His Memory Has Been Aspersed By The
Writers Of China, Who Have Generally Denounced Him As A Free-Thinker And
A
nihilist, and although, twenty years after his death, a tablet bearing his
name was placed in the Hall of
Confucius as the greatest Chinese thinker
since Mencius, it was removed after a brief period, and since then both
the name and the works of Wanganchi have been consigned to an oblivion
from which only the curiosity of European writers has rescued them.
Chintsong's reign was peaceful, but he seems to have only avoided war by
yielding to all the demands of the Tartars, who encroached on the frontier
and seized several Chinese cities. His son Chetsong was only ten when he
became emperor, and the administration was carried on by his mother, the
Empress Tefei, another of the capable women of Chinese history. Her early
death left Chetsong to rule as he listed, and his first acts of
independent authority were not of happy augury for the future. He had not
been on the throne many months before he divorced his principal wife
without any apparent justification, and when remonstrated with he merely
replied that he was imitating several of his predecessors. The censor's
retort was, "You would do better to imitate their virtues, and not their
faults." Chetsong did not have any long opportunity of doing either, for
he died of grief at the loss of his favorite son, and it is recorded that,
as "he did not expect to die so soon," he omitted the precaution of
selecting an heir.
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