowers, fruits, and wines, and fabrics of white silk. On the day itself, the chief priest that is, the emperor or governor-general (for Confucius did not separate the offices of king and priest) arrives at the temple, and, having washed his hands, is ready to officiate. The whole of the mandarins of the district, in court costume, having now been marshalled in front of the altar, a master of ceremonies calls aloud, " Receive the Spirit." Again he calls, and the vocalists and musicians who are present sing and play a hymn. After this a herald cries aloud, "Let the incense arise," and again, " Receive the Spirit." Here the officiating chief kow-tows, and on rising is presented with a burning incense-stick. He raises this stick in both hands twice over his head, as a Roman Catholic priest elevates the host, then hands it to an attendant, who places it in a large incense-burner standing on the altar, and again performs the kow-tow. The chief then goes back to his place at the head of the mandarins, and all together perform the kow-tow while the minstrels sing a hymn in honour of Confucius. The chief has to advance to the altar nine times, and each time he presents to the tablet of Confucius a certain number of offerings, parts of the animals, or some of the flowers, fruits, or silks, raising each offering as it is presented above iiis head. Some quotation from Confucius, written on a sheet of yellow paper, is then read aloud by a herald, after which the paper is burnt and the writing is thus conveyed to spirit-land. In some cases an image of Confucius has crept into use in the temples, in place of the original and still usual tablet. The tablet is a piece of painted wood, with the name of Confucius written on it. In connection with every Confucian temple there is a hall containing the tablets of men of conspicuous official ability, or of men renowned for their filial devotion ; another hall for the tablets of local celebrities; and another for the names of the devoted and virtuous women who have lived in the district.
CHAPTER VII.
IN 1850 Taou-Kwang was succeeded by Hien-feng, when a new but vain cry was raised for the reforms hoped for at the beginning of the previous reign. Revolts followed. One under Teen-tih failed, the people deserting him for Hung-sen-tsuen, whose mission was to drive out the Tatar rulers, as well as the sins of the age. The people flocked to his standard. His campaign through Hoo-nan and Hoo-pih was successful, and in 1852 he had established himself in Nan-King, and declared himself first emperor of the Tai-ping, under the title Tien- Wang. His armies were victorious as far north as Tientsin, and his sympathisers appeared in numbers in many parts of the country. He declared himself Christian.
In 1857 a dispute arose between the European representatives and China, and war was declared, Britain and France sending an expedition to the country. Pekin was captured by Hope Grant with 10,000 English and 5,000 French troops in 1860. The fight concluded near the end of the following year, the Chinese paying an indemnity of 8,000,000 taels.
When peace was arrived at, the Chinese authorities "ot the benefit of the services of Major Gordon to assist them against the Tai-pings. Hien-feng had fled when the allies were marching on Pekin, and his son Tung-che, five years of age, became the next emperor. In a short time Gordon had drilled his troops and gained several victories, gradually driving the enemy into their capital, Nan-King. In 1864 the capital itself fell into the hands of the imperialists, and Tien- Wang, and his cause with him, fell about the same time. That the army maintained a fair amount of vigour for some time after Gordon left it is shown by the way in which the imperial power put down the attempt of the Mohammedans in the distant southwest to set up an independent kingdom for themselves under Sulieman. Their capital, Ta-le-foo, was taken, and their partisans throughout the province of Yun-nan almost killed out. There may, however, be some truth in the allegation that they were assisted by treachery.
During the minority of Tung-che the power was in the hands of empress-regents the widow of Taou-Kwang and the mother of Tung-che, who were installed with the assistance of Prince Kung, a brother of Hien-Feng. They remained in office until 1873, when Tung-che ascended the throne. He was dissipated and in failing health, and invited the two * old regents back to power. He died in 1875, leaving a widow enceinte, but it seems she also died. The regents alleged that Tung-che had not declared his successor, and themselves declared a son of the seventh brother of Hien-Feng. This succession was received with disfavour in China, being of the same generation, and so not fitting for the performance of ancestral worship, inclusive of the last emperor. However, the disaffection seems to have passed away, and the second regency lasted fourteen years, when Tsa-tien assumed power, with the title of Kwang-Hsu, in 1889. In the same year he married his cousin, but has as yet no heir. One of the empress-regents died in 1881, but the mother of Tung-che still lives, and the preparations for the universal celebration of her sixtieth birthday were lately put off on account of the war with Japan.
The emperor is twenty-three years of age, and his imperial person and harem are at present surrounded by eight or ten thousand eunuchs. This later age of woman's rule and swarms of eunuchs is not likely to be remembered with greater love than those long past.
In connection with Gordon's work against the Taiping, a Chinese official, Li-Hung-chang, distinguished himself, and was made Goveruor-Geuerul of Kiang-su in 1862, and Viceroy of Kukwang in 1867. In 1870 he settled at Tientsin as Viceroy of the Metropolitan Province of Chihli. He conducted the negotiations with England arising out of the Margary murder, which ended in the Chefoo Convention of 1876. For the past twenty years he has been senior Grand Secretary of State the first Chinese who has held that post under a Manchu emperor. Chinese officialdom is exclusive in the extreme. Eepresentatives of European states have seldom been in a Chinese minister's house; even the servants at the various legations would feel chagrined if observed speaking with their masters on the streets. It was only after the war of 1860-61 that a sort of Foreign Office was instituted, the duties appropriate to such an office having hitherto been conducted at the Colonial Ministry, on the principle that all foreign peoples were tributary to China. The new board, which is called Tsungli-yamen, has consisted of from eight to twelve members closely identified with the Grand Council, and its chief aim seems to be to delay the demands and shelve the proposals of those who have communications with it.
