the Chinese. There would, in their eyes,
be no need to palliate such strictly just acts of retribution as these.

Not content with having chastised the living Tungani, by annihilating
them, as a race capable of self-defence for a generation to come, the
bodies of some of the prime movers in the Tungan movement in its
infancy, such as To-teh-lin, Heh-tsun, and Han-Hing-Nung, were exhumed
and quartered, as an example to all traitors to the Chinese Empire. The
fall of Manas struck a blow that resounded throughout Central Asia, and
at the intelligence a panic spread among all the peoples of Chinese
Turkestan and Jungaria. The enterprise had been conducted with such
astonishing secrecy, and the blow had been struck with such rapidity and
skill, that the effect was enhanced by these causes, new alike in the
annals of China and Central Asia. Not only had the Khitay returned for
revenge, but they had brought with them all the auxiliaries that make
England and Russia the dominant powers in that continent. The Khitay no
longer advanced in the clumsy formation of a long-forgotten age, but in
obedience to orders based on the models of France and Germany. Their
artillery was not a source of danger to the artillerists alone, but as
effective as the workshops of Herr Krupp can supply. But, above all,
their generals had made still more astonishing progress. In the sieges
of Urumtsi and Manas they had proved themselves to be no mean
tacticians; in their next and more extended enterprise they were to show
that they must be ranked still higher as strategists.

Before the end of 1870 the Tungani had ceased to be an independent
people. The great majority of them had fallen either in the field or by
the hand of the executioner; and with their disappearance the first
portion of the task of the Chinese army was completed. The blood of the
Khitay massacred in 1862 and 1863 was atoned for, and Chinese prestige
restored to as great a height as at any time it had been in the present
century. More remained to be accomplished, in its danger as in its
result more important, which we have now to consider, before their full
task should be consummated; but the Chinese army and its generals had
done, even up to this point, a feat of which any country might be proud.

These events appear sudden and strange to us who are far removed from
their influence, and who only entertain a languid kind of supercilious
interest in matters in which the Chinese are the