times appear, have, during the period of the Christian era wrenched the government of every civilized Asiatic state from its own people and governed them on the whole with advantage. As Parthians, Mamluks, Mongols, Seljuk and Ottoman Turks, to leave the lesser breeds unnamed, the distant congeners of the Manchus have not only invaded but repeatedly controlled all the civilized nations of the continent. The history of China cannot be properly understood unless due notice is taken of the impact of her northern neighbors from the period of the great Ch'in to recent times, nor can we afford to neglect the fact that her own great dynasties and governing element have come from those northern provinces which are chiefly peopled by descendants of a Tartar-Chinese intermixture.

Nurhachu, though he never entered China, stands as an exponent of the highest qualities of his race, a creative genius not only in strategy but in politics, the founder of a great tradition capably maintained for two centuries by his descendants, the establisher of a line of monarchs which have been surpassed by no other ruling house during an equal period in China.

The Chinese had reason for serious apprehension if Nurhachu succeeded in his purpose of reducing all the Tartar clans to his way. He had left them in no doubt as to his intention, when this was accomplished, of driving them behind the Great Wall, and in 1617 he published an open defiance to them by drawing up and burning with sacrificial ceremonies a document known as the "Seven Hates," including amongst the charges their murder of his parents, their interference with Manchu autonomy, their assistance rendered to his enemies, their assassination of an envoy and harassing of his farmers-“for all of which," he concludes, "I hate you with an intense hatred and now make war against you." They took him at his word, for while engaged, in 1619, in a war with the last of the Nüjen states that continued to resist him, a Chinese army of 200,000 was assembled at Mukden and marched in four divisions against the little state of Hingking. With only 60,000 men he proceeded, by the same tactics that Napoleon employed,

to attack each of these divisions with his whole force before assistance could be got from the others. The result of the five days' battle, known as that of Sahu, was a complete and extraordinary victory for the Manchus and the annihilation of the Chinese army, with a loss of 45,000 men slain on the field. Yet, though his success secured for him unquestioned authority over the Nüjen tribes that had held out against him, the Chinese troops soon recovered their morale under an able general, who fortified the towns of Liaotung so successfully that for two years Nurhachu did not venture to attack him. The bravery of the Chinese is noticeable throughout these campaigns. What defeated them ultimately was the removal of energetic generals and the unconscionable turpitude of the eunuch control under which the Peking government had fallen. In 1621 Mukden and Liaoyang with seventy walled cities were captured and the Manchus for the first time established in control of the whole territory which foreigners have ever since called by their name. The Chinese never gave up the contest, but they were badly led by dull and cowardly generals sent by the palace politicians. Nevertheless the resistance was always determined. They lost the country west of the Liao down to the Great Wall, but regained most of it within four years under a competent leader called Sun Chengtsung, who fortified Shanhai kwan and Ningyuen. It was in 1625, during this period when his military advance was checked, that Nurhachu removed his palace from Liaoyang to Mukden his sixth capital—and built the imperial headquarters which the dynasty has ever since regarded as its home. The transfer of the administration from the original tribal valley to this thickly settled Chinese plain was attended by a fuller adjustment of his government to the Chinese system and by an imitation of Ming ceremonial at his court. It was as natural for the princes to be educated in Chinese letters as it was for the Frankish princes to write Latin. Chinese culture was the only culture known to their world, and it was impossible for a sovereign in eastern Asia to set up his rule upon any other model or to hope for acceptance by civilized subjects unless he adopted their

institutions. The Mongols had done so, and before the Mongols every northern conqueror in China since China began to be.

But what the Mongols learned of Chinese methods during a half century of conflict, the Manchu acquired in pursuing Nurhachu's sensible policy of providing several millions of Chinese settlers in the Liao Valley with the government to which they were accustomed, and habituating their own clansmen to the language and order of a finer culture than their own. It was this policy and their consistent recognition of a superior system that enabled the Manchus to retain their hold upon China after they had effected their conquest. The conquest itself, it will be observed, was a long struggle carried on chiefly through the agency of Chinese against Chinese until the country was too exhausted to offer further resistance to the forces that stood for order. At no time did the conquerors show superior generalship or valor; in numbers their own fighting men were always vastly nferior to the Chinese; in intellectual power they were never their equals. Yet they succeeded through sheer force of character, as the Ottomans have succeeded during a much longer period in western Asia, in dominating a people that were superior to them in every important quality except that of leadership.