The right of audience with the emperor of the representatives of foreign powers has long been a vexed question. After the war of 1860 the right of audience, after the manner of other foreign courts, was one of the first concessions demanded by the victorious allies; but the Emperor Hien-feng having fled, and the next emperor being a minor, there was no immediate opportunity of bringing the matter to a crisis. As soon, however, as Tung-che assumed power, the ministers presented a collective note requesting an audience with the emperor. In former discussions of the question of audience, the. obstacle to its being carried out was the refusal of foreign ministers to perform the kow-tow a ceremonial required of tributary princes, which consists of kneeling three times, and at each kneeling striking the ground three times with the forehead.
On the occasion now referred to the Chinese gave way in the matter of kow-towing, but had recourse to one of their usual ruses inviting the ministers to audience, not in the palace, but in a hall used for the entertainment of Mongolian and other tributary chiefs. The ministers were not satisfied with this, but the matter was again postponed on account of the death of Tung-che, and his succession by a minor. When Kuang-hsu in 1889 assumed power, he issued a proclamation that he would hold an audience in the same building, and here, notwithstanding expressions of dissatisfaction, it was held in 1891. On the next occasion a compromise was made. The reception took place in another hall, and the ambassadors were admitted through the main or porcelain gate of the palace.
On the 12th of November of last year (1894) the European and American ministers were received by the emperor in the imperial palace itself, the ministers having informed the emperor that they had letters of congratulation to present on the anniversary of the sixtieth birthday of the empress-dowager ; and China, being no doubt somewhat humiliated by the Japanese victories, ceded this long-denied right to foreign representatives.
In 1876 there was a railway made from Woosung to Shanghai, but soon after completion it was acquired by the provincial authorities and torn up, so that, as late as 1887, there was not a bit of railroad in China. There is now a line from Tung-ku, at the mouth of Peiho River, to Tien-tsin a distance of twenty-seven miles ; and from Tong-ku to the Tung-shan and Kaiping coalfields, and on as far as the seaward end of the Great Wall. Li-Hung-chang is said to be personally concerned in this railway and the coal enterprise. Chau-chi-tung, while viceroy of the two Kuangs, pressed for the construction of a railway from Pekin to Hankow, and in 1889 an imperial proclamation authorised this railway but as the Chinese wished to be beholden as much as possible to themselves, they have begun by searching the country for iron ore and coal, preliminary to setting up smelting furnace?, to be followed no doubt by rolling mills, and in time, let us hope, by a railway. Besides the general objection of Chinese officialdom to permit anything new until it sees where the benefit to itself is to come in, there are two great objections current. One a semi-religious or geomantic one, which is founded on the prevention of offence to the Feng-shui, or crowd of spirits, to one or other of whom every inch of Chinese ground is sacred. Hardly a house can be built in rural China without the direction of some one skilled in geomancy. The other great objection is that railways would deprive the junkmen and coolies, who now carry on the river and canal traffic, of their means of livelihood. In spite of Feng-shui, there is now an extensive telegraph system instituted in China.
Since Gordon's day his army has to a certain extent been kept up by Li-Hun g-chang. It is called the Black Flag Army, and is supplied with modern fire-arms.
After the late French war, too, China appeared to bestir itself a little. Arsenals and forts were built; colleges were instituted for the education of cadets; cruisers and ironclads, heavily armed, were obtained in England and Germany. Still there was no centralisation, and nothing in the shape of a headquarters' staff. The Chinese and Mongolians, Manchus and others, would make fair enough soldiers ; and officers no doubt would arise, too, if there was any worthy head to call them out ; but as it is, the officers are mostly men who have bought their position by bribes, and become corrupt pilferers of the soldiers' pay, and even rations, to make good their outlay. Supposing the army to be Avell disciplined and well led, it would still be without any efficient means of rapid mobilisation in the present backward state of railway enterprise in China.
The customs' revenue is under the control of Sir Robert Hart, an Englishman, and amounts to about 5,000,000 per annum, all taken at the twenty-four Treaty ports. At these ports there are resident 10,000 foreigners, of whom 4000 are British. It is mostly at these Treaty ports that there is any sign of a free native press. It can hardly be called free in the British sense, for the editors, as a rule, give a general support to the government, perhaps paid for, and make little attempt at the free criticism or the reflection of public opinion. No doubt the absence of anything in the shape of party politics handicaps the Chinese journalist. The papers are, however, useful for the acquiring of telegraphic information and the circulation of general news.
The inland revenue is composed chiefly of the tax on land ; a tribute on rice and salt, amounting to about 33,000,000 silver taels ; the native customs, transit levy, and licenses, of nearly 20,000,000 taels. The tael at present rate of exchange, or price of silver, is about 2s. 6d. At the time of the payment of the war indemnities to England, the exchange value of the tael was about 6s.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE WAR WITH JAPAN.
