d, and the Manchus began to
attack the Chinese cities in Manchuria. In 1616, after his first
considerable successes, their leader Nurhachu assumed the imperial
title; the name of the dynasty was Tai Ch'ing (interpreted as "The great
clarity", but probably a transliteration of a Manchurian word meaning
"hero"). In 1618, the year in which the Thirty Years War started in
Europe, the Manchus conquered the greater part of Manchuria, and in 1621
their capital was Liaoyang, then the largest town in Manchuria.

But the Manchu menace was far from being the only one. On the south-east
coast a pirate made himself independent; later, with his family, he
dominated Formosa and fought many battles with the Europeans there
(European sources call him Coxinga). In western China there came a great
popular rising, in which some of the natives joined, and which spread
through a large part of the southern provinces. This rising was
particularly sanguinary, and when it was ultimately crushed by the
Manchus the province of Szechwan, formerly so populous, was almost
depopulated, so that it had later to be resettled. And in the province
of Shantung in the east there came another great rising, also very
sanguinary, that of the secret society of the "White Lotus". We have
already pointed out that these risings of secret societies were always a
sign of intolerable conditions among the peasantry. This was now the
case once more. All the elements of danger which we mentioned at the
outset of this chapter began during this period, between 1610 and 1640,
to develop to the full.

Then there were the conditions in the capital itself. The struggles
between cliques came to a climax. On the death of Shen Tsung (or Wan-li;
1573-1619), he was succeeded by his son, who died scarcely a month
later, and then by his sixteen-year-old grandson. The grandson had been
from his earliest youth under the influence of a eunuch, Wei
Chung-hsien, who had castrated himself. With the emperor's wet-nurse and
other people, mostly of the middle class, this man formed a powerful
group. The moment the new emperor ascended the throne, Wei was
all-powerful. He began by murdering every eunuch who did not belong to
his clique, and then murdered the rest of his opponents. Meanwhile the
gentry had concluded among themselves a defensive alliance that was a
sort of party; this party was called the Tung-lin Academy. It was
confined to literati among the gentry, and included in particular