CHINESE GAMBLERS.
THE MANCHU CONQUEST OF CHINA.
Long years of misgovernment in China produced their natural result. Evils stalked abroad while worthless emperors spent their days in luxury at home. The land ceased to be governed, local rebellions broke out in a dozen quarters, and the Manchu invasion was but one event in the series of difficulties that environed the weakened throne. From the midst of these small rebellions emerged a large one before which the Ming dynasty trembled to its fall. Its leader, Li Tseching, was a peasant's son, who had chosen the military career and quickly gained renown as a daring horseman and skilful archer. In 1629 he appeared as a member of a band of robbers, who were defeated by the troops, Li being one of the few to escape. A year afterwards we hear of him as high in rank in a rebel band almost large enough to be called an army. The leader dying after a few years, Li succeeded him in command.
His progress to power was rapid, cunning and duplicity aiding him, for often when in a dangerous situation he escaped by pretending a desire to come to terms with the authorities. Other rebels rose, won victories, and sank again; but Li held his own and steadily grew stronger, until, in 1640, he was at the head of an army of nearly half a million of men and in a position to aspire to the throne of Peking itself. Town after town fell into his hands, frightful outrages being perpetrated in each, for Li was a brigand in grain and merciless at heart. The efforts of the emperor to overthrow him proved futile, the imperial army being sent against him in four divisions, which he attacked and defeated in detail. The court had learned nothing from the failure of similar tactics in the war with Noorhachu. After this pronounced success Li laid siege to Kaifong, an important city which had once been the capital of China. He was twice repulsed, but a third time returned to the siege, finally succeeding through a rise in the Hoang-ho, which washed away the defences of the city, drowned thousands of its people, and left it at the mercy of the besieging troops.
Li's next effort was made against the city of Tunkwan, the most formidable of Chinese fortresses. Situated in the mountains between the provinces of Honan and Shensi, it was strong by position, while the labor of centuries had added enormously to its strength. Here fortune aided him, his army following into the city a fugitive force which had been beaten outside. By this time the rebel chief had made himself so dreadful a record by the massacres and outrages committed in conquered cities that terror began to fill the minds of garrisons, and towns and cities opened their gates to him without venturing resistance.
No longer a mere rebel chief, but master of more than a third of China, and feared through all the rest, Li now assumed the title of emperor, and, capturing every stronghold as he advanced, began his march upon Peking, then a scene of unimaginable terror and confusion. The emperor, who had hesitated to flee, found flight impossible when Li's great army invested the capital. Defence was equally impossible, and the unhappy weakling, after slaying all the women of the palace, ended the career of the Ming dynasty by hanging himself. Li was quickly master of the city, where the ancestral temple of the Mings was plundered and levelled with the ground, and all the kinsmen of the royal family he could seize were summarily put to death. Thus was completed the first phase of a remarkable career, in which in a few years the member of a band of robbers became master of the most populous empire of the earth. The second phase was to be one of a decline in fortune still more rapid than had been the growth of the first. And with it is connected the story of the Manchu invasion and conquest of China.
We have seen in the preceding tale how the heroic Chungwan held the fortress of Ningyuen against all the efforts of Noorhachu, the Manchu chief. After his death Wou Sankwei, a man of equal valor and skill, repelled Taitsong and his Manchus from its walls. This city, with the surrounding territory, was all of Northern China that had not submitted to Li, who now made earnest efforts by lavish promises to win Wou over to his side. But in the latter he had to deal with a man who neither feared nor trusted him, and to whose mind it seemed preferable that even the Tartars should become lords of the empire than that it should be left to the mercy of a brutal robber like Li Tseching.
Wou's position was a delicate and difficult one. The old dynasty was at an end. Those loyal to it were powerless. He had no means of his own enabling him to contend against the great force of Li. He must surrender or call in foreigners to his aid. In this dilemma he made overtures to the Manchus, asking their aid to put down the rebellion and restore tranquillity to the empire,—seemingly with the thought that they might be dispensed with when no longer of use.
Not for a moment did the Manchu leaders hesitate to avail themselves of the promising offer. The man who for years had stood resolutely in the way of their invasion of China was now voluntarily stepping from their path, and even offering them his aid to accomplish their cherished project. The powerful fortresses which had defied their strength, the Great Wall which in Wou's hands might have checked their progress, had suddenly ceased to be obstacles to their advance, and throughout the camps and towns of the Tartars an enthusiastic response was made to the inspiriting cry of "On to Peking!"