IN 1884 Japan sent troops to Korea to redress an insult to its representative, who was resident there under a treaty of 1876. China interfered, and in 1885 a treaty was concluded between China and Japan. In it, it was stipulated that should either China or Japan find it necessary to protect their interests in Korea against the rapacity of the inhabitants by landing troops, neither country should do so without giving due notice to the other, and that China and Japan should, if possible, enter upon joint action.
In 1894 Japan, after first appealing to China for redress against alleged Korean depredation on her merchants, and after making this appeal in vain, gave notice, in terms of the treaty of 1885, that she was about to land troops in Korea, which she did in that year. Japan had already drawn attention to the fact that China had troops in Korea.
On 20th June 1894 a Times telegram says: "Japan, preferring foreign to civil war, refuses to evacuate Korea, and simultaneously demands a joint occupation. China refuses both propositions, and is increasing her naval and military powers."
The insinuation at the beginning of this message is, that Japan prefers to go to war with Korea or China at the instigation of her own war party, rather than risk the open rebellion of that party in Japan. It is true that there is a strong popular war party in Japan, but it is also true that, not Japan only, but the European Powers and the United States, have received unwarrantable treatment at the hands of the Koreans ; the ascendancy of the Chinese ambassador at the Court of Seoul was also well known, and, as has been shown, Japan was acting within her treaties. The plea now set up by Chinese diplomacy, that, though Korea was free to make treaties, China was still suzerain, and would take no steps in the matter until the withdrawal of the Japanese troops, was sophistical, and not likely to appeal to a practical and warlike country which believed itself to be ill-treated. Japan then announces her intention to carry out the desired reforms in Korea herself, after giving Eussia satisfactory assurances that she has no intention of making any territorial conquests in Korea.
On llth July 11,000 Japanese troops landed in Korea, and reinforcements are held in readiness in Japan. The Korean Government now, at the request of Japan, appointed three commissioners to discuss the proposed reforms. About the 20th of July the Korean Government seems to have accepted the reforms desired by the Japanese, but this acceptance turns out to be conditional on Japanese evacuation. At the same time rumours are afloat that 12,000 Chinese troops are on their way to Korea, and that China has threatened to break off negotiations if Japanese troops are not withdrawn from the peninsula, the 20th of July being mentioned as the date for Japanese acceptance.
About the beginning of the last week in July word comes from Seoul that the palace troops are assuming a threatening attitude, and that a rupture is imminent ; at the same time comes the rumour that the Japanese have sunk a Chinese transport.
This sinking, of the transport, and attack at the same time on the Chinese war vessels accompanying it, seems to have been the first overt act of the war, and was done, says the Japanese Foreign Office, " in consequence of severe provocation."
On the morning of Monday, 23rd July, the inhabitants of Seoul are awakened by the firing of the Japanese troops on the king's palace ; earlier in the morning 1200 Japanese troops had entered the city. The palace was soon taken, then the Chinese Embassy, and by the end of the day the town was in charge of the Japanese, and the various legations guarded by them.
By 31st July the Japanese Government has informed the foreign representatives that there is a state of war between their country and China. Shortly afterwards comes the news that the Japanese forces in Korea have repulsed the Chinese, and now occupy their headquarters at Asan. By the 9th of August 20,000 additional Japanese troops have been landed at Chemulpo, and are marching on Seoul. The Japanese fleet has made a run into the Gulf of Pechili and exchanged shots with the forts at Port Arthur and Wei-Hai-Wei ; but not finding the Chinese fleet, of which it is in search, it returns to Korean waters. Great preparations are being made at Ping-yang by the Chinese to check the invaders, and Japanese troops are still arriving in Korea. Before the end of August all Japanese harbours have been protected by torpedoes.
The advance of the Japanese columns in Korea continues. One division comes up with the enemy at Sing-chuen, and drives them out of their lines there ; another column coming up on the 7th of September, the attack is renewed ; the Chinese fought well, but seeing that they were being surrounded, they fled in the end towards Ping-yang. Further skirmishes occur, the Chinese still retreating.
The commander of this, the first Japanese army, Marshal Yamagata, is now at the front. On the 13th of September a Japanese division made a reconnaisance in force. On the 14th the Japanese army, supported by the fleet, are in a position to attack ; they are in three divisions, the left wing being strengthened by marines. On the 15th the battle opened with an artillery duel, which lasted till noon ; the Japanese centre then advanced, keeping up a musketry fire till dusk ; the Chinese defences suffered considerably, but there seems to have been no great loss of life. After dusk the Japanese "wings drew round the Chinese position, and at three o'clock next morning a simultaneous attack from three directions drove the Chinese in half an hour from their camp, where they left behind them large quantities of arms, ammunition, and stores.
Ping-yang, the old capital of Korea, now held by the victorious Japanese, is about half-way between Seoul and the Yalu River, which divides Korea from Manchuria.
