THE DALAI LAMA.

599

murmur to those who advocate the cause of heaven the unscrupulous resolution and the unyielding persistency that are condemned in the search of worldly ends. Such were the views of Galdan, who for a moment aspired to attain as a minister of religion that unquestioned sway which, as the chief of a nomadic people, the difference of a few months seemed destined to prevent his enjoying.

Over the whole of Buddhist Asia the fame of the Dalai Lama of Tibet spreads its gentle influence. The poor and scattered clans on the northern steppe believe in the benefits to be derived from that saintly personage's intercession quite as much as, and probably much more than, astute statesmen and rulers at Pekin. The power of the Dalai Lama was exercised with less despotic sway over those who regarded that incarnation of an immortal spirit as their highest religious dignitary, than that of the Pope of Rome; but it was none the less real as a matter of general belief and common acceptance. It was to Lhasa, or rather to the lamasery of Botala, that the young Eleuth chief turned his steps. His absence was not lengthy. Before his departure Galdan had quarrelled with some of his brothers, and in the discussion that ensued had slain his full-brother Tsenka. This deed of violence precipitated his flight, but it also contributed to his prompt return. News of the crime reached the ears of the Dalai Lama, and the favour of admission to the ranks of the clergy of Tibet was refused to one coming with the stains of blood upon his hands. Galdan quitted Tibet and returned to the quarters of his race. Among a people accustomed to violence, his crime was easily forgotten, or lightly condoned by a brief absence. His return was hailed by those who knew that he came straight from the palace of the Dalai Lama, and he found that the reputation of having lived in the effulgence of that holy presence served him in almost as good stead as if his character were spotless. Then again he turned to the schemes of ambition which, ever uppermost in his brain, were to be attained either by fair means or by foul, and to which the superstition and the credulity of men were likely to be as good stepping-stones as his own ability and nerve.

Galdan's designs were carried out to the letter. He

deposed the Khan who had been elected in his place after the murder of Tsenka, and as the next step decreed the death of all the members of his family whose opposition to his plans might be expected. This holocaust in the camp of the Eleuths terrified the people into a state of subjection, which it became Galdan's main object to make as light and durable as he could. Galdan had done enough for the moment towards strengthening his own position. He had now to consolidate his power by systematic encroachments on the lands of his neighbours; and as the preliminary to these latent designs he sent a mission, nominally of congratulation, but really of inquiry and investigation, to the Court of Kanghi. It arrived at the very moment when the rebellion of Wou Sankwei was at its height, and it returned before the death of that prince and the subsequent pacification of the South had taken place. The tale it brought back to Galdan was one, therefore, not of the power and resources of the Manchus, but of their weakness and embarrassment. These Central Asian envoys may well have been excused if they spread the rumour that the brave young Tartar ruler stood on the verge of ruin.

When Galdan received the report of his messengers he abandoned whatever intention he may have had of preserving the peace with the Chinese Empire. The opportunity of advancing his interests at its expense, for which he had been on the look-out, seemed to have arrived, and he lost no time in beginning the encroachments over which he had long meditated. The Khalkas, who had given a willing and sincere recognition to the Manchu authority, presented the mark upon which he could most easily vent his simulated indignation and his deeply-felt ambition. They were within the reach of his power, and too remote to receive from China the aid which could alone enable them to resist his attack. The invasion of the Khalka districts formed the task undertaken by Galdan in his first campaign; but at the same time he sent troops in the direction of the Chinese frontier. The approach of his force induced many to flee within the Emperor's territory, and to seek the aid of his officials in recovering their possessions from an aggressor with no valid ground of complaint against them. Kanghi gave them

GALDAN'S EMBASSY.

601

permission to settle on the frontier, and provided them with a few necessaries. But at first he could not do more than watch the progress of events with vigilant attention, and this he was always careful to do. His generals on the frontier were ordered to send spies into the territory of the Eleuths, and these reported that Galdan had established a formidable military power, and that he meditated extending his sway over all the regions adjacent to China.

While employed in the serious business of advancing his authority into the lands of the Khalkas, Galdan amused himself by frequently sending missions to Pekin, with the double object of increasing his information and of blinding the Emperor as to his plans. So little was known about the state of the regions beyond the Chinese frontier, that for a long time Galdan was able to keep the execution of his plans without the knowledge of the Chinese officials. So well did he combine the arts of vigilant activity in the field and of dissimulation in his diplomatic negotiations, that in the year 1679, when his encroachments on the Khalka country were beginning to assume tangible form, his ambassador at Pekin was accorded a flattering reception, and returned to his master with the seal and patent of a khan.

