One Event, And Perhaps The Most Important Of Woutsong's Reign,
Calls For Special Mention, And That Is The Arrival At Canton Of The First
Native Of Europe To Reach China By Sea.
Of course it will be recollected
that Marco Polo and others reached the Mongol court by land, although the
Venetian sailed from China on his embassy to southern India.
In 1511,
Raphael Perestralo sailed from Malacca to China, and in 1517 the
Portuguese officer, Don Fernand Perez D'Andrade, arrived in the Canton
River with a squadron, and was favorably received by the mandarins.
D'Andrade visited Pekin, where he resided for some time as embassador. The
commencement of intercourse between Europeans and China was thus effected
most auspiciously; and it might have continued so but that a second
Portuguese fleet appeared in Chinese waters, and committed there numerous
outrages and acts of piracy. Upon this D'Andrade was arrested by order of
Woutsong, and after undergoing imprisonment, was executed by his successor
in 1523. It was a bad beginning for a connection which, after nearly four
hundred years, is neither as stable nor as general as the strivers after
perfection could desire.
The death of Woutsong without children, or any recognized heir, threatened
to involve the realm in serious dangers; but the occasion was so critical
that the members of the Ming family braced themselves to it, and under the
auspices of the Empress Changchi, the widow of the late ruler, a secret
council was held, when the grandson of the Emperor Hientsong, a youth of
fourteen, was placed on the throne under the name of Chitsong. It is said
that his mother gave him good advice on being raised from a private
station to the lofty eminence of emperor, and that she told him that he
was about to accept a heavy burden; but experience showed that he was
unequal to it. Still, his shortcomings were preferable to a disputed
succession. The earlier years of his reign were marked by some successes
over the Tartars, and he received tribute from chiefs who had never paid
it before. But Chitsong had little taste for the serious work of
administration. He showed himself superstitious in matters of religion,
and he cultivated poetry, and may even have persuaded himself that he was
a poet. But he did not pay any heed to the advice of those among his
ministers who urged him to take a serious view of his position, and to act
in a manner worthy of his dignity. It is clear that his influence on the
lot of his people, and even on the course of his country's history, was
small, and such reigns as his inspire the regret expressed at there being
no history of the Chinese people; but such a history is impossible.
It might be more instructive to trace the growth of thought among the
masses, or to indicate the progress of civil and political freedom; yet,
not only do the materials not exist for such a task, but those we possess
all tend to show that there has been no growth to describe, no progress to
be indicated, during these comparatively recent centuries.
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