protracted campaign barren of result, left Taltanga and returned to their homes. The Kirghiz did not keep their faith; Taltanga saw that he had been duped, and Amursana again took the field against Keen Lung's army. The Chinese commanders found themselves obliged to order a retreat, and during the return march to Kansuh they were harassed by their active and enterprising assailants. The destruction of the small rear-guard under the intrepid Hoki, who seems to have voluntarily sacrificed himself by making a resolute stand to save the rest of the army, completed the disastrous events of this campaign. Encouraged by Amursana's success every petty chief hastened to set up his own authority, and they uniformly celebrated the commencement of their independence by the massacre of every Chinese subject on whom they could place their hands.

Yet not for these disasters and unfortunate occurrences did the Emperor Keen Lung give up his policy or depart from the line of action, in the wisdom of which he continued firmly to believe. To the incompetence of his commanders he could with much justice attribute the failure of his plans, and without indulging in useless recriminations or complaints he devoted himself to the task of discovering a man capable of executing his projects. The loss of Panti appeared for a moment to be irreparable. Keen Lung was still engaged in this search, when the message came from the scene of war that the exigencies of the situation had led to the discovery of a military genius. An officer named Tchaohoei had the command of a small detachment, and, when Taltanga began his retreat towards Kansuh, he hastened to collect such troops as he could, and made preparations for defending the district under his control against the advancing Eleuths. He gathered round him the relics of Hoki's force and the stragglers of Taltanga's army, and with them he prepared to uphold the Emperor's authority until assistance should come to him from China.

The news of Tchaohoei's fortitude and energy confirmed Keen Lung in his belief that the policy upon which he had decided was the right one, and that its success demanded only a competent and cautious general. Tchaohoei's conduct in

face of a confident enemy and under arduous circumstances seemed to mark him out as the very man for the occasion, and in a despatch to the Emperor, describing the position of affairs and suggesting the measures that seemed to him necessary, he showed such a grasp of the whole question, and his views so closely accorded with those of Keen Lung himself, that the Emperor at once determined to send him the reinforcements he required, and to entrust him with the chief command over all the troops beyond the frontier. When Tchaohoei revealed his talent as a commander, Keen Lung had been almost on the point of giving up the contest in despair. The sufferings of his troops had been great, their losses severe, and the result appeared as remote as ever. The complaints at the capital for the waste of precious lives and treasure could not with safety be much longer ignored; and had Tchaohoei failed in his task the Manchu ruler would, no doubt, have abstained from further action and given up the prosecution of his favourite policy.

In 1757 two fresh armies were sent across the desert, and, when they reached Ili, they enabled Tchaohoei to at once assume the offensive. Amursana, although he had so far preserved his life and avoided complete overthrow, was in no better state to offer a determined resistance to the onset of his assailants than on the first occasion of the Chinese advance. Again his supporters abandoned him, and sought only to secure their own safety by flight to the mountains that surrounded the favoured districts of Ili. Amursana, unable to rally round him a sufficient body of troops to justify his attempting open resistance to the Chinese, and possibly awed by their persistence in pursuing him, imitated the example of his supporters, and again fled for safety to his former friends the Kirghiz. His flight was so precipitate that he marched day and night without staying to inquire whether he was even being pursued, or whether his own supporters were following him.

Tchaohoei entrusted the pursuit of Amursana to Fouta, the most trusted and skilful of his lieutenants. This officer followed by forced marches on the traces of the fugitive. He reached Amursana's first place of retreat very shortly after

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that ill-advised prince, and he had the satisfaction of receiving the surrender of the principal Kirghiz clans. But Amursana had then made his escape into Russian territory, where he was permitted rather to wander at large than to enjoy the absolute protection of the Czar's Government. Yet even at this remote distance, and notwithstanding that the solitudes to which he had fled were unknown and had not been penetrated by Chinese soldiers, Amursana still was not safe from Keen Lung's vengeance. The result of this war remained indecisive, his objects were considered to be but half-attained so long as Amursana continued at large. Both to Tchaohoei and to Fouta Keen Lung sent fresh instructions to lose no opportunity and to spare no effort to capture the rebel alive or dead.

The close of Amursana's troubled career was at hand, although the fatal blow that ended it was not struck by his implacable enemy. "An irritated heaven hastened the time of its vengeance," to use Keen Lung's phrase, “and a pestilent malady slit the black thread of his life." A demand was presented to the Russian officials to surrender the body, but with this request they refused to comply on the ground that their religion forbade the expression of enmity after death. They showed the emissaries of Keen Lung the corpse of his unfortunate antagonist, and with this incident the campaign that had as its main object the chastisement of Amursana may be said to have terminated.

