Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/163

 KUBLAI KHAN 151 quite clear, the first campaign of Kublai was directed to the subjugation of the remote western province of Yunnan. After the capture of Talifu (well known in recent years as the capital of a Mohammedan insurgent sultan) Kublai returned north, leaving the war in Yunnan to a trusted general. Some years later (1257) the khan Mangku himself entered on a campaign in west China, and died there, before Ho-chow in Sz chuen (1259). Kublai assumed the succession, but it was disputed by his brother Arikbugha, and by his cousin Kaidu, and wars with these retarded the prosecution of the southern con quest. Doubtless, however, this was constantly before Kublai as a great task to be accomplished, and its fulfil ment was in his mind when he selected as the future capital of his empire the Chinese city that we now know as Peking. Here, in 12G4, to the north-east of the old city, which under the name of Yenking had been an occa sional residence of the Kin sovereigns, he founded his new capital, a great rectangular plot of 18 miles in circuit. The (so-called) &quot; Tartar city &quot; of modern Peking is the city of Kublai, with aboub one-third at the north cut off, but Kublai s walls are also on this retrenched portion still traceable. The new city, officially termed Tai-tu (&quot;great court&quot;), but known among the Mongols and western people as Kaan-baltgh (&quot;city of the khan&quot;; see vol. iv. p. 722), was finished in 1267. The next year war against the Sung empire was resumed, but was long retarded by the strenu ous defence of the twin cities of Siang-yang and Fan-ching, on opposite sides of the river Han, and commanding two great lines of approach to the basin of the Great Kiang. The niege occupied nearly five years. After this Bayan, Kublai s best lieutenant, a man of high military genius and noble character, took command. It was not, however, till 1276 that the Sung capital surrendered, and Bayan rode into the city (then probably the greatest in the world) as its conqueror. The young emperor, with his mother, was sent prisoner to Kaan-baligh ; but two younger princes had been despatched to the south before the fall of the -city, and these successively were proclaimed emperor by the adherents of the native throne. An attempt to maintain their cause was made in Full-keen, and afterwards in Canton province; but in 1279 these efforts were finally extin guished, and the faithful minister who had inspired them terminated the struggle by jumping with his young lord into the sea, Even under the degenerate Sung dynasty the conquest of southern China had occupied the Mongols during intermittent campaigns of half a century. But at last Kublai was ruler of all China, and probably the sovereign (at least nominally) of a greater population than had ever acknowledged one man s supremacy. For, though his rule was disputed by the princes of his house in Turkestan, it was acknowledged by those on the Volga, whose rule reached to the frontier of Poland, and by the family of his brother Hulaku, whose dominion extended from the Oxus to the Arabian desert. For the first time in history the name and character of an emperor of China were familiar as far west as the Black Sea, and not unknown in Europe. The Chinese seals which Kublai conferred on his kinsmen reigning at Tabriz are* stamped upon their letters to the kings of France, and survive in the archives of Paris. Adventurers from Turkestan, Persia, Armenia, Byzantium, even from Venice, served him as ministers, generals, governors, envoys, astronomers, or physicians ; soldiers from all Asia to the Caucasus fought his battles in the south of China. Once in his old age (1287) Kublai was compelled to take the field in person against a serious revolt, raised by Nayan, a prince of liis family, who held a vast domain on the borders of Manchuria. Nayan was taken and executed. The revolt had been stirred up by Kaidu, who survived his imperial rival, and died in 1301. Kublai himself died in 1294, at the age of seventy-eight. Though a great figure in Asiatic history, and far from deserving a niche in the long gallery of Asiatic tyrants, Kublai misses a record in the short list of the good rulers. His historical locus was a happy one, for, whilst ho was the first of his race to rise above the innate barbarism of the Mongols, he retained the force and warlike characterof his ancestor;!, which vanished utterly in the effeminac-y of those who came after him. He had great intelligence and keen desire of knowledge, with apparently a good deal of natural benevolence and magnanimity. But his love of splendour, and his fruitless expeditions beyond sea, created enorniuus demands for money, and he shut his eyes to the character and methods of those whom he employed to raise it. A remarkable narrative of the oppressions of one of these, Ahmed of Fetuiket, and of the revolt which they provoked, is given by Marco Polo, in substantial accordance with the Chinese annals. Kublai patronized Chinese literature and culture gene rally. Of the great astronomical instruments which he caused to be made specimens are still preserved at Peking, which are truly splendid as works of art, and not con temptible as works of science. Though he put hardly any Chinese into the first ranks of his administration, he attached many to his confidence, and was personally popular among them. Had his endeavour to procure European priests for the instruction of his people, of which we know through Marco Polo, prospered, the Roman Catholic Church, which did gain some ground under his successors, might have taken stronger root in China. Failing this momentary effort, Kublai probably saw in the organized force of Tibetan Buddhism the readiest instru- ment in the civilization of his countrymen, and that system received his special countenance. An early act of his reign learning the head of the Lamaite church, and eventually also prince of Tibet, an act which may be regarded as a precursory form of the rule of the &quot; grand lamas &quot; of Lassa. The same ecclesiastic, Mati Dhwaja, was employed by Kublai to devise a special alphabet for use with the Mongol language. It was chiefly based on Tibetan forms of Nagari ; some coins and inscriptions in it are extant ; but it had no great vogue, and soon perished. Of the splendour of his court and entertainments, of his palaces, summer and winter, of his great hunting expeditions, of his revenues and extraordinary paper currency, of his elaborate system of posts and much else, an account is given in the book of Marco Polo, who passed many years in Kublai s service. We have alluded to his foreign expeditions, which were almost all disastrous. Nearly all arose out of a hankering for the nominal extension of his empire by claiming sub mission and tribute. Expeditions against Japan were several times repeated; the last, in 1281, on an immense scale, met with huge discomfiture. Kublai s preparations to avenge it were abandoned owing to the intense discontent which they created. In 1278 he made a claim of submission upon Champa, an ancient state representing what we now call Cochin China. This eventually led to an attempt to invade the country through Tongking, and to a war with the latter state, in which the Mongols had much the worst of it. War with Burmah (or Mien, as the Chinese called it) was provoked in very similar fashion, but the result was more favourable to Kublai s arms. The country was overrun as far as the Irawaddy delta, the ancient capital Pagan, with its magnificent temples, destroyed, and the old royal dynasty overthrown. The last attempt of the kind was against Java, and occurred in the last year of the old khan s reign. The envoy whom he
 * had been to constitute a young lama of intelligence and