THE POTALA AT LHASA, FROM THE W.S.W.
From Fergusson's History of Indian and Eastern Architecture.
From a photograph by Lieut. F. M. Bailey.
The Court of the Great Mogul in India is one of those two which were mentioned a few pages back as rivalling in its splendour that of the Grand Monarque himself. The other is that of China, where a new dynasty, the Manchus, came by conquest to the throne. As usual, it was by way of invasion of a people from the north, more warlike and less civilised than the Chinese. As usual, the warlike conquerors lost their own characteristics among the multitudes of the more civilised nation. But they kept the throne till close on the end of the eighteenth century, and by enforcing some sort of authority, from Pekin as a centre, they brought the empire to greater prosperity than it had known during the very many previous years in which it had been distracted by feuds between the local chieftains. Tibet, the land of the "Forbidden City" of Lhasa, with its wonderful Potala, the palace of the holy Lama, was conquered and absorbed for a while into the huge empire.
But the fortunes of China and the glories of the Emperor's court had very little influence in the making of the great world story. It was a land, a vast land, apart. And it did not move. How stationary it was is indicated by the curious fact that although China is credited with the invention and use of gunpowder before any of the western nations, the only artillery that they had for their defence against the Manchu invaders was cast for them by the Jesuits, Jesuit missionaries from the West. With a beautiful impartiality, the Jesuits are said to have cast cannon for the Manchus also. It is truly a remarkable circumstance that these emissaries, devoted, at the imminent risk of their lives, to carrying the Christian faith all over the world, should be thus engaged in making munitions of war. But the members of this singular religious order were always practical, always active as politicians in all the countries into which they went. And there were none which they did not penetrate.
Populations of East and West
At first the Jesuits were made welcome in China, but a reaction against all western people seems to have taken place when the Manchu emperor was firmly established on his throne. Japan also set her face against the new trade that was carried out in Dutch and Portuguese vessels. Moreover, in 1662 the Dutch suffered a heavy reverse in being driven out of the island of Formosa, after long and hard fighting. The beginning of the eighteenth century really saw the doors of the far East more firmly closed to the West than they had been fifty years before. The far East therefore was, for the time being, even less in the world story than it had been. But it had its own story, which sufficed for itself, and it was a story in which very many actors played a part. The western lands were still what we should reckon very thinly populated. Our England, for instance, nearly certainly did not have a population of more than five millions and a half at the end of the seventeenth century. But already there must have been a relatively dense population in China. In Pekin, in an appalling earthquake that happened in 1661, it is said that 400,000 people lost their lives. Now the total population of London in 1685 is put at only a little more than half a million, and London was already far and away the largest town in our country, seventeen times larger than Bristol, which then was second to it in numbers. North of the Trent, the country was still scarcely civilised or settled at all. But after nightfall the unlighted streets of the cities were probably more dangerous than any part of the country. Near London even, at a much later date, it was the law that all the covert near the high roads should be cut away so as to leave less shelter for the lurking highwaymen; but still the picturesque Dick Turpins abounded. And high roads, roads along which a coach might go, ever so slowly, sometimes drawn by oxen, were few, and these few were bad. Great men travelled with six horses to their coach and a large following, not for honour and glory but because it was likely that the pulling power of six horses and even more might be required to draw the coach through the marshy places of the road—and in the undrained and unenclosed country the marshy places were many. Nor were the numerous retainers for vain show: they were for necessary protection, and at any moment might have to use their arms.
When the fields began to be enclosed and drained, they would grow more corn or pasture and so help to support a larger population; but the enclosing meant that much of the waste, where the poor people had picked firewood and perhaps caught or killed some game, were taken from them. And as it was in England, so too was it in other European countries as they advanced in civilisation.
In the main, then, the story of the latter half of the seventeenth century is the story of the shifting of the great power in the world from Spain to France. The story of the early years of the eighteenth century is in the main the story of the opposition of the other nations to the carrying out of the provisions of the will of the King of Spain by which he bequeathed all that was Spain's to the grandson of the French king. Had those provisions been faithfully executed they would have thrown so great power and wealth into the hands of the ruler of France that no other nation could have lived at ease under so vast a menace. Already France had submitted to some check in agreeing to the provisions of the Peace of Ryswick. But she was arrogant and aggressive still.