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Updated: May 25, 2025
He reached Wusieh on the 25th of March, four days after the repulse at Kintang, and he there learned that Fushan had been taken and that Chanzu was being closely attacked. The imperialists had fared better in the south. General Ching had captured Kashingfoo, a strong place in Chekiang, and on the very same day as the repulse at Kintang, Tso Tsung Tang had recovered Hangchow.
The younger brother of the banished Emperor was proclaimed by the Chinese at Nanking, and managed to set up what is known as the southern Sung dynasty; but the Nü-chêns gave him no rest, driving him first out of Nanking, and then out of Hangchow, where he had once more established a capital.
Little permanent good had been effected by these successful operations on the coast, and Taoukwang was still as resolute as ever in his hostility; nor is there any reason to suppose that the capture of Hangchow, or any other of the coast towns, would have caused a material change in the situation.
It seems that after 1127 a good number of farmers had left Honan and the Yellow River plains when the Juchên conquered these places and showed little interest in fostering agriculture; more left the border areas of Southern Sung because of permanent war threat. Many of these lived miserably as tenants on the farms of the gentry between Nanking and Hangchow.
Once again the imperial commanders in their anxiety to crush Chung Wang had reduced their force in front of Nankin to an excessively low condition, and the Taeping leader, placed in a desperate position, seized the only chance of safety by hastening from Hangchow to Nankin at full speed, and attacking the imperial lines.
This account of Hangchow is taken partly from Marco Polo, op. cit., bk. II, c. LXVIII: 'Of the noble and magnificent city of Kinsai'; and partly from Odoric of Pordenone, Cathay and the Way Thither, ed. Yule, pp. 113-20.
A Szechuen man, a native of Chungking, fifty-nine years of age, Wong is a man of immense wealth, his bank being known all over China, and having branches in capital cities so far distant from each other as Peking, Canton, Kweiyang, Shanghai, Hankow, Nanchang, Soochow, Hangchow, and Chungking. I may add that he has smoked opium for many years. I formed a high opinion of the intelligence of Wong.
I guess we wrote you from Hangchow about seeing the monument and shrine to two Chinese officials who were torn in pieces at the time of the Boxer rebellion because they changed a telegram to the provincial officers "Kill all foreigners" to read "Protect all foreigners." The shrine is kept up, of course, by the Chinese, and very few foreigners in China even know of the incident.
In consequence of these attacks and the improved position in Afghanistan it was decided to again assume the offensive, and to break up the hostile army at Hangchow, of which the body that attacked Ningpo was the advanced guard. Sir Hugh Gough commanded the operations in person, and he had the co-operation of a naval force under Sir William Parker.
In the third moon of the year 1276, Bayan, the conquering lieutenant of Genghis Khan, captured Hangchow, received the jade rings of the Sungs, and was taken out to the bank of the river Tsientang to see the spirit of Tsze-sü pass by in the great bore of Hangchow that tidal wave which annually rolls in, and, dashing itself against the sea-wall of Hangchow, rushes far up the river, bringing, for eighteen miles inland, a tide of fresh, deep-sea splendor, and thrilling all who see or hear.
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