ng, the great city of central China, and captured it
with ease. He then crossed the Yangtze, and conquered the rich provinces
of the south-east. He was a rebel who no longer slaughtered the rich or
plundered the towns, and the whole of the gentry with all their
followers came over to him _en masse_. The armies of volunteers went
over to Chu, and the whole edifice of the dynasty collapsed.

The years 1355-1368 were full of small battles. After his conquest of
the whole of the south, Chu went north. In 1368 his generals captured
Peking almost without a blow. The Mongol ruler fled on horseback with
his immediate entourage into the north of China, and soon after into
Mongolia. The Mongol dynasty had been brought down, almost without
resistance. The Mongols in the isolated garrisons marched northward
wherever they could. A few surrendered to the Chinese and were used in
southern China as professional soldiers, though they were always
regarded with suspicion. The only serious resistance offered came from
the regions in which other Chinese popular leaders had established
themselves, especially the remote provinces in the west and south-west,
which had a different social structure and had been relatively little
affected by the Mongol regime.

Thus the collapse of the Mongols came for the following reasons: (1)
They had not succeeded in maintaining their armed strength or that of
their allies during the period of peace that followed Kublai's conquest.
The Mongol soldiers had become effeminate through their life of idleness
in the towns. (2) The attempt to rule the empire through Mongols or
other aliens, and to exclude the Chinese gentry entirely from the
administration, failed through insufficient knowledge of the sources of
revenue and through the abuses due to the favoured treatment of aliens.
The whole country, and especially the peasantry, was completely
impoverished and so driven into revolt. (3) There was also a
psychological reason. In the middle of the fourteenth century it was
obvious to the Mongols that their hold over China was growing more and
more precarious, and that there was little to be got out of the
impoverished country: they seem in consequence to have lost interest in
the troublesome task of maintaining their rule, preferring, in so far as
they had not already entirely degenerated, to return to their old home
in the north. It is important to bear in mind these reasons for the
collapse of the Mongols, so tha