Thus Died Tiping, The Last
Chinese Emperor Of The Sungs, And With Him Expired That Ill-Fated Dynasty.
Chang Chikia Renewed The Struggle With Aid Received From Tonquin, But When
He Was Leading A Forlorn Hope Against Canton He Was Caught In A Typhoon
And He And His Ships Were Wrecked.
His invocation to heaven, "I have done
everything I could to sustain on the throne the Sung dynasty.
When one
prince died I caused another to be proclaimed emperor. He also has
perished, and I still live! Oh, heaven, shall I be acting against thy
desires if I sought to place a new prince of this family on the throne?"
sounded the dirge of the race he had served so well.
Thus was the conquest of China by the Mongols completed. After half a
century of warfare the kingdom of the Sungs shared the same fate as its
old rival the Kin, and Kublai had the personal satisfaction of completing
the work begun by his grandfather Genghis seventy years before. Of all the
Mongol triumphs it was the longest in being attained. The Chinese of the
north and of the south resisted with extraordinary powers of endurance the
whole force of the greatest conquering race Asia had ever seen. They were
not skilled in war and their generals were generally incompetent, but they
held out with desperate courage and obstinacy long after other races would
have given in. The student of history will not fail to see in these facts
striking testimony of the extraordinary resources of China, and of the
capacity of resistance to even a vigorous conqueror possessed by its inert
masses. Even the Mongols did not conquer until they had obtained the aid
of a large section of the Chinese nation, or before Kublai had shown that
he intended to prove himself a worthy Emperor of China and not merely a
great Khan of the Mongol Hordes.
CHAPTER VI
KUBLAI AND THE MONGOL DYNASTY
While Bayan was winning victories for his master and driving the Chinese
armies from the field, Kublai was engaged at Pekin in the difficult and
necessary task of consolidating his authority. In 1271 he gave his dynasty
the name of Yuen or Original, and he took for himself the Chinese title of
Chitsou, although it will never supersede his Mongol name of Kublai.
Summoning to his court the most experienced Chinese ministers, and aided
by many foreigners, he succeeded in founding a government which was
imposing by reason of its many-sidedness as well as its inherent strength.
It satisfied the Chinese and it was gratifying to the Mongols, because
they formed the buttress of one of the most imposing administrations in
the world. All this was the distinct work of Kublai, who had enjoyed the
special favor of Genghis, who had predicted of him that "one day he will
sit in my seat and bring you good fortune such as you have had in my
time." He resolved to make his court the most splendid in the world.
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