On the 16th the news of the land victory is brought to the fleet ; the marines are embarked, and the fleet, consisting of nine ships of war and two armed transports, steam northwards no doubt with the intention of again supporting the army. As they come iip, however, to the bay at the mouth of the Yalu, they find that the Chinese fleet, which has just managed to convoy transports into that river, has been watching them steam up. The Chinese admiral is practically forced to make his battle formation in the bay. Had he taken to the open, he would have left his transports, still undischarged, to the uiercy of any Japanese gunboat which chose to make for the river. He arranges his vessels in a crescent form. The Japanese vessels come into the bay in a line abreast, saving their fire for some distance after the Chinese have commenced, and until they are within a mile and a half or two miles of the enemy. For some time they move ahead in a line slowly, then turn and swoop down on one of the horns of the Chinese crescent. Coming about in perfect order, they make a similar visit to the other horn. This method is kept up until the Chinese ships are pretty well punished, and have lost all formation. Two of them are on fire and are fun ashore ; one, in a half-sinking condition, is blown up by torpedoes, and many are badly damaged. On the Japanese side one of the armed transports is crippled, and the Agdki has been badly hit ; the captain of the latter was in the tops when her mast was shot away, and was killed. The fighting had lasted from one o'clock till five. At dusk the Japanese sailed away, and next day most of the Chinese left for the Gulf of Pechili, the transports with them.
These victories no doubt served to heighten the war fever in Japan, and, it may be, to alter the Japanese plan of campaign. By 22nd September, 30,000 troops are embarking at Hiroshima, whose destination is still unknown.
About the beginning of OctobeV, Great Britain seems to have made endeavours to bring about a joint proposal of peace from the Powers, but did not succeed. The burden of the Japanese press is that China must take her chastisement, and learn from it that, if she is to save herself as a nation, she must follow Japan in her adoption of Western methods certainly a very sensible position to take up.
The first army is steadily moving forward in Korea. On the 15th of October it is on the south bank of the Yalu, facing the Chinese on the opposite shore. On the 24th, 1600 Japanese crossed the Yalu above the ferry, which was guarded by a Chinese fort, and, making a detour, attacked this fort and carried it by storm. Meantime pontoons are in readiness, and during the night the whole force is. transported men, horses, and guns without mishaps. Next day there is a skirmish at Fu-shan, and the Chinese retire on Ku-Tien-chao. Early on the morning of the 26th the Japanese are in array before the latter place, but there is no answer to their firing. The realisation among the troops that the Chinese have evacuated the place during the night is followed by ringing cheers and a hot pursuit. Thirty guns are captured, besides ammunition and stores.
The mo an tain passes between Manchuria and Korea have been guarded, and the Japanese army is on the main road between Peking and Mukden. In this way is realised the general expectation of a great battle on the Yalu. It should be remembered that during this expedition the Japanese have not only to meet a foe in their front, but also to keep in order a nation almost in a state of anarchy behind them. Evidently great credit is due to the almost statesmanship of Marshal Yamagata, and the energy and skill of General Nodzu in the front.
In the meanwhile the Japanese fleet has not been inactive. The Gulf of Pechili has been blockaded, and warships are patrolling the coasts in the neighbourhoods of "Wei-Hai-'Wei and Port Arthur.
On the 21st of October a special embassy from Korea assures the Japanese Government of the willingness of their country to carry out the reforms proposed by Japan.
On 4th November news comes from Tokio that the second Japanese army has effected a landing on the Liao-tung Peninsula, with Port Arthur as its goal. One section landed to the north-east of Talienwan, and another near Kinchow. Having occupied and garrisoned Kinchow, they march together on Taliemvan, of which they quietly take possession, meeting with little opposition.
On 6th November, 'at Tieu-tsin, the assembled representatives of the foreign powers hear the declaration by the Tsung-li-Yamen of Chinese impotence to withstand the attack of Japan ; but it appears they can only advise a direct appeal from China to the Mikado. The lifting of the torpedoes in Yokohama harbour about this time indicates the Japanese opinion of the power or opportunity left to the Chinese navy.
Great sections of the Chinese Manchurian army seem to be little more than badly-armed, plundering rabbles; the Japanese army keeps perfect order, pays its way, and is naturally received by the native peasantry with open arms.
Marshal Yamagata has now, about the middle of November, divided the first army into two sections. One of them is marching on Sui-yin ; the other, on its way to Liu-sau-Kwang, was attacked vigorously by a large body of Chinese cavalry, but finally dispersed it, reaching its destination in order, and is now on its way to Mo-tin-ting.
The division marching on Sui-yin finds, on its arrival there on the 18th, that the Chinese had fled during the previous night, and arc retreating on Peace proposals, instigated by China or made on her behalf, fill the air.
The second Japanese army leaves Kinchow on the 16th of November, in two divisions, for Port Arthur a distance of thirty-five miles, with bad roads, especially for heavy guns.
On the Nth Admiral Ito discovered that the main Chinese fleet is inside Wei-Hai-Wei, and not being able to induce it to venture out, he leaves some of his ships to watch the harbour entrance, and returns to Talien Bay. About the same time there is news of a third Japanese army embarking for some unknown point in China.