Nurhachu met his first and only serious check in attempting the capture of Ningyuen, which was defended by a good general and by cannon cast by Jesuit missionaries. He died soon after this, in September, 1626, and was buried in the great tomb outside of Mukden, which is still shown to travelers. In accordance with Chinese custom his personal name had been replaced by the reign title of Tienming in 1616, when he assumed the dignity of emperor. After the accession of his grandson to the throne in Peking he was given the title of Taitsu, or Great Ancestor, by which he is known in imperial histories.

His successor, a fourth son known as Taitsung, appears to have been loyally supported by numerous brothers in taking up the arduous work of carving out a kingdom and pressing down upon China. The defense of the lower Liao

was, however, maintained with much persistence by the Chinese, despite the corruption and divided councils of the Ming government, that his way to the capital remained closed, owing chiefly to the obstinate resistance of the two strong fortresses of Ningyuen and Shanhai kwan. While he cannot be granted the supreme place in the fortunes of his family that belongs to Nurhachu, the task bequeathed to him of advancing those fortunes beyond the ancestral domain was hardly less difficult than that of winning its independence. His first achievement, the conquest of northern Korea, whose loyalty to the Ming suzerain necessitated its punishment to secure his southern frontier, was completed in 1627. His other neighbors, the Mongols, presented a far more serious problem, but within ten years, between 1626 and 1636, by a series of expeditions and negotiations, he had succeeded in practically incorporating Kortsin into his own domain and obtaining the suzerainty and tribute of all inner Mongolia. Besides the obvious strategic necessity of thus solidifying his own boundaries the control of Mongolia permitted him to raid the whole northern tier of Chinese provinces across that vast border which has ever been a source of their apprehension since the beginning of recorded history. A great excursion in force was made in 1629 to the city of Peking itself, where the terrified court was besieged for some weeks and the country around laid waste, but the Chinese general with his army brought down from Shanhai kwan was able to prevent an assault and the capital was saved.

Taitsung died at the age of fifty-two in September, 1643, and was succeeded by his ninth son, a child of five, while the control of the Manchu dynasty passed into the hands of the boy's uncle Dorgun. It was a critical moment in the career of that dynasty, for dissension amongst the many able and aspiring sons of Nurhachu would have involved its ruin had a struggle amongst them for the succession begun. By continuing the line in accordance with prescribed Chinese custom, in the person of a heir of the next generation, the internal peace of the warlike band was preserved while their activity found ample scope in the sudden

and enormous expansion of their emprise in the conquest of China.

Meanwhile the internal condition of the Chinese empire had become desperate under a long series of famines and rebellions which had utterly paralyzed its economic resources and brought about a general anarchy. It is impossible to decide whether under such loosely organized agencies as that of China the general prevalence of distress is a cause or a consequence of political disturbance. When thickly populous agricultural communities are reduced to starvation the people will inevitably break up into robber bands and prey upon each other to the confusion of all civil administration. No government can reduce the disorder unless provisions can be obtained to satisfy the needs of those made desperate by want; but a bad government may by its inefficiency aggravate the starving people and succumb to the forces of disruption thus let loose. It is notable that in the history of China no great upheaval has occurred without its concomitant of famine. In the third decade of the seventeenth century the northern provinces were visited by an unusually severe drought which was so badly met by venal officials that multitudes took to the mountains and attacked the roads and villages. In addition to these natural causes weakening authority in an imperfectly articulated domain, increased taxation and recurring levies of troops to meet the Manchus began in 1621 to arouse angry opposition in the western provinces. Revolts broke out which were painfully and only partly subdued. By 1631 the robber bands throughout all the inland provinces had swelled to great armies under redoubtable captains, whose successes encouraged the able-bodied to enlist under their banners and live upon the spoil of captured cities. At the end of another decade Li Tsu-cheng, a Shansi leader, after many vicissitudes, had become the greatest of them all, and with an army composed of nearly a million needy adventurers he was swarming, in 1641, over the famine-stricken province of Honan toward Peking. Despite the impotence of the imperial government in this score of years of carnage it is remarkable that the various rebel armies