. But
in the west, where he was in power, the gentry counted for nothing; they
had in any case been weaker in the west, and they had been decimated by
the insurrection of Chang Hsien-chung. Thus Wu San-kui was compelled to
try to push eastwards, in order to unite with the gentry of the 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 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
co