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marked the completion of the conquest of Leaoutung by the removal of his capital to the site of his latest victory. Thus rapidly did their first great military conquest at the expense of China follow the reunion of the Niuche tribes under a single head, and from his new palace in Leaouyang Noorhachu could speculate on how his next stride southward might carry him into the imperial city of Pekin.

While the Manchus were thus arranging matters after their own fashion in the north, other enemies presented themselves in the south to cause anxiety to the Chinese Government. There is no evidence to establish a chain of connection between these two events, but it is only reasonable to suppose that the disasters in Leaoutung, by producing an impression that the power of the Mings was on the wane, encouraged the discontented and the turbulent in other parts of the country to resort to force for the attainment of their ends. In the mountainous tracts of Szchuen, which had often before nourished traitors and produced disaffected subjects, the clans had gathered round a local chieftain and assumed an attitude of covert hostility towards the Chinese authorities. Nor were the people of the cities and plains very staunch in their allegiance to the Emperor, although they looked with suspicion and apprehension on the movements of a race more prone to disregard than to respect the rights of property and the persons of law-abiding citizens.

The principal of the disaffected tribes in this province was that known as the Kolo, whose chief Chetsong Ming could raise an armed force of nearly 30,000 men, and in the time of the Manchu peril he had placed this body at the disposal of the Viceroy of Szchuen, either to relieve a portion of the local garrison, or to take the field against the Tartars. That functionary either formed a poor opinion of their military capabilities, or indulged the promptings of his own caprice, for he disbanded many of these would-be soldiers without awarding them the slightest compensation. Chetsong's followers thereupon broke out in open insubordination, and, having murdered the Viceroy, took possession of several of the most important towns in Szchuen. Chetsong immediately placed himself at the head of this insurrectionary movement,

and had the satisfaction of seeing his authority promptly established in Chentu and Chungking. Many of the people joined him, and the greater number of the mandarins put themselves to death in expiation of the disgrace of having found themselves unable to defend their posts.

The steps taken towards restoring Tienki's authority were necessarily slow, and the reduced numbers of the garrison rendered it a work of time to repress a rebellion that had been marked in its earlier stages by such decided successes. While on all sides there was abundant evidence of both treachery and incapacity, the noble conduct of Tsinleang, a woman who had inherited the chiefship of a small district, afforded some proof that the nobler virtues were not yet wholly extinct among the tributaries and vassals of the Empire. She had raised a corps of troops, and sent them to assist the Emperor in Leaoutung, where they had suffered great losses, and where her two brothers had been slain. And now, in face of this sudden emergency in her own province, she raised another large force, and hastened to combine with those who were endeavouring to maintain, or rather to reassert, Tienki's authority in the south-west.

The campaign fought with this object lasted throughout the greater portion of the years 1621 and 1622, and success was not assured until, after long sieges, both Chentu and Chungking surrendered to the Imperial arms. Chetsong escaped to the mountains, and, although baffled in his main undertaking, he could console himself with the remembrance of the infinite mischief which he had caused, and of what losses he had cost his conqueror. Chetsong's rebellion, however, did but apply the torch to the mass of disaffection which had long been seething in the south-west. In the neighbouring province of Kweichow a similar rising took place under the instigation of Ganpangyen, a local chief, who thought he saw in the embarrassments of the Chinese a short road to increased power. The successes obtained by this individual over the garrisons of Yunnan and Kweichow carried alarm throughout an extensive tract of country, and entailed the temporary subversion of the Emperor's authority in a great portion of these provinces. This insurrection might have attained much

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larger proportions, but for the valour and resolution of the commandant of the principal city of Kweiyang. For nearly twelve months the rebel chief laid siege to it, but all his assaults were repulsed. He broke his strength against its fortifications, and his followers abandoned him when they found that he could not command victory. Ganpangyen was glad to be able to make a safe retreat to his own state, whither the Chinese were too exhausted to pursue him.

Much nearer the capital serious disturbances broke out in the province of Shantung, where a rebel leader named Su Hongju had gathered round him a military following of considerable numerical strength. He obtained several successes, plundered numerous towns, and for a time carried everything before him. But his successes happily proved ephemeral, The regular troops rallied, and returned to the attack. Su Hongju and his band were shut up in the town of Tenghien, where at length the rebels agreed to give up their arms and to surrender their leader. Su Hongju having thus run his brief career, was betrayed by his own followers and perished on the scaffold. In 1623 there was a renewal of the previous disturbances in both Kweichow and Szchuen; but the Viceroy, Wang Sanchen, succeeded in rendering a good account of the rebels, although for himself these later operations had an unfortunate ending. He was enticed with a small body of followers into an ambuscade in the mountains, where he and his comrades, overwhelmed by numbers, were all slain.

