Keen Lung Decided To Administer The Country Which He Had Conquered.
But
another step was seen to be necessary to give stability to the Chinese
administration, and that was the annexation of Kashgaria.
The great region
of Little Bokhara or Eastern Turkestan, known to us now under the more
convenient form of Kashgaria, was still ruled by the Khoja Barhanuddin,
who had been placed in power by Amursana, and it afforded a shelter for
all the disaffected, and a base of hostility against the Chinese. Even if
Tchaohoei had not reported that the possession of Kashgaria was essential
to the military security of Jungaria, there is no doubt that sooner or
later Keen Lung would have proceeded to extreme lengths with regard to
Barhanuddin. The Chinese were fully warranted, however, in treating him as
an enemy when he seized an envoy sent to his capital by Tchaohoei and
executed him and his escort. This outrage precluded all possibility of an
amicable arrangement, and the Chinese prepared their fighting men for the
invasion and conquest of Kashgaria. They crossed the frontier in two
bodies, one under the command of Tchaohoei, the other under that of Fouta.
Any resistance that Barhanuddin and his brother attempted was speedily
overcome; the principal cities, Kashgar and Yarkand, were occupied, and
the ill-advised princes were compelled to seek their personal safety by a
precipitate flight. The conquest and annexation of Kashgaria completed the
task with which Tchaohoei was charged, and it also realized Keen Lung's
main idea by setting up his authority in the midst of the turbulent tribes
who had long disturbed the empire, and who first learned peaceful pursuits
as his subjects. The Chinese commanders followed up this decided success
by the dispatch of several expeditions into the adjoining states.
The ruler of Khokand was either so much impressed by his neighbor's
prowess, or, as there is much reason to believe, experienced himself the
weight of their power by the occupation of his principal cities, Tashkent
and Khokand, that he hastened to recognize the authority of the emperor
and to enroll himself among the tributaries of the Son of Heaven. The
tribute he bound himself to pay was sent without a break for a period of
half a century. The Kirghiz chiefs of low and high degree imitated his
example, and a firm peace was thus established from one end of Central
Asia to the other. The administration was divided between Chinese and
native officials, and if there was tyranny, the people suffered rather
from that of the Mohammedan Hakim Beg than that of the Confucian Amban.
Keen Lung was engaged in many more wars than those in Central Asia. On the
side of Burmah he found his borders disturbed by nomad and predatory
tribes not less than in the region of Gobi. These clans had long been a
source of annoyance and anxiety to the viceroy of Yunnan, but the weakness
of the courts of Ava and Pegu, who stood behind these frontagers, had
prevented the local grievance becoming a national danger.
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