Two
Fresh Armies Were Sent To The Ili, And Placed, On Their Arrival There,
Under The Command Of Tchaohoei, Who Was Exhorted, Above All Things, To
Capture Amursana, Dead Or Alive.
Tchaohoei at once assumed the offensive,
and as Amursana was abandoned by his followers as soon as they saw that
China was putting forth the whole of her strength, he had no alternative
but once more to flee for shelter to the Kirghiz.
But the conditions
imposed by Keen Lung were so rigorous that Tchaohoei realized that the
capture of Amursana was essential to his gaining the confidence and
gratitude of his master. He, therefore, sent his best lieutenant, Fouta,
to pursue the Eleuth prince. Fouta pursued Amursana with the energy of one
who has to gain his spurs, and he almost succeeded in effecting his
capture, but Amursana just made his escape in time across the frontier
into Russian territory. But Keen Lung was not satisfied with this result,
and he sent both to Fouta and Tchaohoei to rest satisfied with nothing
short of the capture of Amursana. The close of that unfortunate prince's
career was near at hand, although it was not ended by the act of the
Chinese officers. He died in Russian territory of a fever, and when the
Chinese demanded of their neighbors that his body should be surrendered
they refused, on the ground that enmity should cease with death; but Fouta
was able to report to his sovereign that he had seen with his own eyes the
mortal remains of the Eleuth chief who had first been the humble friend
and then the bitter foe of the Manchu ruler.
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. But the triumph
of the remarkable Alompra, who united Pegu and Burmah into a single state,
and who controlled an army with which he effected many triumphs, showed
that this state of things might not always continue, and that the day
would come when China might be exposed to a grave peril from this side.
The successors of Alompra inherited his pretensions if not his ability,
and when the Chinese called upon them to keep the borders in better order
or to punish some evildoers, they sent back a haughty and unsatisfactory
reply. Sembuen, the grandson of Alompra, was king when Keen Lung ordered,
in the year 1768, his generals to invade Burmah, and the conduct of the
war was intrusted to an officer in high favor at court, named Count
Alikouen, instead of to Fouta, the hero of the Central Asian war, who had
fallen under the emperor's grave displeasure for what, after all, appears
to have been a trifling offense. The course of the campaign is difficult
to follow, for both the Chinese and the Burmese claim the same battles as
victories, but this will not surprise those who remember that the Burmese
court chroniclers described all the encounters with the English forces in
the wars of 1829 and 1853 as having been victorious.
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