interrelation upon the history of Central Asia, is to be found in the story of the return of the Turguts, so graphically described by De Quincey in an essay entitled: The Flight of a Tartar Tribe.1 The Turguts were a Mongol clan which had settled across the Russian border on the banks of the Volga, in order to escape the trouble brought about by the ambitious projects of Galdan. Their new home pleased them after a while no better than the old, and when they heard of the era of peace which had come as a consequence of the victories of Ch'ien Lung, their homesickness rendered absolutely intolerable the exactions of the Russian Government and the laws as to conscription in which they had hitherto acquiesced. Thereupon began a migration which might seem without precedent in human history, did we not feel that many like it must have taken place in Asia just outside the limits of the record. A great multitude of men, women, and children, numbering at least 300,000 souls, secretly set out to regain the old pasturelands of the tribes under the protection of the Emperor of China. It was at the beginning of January 1771 that the horde started eastward. Not long after, the Cossacks—apprised, like Pharaoh, of the flight of a host of useful serfs-started after them and pursued them with fearful slaughter. Month after month, for eight months the fugitives continued their journey, harassed by enemies and tortured by thirst, their ranks thinned continually by weariness and the length of the way. The worst experience came toward the end, when the Chinese cavalry sent by Ch'ien Lung was already approaching to relieve them. How the Bashkirs and Kirghizes of the desert swooped down upon them, how pursuers and pursued alike, slaughterers and slaughtered, tortured to madness by thirst, came at last to Lake Tengis; how all continued to rush, still slaying and being slain, into the water, until the lake was dyed and polluted with gore — all this must be read in the vivid narrative of De Quincey in order to realize it. Even while Turguts and Bashkirs were struggling together in frenzied hatred, came down the Chinese cavalry, 1 Thomas De Quincey, 1785-1859. and once again the slaughter this time of the Bashkirs raged until the wild tribes of the desert were driven away to perish almost inevitably of thirst, "a retaliatory chastisement more complete and absolute than any which their swords and lances could have obtained, or human vengeance could have devised." The new subjects of the Empire were received with every demonstration of welcome, and the next year a still further migration of some thirty thousand families followed the Turguts, to enjoy the beneficent rule of the Son of Heaven. We may here close for the present our account of the Russian advance in Asia, since the Napoleonic wars engaged the Empire on the western frontier to an extent which made adventures to the east at that time unadvisable. CHAPTER XI ASIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE last three or four chapters have been to such an extent the story of European contacts with Asia rather than the history of Asia itself that it will be well to redress the balance by a brief survey of Asiatic affairs from the domestic point of view, to the end of the eighteenth century. Of course, European affairs, like King Charles's head, will inevitably intrude here and there, but we shall endeavor to keep the Asiatic angle of vision as closely as possible. As far as China is concerned, we have seen the Manchus assembled on the frontier, ready for invasion. But it was the rebellion of the one-eyed bandit Li which actually drove the last Ming Emperor to suicide, and the Manchus did not cross the border till they received the invitation of the Chinese commander, Wu San-kwei. As has already been remarked, Wu may be adjudged a sincere patriot or a detestable traitor, according to the point of view. Much depends upon whether his antagonism to Li was due to sordid or to disinterested motives. One story says that the two soldiers had quarreled over a dancing girl.1 Another is explicit in describing Wu as even sacrificing his aged father, a prisoner in the hands of the rebel, rather than abandon his country to the ambitions of Li. In any case, the Manchus accepted Wu's invitation with alacrity, while Wu consented to the shaving of his head, all but the one lock, 1 See Bland and Backhouse, Annals of the Court of Peking. Note that the sign of subjection was not in the wearing of the queue, but in the shaving of the rest of the head. Chinese formerly wore their hair long. as a sign of allegiance to the invader. Thus was established, in 1644, the Ta Ching (Great Pure) dynasty. The son and successor of Nurhachu had died in the same year, so the first Manchu to sit upon the Chinese throne was a child of nine, Shun Chih. The fact that the first of the Chings to rule over China was a child in the care of his mother gave rise to a curious prophetic song, known as the "Song of the Cakes," which was much quoted at the time of the Revolution a dozen or so years ago. It predicted that, as a dynasty had opened with the rule of a child, even so would it expire- a prophecy quite literally fulfilled. The Manchu yoke was accepted quite generally in the North by the guilds and by the mandarins. In the South, however, it provoked the fiercest opposition. There can be little doubt that, had there been a really worthy heir to the throne of the Mings to serve as a rallying-point, the Manchus would have found their task an exceedingly difficult if not an impossible one. The last Ming candidate,1 with his wife and son (who had been baptized by the Jesuits), was hunted down in Burmah, captured, and put to death. The most prolonged resistance was made by the pirate Koxinga, mentioned in an earlier chapter. He made the seacoast so far untenable by the Manchus that the Emperor ordered the people to withdraw so many leagues inland and leave the redoubtable bandit to harry at his leisure. Koxinga captured the island of Formosa from the Dutch and there established a kingdom which he bequeathed to his son. During the reigns of the first Manchus the Jesuits continued the work they had begun under the Mings. They were in general favored by the emperors on account of their superior scientific knowledge. For the same reason they were hated and opposed by the literati. Some of them, such as Verbiest2 and Adam Schaal,3 were men of fine parts and of superb devo 1 The last Ming claimant was Kwei Wang. 2 Ferdinand Verbiest, 1623-88. Reached China in 1659. |