Holland, France, and Spain? What their cities to ours, for wealth,
strength, gaiety of apparel, rich furniture, and an infinite variety?
What are their ports, supplied with a few junks and barks, to our
navigation, our merchants' fleets, our large and powerful navies? Our
city of London has more trade than all their mighty empire. One English,
or Dutch, or French man of war of eighty guns, would fight with and
destroy all the shipping of China. But the greatness of their wealth,
their trade, the power of their government, and strength of their
armies are surprising to us, because, as I have said, considering them
as a barbarous nation of pagans, little better than savages, we did not
expect such things among them; and this, indeed, is the advantage with
which all their greatness and power is represented to us: otherwise, it
is in itself nothing at all; for, as I have said of their ships, so it
may be said of their armies and troops; all the forces of their empire,
though they were to bring two millions of men into the field together,
would be able to do nothing but ruin the country and starve themselves.
If they were to besiege a strong town in Flanders, or to fight a
disciplined army, one line of German cuirassiers, or of French cavalry,
would overthrow all the horse of China; a million of their foot could
not stand before one embattled body of our infantry, posted so as not to
be surrounded, though they were not to be one to twenty in number: nay,
I do not boast if I say, that 30,000 German or English foot, and 10,000
French horse, would fairly beat all the forces of China. And so of our
fortified towns, and of the art of our engineers, in assaulting and
defending towns; there is not a fortified town in China could hold out
one month against the batteries and attacks of an European army; and at
the same time, all the armies of China could never take such a town as
Dunkirk, provided it was not starved; no, not in ten years siege. They
have fire-arms, it is true, but they are awkward, clumsy, and uncertain
in going off; they have powder, but it is of no strength; they have
neither discipline in the field, exercise in their arms, skill to
attack, nor temper to retreat. And therefore I must confess it seemed
strange to me when I came home, and heard our people say such fine
things of the power, riches, glory, magnificence, and trade of the
Chinese, because I saw and knew that they were a contemptible herd or
crowd of igno