The second army marches very warily on Port Arthur. On the 18th the advance guard meets 2000 of the enemy about eight miles from the town ; it falls back on the first division, and returning reinforced beats back the Chinese. On the evening of the 19th the combined divisions of the Japanese are within four miles of the enemy, who occupy some eleven land forts and nine sea forts. On the 20th the Chinese make a sortie, with the object of preventing the besiegers from mounting their guns, but are beaten back after five hours' fighting. At 6.30 A.M. on the 21st, the Japanese artillery, having taken up positions during the night, opened with remarkable precision a fire on the fort to the right. Later on this fort is carried by storm ; the other forts soon follow, also taken by assault. These defences seem to have been taken by artillery and the bayonet.
Although Admiral Ito reports that Port Arthur fell entirely to the land forces of Japan, the quick firing guns of his torpedo boats seem to have lent considerable aid in the clearing out of the sea forts which followed. By the morning of the 22nd the Japanese were in complete possession of the town of Port Arthur. Many guns, and large quantities of ammunition and food, were found in the place.
The dockyard and arsenal have been handed over to the fleet, and important plans have come into its possession, showing the positions of the sunk mines, and enabling it to clear the harbour of them.
The second army is under the command of Marshal Oyama. On the 26th an advanced guard of this army has started to march on Neuchang.
About the beginning of December the health of Marshal Yamagata breaks down, and General Nodzu takes command of the first army, which has crossed the Mo-tien pass by the 6th. It presses on against considerable opposition, both from the enemy and the wintry weather, the Chinese gradually retreating before it, not without stubborn fighting, in the direction of Neuchang. The division of General Techimi, who succeeded Xodzu, seems to have been checked by the Chinese in force at Feng-huang. The Kirinese soldiers fought well on behalf of China, but were dispersed on the arrival of Japanese reinforcements. On the night of the 18th an army of 10,000 Chinese under General Sung was overtaken ; on the 19th Sung's forces took up a good position, protected against the flanking movements of the enemy. The artillery on both sides was well served. The Japanese, after disabling a Chinese battery, took advantage of the occasion to make a rush on the enemy's position, but were stubbornly met and had to retire ; twice again the charge was repeated, and although they broke through the lines, and engaged in fierce hand-tohand encounters, the Chinese centre remained firm. Japanese reserves were now called up, and fresh charges on the part of the invaders were successful in driving the Chinese from their position, and forcing a general rout. This proved the fiercest fight of the campaign. The Japanese occupied King-wasai, and took much spoil. On the 26th General .NTodzu reports all quiet round Feng-huang.
By the 10th of January General Nodzu has occupied Kai-ping, and his various divisions, a week later, are massing near Neuchang ; and the second army, under General Nogi, is now in touch with them.
On the 8th of January Korean independence has been proclaimed at Seoul with great pomp.
On the 17th the Chinese assumed the offensive, marching from Liao - yang and Ying - Kow on the Japanese lines. Halting at about one and a half miles distant, they open artillery fire. A duel ensues, in which Japanese marksmanship again proves superior to the Chinese, and the latter are finally driven back with considerable loss. Large numbers of Chinese reinforcements have been arriving, but General JSTodzu reports that he is well informed of their movements, and feels no disquiet. Xot the least notable feature of this campaign is that the peaceful inhabitants are returning to their occupations, and that they willingly bring in supplies to the invaders, which are promptly paid for.
Peace envoys at last, after many delays, leave for China on the 20th,
On Sunday, the 20th of January, a Japanese force, stated at 25,000 men, in seventeen transports, has entered Yung-cheng Bay. This is the third Japanese army. These transports and a large fleet of men-ofwar entered during a snowstorm. A body of marines were soon landed, and prepared to make a settlement. A Chinese battery fired on them, but with little result. In the meantime the storm cleared away, and the astonished defenders found themselves face to face with the Japanese array of warships and transports ; they then followed the example of the storm, and cleared away also. A landing of another smaller Japanese force has also taken place, on the other side of Wei-Hai-Wei. By the 23rd most of the Japanese force has been landed under General Sakuma, who is to lead the storming of the fortress; and Marshal Oyama and his staff have taken up their quarters at Tung-Cheng. Siege and field guns are being pushed forward rapidly. Another Japanese landing has been made in the Ning-hai inlet. By the 29th January the investment of Wei-Hai-Wei has been completed and skirmishing has begun. On the morning of the 30th the Chinese have been shelled out of their more exposed lines, and by the end of the day the defence collapses, and all the land forts are taken.
The island fortress of Lin-kung-tau and the Chinese fleet, which has lain some time under cover of the forts, still hold out. On 1st February the bombardment recommenced with vigour, the Japanese firing from the captured land forts, the forts on the island and the fleet replying steadily.
On the night of 2nd February, after the moon had set, the Japanese torpedo boat fleet entered the harbour, but were fired on by the army from the captured forts, who mistook them for Chinese craft, and they were forced to return. Next day the rough weather at sea forces the attacking fleet to take shelter in Yungcheng Bay. But on the nights of the 4th and the 5th the torpedo boats again, with the same precaution, enter the harbour and sink or disable three large Chinese ironclads. On the 6th a Japanese force landed on the island, but was unable to hold it. On the 9th an explosion, evidently of the magazine, on one of the main forts silenced that one. On the llth and 12th the ships are still firing ; on the latter day Admiral Ting surrenders, conceding everything except the lives and liberty of his officers and men. The surrender is carefully arranged, and the Chinese are received with the honours of war.
