against them all alike, and it had the effect of compelling them to show their hands. The example of Wou Sankwei proved infectious and irresistible. All declared against Kanghi, and from Fuhkien and Kwantung to the borders of Tibet and Burmah, there was one common blaze of insurrection against the Tartars. Fortunately for the young Emperor, the danger was more on the surface than in the hearts of the people; but the name of Wou Sankwei alone was as a tower of strength for the disaffected.

In face of this storm, which threatened to overwhelm him, Kanghi showed himself worthy of his race and fully capable of holding his ground against all comers. For a time the insurgents carried everything before them, but gradually the Manchu garrisons, reinforced by timely aid from Pekin, opposed a steady and, as it often proved, a successful resistance to the advancing onset of Chinese patriotism. When the first great danger of being overwhelmed in a general revolt of the Chinese had passed away, and when the situa tion could be more justly as well as more critically scanned, it was seen that the Manchus could fairly hold their own, and that as soon as they should collect their resources the chances of final victory would rest again on their side. In the height of the crisis it was as much, however, as they could reasonably expect if they were able to maintain their position against the numerous and enthusiastic armies which Woul Sankwei placed in the field.

For a time, however, dangers continued to thicken on all sides round the young Manchu ruler. The piratical confederacy of Formosa despatched its vessels to plunder the coast, and naval disasters came to further embarrass the Manchus. Even among the Mongols, who possessed a greater sympathy and fellow-feeling with the Manchus than it was possible for any inhabitant of the Chinese plains to have, the conviction was apparently spreading that the misfortunes of the Tartar conquerors furnished them with an opportunity to promote their own separate interests. Satchar, chief of one of the principal banners, was the first to give expression to this general feeling, and, inviting levies from all his neighbours, proclaimed that on a fixed day he would take the field

with 100,000 men for the invasion of China. Thus, menaced in his rear, Kanghi stood in imminent danger of a double disaster. Nothing save the remarkable promptitude with which he summoned troops from Leaoutung, and the courage which led him to denude Pekin of a large part of its garrison, extricated him from his perilous situation. The corps thus collected advanced by forced marches upon the encampment of Satchar. The swift-moving Manchu cavalry fell upon the Mongols before they had concentrated their forces, and returned with Satchar and his family as prisoners to Pekin. The capture of Satchar paralyzed the Mongols for a time, and after that event none among them dared stir hand or foot against their vigorous opponent.

Good fortune continued to attend the plans of Kanghi, whose difficulties would have sufficed to crush a man of less courage. He profited by his own ability and firmness, but he derived quite as much advantage from the dissensions prevailing among his enemies. Ching, the son of Koshinga and the possessor of Formosa, had quarrelled with the Chinese prince who had unfurled the standard of revolt in Fuhkien, and, more keen to indulge his rancour than to save his country, had turned his arms against the very man whom he had come to aid. The result of the collision that ensued between them was to shatter the forces of the Fuhkien leader, and to compel Ching to retire to his island home. Thus in one province was Kanghi's battle fought and won for him without an effort on his part. The Emperor had but to send a small detachment to regain the province, and to win back the allegiance, for such as it was worth, of its disappointed prince. The resubjugation of Fuhkien entailed that of Kwantung. Those officials, who had been most eager to proclaim their adhesion to the cause of Wou Sankwei, were the very first to greet the return of the Manchus. The aspirations which they had cherished and which they had thought feasible, with the Manchus exhausted by their efforts, and governed by a mere boy, could not, they found, stand contact with the reality of the case. Their adventure required valour and a desperate resolve to win. They possessed neither, and their only course was, when the Manchu troops arrived, to

express their contrition and to promise better conduct for the future. Kanghi had neither the desire nor the intention to irritate the mass of the people. He forgave all save the most guilty, and affected a belief in their pledges. But for the first time Manchu garrisons were placed in all the walled towns, and a part, known as the Tartar city, was specially marked off for their use.

