Within Two Years Kwang Vouti Had The Satisfaction Of Breaking Up The Formidable Faction Known As The Crimson Eyebrows, And Of Holding Its Leader Fanchong As A Prisoner In His Capital.

Kwang Vouti was engaged for many more years in subduing the numerous potentates who had repudiated the imperial authority.

His efforts were invariably crowned with success, but he acquired so great a distaste for war that it is said when his son asked him to explain how an army was set in battle array he refused to reply. But the love of peace will not avert war when a State has turbulent or ambitious neighbors who are resolved to appeal to arms, and so Kwang Vouti was engaged in almost constant hostilities to the end of his days. Chingtse, the Queen of Kaochi, which may be identified with the modern Annam, defied the Chinese, and defeated the first army sent to bring her to reason. This reverse necessitated a still greater effort on the part of the Chinese ruler to bring his neighbor to her senses. The occupant of the Dragon throne could not sit down tamely under a defeat inflicted by a woman, and an experienced general named Mayuen was sent to punish the Queen of Kaochi. The Boadicea of Annam made a valiant defense, but she was overthrown, and glad to purchase peace by making the humblest submission. The same general more than held his own on the northern and northwest frontiers. When Kwang Vouti died, in A.D. 57, after a brilliant reign of thirty-three years, he had firmly established the Han dynasty, and he left behind him the reputation of being both a brave and a just prince.

His son and successor, Mingti, was not unworthy of his father. His acts were characterized by wisdom and clemency, and the country enjoyed a large measure of peace through the policy of Mingti and his father. A general named Panchow, who was perhaps the greatest military commander China ever produced, began his long and remarkable career in this reign, and, without the semblance of an effort, kept the Huns in order, and maintained the imperial authority over them. Among other great and important works, Mingti constructed a dike, thirty miles long, for the relief of the Hoangho, and the French missionary and writer, Du Halde, states that so long as this was kept in repair there were no floods. The most remarkable event of Mingti's reign was undoubtedly the official introduction of Buddhism into China. Some knowledge of the great Indian religion and of the teacher Sakya Muni seems to have reached China through either Tibet, or, more probably, Burma, but it was not until Mingti, in consequence of a dream, sent envoys to India to study Buddhism, that its doctrine became known in China. Under the direct patronage of the emperor it made rapid progress, and although never unreservedly popular, it has held its ground ever since its introduction in the first century of our era, and is now inextricably intertwined with the religion of the Chinese state and people. Mingti died after a successful reign of eighteen years in 75 A.D. His son, Changti, with the aid of his mother, Machi, the daughter of the general Mayuen, enjoyed a peaceful reign of thirteen years, and died at an early age lamented by his sorrowing people.

After Changti came his son, Hoti, who was only ten at the time of his accession, and who reigned for seventeen years. He was a virtuous and well-intentioned prince, who instituted many internal reforms, and during his reign a new writing paper was invented, which is supposed to have been identical with the papyrus of Egypt. But the reign of Hoti is rendered illustrious by the remarkable military achievements of Panchow. The success of that general in his operations with the Huns has already been referred to, and he at last formed a deliberate plan for driving them away from the Chinese frontier. Although he enjoyed the confidence of his successive sovereigns, the imperial sanction was long withheld from this vast scheme, but during the life of Changti he began to put in operation measures for the realization of this project that were only matured under Hoti. He raised and trained a special army for frontier war. He enlisted tribes who had never served the emperor before, and who were specially qualified for desert warfare. He formed an alliance with the Sienpi tribes of Manchuria, who were probably the ancestors of the present Manchus, and thus arranged for a flank attack on the Huns. This systematic attack was crowned with success. The pressure brought against them compelled the Hiongnou to give way, and as they were ousted from their possessions, to seek fresh homes further west. In this they were, no doubt, stimulated by the example of their old opponents, the Yuchi, but Panchow's energy supplied a still more convincing argument. He pursued them wherever they went, across the Gobi Desert and beyond the Tian Shan range, taking up a strong position at modern Kuldja and Kashgar, sending his expeditions on to the Pamir, and preparing to complete his triumph by the invasion of the countries of the Oxus and Jaxartes. When Hoti was still a youth, he completed this programme by overrunning the region as far as the Caspian, which was probably at that time connected with the Aral, and it may be supposed that Khiva marked the limit of the Chinese general's triumphant progress. It is affirmed with more or less show of truth that he came into contact with the Roman empire or the great Thsin, as the Chinese called it, and that he wished to establish commercial relations with it. But however uncertain this may be, there can be no doubt that he inflicted a most material injury on Rome, for before his legions fled the Huns, who, less than four centuries later, debased the majesty of the imperial city, and whose leader, Attila, may have been a descendant of that Meha at whose hands the Chinese suffered so severely.

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