These numerous risings in different parts of the empire, which were of little more than local importance in themselves, possessed a very distinct and tangible significance from occurring at the crisis in the history of the Ming dynasty. They served to occupy a large body of troops who might have been employed against the foreign foe, and they also encouraged that foreign foe to proceed to greater lengths than he would otherwise have done, in the belief that the country was disunited within itself. The Ming dynasty had during these last few reigns failed to satisfy the popular expectation, and it could no longer count on either the hearty or the unanimous support of the people. The corruptness of the Court no doubt contributed most of all to the downfall

of the ruling family, which had enjoyed a brief, if exceptional, popularity; but the Government had to apprehend as much danger from the supineness of its subjects as from their hostility. Yet even at the eleventh hour, if the Emperor had awoke to the gravity of the situation, China might have been saved from the Manchus, and the Mings might have preserved their throne. But the wisdom that had left them so long was not to be vouchsafed in the time of their extremity, and the sands in the hour-glass of Ming existence were running very low in face of dissension within, and of open attack from without.

During this interval the Manchus had been principally engaged in the task of consolidating their power in Leaoutung, and in preparations for a further movement in the direction of the capital. The river Leaou marked the border line, beyond which Noorhachu had not yet attempted to advance, and the defence or passage of that stream became the foremost object with either combatant. The misfortunes which had resulted in the fall of Moukden and the loss of Leaoutung had compelled the Pekin authorities to so far provide against the exigencies of the hour as to give Tingbi a fresh command on the frontier; but unfortunately the influence of the eunuchs of the palace was so strong that the importance of this step was nullified by the simultaneous appointment of another general to an equal command. The latter, secure in the staunch support of the Palace, was able to ignore and override the decisions of his colleague, who had to stand by the aid of a weak, if well-meaning, king, and by the spasmodic and often inconsistent expression of popular approval. The plan of campaign suggested by Tingbi was simple and wellsuited to the emergency. But his colleague would have none of it. His mode of operation was more pretentious and more audacious, and it might have succeeded against an inexpert captain or a mob of soldiers; but against the experienced Noorhachu and his well-trained legions it invited disaster. The Manchus crossed the Leaou, and drove the Imperialists, and with them a large number of the inhabitants, behind the Great Wall. But for the resolute defence of Ningyuen even the Great Wall would hardly have restrained the torrent of

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Manchu attack. In face of this new discomfiture, some further victims had to be offered up for the satisfaction of the people, who were beginning to see in the Manchus no longer a marauding tribe of the frontier, but an invader occupying the threshold, and threatening the very existence of the empire. Tingbi, to whose wise counsel the nation might have owed a safe issue from its peril, but whose recommendations had been treated with indifference, was the first to feel the spleen of those who, in the safety of the capital, decreed what was right and wrong, what wise and foolish, in the command of armies in the field. The execution of Tingbi closed an honourable career, and it removed another of the few soldiers who might possibly have been a successful defender of the country. With Tingbi, who had kept Noorhachu at the height of his success for two years at bay, disappeared the only commander whose skill had given any promise of restoring the inequalities of the struggle; but it is only a sorry satisfaction to remember that the eunuchs suffered in common with the nation, and that all their influence failed to save Tingbi's colleague from a fate similar to his own.

The Chinese lieutenants fared better than might have been anticipated after so crushing an overthrow in improvising a defence of that portion of the Great Wall which approaches most nearly to the sea, and of which the town of Shanhaikwan* may be taken as the central point. Nor were their efforts wholly confined to this object, for, finding that the Manchus were fully occupied in disposing of the large population in their new province, a Chinese officer, named Chungwan, threw himself into Ningyuen with a small band to reinforce the garrison of that place. The courage shown by Chungwan, and the all-providing care and energy of the new viceroy, Chungtsung, served to again arrest the advancing tide of

* Shanhaikwan, meaning sea and mountain barrier," the most eastern gate of the Great Wall. An interesting account of a journey in this quarter of China, from Tientsin to Moukden, will be found in Mr. George Fleming's "Travels on Horseback in Mantchu Tartary," 1863 ; later information on the same subject is contained in Captain Gill's "River of Golden Sand," 1880, vol. i., and also in Mr. H. E. M. James's Long White Mountain."