It Takes
Place On The First Day Of The First Moon, Which Falls In Our Month Of
February.
All business is stopped, the tribunals are closed for ten days,
and a state of high festival resembling the Carnival prevails.
The
conspirators resolved to take advantage of this public holiday, and of the
excitement accompanying it, to carry out their scheme, and the Manchus
appear to have been in total ignorance until the eleventh hour of the plot
for their destruction. The discovery of the conspiracy bears a close
resemblance to that of the Gunpowder Plot. A Chinese slave, wishing to
save his master, gave him notice of the danger, and this Manchu officer at
once informed Kanghi of the conspiracy. The son of Wou Sankwei and the
other conspirators were immediately arrested and executed without delay.
The Manchus thus escaped by the merest accident from a danger which
threatened them with annihilation, and Kanghi, having succeeded in getting
rid of the son, concentrated his power and attention on the more difficult
task of grappling with the father.
But the power and reputation of Wou Sankwei were so formidable that Kanghi
resolved to proceed with great caution, and the emperor began his measures
of offense by issuing an edict ordering the disbandment of all the native
armies maintained by the Chinese viceroys, besides Wou Sankwei. The object
of this edict was to make all the governors of Chinese race show their
hands, and Kanghi learned the full measure of the hostility he had to cope
with by every governor from the sea coast of Fuhkien to Canton defying
him, and throwing in their lot with Wou Sankwei.
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