China and the Manchus

by Herbert Allen Giles

A small point which has given rise to some confusion, may fitly be mentioned here. The tribe of Tartars hitherto spoken of as Nü-chêns, and henceforth known in history as the "Golden Dynasty," in 1035 changed the word chên for chih, and were called Nü-chih Tartars. They did this because at that date the word chên was part of the personal name of the reigning Kitan Emperor, and therefore taboo. The necessity for such change would of course cease with their emancipation from Kitan rule, and the old name would be revived; it will accordingly be continued in the following pages.

The victories of Akutêng over the Kitans were most welcome to the Chinese Emperor, who saw his late oppressors humbled to the dust by the victorious Nü-chêns; and in 1120 a treaty of alliance was signed by the two powers against the common enemy. The upshot of this move was that the Kitans were severely defeated in all directions, and their chief cities fell into the hands of the Nü-chêns, who finally succeeded, in 1122, in taking Peking by assault, the Kitan Emperor having already sought safety in flight. When, however, the time came for an equitable settlement of territory between China and the victorious Nü-chêns, the Chinese Emperor discovered that the Nü-chêns, inasmuch as they had done most of the fighting, were determined to have the lion's share of the reward; in fact, the yoke imposed by the latter proved if anything more burdensome than that of the dreaded Kitans. More territory was taken by the Nü-chêns, and even larger levies of money were exacted, while the same old farce of worthless tribute was carried on as before.

In 1123, Akutêng died, and was canonised as the first Emperor of the Chin, or Golden Dynasty. He was succeeded by a brother; and two years later, the last Emperor of the Kitans was captured and relegated to private life, thus bringing the dynasty to an end.

The new Emperor of the Nü-chêns spent the rest of his life in one long struggle with China. In 1126, the Sung capital, the modern Kʽai-fêng Fu in Honan, was twice besieged: on the first occasion for thirty-three days, when a heavy ransom was exacted and some territory was ceded; on the second occasion for forty days, when it fell, and was given up to pillage. In 1127, the feeble Chinese Emperor was seized and carried off, and by 1129 the whole of China north of the Yang-tsze was in the hands of the Nü-chêns. The younger brother of the banished Emperor was proclaimed by the Chinese at Nanking, and managed to set up what is known as the southern Sung dynasty; but the Nü-chêns gave him no rest, driving him first out of Nanking, and then out of Hangchow, where he had once more established a capital. Ultimately, there was peace of a more or less permanent character, chiefly due to the genius of a notable Chinese general of the day; and the Nü-chêns had to accept the Yang-tsze as the dividing line between the two powers.

The next seventy years were freely marked by raids, first of one side and then of the other; but by the close of the twelfth century the Mongols were pressing the Nü-chêns from the north, and the southern Sungs were seizing the opportunity to attack their old enemies from the south. Finally, in 1234, the independence of the Golden Dynasty of Nü-chêns was extinguished by Ogotai, third son of the great Genghis Khan, with the aid of the southern Sungs, who were themselves in turn wiped out by Kublai Khan, the first Mongol Emperor to rule over a united China.

The name of this wandering people, whose territory covers such a huge space on the map, has been variously derived from (1) moengel, celestial, (2) mong, brave, and (3) munku, silver, the last mentioned being favoured by some because of its relation to the iron and golden dynasties of the Kitans and Nü-chêns respectively.

Three centuries and a half must now pass away before entering upon the next act of the Manchu drama. The Nü-chêns had been scotched, but not killed, by their Mongol conquerors, who, one hundred and thirty-four years later (1368), were themselves driven out of China, a pure native dynasty being re-established under the style of Ming, "Bright." During the ensuing two hundred years the Nü-chêns were scarcely heard of, the House of Ming being busily occupied in other directions. Their warlike spirit, however, found scope and nourishment in the expeditions organised against Japan and Tan-lo, or Quelpart, as named by the Dutch, a large island to the south of the Korean peninsula; while on the other hand the various tribes scattered over a portion of the territory known to Europeans as Manchuria, availed themselves of long immunity from attack by the Chinese to advance in civilization and prosperity. It may be noted here that "Manchuria" is unknown to the Chinese or to the Manchus themselves as a geographical expression. The present extensive home of the Manchus is usually spoken of as the Three Eastern Provinces, namely, (1) Shêngking, or Liao-tung, or Kuan-tung, (2) Kirin, and (3) Heilungchiang or Tsitsihar.