Meanwhile the Chinese peace envoys arrive on the 30th of January at Kobe, where it transpires that they are not empowered to settle anything without reference to Peking. On the 2nd February they are sent back.
On the day after the surrender of Admiral Ting, Li-Hung-chang has been re-invested with all his lost honours and appointed special envoy and plenipotentiary to proceed to Japan to sue for peace.
On the 20th Japanese war vessels are cruising off Formosa.
Eound about Liao-yang and Neuchang there is still considerable resistance to the first and second armies of Japan. On the 27th of February a sharp fight takes place; the Chinese are beaten off, but not pursued. About the beginning of March, however, Nodzu and Nogi are both advancing in force, the objective points being Neuchang and Ying-kow.
In the first week of March two divisions of the first army, after bombardment of the fortifications and desperate fighting in the streets, occupy Neuchang. Yogi's army captures Ying-kow, and assistance is being sent to Colonel Katsura, who is being stoutly resisted before Tiao-yang.
On 15th March Li-Hung-chang sails from Tien-tsin, and on the 19th arrives in Japan.
The negotiations begin at Simonoseki. On the day after the mutual expressions of satisfaction as to the respective credentials, an unfortunate occurrence causes some delay. Li-Hung-chang is shot at and wounded by a Japanese maniac. Amid universal expressions of satisfaction, it transpires that the wound is not serious. On the 29th of March an armistice is declared, and the war is practically ended.
The Japanese conditions of peace include a large war indemnity, the granting of various commercial privileges such as the permission of foreigners to import into and employ machinery in China, and the opening up to foreign trade of towns and waterways ; Korean independence ; and the cession of Liao-tung Peninsula and the island of Formosa.
After the publication of the treaty, Russia, backed by Germany and France, objected to the cession of Liao-tung, and this condition was replaced by an addition to the indemnity of another large sum. In view of this alteration, Russia, ostensibly at least, stepped in as a guarantor of a Chinese loan on conditions not made public.
Japan is now engaged in possessing itself of and pacifying Formosa.
Just about the time of the fall of Port Arthur, a telegram appeared in the newspapers to the effect that China in the interior was enjoying marked tranquillity. One might have thought that a press agency had suddenly taken up the role of humorist at the expense of the characteristic blandness attributed to the Chinaman ; but most probably the news item was a plain statement of fact. Many parts of the interior of China nre still ignorant of the occurrence of a great national defeat.
The dreary picture of Chinese incompetence is not without one or two relieving incidents or redeeming features. Sung, rallying his half-drilled, indifferently-armed levies, seems to pick up a little knowledge of tactics, though his forces never attain any great solidarity. Admiral Ting, holding out against the enemy and reason, is a refreshing spectacle after such a never-ending display of facility for dispersion on the part of his fellow-countrymen.
The old Li-Hung-chang, too, whose name is in so many telegrams and tales, whose words or sentiments are in none, holding on impassible whether special buttons or yellow waistcoats come or go, and at last, when straits are direst for his country, bearing the weight of all its humiliation, as suppliant at the gate of the conqueror, is a figure worth attention.
As has already been said, there is no central control over the army and navy in China, each province being responsible for itself. During the war it would seem that some kind of an attempt was made to form a centralised regulating power for the control of the national defence, but that it failed.
The most pressing problem in Chinese statesmanship is how to effect this centralisation of authority now.
CHAPTER IX.
THE Manchu dynasty added to the lands under the Chinese crown all Manchuria. They also brought tribute from Korea and many parts of Mongolia, including the Ordos tribes and those of Koko-nor; so that the China of their day may almost be said to have consisted of all the territory between latitudes 20 and 42, and lines of longitude 100 to 130, or over 2,000,000 square statute miles. The southern Nan-Shan mountains, a range about 1200 miles in length, extend for about 800 miles nearly east and west between latitude 25 and 26, then, stretching northwards to latitude 28, cut off the fertile, nearly tropical, valley of the Se-Keang river and the province of Fuh-Keen, opposite the Formosa Channel, from the rest of the country. It was in this strip of country that nearly all the early European maritime trade was carried on. From the northern slopes of this mountain chain flow through fertile valleys many tributaries of the Yang-tsze-Kiang, the great central river of China. Its middle and upper stretches are called the Ta-Keang and the Kin-sha-keang, the latter rising in the Snowy Mountains which separate Thibet from China.
North of this great river the mountains of Thibet reach into China in two long nearly parallel chains, running nearly east and west, and ending half-way between Thibet and the Eastern Sea. To the north and west of these, in the northern Nan-Shan mountains and the highlands of Koko-nor, rises the Yellow River, the other great river of China. In the north of the province of Kan-suh it wanders away north into Mongolia, but returns upon itself and flows south, separating in its course the provinces of Shen-se and Shan-se, coming down to within 250 miles of the course of the Yang-tsze-Kiang. It is here turned off by a spur of the northmost of the two parallel mountain chains above mentioned, and flows eastward and northward to the sea, in the Gulf of Pechili. Before the last great change in its course in 1851-53, it flowed into the north of the Yellow Sea, and in former times it has reached the sea at a point as far north as the mouth of the Pei-ho Eiver, near Tien-tsin. One of the most remarkable geographical features of China is the vast delta plain, through which the last stretch of the Yellow Kiver reaches the sea. It begins near the north-east boundary of the empire, comes south through the provinces of Chi-li and Shan-tang, leaving the mountainous district of the latter to the east, like a seaward island ; then stretches westward up the Yellow River, and southward and eastward till it joins the delta of the Yang-tsze-Kiang. This great plain has a stretch parallel with the sea of about 700 miles in length, and a landward breadth at its greatest of 500 miles. It has long been the scene of disastrous floods and of preventive works.
