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The Chinese crossed the Hoangho on a bridge of junks, and Tsinyuen, which Lissechi had made his capital, surrendered without a blow. Lissechi abandoned one fortress after another on the approach of Suta. Expelled from Shensi he hoped to find shelter and safety in the adjoining province of Kansuh, where he took up his residence at Lintao.
He then devoted his attention to the pacification of Kansuh; and after many desultory engagements proceeded to lay siege to the town of Souchow, where the Mohammedans had massed their strength.
The departure of Suta emboldened Kuku Timour so far as to lead him to take the field, and he hastened to attack the town of Lanchefoo, the capital of Kansuh, where there was only a small garrison. Notwithstanding this the place offered a stout resistance, but the Mongols gained a decisive success over a body of troops sent to its relief. This force was annihilated and its general taken prisoner.
The sense of a common peril, more perhaps than the desire to attain the same object, led to revolts at Hami, Barkul, Urumtsi, and Turfan, towns which formed a group of industrious communities half-way between the prosperous districts of Kansuh on the one side and Kashgar on the other.
To effect this, the old province of Kiangsan was divided into the modern Anhui and Kiangsu; Kansuh was carved out of Shensi; and Hukuang was separated into Hupeh and Hunan. Formosa, which was finally reconquered in 1683, was made part of the province of Fuhkien, and so remained for some two hundred years, when it was erected into an independent province.
On his way back from this campaign the Mongol chief attacked the Prince of Hia, who reigned over Kansuh and Tangut, and thus began the third war he waged for the extension of his power. Before this assumed serious proportions he summoned a Grand Council or Kuriltai, at his camp on the Onon, and then erected outside his tent the royal Mongol banner of the nine white yak-tails.
He found them settled and with some fair degree of civilization; spoke of Bactria under their sway as a "land of a thousand cities"; they had learned much since they were nomads driven out of Kansuh by the Huns. Also they were in the midst of a career of expansion.
Kansuh fell at the head of his gallant troops in a battle near Aleppo in August 1516; a last desperate stand of the Mamluks under the Mukattam Hill at Cairo in January 1517, was overcome, and Sultan Selim made Egypt a province of the Turkish empire. Such it remains, formally, to this day. Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland
In this respect ho has been closely imitated by his most distinguished lieutenant, Li Hung Chang, who succeeded to some of his dignities and much of his power. Another of Tseng's proteges, Tso Tsung Tang, had been raised from the viceroyalty of Chekiang and Fuhkien to that of Shensi and Kansuh.
It is probable that about one hundred and sixty thousand Turguts set out on that long march, of whom only some seventy thousand reached their goal. These Dungans were Mahometan subjects of China, who in very early times had colonized, under the name of Gao-tchan, in Kansuh and Shensi, and subsequently spread westward into Turkestan.
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