A SEVEN YEARS' WAR. 489 the closing scene reflects no credit on the Chinese. The fortune of war had placed two Japanese officers, near relatives of the King Fashiba, in their power. They were sent with other prisoners to Pekin, for their fate to be there decided. By some line of tortuous reasoning difficult to understand and impossible to approve, Wanleh's ministers decreed that Fashiba was a rebel, and that his kin must suffer death. With the murder of these unfortunate prisoners, the seven years' war in Corea closed. The motives of the Chinese in defending that state were alike prudent and honourable, and the commencement of the war promised them military success; but, as it continued, the incapacity of the commanders ruined all these favourable prospects. Its concluding stages were marked by lying bulletins of victories that were never won, and it was consummated with a disgraceful crime. Misfortunes never come singly, and they descended rapidly on the devoted head of the unfortunate Wanlch, who was dearly paying for the faults of his predecessors. The revolt of Ninghia had been followed by the protracted war with Japan, and that contest had hardly concluded when a rising, destined to prove of a troublesome character, broke out among the tribes in the western mountains of Szchuen. A hereditary chieftain there, named Yang Inglong, had gathered a considerable military force together under his orders, and, knowing the embarrassment of the Imperial Government, thought the time was opportune for putting forward his claims to independence. He raised a number of troops, with which he harried the borders and captured several towns from the Chinese. Thirty or forty thousand men were reported to obey his orders, and the Government attached so much importance to the movement that several of the generals and most of the troops who had been employed in Corea were directed to cross China and march against this new enemy of the State. The rebels fought with great bravery, and the difficult nature of their country rendered the task of reducing them one of time. Thanks mainly to the courage and skill of Liuyen, the Imperial troops succeeded in forcing their way through the hills to the fort where Yang had established his head-quarters. Terrified at the approach of the Chinese, Yang wished to surrender, but Liuyen refused to hold any communication with a rebel. With apparently no place to flee to, Yang resolved to commit suicide, but his son conceived it to be more honourable to be taken sword in hand. The execution of the latter, and the placing of a garrison in the captured hill fort, marked the close of this rebellion, which had been crushed with commendable promptitude. Its importance must not, however, be lightly judged because the victory was so easily attained. In estimating the significance of this and other similar insurrections, the effort necessary to restore order must be remembered. Here we see that a rising among a petty people in the South-West required the despatch of soldiers who had already borne the hardships of several campaigns in the North-East. The consequences of this inadequate military power became very perceptible when the Mings were assailed by a formidable foreign foe. During these years of disturbance there had been a remarkable development in the intercourse between the Chinese and the nations of the West. The Portuguese had as early as the year 1560 obtained from the local mandarins the right to erect sheds for their goods at a place near the mouth of the Canton estuary, which became known as Macao. Some years later this place had attained so much importance, that between five and six hundred Portuguese merchants, it is stated on good authority, resorted thither annually for purposes of trade. This settlement continued to develop both in size and in the amount of its commerce, notwithstanding the precarious conditions under which it was held; and by the regular payment of their rent to the Government, as well as by a system of judicious bribing, the Portuguese long enjoyed the practical monopoly of the external trade of the great mart of Canton with the West. About the same time that the Portuguese were thus establishing themselves on the mainland of China, the Spaniards had seized the Philippine Islands, to which they gave the * * Manilla was declared the capital of this new possession by the Governor Legaspi in the year 1571. MASSACRE AT MANILLA. 491 name of their king. They were not long in possession of these fertile islands before they came into contact with the Chinese, who had been in the habit of resorting thither from Canton for purposes of trade from a time much anterior to the Spanish occupation. In the train of Canton merchants came Chinese settlers, and the prosperity of Manilla was due as much to the latter's thrift and capacity for labour of all kinds, as it was to the profits of the commercial dealings with the former. The number of the Chinese settlers increased. with startling rapidity, and soon the Spanish officials and garrison began to see in these tillers of the soil, who so far outnumbered them," a formidable foe and a possible source of peril. The southern imagination having once entertained the possibility of a rising on the part of the Chinese immigrants, did not suffer the fear to slumber, and magnified into an immediate danger what was only a conjectural contingency. The arrival of three mandarins in the year 1602, with some indefinite mission from the Emperor, seemed to confirm these suspicions, and, after they had been as summarily dismissed as circumstances allowed, the Spaniards formed their plans for achieving another St. Bartholomew at the expense of the helpless and unoffending Chinese. In