A certain amount of navigation by small native vessels is carried on on the Yellow River, and it is a useful source of irrigation canals. The Yang-tszeKiang, on the other hand, is one of the finest navigable rivers in the world, and, like the Se-keang River, bears a large population living entirely on boats, and having no other home. The influence of the tide rises as high as Nanking, about 200 miles up from the sea. The river is navigable for steamers of moderate draft for about 1200 miles of its course, and has many large, rich, and populous cities on its banks. Above this, between I-chang and Kwei-chow-foo, its course is in a mountainous district, and its flow disturbed by rapids, presenting difficulties even to the native craft.
The next river in importance is in the southern section of the country. It rises in the west end of the Nan-Shan mountains and flows eastward, passing near its mouth Canton, and reaching the sea at Macao, the site of the first European settlement in China. It is navigable for moderate draughts for over 100 miles from the sea. It is called the Se-Keang on its lower reaches, and, like the other rivers of China, has other names on its middle and upper reaches.
The navigations of the Yang-tsze-Kiang and the Yellow River, and that of the Pei-ho still further north, are joined by the Grand Canal. This canal extends also south of the Yang-tsze-Kiang to Hangchow ; and as the Pei-ho in the north is the river of Peking, the canal thus serves to connect Peking with the port of Hang-chow. Between the Yang-tsze-Kiang and the old bed of the Yellow River the canal is the source of irrigation for the adjoining country, and the means of transit for its produce and for the wants of the industrious and prosperous people who line its banks, marked at intervals by thriving towns. Beyond the old bed of the Yellow River and up to that river a different state of matters arises ; the little water in the canal being below the level of the surrounding country, and so not available, without mechanical aid, for the purposes of irrigation. Beyond the Yellow River the canal passes into a wooded and well-watered country, where it is joined by the Wei River, and passes on without further difficulties to the Pei-ho River, where it terminates about 800 miles north of its beginning at Hang-chow. The north end of the canal and the Pei-ho River are frozen for two or three months each winter.
Near the centre of the great valley of the Yang-tszeKiang is the great Lake of Tung-ting, formed at the convergence of nine rivers on a comparatively flat bit of country. Its level and extent varies with the flow of the water in the streams which feed it, and the gorging of the channel of the Yang-tsze-Kiang into which it drains ; at its high water it is eighty miles in length. Po-yang is another large lake of similar formation and characteristics, also draining into the Yang-tsze-Kiang at a point over 200 miles further on on its seaward course. There is also a chain of lakes along the line of the Grand Canal, dwindling into marshes in the north. Tai-hoo, near the town of Soo-chow, is noted for the beauty of its surroundings and its islands. The latter, adorned by temples and pleasure-houses, are favourite resorts of the rich pleasure-seekers of the cities of Hang-chow and Foochow. These lakes are inhabited, not the islands merely, but, in a fashion peculiar to China, by floating villages made of a platform of bamboo covered with turf, having cottages and gardens and tiny lakes spanned by bamboo bridges.
The Yellow Kiver takes its name from the fact that it cuts through, during a great part of its course, a geological formation which is a marked feature of that part of Northern China. It is a deep and widespread layer of a yellow, compact, but friable earth, which the river eats away and is coloured by. It covers an area of more than 200,000 square miles, in depths of up to 1000 feet. This loess, as it has been called, forms a good agricultural soil, and when borne down by the river seawards enters largely into the composition of the great delta plain mentioned above.
Peking, being in the north, and near their home, very naturally became the permanent capital of the Manchu dynasty. It is situated in the province of Chih-li, whose northern boundary is the Great Wall. Here the Manchus were near their own ancient city of Mukden, and near the great imperial hunting-grounds, the annual resort to which of the emperor and his court was one of the great social events of the year. Tien-tsin is the treaty port of this province, where the annual value of the imports is about 5,000,000 sterling, exceeding by about ten times that of the exports. The capital city no doubt absorbs a certain amount of this surplus, and to some extent now it is balanced by the export of coal into the other provinces. There are extensive coalfields in the north and west, which are being slowly developed. Wheat, oats, and maize are grown, as well as fruits and vegetables, abundantly, the climate being similar to that of Paris, but colder in winter.
Shan-tung lies to the south. Its eastern half is a hilly promontory projecting into the ocean, the north side forming the south side of the Gulf of Pechili, and its southern side forming the northern shore of the Yellow Sea. From this promontory and the mountainous district alongside are exported salt and coal. The western half of the province is flat and fertile, and exports silk and grain. The wax-tree which supports the wax insect grows here, and wax is manufactured ; the insect is housed in autumn for the winter, and put out again in the spring. The treaty port is Chee-foo, situated on the north side of the promontory.