The first intelligence of Tchaohoei's success had served to supply the peace party at Pekin with a favourable opportunity for renewing their advice, that it would be wise to withdraw from Central Asia and to abandon once and for all dangerous and unprofitable enterprises in a far distant and impoverished region. "The kingdom of the Eleuths," exclaimed these men, "is too remote from the centre of our authority for us to be able to long govern it. Let us, therefore, abandon it to the care of whoever wishes to take it. What matters it to the glory of the Middle Kingdom, these uncultivated lands, and a people more than half savage?" The advice of these timid counsellors carried less weight than it would otherwise have done because Keen Lung had decided in his own mind

the right policy to pursue. He had resolved on nothing short of the establishment of his authority in the midst of the turbulent tribes that had disturbed his frontier, and, although momentarily undecided by a succession of reverses, he returned to the original plan with fresh confidence and energy as soon as he realized that in Tchaohoei he had found a worthy successor to Panti.

Having conquered the regions of Jungaria, and the favoured district of Ili, Keen Lung next turned his attention to the bestowing of the advantages of a settled government upon the inhabitants of those territories. At first he attempted to rule the tribes by means of native chiefs and princes, on whom he conferred the dignity of Khan. The plan did not work well. Many of them turned out incapable, and those whose ability increased their importance chafed at the restrictions placed upon their liberty and rebelled against Keen Lung. The Emperor's first scheme for the administration of his new possessions thus fell through, and it became necessary to devise another which should leave the people their liberty while it would place greater control in the hands of his officials. During this period of disturbance the Chinese commanders acted with marked severity, and the Eleuths suffered for the crimes and ambition of their chiefs.

Those who disturbed the tranquillity of the new Chinese possession were encouraged to do so by the knowledge that the country south of the Tian Shan mountains, known as Little Bokhara or Kashgaria, offered an asylum in the event of defeat. The authority of the Khoja Barhanuddin, who had been established in the place of power by the assistance of Amursana, was still recognized in the greater portion of that region; and neither at the time of Amursana's overthrow, nor during the period of the rule of the four Khans whom the Emperor had nominated as his viceroys, did Barhanuddin consider it to be necessary for him to make any overtures to Keen Lung's representatives, or to enrol himself as one of the Chinese well-wishers. Yet, according to Keen Lung's view of the situation, the conquest of the kingdom of the Eleuths carried with it the proper subordination if not the open surrender to him of the territory of its vassals. Of these

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the principal was Little Bokhara, the incorporation of which with the Empire was stated by Tchaohoei to be necessary to the permanent and tranquil possession of Ili.

The Chinese writers assume for their country the credit of having released Barhanuddin and of having restored him to the seat of his ancestors at the time of Panti's invasion, but the fact seems to have been that he owed his liberty and restoration more to Amursana than to the Chinese general. When Amursana departed from the stipulations of his arrangement with the Emperor, and suffered at the hands of his more powerful allies, Barhanuddin allowed himself to forget all considerations of prudence in the fervour of his indignation. against the Chinese. There was room for hope that a hostile collision might be averted until Barhanuddin and his brother laid violent hands upon the persons of an envoy and his suite, sent by Tchaohoei to discover whether a pacific understanding with these neighbours could not be arranged. The massacre of this embassy precluded that idea being any further entertained, and the Chinese troops were collected for the invasion of Little Bokhara just as a few months previously they had been assembled for the conquest of Amursana and his dominions. The murder of his representatives afforded Keen Lung the strongest reason for sanctioning the proposals of his general. This outrage compelled him to again draw the sword which he had only just placed in the sheath. "March," he wrote, "against the perfidious Mahomedans, who have so insolently abused my favours; avenge your companions who have been the unhappy victims of their barbarous fury."

Although Keen Lung simply reports that his generals duly set out on their enterprise, and that in a very short time they had subdued and annexed the country of Altyshahr, some of the details of this interesting campaign have been preserved in other quarters. The Chinese crossed the frontier in two bodies, one under the command of Tchaohoci, the other under that of Fouta. Such feeble resistance as Barhanuddin and his brother attempted was speedily overcome; the principal cities, Kashgar and Yarkand, were occupied, and the ill-advised rulers lately rejoicing in all the conviction