In Szchuen a local chief had
raised a force of 30,000 men for service on the frontier in the wars with
the Manchus, and the viceroy of the province not only declined to utilize
their services, but dismissed them without reward or even recognition of
their loyalty.
These slighted and disbanded braves easily changed
themselves into brigands, and as the government would not have them as
supporters, they determined to make it feel their enmity, Chetsong Ming,
the chief who had raised them, placed himself at their head, and attracted
a large number of the inhabitants to his standard. The local garrisons
were crushed, the viceroy killed, and general disorder prevailed among the
people of what was the most fertile and prosperous province of the empire.
Chetsong attempted to set up an administration, but he does not seem to
have possessed the capacity or the knowledge to establish a regular
government. While he headed the rebellious movement, a woman named
Tsinleang, the hereditary chieftainess of a small district, placed herself
at the head of the loyalists in the state, and, leading them herself,
succeeded in recovering the principal cities and in driving Chetsong out
of the province. She has been not inappropriately called by one of the
missionary historians the Chinese Penthesilea. The success she met with in
pacifying Szchuen after a two years' struggle was not attained in other
directions without a greater effort and at a still heavier cost. In
Kweichow and Yunnan a rebel named Ganpangyen raised an insurrection on a
large scale, and if his power had not been broken by the long siege of a
strong fortress, obstinately defended by a valiant governor, there is no
telling to what success he might not have attained.
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