Читать книгу The War in the East: Japan, China, and Corea - White Trumbull - Страница 7

CHINESE CANNONIERS.

For nearly three hundred years, from 1370 to 1650, the Mings swayed the destinies of China. Their rule was not one of uninterrupted peace, either within or without the empire; but it was on the whole a wise and popular rule, and the period which it covers is otherwise notable for immense literary activity and for considerable refinement in manners and material civilization.

From without, the Mings were constantly harrassed by the encroachments of the Tartars; while from within the ceaseless intriguing of the eunuchs was a fertile cause of trouble.

ANCIENT CHINESE ARCH.

Chief among the literary achievements of this period, is the gigantic encyclopedia in over twenty-two thousand books, only one copy of which, and that imperfect, has survived out of the four that were originally made. Allowing fifty octavo pages to a book, the result would be a total of at least one million one hundred thousand pages, the index alone occupying no fewer than three thousand pages. This wonderful work is now probably rotting, if not already rotted beyond hope of preservation, in some damp corner of the imperial palace at Peking. Another important and more accessible production was the so-called “Chinese Herbal.” This was a compilation from the writings of no fewer than eight hundred preceding writers on botany, mineralogy, entomology, etc., the whole forming a voluminous but unscientific book of reference on the natural history of China. Shortly after the accession of the third emperor, Yung Lo, the imperial library was estimated to contain written and printed works amounting to a total of about one million in all. A book is a variable quantity in Chinese literature, both as regards number and size of pages; the number of books to a work also vary from one to several hundred. But reckoning fifty pages to a book and twenty or twenty-five books to a work, it will be seen that the collection was not an unworthy private library for any emperor in the early years of the fifteenth century.

The overthrow of the Mings was brought about by a combination of events of the utmost importance to those who would understand the present position of the Tartars as rulers of China. A sudden rebellion had resulted in the capture of Peking by the insurgents, and in the suicide of the emperor who was fated to be the last of his line. The imperial commander-in-chief, Wu San-kuei, at that time away on the frontiers of Manchooria engaged in resisting the incursions of the Manchoo-Tartars, now for a long time in a state of ferment, immediately hurried back to the capitol but was totally defeated by the insurgent leader and once more made his way, this time as a fugitive and a suppliant, toward the Tartar camp. Here he obtained promises of assistance chiefly on condition that he would shave his head and grow a tail in accordance with Manchoo custom, and again set off with his new auxiliariesauxiliaries toward Peking, being reinforced on the way by a body of Mongol volunteers. As things turned out, the commander arrived in Peking in advance of these allies, and actually succeeded with the remnant of his own scattered forces in routing the troopstroops of the rebel leader before the Tartars and the Mongols came up. He then started in pursuit of the flying foe. Meanwhile the Tartar contingent arrived and on entering the capitol the young Manchoo prince in command was invited by the people of Peking to ascend the vacant throne. So that by the time Wu San-kuei reappeared, he found a new dynasty already established and his late Manchoo ally at the head of affairs. His first intention had doubtless been to continue the Ming line of emperors; but he seems to have readily fallen in with the arrangement already made and to have tendered his formal allegiance on the four following conditions:

That no Chinese woman should be taken into the imperial seraglio; that the first place at the great triennial examination for the highest literary degrees should never be given to a Tartar; that the people should adopt the national costume of the Tartars in their everyday life; but that they should be allowed to bury their corpses in the dress of the late dynasty; that this condition of costume should not apply to the women of China who were not to be compelled either to wear the hair in a tail before marriage as the Tartar girls do, or to abandon the custom of compressing their feet.

The great Ming dynasty was now at an end, though not destined wholly to pass away. A large part of it may be said to remain in the literary monuments. The dress of the period survives upon the modern Chinese stage; and when occasionally the alien yoke has galled, seditious whispers of “restoration” are not altogether unheard. Secret societies have always been dreaded and prohibited by the government; and of these none more so than the famous “Triad Society,” in which heaven, earth, and man are supposed to be associated in close alliance, and whose watchword is believed to embody some secret allusion to the downfall of the present dynasty.

In the latter part of the sixteenth century, the civilization of western Europe began to make itself felt in China by the advent of the Portuguese, and this matter will be returned to in the following chapter.

In other parts of the world, eventful times have set in. In England we are brought from the accession of Richard II. down to the struggle between the king and the commons and the ultimate establishment of the commonwealth. We have Henry IV. in France and Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain. In England, Shakspeare and Bacon; in France, Rabelais and Descartes; in Germany, Luther and Copernicus; in Spain, Cervantes; and in Italy, Galileo, Machiavelli and Tasso; these names to which should be added those of the great explorers, Columbus and Vasco de Gama, serve to remind one of what was meanwhile passing in the west.

A CHINESE LODGING HOUSE.