this design their firearms enabled them to succeed, and after a butchery which lasted several months it was reported that most of the twenty thousand unarmed Chinese had been slaughtered. The Spaniards attributed the success of this first massacre of Manilla to the presence of their national saint, St. Francis; but, while they congratulated themselves on their triumph, they had nearly ruined their colony, which owed all its prosperity to Chinese labour. The Chinese Government was then, as now, indifferent to the fate of those of its subjects who went away to foreign states, and the Spanish explanations were accepted without any difficulty being raised, or even without many inconvenient questions being asked. Fresh Chinese colonists again flocked to those pleasant islands undeterred by the fate of their countrymen, and their numbers soon increased to a greater extent than before. The Spaniards had recourse to In 1602 there were 20,000 Chinese and only 800 Spaniards. the same violent remedy as on the former occasion; but this event belongs to a later period. The successive massacres of Manilla show, however, that the same principles of government which were carried out by the Spaniards in America against the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru were enforced in the Philippines. In estimating the policy of the Chinese towards Europeans, much of their national dislike must be attributed to the impression produced by these massacres, and all other countries have had to suffer in this matter from the brutal and cowardly cruelty of the representatives of Spain in the Chinese seas. While these events were in progress for the establishment of commercial relations, individuals, urged by a laudable zeal to spread the truths of Christianity, had succeeded in gaining admission into China, where they were received with more consideration than would have been shown in Europe to any who came to teach the doctrines of Sakya Muni, or to explain the ethics of Confucius. The advent of these foreigners attracted little notice, and they appear to have been regarded with the complacent satisfaction which a great people always finds in the arrival of strangers from remote countries, whose very presence is an implied compliment to their own fame. Of these missionaries, charged by the Pope to convert the heathen in China, the first to arrive in the year 1581 was Michel Roger, a member of the Order of Jesuits. He was followed, two years later, by Ricci, who gained a ready way to the Emperor's favour by the presents of a repeating watch and a clock. Of Matthew Ricci it may be said that he possessed all the qualities necessary to convey a favourable impression both of his religion and his race; and to his tact * The Dutch did not appear on the scene until some years later. In 1624 they arrived off Macao, but the Portuguese drove them away. They then established themselves on the west coast of Formosa, where at a later period more will be heard of their doings. The French did not arrive till a much later period (reign of Kanghi), except as missionaries. In 1596 Elizabeth wrote a letter to the Emperor, but it did not reach its destination. Other attempts were made, but English intercourse did not fairly begin until 1634, when Captain Weddell's voyage, which was chiefly remarkable for the discovery of the mouth of the Canton river, and for the valour shown by our sailors and the ability evinced by the commander. FRENCH MISSIONARIES. 493 during a residence of twenty-eight years must be attributed the solid footing which the French missionaries obtained at Pekin, and which they retained, with rare intervals, for nearly two centuries. Others followed in their footsteps, and of these the most notable were Adam Schaal and Verbiest. The Chinese authorities seem to have regarded with a tolerant and half-amused curiosity these attempts to convert them; but, although two high officials at least were baptized, and extended their protection to the foreign priests, very little progress could be reported in the work they had undertaken. On the other hand, the missionaries were, in a worldly sense, most useful. They reformed-on the recommendation of a Chinese official Li Chitsao, or Peter, President of the Tribunal of Rites at Nankin-the Chinese calendar, and corrected several astronomical errors. The Imperial Observatory flourished under their direction, and more correct maps of the provinces were drawn under their supervision. In short, they placed at the disposal of the Pekin ministers their superior information, and, in return for the practical benefits they were able to confer, they received the rights of residency and fair treatment. But the Chinese remained cold in any advances towards Christianity. Wanleh's difficulties had proved unceasing since the first days of his accession to power. Even the Miaotze, those savage and unconquered hillmen of Kweichow, would not spare the anxieties of this unfortunate prince. As early as the year 1586 they had given the authorities much trouble, and obliged them to have recourse to extreme measures. More than thirty years later, in 1617, they broke out afresh, when the disturbances on the northern frontier were embarrassing the Government, and under a leader named Mongchang they committed numerous depredations in the plains. This quarrel was apparently arranged, but the Emperor's representative accepted the amicable expressions of the mountaineers, and did not push the matters with them to extremities. These petty risings were of very small moment in com As M. Huc, himself an ardent missionary, has put it-"A melancholy trait is it in the character of this people, that Christian truth does but glide over its surface !" |