Yangtze region against the Manchus. The Manchus guessed Wu San-kui's
plan, and in 1673, after every effort at accommodation had failed, open
war came. Wu San-kui made himself emperor, and the Manchus marched
against him. Meanwhile, the Chinese gentry of the Yangtze region had
come to terms with the Manchus, and they gave Wu San-kui no help. He
vegetated in the south-west, a region too poor to maintain an army that
could conquer all China, and too small to enable him to last
indefinitely as an independent power. He was able to hold his own until
his death, although, with the loss of the support of the gentry, he had
no prospect of final success. Not until 1681 was his successor, his
grandson Wu Shih-fan, defeated. The end of the rule of Wu San-kui and
his successor marked the end of the national governments of China; the
whole country was now under alien domination, for the simple reason that
all the opponents of the Manchus had failed. Only the Manchus were
accredited with the ability to bring order out of the universal
confusion, so that there was clearly no alternative but to put up with
the many insults and humiliations they inflicted--with the result that
the national feeling that had just been aroused died away, except where
it was kept alive in a few secret societies. There will be more to say
about this, once the works which were suppressed by the Manchus are
published.

In the first phase of the Manchu conquest the gentry had refused to
support either the Ming princes or Wu San-kui, or any of the rebels, or
the Manchus themselves. A second phase began about twenty years after
the capture of Peking, when the Manchus won over the gentry by desisting
from any interference with the ownership of land, and by the use of
Manchu troops to clear away the "rebels" who were hostile to the gentry.
A reputable government was then set up in Peking, free from eunuchs and
from all the old cliques; in their place the government looked for
Chinese scholars for its administrative posts. Literati and scholars
streamed into Peking, especially members of the "Academies" that still
existed in secret, men who had been the chief sufferers from the
conditions at the end of the Ming epoch. The young emperor Sheng Tsu
(1663-1722; K'ang-hsi is the name by which his rule was known, not his
name) was keenly interested in Chinese culture and gave privileged
treatment to the scholars of the gentry who came forward. A rapid
recovery quite clearl