Kiang-su is on the sea to the south of Shan-tung. Its eastern boundary is the southern shore of the Yellow Sea. In the north it is part of the great delta plain of the Yellow River, whose former courses traversed it. In the south it is crossed by the Yang-tsze-Kiang, and the Grand Canal passes through it longitudinally at right angles to the seaward-flowing rivers, which are numerous, joining its many lakes. The land is well watered, flat, and fertile. Tea and silk are the principal productions of the province ; it also exports cotton and sugar. Nanking, the capital, was once the capital of China. Near it minerals are worked plumbago, iron, and coal. The Soo-chow-foo district is famous all over the empire for its silk as well as for its beauty. The treaty ports are Shang-hai in Hang-chow Bay, and Chin-Keang on the Yang-tsze-Kiang. This is the most populous province in China, its area of 45,000 square miles being inhabited by 38,000,000 people or about 850 to the square mile.
Che-Jceang is the next province coming'south. The northern and seaward part of it is a continuation of the delta plain. To the west and north the eastmost spurs of the Nan-shan mountains close in the southern end of the plain, and on the south cut off the province from that southern section of the country which lies beyond the Nan-shan Mountains. The valleys in the hilly portions of the country are beautiful and fertile, growing large quantities of tea. In the plains silk is produced in abundance, and a certain amount of cotton. Straw hats and paper fans also figure among the exports. Hang-chow is the principal city, and the treaty port is Ning-po.
Shan^se, going back again to the north, lies next to Chih-li, and is bounded on the north by the Great Wall, and on the east by the Yellow Eiver. No province more loudly declares the industrial stupidity of the powers that be in China. It contains one of the largest and finest coal and iron districts in the world, but in agricultural products the province is poor. Meat is a rare luxury; even salt fish is attainable only by the well-to-do. The people are poor, and in some districts subject to famine and starvation.
Shen-se lies next, to the west, on the other side of the Yellow River, also reaching to the Great Wall on the north. This province is cut in two by the Tsing-shan and Foo-new-shan mountain chains, running east and west. To the north of these, in the valley of the Wei-ho River, lies the road through the Koko-nor district into Central Asia, the gate from Eastern China being at the narrow passage between the Yellow River and the Foo-new-shan Mountains. This gate is commanded by the town of Si-ngan-foo, the capital of the province, and for twenty centuries the capital of the empire. . It is enclosed in a walled square measuring six miles across, and its fortifications are supposed to be kept in perfect repair. The great Tung-kwan road, from Thibet and Yun-nan and Sye-chuen to Peking and the north-eastern provinces passes through Si-nganfoo. Another great road leads to the city of Lanchow-foo, and thence along the neighbourhood of the Great Wall to Soo-chow-foo and from there, into Central Asia. It was along this road that the earliest communication with Europe took place, including the journeys of the Polos.
Han-suh, the next province to the west, is the one in which the above road mostly lies. This state is thinly populated, and to the north-west mostly desert ; so that the government, during the Han dynasty, erected fortified post-houses along the road, where travellers might rest and government couriers change horses. What agriculture there is in the province is chiefly pastoral, and its products wool, hides, and butter. To the west lies Koko-nor and Thibet.
Sze-chuen, which lies immediately to the south of Kan-suh and Shen-se, is the largest province of China, but its north-western region is mountainous and wild, and inhabited by tribes who own to but an indifferent allegiance to China. Its population numbers about 35,000,000. The south-eastern region is traversed by the Yang-tsze-Kiang, which is navigable, and several considerable rivers from the north-west and west join it on its course through the province. Perhaps no river in the world gladdens the heart of a finer country or more industrious population. Silk, though not of the finest quality, is largely produced and exported ; also tobacco, opium, and wax.
Salt is derived from brine wells. The brine is evaporated over fires of petroleum, which also is procured from wells in the district Spelter and .copper are exported, also wood oil in considerable quantity. For China, the province is well supplied with roads.
Ho-nan marches with Chih-li on its north, and is bounded by the seven provinces that lie around it. The Yellow Kiver flows through it in the north. On the west the mountains of Fow-new-shan form a watershed, pouring rivers to the south and east. In the north cereals are abundant. The province on the whole is agricultural ; cotton is grown largely in the south. The population averages about 350 to the square mile. Various roads in the province join the great road passing alongside of the Yellow Kiver from Thibet to Peking.
Gan-htcay lies south and eastward of Ho-nan. In the south it is hilly, with the Yang-tsze-Kiang flowing between two mountain chains. In the north it is watered by the Hwai-ho and its tributaries, which flow into the great lakes of Kiang-su. Green tea is largely produced in the south, and tea of some kind all over the province ; cotton and hemp are also raised in large quantities. The land is everywhere carefully irrigated, and is extremely fertile, and waterways for navigation are fairly abundant. The state is populous 720 to the square mile.
Hoo-pih, to the eastward, is a well-watered and fertile province, almost wholly agricultural, producing wheat, beans, cotton, and tobacco. It has a treaty port, Hankow, on the Yellow River, the value of whose exports (over 5,000,000) is greater than that of any of the other treaty ports.
Keang-se, south of the two former provinces, is mountainous. The Kea-King, the principal river, flows from the Nan-shan Mountains in the south down the centre of the country to the Lake of Poyang in the north. On the east a