Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/169

 SUICIDAL CONQUEST. 145 had built magnificent palaces^ which he surrounded with extensive gardens as splendid as the exercise of taste and the expenditure of money could make them. And to the incalculable miseries produced by his Corean expeditions, are to be added the sufferings caused by the forced labour of a million of men in rebuilding the Great Wall in the north. Better had he, in those unsettled times, attempted to read men more wisely, and had left book-making to those who neglected no greater duty in confining themselves to literary work. The emperor Yang is to this day regarded as an example in, and patron of literature ; but even more emphatically^ and with justice, is he pointed out as a beacon in political life. His attempted Corean conquests failed, only because they were ill timed and madly carried on, regardless of the terrible sufferings inflicted upon his people, already in the depths of misery. But they cost Yang his own life, his family the crown, and China countless myriads of lives, which no conquest could have repaid. Probably because of the frightful distress, the famines and the wars, which reigned supreme over China ; probably because aware that the people regarded himself as the cause of all these trials; chiefly because, coward that he was, he was utterly incapable of meeting the dangers which his reckless and thoughtless cruelties had aroused ; most likely from a combination of all three, — emperor Yang became a sottish drunkard ; and when Li, the Tang Wang, with Turkish aid, was rapidly pushing eastwards, Yang never let strong drink leave his side. His commander, Yu Wun, seeing there was absolutely no hope, as long as Yang was at the head of affairs, put him to death, and, with the hope of saving the Empire, proclaimed his son. He was too late. Yang had lost the hearts of the people long ago He had lost laige portions of his empire ; and if he could not himself keep the crown, not a hand outside his court would be raised to save it Thus terminated his Corean wars for Yang, and the Swi dynasty dashed out its brains against the walls of the petty Liaotung city, — ^the modem Liaoyang. The Coreans had a respite for many years, besides the fame whidi they had