The
Emperor's Uncles Had Designs On His Authority, But These Fell Through And
Came To Naught, Rather Through Woutsong's Good Fortune Than The Excellence
Of His Arrangements.
In Szchuen a peasant war threatened to assume the
dimensions of a rebellion, and in Pechihli bands of mounted robbers, or
Hiangmas, raided the open country.
He succeeded in suppressing these
revolts, but his indifference to the disturbed state of his realm was
shown by his passing most of his time in hunting expeditions beyond the
Great Wall. His successors were to reap the result of this neglect of
business for the pursuit of pleasure; and when he died in 1519, without
leaving an heir, the outlook was beginning to look serious for the Ming
dynasty. One event, and perhaps the most important of Woutsong's reign,
calls for special mention, and that is the arrival at Canton of the first
native of Europe to reach China by sea. Of course it will be recollected
that Marco Polo and others reached the Mongol court by land, although the
Venetian sailed from China on his embassy to southern India. In 1511,
Raphael Perestralo sailed from Malacca to China, and in 1517 the
Portuguese officer, Don Fernand Perez D'Andrade, arrived in the Canton
River with a squadron, and was favorably received by the mandarins.
D'Andrade visited Pekin, where he resided for some time as embassador. The
commencement of intercourse between Europeans and China was thus effected
most auspiciously; and it might have continued so but that a second
Portuguese fleet appeared in Chinese waters, and committed there numerous
outrages and acts of piracy. Upon this D'Andrade was arrested by order of
Woutsong, and after undergoing imprisonment, was executed by his successor
in 1523. It was a bad beginning for a connection which, after nearly four
hundred years, is neither as stable nor as general as the strivers after
perfection could desire.
The death of Woutsong without children, or any recognized heir, threatened
to involve the realm in serious dangers; but the occasion was so critical
that the members of the Ming family braced themselves to it, and under the
auspices of the Empress Changchi, the widow of the late ruler, a secret
council was held, when the grandson of the Emperor Hientsong, a youth of
fourteen, was placed on the throne under the name of Chitsong. It is said
that his mother gave him good advice on being raised from a private
station to the lofty eminence of emperor, and that she told him that he
was about to accept a heavy burden; but experience showed that he was
unequal to it. Still, his shortcomings were preferable to a disputed
succession. The earlier years of his reign were marked by some successes
over the Tartars, and he received tribute from chiefs who had never paid
it before. But Chitsong had little taste for the serious work of
administration. He showed himself superstitious in matters of religion,
and he cultivated poetry, and may even have persuaded himself that he was
a poet. But he did not pay any heed to the advice of those among his
ministers who urged him to take a serious view of his position, and to act
in a manner worthy of his dignity. It is clear that his influence on the
lot of his people, and even on the course of his country's history, was
small, and such reigns as his inspire the regret expressed at there being
no history of the Chinese people; but such a history is impossible.
It might be more instructive to trace the growth of thought among the
masses, or to indicate the progress of civil and political freedom; yet,
not only do the materials not exist for such a task, but those we possess
all tend to show that there has been no growth to describe, no progress to
be indicated, during these comparatively recent centuries. It is the
peculiar and distinguishing characteristic of Chinese history that the
people and their institutions have remained practically unchanged and the
same from a very early period. Even the introduction of a foreign element
has not tended to disturb the established order of things. The supreme
ruler possesses the same attributes and discharges the same functions; the
governing classes are chosen in the same manner; the people are bound in
the same state of servitude, and enjoy the same practical liberty; all is
now as it was. Neither under the Tangs nor the Sungs, under the Yuens nor
the Mings, was there any change in national character or in political
institutions to be noted or chronicled. The history of the empire has
always been the fortunes of the dynasty, which has depended, in the first
place, on the passive content of the subjects, and, in the second, on the
success or failure of its external and internal wars. This condition of
things may be disappointing to those who pride themselves on tracing the
origin of a constitution and the growth of civil rights, and also would
have a history of China a history of the Chinese people; although the fact
is undoubted that there is no history of the Chinese people apart from
that of their country to be recorded. The national institutions and
character were formed, and had attained in all essentials their present
state, more than two thousand years ago, or before the destruction of all
trustworthy materials for the task by the burning of the ancient
literature and chronicles of China. Without them we must fain content
ourselves with the history of the country and the empire.
Chitsong was engaged in three serious operations beyond his frontier, one
with a Tartar chief named Yenta, another with the Japanese, and the third
in Cochin China. Yenta was of Mongol extraction, and enjoyed supreme power
on the borders of Shansi. His brother was chief of the Ordus tribe, which
dwells within the Chinese frontier. Changtu, the old residence of Kublai,
was one of his camps, and it was said that he could bring 100,000 horsemen
into the field.
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