The Death-struggle Of China
Never in its history has China shown such unyielding courage as it did
in its resistance to the invasion under Kublai Khan. The city of
Sianyang alone held back the tide of Mongol success for full five years.
After its fall there were other strongholds to be taken, other armies to
be fought, and for a number of years the Chinese fought desperately for
their native land. But one by one their fortified cities fell, one by
one their armies were driven back by the impetuous foe, and gradually
the conquest of Southern China was added to that of the north.
Finally the hopes of China were centred upon a single man, Chang Chikie,
a general of unflinching zeal and courage, who recaptured several towns,
and, gathering a great fleet, said to have numbered no fewer than two
thousand war-junks, sailed up the Yang-tse-Kiang with the purpose of
attacking the Mongol positions below Nanking. The fleet of the Mongols
lay at that point where the Imperial Canal enters the Kiang on both
sides. Here the stream is wide and ample and presents a magnificent
field for a naval battle.
The attack of the Chinese was made with resolution and energy, but the
Mongol admiral had prepared for them by sending in advance his largest
vessels, manned with bowmen instructed to attach lighted pitch to their
arrows. The Mongol assault was made before the Chinese fleet had emerged
from the narrow part of the river, in which comparatively few of the
host of vessels could be brought into play. The flaming arrows set on
fire a number of the junks, and, though the Chinese in advance fought
bravely, these burning vessels carried confusion and alarm to the
thronging vessels in the rear. Here the crews, unable to take part in
the fight and their crowded vessels threatened with the flames, were
seized with a fear that soon became an uncontrollable panic. The result
was disastrous. Of the great fleet no less than seven hundred vessels
were captured by the Mongols, while a still greater number were burnt or
sunk, hardly a fourth of the vast armament escaping from that fatal
field.
The next events which we have to record take us forward to the year
1278, when the city of Canton had been captured by the Mongol troops,
and scarcely a fragment of the once great empire remained in the hands
of the Chinese ruler.
The incompetent Chinese emperor had died, and the incapable minister to
whose feebleness the fall of Sianyang was due had been dismissed by his
master and murdered by his enemies. The succeeding emperor had been
captured by the Mongols on the fall of the capital. Another had been
proclaimed and had died, and the last emperor of the Sung dynasty, a
young prince named Tiping, was now with Chang Chikie, whose small army
constituted his only hope, and the remains of the fleet his only
empire.
The able leader on whom the last hopes of the Chinese dynasty now rested
selected a natural stronghold on an island named Tai, in a natural
harbor which could be entered only with a favorable tide. This position
he made the most strenuous efforts to fortify, building strong works on
the heights above the bay, and gathering troops until he had an army of
nearly two hundred thousand men.
So rapidly did he work that his fortifications were completed before the
Mongol admiral discovered his locality. On learning what had been done,
the Mongols at once hurried forward reinforcements and prepared for an
immediate and vigorous assault on this final stronghold of the empire of
China. The attack was made with the impetuous courage for which the
Mongols had become noted, but the works were bravely held, and for two
days the struggle was maintained without advantage to the assailants. On
the third day the Mongol admiral resumed his attack, and a fiercely
contested battle took place, ending in the Chinese fleet being thrown
into confusion. The result would have been utterly disastrous had not a
heavy mist fallen at this opportune moment, under cover of which Chang
Chikie, followed by sixteen vessels of his fleet, made his way out to
sea.
The vessel which held the young emperor was less fortunate. Caught in
the press of the battle, its capture was inevitable, and with it that of
the last emperor of the Sung dynasty. In this desperate emergency, a
faithful minister of the empire, resolved to save the honor of his
master even at the sacrifice of his life, took him in his arms and
leaped with him into the sea. This act of desperation was emulated by
many of the officers of the vessel, and in this dramatic way the great
dynasty of the Sung came to an end.
But the last blow for the empire had not been struck so long as Chang
Chikie survived. With him had escaped the mother of the drowned prince,
and on learning of his loss the valiant leader requested her to name
some member of the Sung family to succeed him. But the mother,
overwhelmed with grief at the death of her son, was in no mood to listen
to anything not connected with her loss, and at length, hopeless and
inconsolable, she put an end to her own existence by leaping overboard
from the vessel's side.
Chang Chikie was left alone, with the destinies of the empire dependent
solely upon him. Yet his high courage sustained him still; he was not
ready to acknowledge final defeat, and he sailed southward in the double
hope of escaping Mongol pursuit and of obtaining means for the renewal
of the struggle. The states of Indo-China were then tributary to the
empire, and his small fleet put in to a port of Tonquin, whose ruler not
only welcomed him, but aided him to refit his fleet, collect stores, and
enlist fresh troops.
Thus strengthened, the intrepid admiral resolved to renew the war
without delay, his project being to assault Canton, which he hoped to
take by a sudden attack. This enterprise seemed desperate to his
followers, who sought to dissuade him from what might prove a fatal
course; but, spurred on by his own courage and a hope of retrieving the
cause of the Sungs, he persisted in his purpose, and the fleet once more
returned to the seas.
It was now 1279, a year after Tiping's death. The Mongols lay in fancied
security, not dreaming that there was in all China the resolution to
strike another blow, and probably unsuspicious that a fleet was bearing
down upon one of their captured ports. What would have been the result
had Chang Chikie been able to deliver his attack it is impossible to
say. He might have taken Canton by surprise and captured it from the
enemy, but in any event he could not have gained more than a temporary
success.
As it was, he gained none. Fate had destined the fall of China, and the
elements came to the assistance of its foes. A sudden and violent
tempest fell upon the fleet while near the southern headland of the
Kwantung coast, hurling nearly or quite all the vessels on the shore or
sinking them beneath the waves. The bold leader had been counselled to
seek shelter from the storm under the lee of the shore, but he refused,
and kept on despite the storm, daring death in his singleness of
purpose.
"I have done everything I could," he said, "to sustain the Sung dynasty
on the throne. When one prince died I had another proclaimed. He also
has perished, and I still live. Should I be acting against thy decrees,
O Heaven, if I sought to place a new prince on the throne?"
It appeared so, for the winds and the waves gave answer, and the last
defender of China sank to death beneath the sea. The conquest of China
was thus at length completed after seventy years of resistance against
the most valorous soldiers of the world, led by such generals as
Genghis, Kublai, and other warlike Mongol princes. In view of the fact
that Genghis had overrun Southern Asia in a few years, this long and
obstinate resistance of China, despite the incompetence of its princes
and ministers, places in a striking light the great military strength of
the empire at that period of its history.