Meantime Wou Sankwei maintained his independence in his own immediate neighbourhood. He appears to have

come to the wise determination to content himself with the sovereignty of these provinces which he hoped to weld into a kingdom for his son; and it was none of Kanghi's policy to venture upon a precipitate attack on this formidable general, whose military skill he rightly dreaded. All Kanghi's efforts were devoted to the work of detaching his friends and of crushing his allies. In 1677, however, he had so far succeeded in this preliminary task that he gave instructions for his armies to converge upon Wou Sankwei's territory from the north and also from the east. The Manchus met their match in the field, but the dissensions prevalent among the Chinese elsewhere had been manifested even in the ranks of the followers of Wou Sankwei, and this disunion more than counterbalanced their successes. Gradually his forces were driven out of Hoonan, and over his part of Szchuen he could claim only a precarious tenure. When Wou Sankwei took his first step backwards, the sun of his fortunes set. His own adherents abandoned him, the rebels in other parts hastened to come to terms with the supreme power, and all the scattered bodies of Manchu troops converged upon him as a common centre. For fifty years this Chinese warrior had never known the meaning of defeat, but he was now on the eve of irretrievable ruin, from which there was none to extricate him.

From Szchuen Wou Sankwei passed into Yunnan, whence he superintended the conduct of the campaign on the Hoonan and Kweichow frontiers. So long as he lived the skill shown in his military dispositions compensated to a great extent for other deficiencies, and the tardiness of his generals' success induced Kanghi to proclaim his intention of taking the field

in person. Several of his most experienced ministers disapproved of this resolution, as the absence of the Emperor from Pekin was held to be calculated to create disturbances in the North; but at this conjuncture the news of Wou Sankwei's death opportunely arrived. There are several versions of the manner in which this event happened, but the most probable one seems to be that he died of old age in the year 1679. Even with his great talents and reputation it had become clear that the success of his cause was virtually hopeless, and when he died his party dwindled down to an insignificant faction under the leadership of his grandson Wou Shufan. Kanghi then gave up his idea of taking the field in person, satisfied with the conviction that no other Chinese chieftain existed to take the place of his formidable opponent.

The disappearance of Wou Sankwei struck a rude blow at the courage and confidence of the Chinese people, for whom the death of their greatest man was an irreparable loss. Their ideas of resistance to the bitter end then gave place to the more worldly sentiment of coming to as speedy a settlement as possible with the Manchu officials. Wou Sankwei's long career covered the most critical period in the modern history of China, and, during the half-century that elapsed from the time when he distinguished himself in the defence of Ningyuen until he died as an independent prince in Yunnan, he occupied the very foremost place in the minds of his countrymen. The part which he had taken first in keeping out the Manchus, and then in introducing them into the state, reflected equal credit on his ability and patriotism. For even in requesting the Manchus to come to his aid against the robber Li he had been actuated by the purest motives, as there was then only a choice of evil alternatives; and it seemed preferable that a respectable, if alien, form of government should be established, to allowing the Empire to fall into the hands of a freebooter whose thoughts were solely of plunder. The Manchus, although well aware of the magnitude of their debt, secretly wished to exclude him from the just recompense of his unequalled services; but the Court was too wise to quarrel with one whose indignation might prove formidable. Yet

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the workings of their minds were not wholly concealed from Wou Sankwei, and when he received from Kanghi the order to proceed in person to Pekin and to disband his army, the moral indignation which had long possessed him broke forth. Something he may have presumed on the youth and inexperience of the Emperor, and he certainly forgot that his own age precluded his taking the active part in the field necessary to the success of his enterprise. For a moment it almost seemed that he was destined to succeed, and that the verdict of fortune would be reversed. With regard to the Manchus, Wou Sankwei might flatter himself that he had played the part of king-maker; but when he attempted to set up his own individual authority, he failed in his task. Notwithstanding that his life closed under the blight of a failure, the long, varied, and picturesque career of Wou Sankwei remains one of the most remarkable and striking to be met with in the course of Chinese history.

Wou Shufan carried on the unequal struggle with the Manchu generals for a few years; but in 1681 he lost all the possessions he had received from his grandfather, except the town of Yunnan. Long and valiantly did these representatives of a lost cause defend that stronghold, and Wou Shufan emulated the fortitude of his family. But the inevitable end could not be averted. The Manchus having once gained admission within the walls, the siege speedily terminated. The garrison was put to the sword, and Wou Shufan only baffled his enemy by committing suicide. Yet the full measure of the Manchu vengeance was not satisfied until his head had been sent to Pekin to be hung up over the gate as a warning to traitors, and as a proof of the Tartar triumph. Nor was even this act the last that marked the repression of the great rebellion; for the body of Wou Sankwei himself was taken from the tomb, and his ashes were scattered throughout the eighteen provinces of China, to testify to all that no trace any longer remained of the man who had threatened the very existence of the Manchus, and at whose name all his foes used to tremble.

Kanghi had now occupied the throne for more than twenty years, and the child upon whom the weight of a great