Chinese merely as the instruments of their self-aggrandisement, were further increased during this period by the depredations of the Nienfei rebels in the province of Shantung. During these operations Sankolinsin died, leaving Tseng Kwofan in undisputed possession of the first place among Chinese officials. Sankolinsin, when retreating after a reverse, was treacherously murdered by some villagers whose hospitality he had claimed. The career of the great Mongol prince, who had unsuccessfully opposed the allied forces during the Pekin campaign, terminated ignominiously; but his constant activity, when he was to a certain extent in disgrace, showed that he was unremitting in his fidelity to the Tartar ruler. The Nienfei rebellion continued to alarm and agitate the provinces on the northern bank of the Yellow river, and the task of suppressing them was rendered more difficult by the mutinous state of the soldiery. However, the Nienfei never became formidable in the sense of being a national danger; and although they continued for several years longer to be a source of trouble and disturbance, they owed their own safety as much to the celerity of their movements as to their military power.

The events of this introductory period may be appropriately concluded with the strange stroke of misfortune that befell Prince Kung in the spring of 1865, and seemed to show that he had indulged some views of personal ambition. The affair had probably a secret history, but if so, the truth is hardly likely to be ever known. The known facts were as follows: On the 2nd of April, 1865, there appeared an edict degrading the Prince in the name of the two RegentEmpresses, for Tsi An, the abler woman, had been associated with Tsi Thsi, the Empress of higher grade. The charge made against him was of having grown arrogant, and of assuming privileges to which he had no right. He was at first "diligent and circumspect," but he has now become disposed "to overrate his own importance." In consequence, he was deprived of all his appointments and dismissed from the scene of public affairs.

There was not much likelihood that a man, who had taken so decisive a share in arranging the accession of the ruling

THE TWO EMPRESSES.

429 prince, and in the appointment of the Regents during his minority, would tamely acquiesce in being set on one side by the decree of two women. All his friends on the Imperial Council petitioned the Throne, representing in the plainest terms the great inconvenience that would be entailed by the withdrawal of Prince Kung from the control of public affairs. It was significantly observed in one of these memorials that "if the Imperial household be the first to begin misunderstandings" there was no telling where the excitement would not extend. These representations could scarcely fail to produce their due effect. Five weeks after his fall Prince Kung was reinstated on the 8th of May in all his offices, with the exception of that of President of the Council. This episode, which might have produced grave complications, closed with a return to almost the precise state of things previously existing. There was one important difference. The two Empresses had asserted their predominance. Prince Kung had hoped to be supreme, and to rule uncontrolled. From this time forth he was content to be their minister and adviser on terms similar to those that would have applied to any other official.

The year 1865, which witnessed this very interesting event in the history of the Chinese Government, beheld before its close the departure of Sir Frederick Bruce from Pekin, and the appointment of Sir Rutherford Alcock to fill the post of Resident Minister at Pekin. Sir Frederick Bruce left an example to his successors of how the dignity of the British Crown, in dealing with another great, if somewhat anomalous, Government was to be sustained. Sir Rutherford Alcock, who had represented his country in Japan during the trying years after the bombardment of Shimonoseki, then found the opportunity to put in practice some of the honourable sentiments to which he had given expression twenty years before at Shanghai. When Sir Rutherford left Yeddo for Pekin, the post of Minister in Japan was conferred on Sir Harry Parkes, who had been acting as Consul at Shanghai since the conclusion of the war. The relations between the countries were gradually settling down on a satisfactory basis, and the appointment of a Supreme Court for China and Japan at

Shanghai, with Sir Edmund Hornby as Chief Judge, promised to enforce obedience to the law among even the unsettled adventurers of different nationalities left by the conclusion of the Taeping rebellion and the cessation of piracy without a profitable pursuit. The Chinese were thus able to turn their attention from questions of foreign intercourse to the suppression with increasing vigour of the other insurrections which had been agitating the Empire.

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CHAPTER XVII.

THE TWO MAHOMEDAN REBELLIONS.

We have already described or noticed a sufficient number of human calamities, arising from disastrous foreign wars and a sanguinary civil rebellion, to have taxed the strength and imperilled the existence of the most powerful of Empires. But while the events which have been set forth and recorded were happening in the heart of China, along her coasts and at the capital, other misfortunes yet had befallen the executive, in the more remote quarters of the realm it is true, but still none the less resulting in the loss and ruin of provinces, and in the subversion of the Emperor's authority. Two great uprisings of the people occurred in opposite directions, both commencing while the Taeping rebellion was in full force, and continuing to disturb the country for many years after its suppression. The one had for its scene the great southwestern province of Yunnan; the other the two provinces of the north-west, Shensi and Kansuh. They resembled each other in one point, and that was that they were instigated and sustained by the Mahomedan population alone. The Panthays and the Tungani were, as it may please the fancy, either indigenous tribes or foreign immigrants, who had adopted or imported the tenets of Islam. Their sympathies with the Pekin Government may never have been great, but they were impelled in both cases to revolt more by local tyranny than by any distinct desire to cast off the authority of the Chinese; but, of course, the obvious embarrassment of the central executive encouraged, by simplifying, the task of rebellion. The Panthay rising calls for description in the

first place, because it began at an earlier period than the other, and also because the details have been preserved with greater fidelity.

Mahomedanism is believed to have been introduced into Yunnan in or about the year 1275, and it made most progress among the so-called aboriginal tribes, the Lolos and the Mantzu. The officials were mostly Chinese or Tartars, and, left practically free from control, they more often abused their power than sought to employ it for the benefit of the people they governed. In the very first year of Hienfung's reign (1851) a petition reached the capital from a Mahomedan land proprietor in Yunnan named Ma Wenchu, accusing the Emperor's officials of the gravest crimes, and praying that "a just and honest man" might be sent to redress the wrongs of an injured and long-suffering people. The petition was carefully read and favourably considered at the capital; but although a gracious answer was accorded, the Emperor was at the time powerless to apply a remedy.

Four years passed away without any open manifestation being given of the deep discontent smouldering below the surface. But in 1855 the Chinese and the Mahomedan labourers quarrelled in one of the principal mines of the province, which is covered with ancient mines of gold, iron, and copper. It seems that the greater success of the Mahomedans in the uncertain pursuit of mining had roused the displeasure of their Chinese colleagues. Disputes ensued, in which the Mussulmans added. success in combat to success in mining; and the official appointed to superintend the mines, instead of remaining with a view to the restoration of order, sought his personal safety by precipitate flight to the town of Yunnan. During his absence the Chinese population raised a levy en masse, attacked the Mahomedans who had gained a momentary triumph, and compelled them by sheer weight of numbers to beat a hasty retreat to their own homes in a different part of the province. This success was the signal for a general outcry against the Mahomedans, who had long been the objects of the secret ill-will of the other inhabitants. Massacres