Among the numerous small independent communities above mentioned, which traced their ancestry to the Nü-chêns of old, one of the smallest, the members of which inhabited a tract of territory due east of what is now the city of Mukden, and were shortly to call themselves Manchus,—the origin of the name is not known,—produced, in 1559, a young hero who altered the course of Chinese history to such an extent that for nearly three hundred years his descendants sat on the throne of China, and ruled over what was for a great portion of the time the largest empire on earth. Nurhachu, the real founder of the Manchu power, was born in 1559, from a virile stock, and was soon recognised to be an extraordinary child. We need not linger over his dragon face, his phœnix eye, or even over his large, drooping ears, which have always been associated by the Chinese with intellectual ability. He first came into prominence in 1583, when, at twenty-four years of age, he took up arms, at the head of only one hundred and thirty men, in connection with the treacherous murder by a rival chieftain of his father and grandfather, who had ruled over a petty principality of almost infinitesimal extent; and he finally succeeded three years later in securing from the Chinese, who had been arrayed against him, not only the surrender of the murderer, but also a sum of money and some robes of honour. He was further successful in negotiating a treaty, under the terms of which Manchu furs could be exchanged at certain points for such Chinese commodities as cotton, sugar, and grain.

In 1587, Nurhachu built a walled city, and established an administration in his tiny principality, the even-handed justice and purity of which soon attracted a large number of settlers, and before very long he had succeeded in amalgamating five Manchu States under his personal rule. Extension of territory by annexation after victories over neighbouring States followed as a matter of course, the result being that his growing power came to be regarded with suspicion, and even dread. At length, a joint attempt on the part of seven States, aided by two Mongol chieftains, was made to crush him; but, although numerical superiority was overpoweringly against him, he managed to turn the enemy's attack into a rout, killed four thousand men, and captured three thousand horses, besides other booty. Following up this victory by further annexations, he now began to present a bold front to the Chinese, declaring himself independent, and refusing any longer to pay tribute. In 1603, he built himself a new capital, Hingking, which he placed not very far east of the modern Mukden, and there he received envoys from the Mongolian chieftains, sent to congratulate him on his triumph.

At this period the Manchus, whose spoken words were polysyllabic, and not monosyllabic like Chinese, had no written language beyond certain rude attempts at alphabetic writing, formed from Chinese characters, and found to be of little practical value. The necessity for something more convenient soon appealed to the prescient and active mind of Nurhachu; accordingly, in 1599, he gave orders to two learned scholars to prepare a suitable script for his rapidly increasing subjects. This they accomplished by basing the new script upon Mongol, which had been invented in 1269, by Baschpa, or ʽPhagspa, a Tibetan lama, acting under the direction of Kublai Khan. Baschpa had based his script upon the written language of the Ouigours, who were descendants of the Hsiung-nu, or Huns. The Ouigours, known by that name since the year 629, were once the ruling race in the regions which now form the khanates of Khiva and Bokhara, and had been the first of the tribes of Central Asia to have a script of their own. This they formed from the Estrangelo Syriac of the Nestorians, who appeared in China in the early part of the seventh century. The Manchu written language, therefore, is lineally descended from Syriac; indeed, the family likeness of both Manchu and Mongol to the parent stem is quite obvious, except that these two scripts, evidently influenced by Chinese, are written vertically, though, unlike Chinese, they are read from left to right. Thirty-three years later various improvements were introduced, leaving the Manchu script precisely as we find it at the present day.