Three years later Kanghi commissioned two of the principal officers attached to his person to proceed to the camp of Galdan to ascertain how far the disquieting rumours concerning his movements and military preparations were true. At the same time he sent other envoys to the Khalkas, and among these may be noted Feyanku, then a young captain in the bodyguard, but afterwards one of the most celebrated of Chinese generals. These diplomatic agents were the bearers of the usual number of presents for the princes to whom they were about to proceed; but their instructions were of the simplest kind. One and all of the potentates whom they visited were to acknowledge the supremacy of the Chinese Emperor and to renew the formal expression of their allegiance at stated intervals. Of these missions, the result only of that to Galdan had any practical significance.

The laws of hospitality are sacred and exacting. Galdan, enraged at heart at the pretensions of a monarch whose power

he affected to despise, lavished on Kanghi's envoys all the resources of his people and circumstances. The arrival of an embassy in his poor country from the rich and powerful Emperor of China was an event, he said, that would be handed down to posterity as the most glorious of his reign; yet he was no doubt thinking that his relation to Kanghi might become very similar to those of the early Manchu leaders with the last of the Ming emperors. The Chinese envoys did not succeed in obtaining any of those formal concessions which they were expected to bring back from him, and the indifference of Galdan's attitude was enhanced by the unaffected cordiality of the pledges of friendship given by the Khalkas. To this they were impelled both by their apprehensions of Galdan, and also by the divisions and rivalries which disturbed the harmony of their assemblies.

The dissensions of the Khalkas afforded Galdan his opportunity, and when Kanghi succeeded in 1687 in effecting a reconciliation between these princelets, who swore before an image of Buddha to keep the peace among themselves, Galdan resorted to all the artifices within his power to disturb the harmony of this arrangement and to revive the feuds and discord that many hoped had been happily healed. Kanghi addressed them by letter in terms which sought to bring before them all the risk and attendant evils of the course they were pursuing; but his principal aim was to check the pretensions and encroachments of Galdan. Early in the following year, therefore, he sent a new embassy into the Khalka country; and he attached so much importance to its success, that he entrusted the mission to some of his nearest and most intimate advisers. Prince Sosan, a captain of the bodyguard and minister of state, was placed at the head of the embassy, and with him was associated Tong Kwekang, another official of high rank, and Kanghi's maternal uncle. With these Chinese dignitaries also went the two European priests, Gerbillon and Pereira, as interpreters, for to the complications among the Khalkas there had been added a dispute with the Russian colonists, who had crossed a continent to find a fertile place of settlement on the banks of the Amour.

The Russians had constructed along the Southern border

THE RUSSIANS.

603

of their new possession a line of block-houses, but, as their presence in this remote quarter did not apparently disturb the Chinese, they soon began to fortify their stations on a more pretentious and formidable scale. A fort was erected at Albazin, a place on the upper course of the Amour, and the Russian authorities in this quarter anticipated being able to derive substantial benefit from the disturbed state of the country held by the Khalkas as well as from the rival pretensions of Galdan and the Emperor Kanghi. In this expectation they were doomed to disappointment, for the Chinese troops sent into the neighbourhood by Kanghi, with the aid of the surrounding tribes, fell upon the garrison of Albazin, captured the place, and carried off a band of Russian prisoners to Pekin, where their descendants still remain. The Russians returned and re-established themselves at Albazin with that obstinacy which is one of their characteristics, and which they derive from their Tartar origin. Hostilities recommenced and languished throughout the year, and then it was that Kanghi, more anxious to crush Galdan than to embroil himself in an indefinite quarrel with the Russians, accepted the overtures that came to him from the Muscovites for a pacific arrangement. This embassy had almost reached the scene. of its proposed diplomatic labours, when an event compelled its sudden return. War had at last broken out between the Eleuths and the Khalkas, and Galdan was in the act of invading the very territory whither Kanghi's representatives had gone to assert his right against the Russians. Although the diplomatists were recalled, the negotiations were only suspended, and not broken off. In the following year it may be stated that they were brought to an auspicious termination by the treaty of Nipchu.

Galdan had on his side speculated on the possible advantages he might derive from the appearance of these Russians, and possessed with the idea that it must tend to his advantage, he resolved to defer no longer his open rupture with the Khalkas. Even in these uncivilized regions, where the law of might supersedes every other consideration, the moral sentiment of the human race requires that some cloak shall be given to acts of wanton aggression. Galdan specified his