The Prince Of
That State Offered The Utmost Resistance He Could, But In The One Great
Battle Of The War His Army Fighting Bravely Was Overthrown, And He Was
Compelled To Abandon His Capital.
The conquest of Yunnan completed the
pacification of the empire, and the authority of Hongwou was unchallenged
from the borders of Burmah to the Great Wall and the Corean frontier.
The
population of the empire thus restored did not much exceed sixty millions.
The last ten years of the reign of Hongwou were passed in tranquillity,
marred by only one unpleasant incident, the mutiny of a portion of his
army under an ambitious general. The plot was discovered in good time, but
it is said that the emperor did not consider the exigencies of the case to
be met until he had executed twenty thousand of the mutineers.
In 1398 Hongwou was attacked with the illness which ended his life. He was
then in his seventy-first year, and had reigned more than thirty years
since his proclamation of the Ming dynasty at Nankin. The Emperor Keen
Lung, in his history of the Mings, states that Hongwou possessed most of
the virtues and few of the vices of mankind. He was brave, patient under
suffering, far-seeing, studious of his people's welfare, and generous and
forbearing toward his enemies. It is not surprising that he succeeded in
establishing the Ming dynasty on a firm and popular basis, and that his
family have been better beloved in China than any dynasty with the
possible exception of the Hans.
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