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Updated: June 4, 2025
When he wished to levy a heavy contribution from a too rich subject he had recourse to what may be styled a mild joke, sooner than to threats and corporal punishment. The following incident has been quoted in this connection: One day Kanghi made an official, who had grown very wealthy, lead him, riding on an ass, round his gardens. As recompense the emperor gave him a tael.
At last Kanghi resolved to take some decisive step to bring the question to a climax, and he accordingly sent Wou Sankwei an invitation to visit him at Pekin. Wou Sankwei excused himself from going to court on the ground that he was very old, and that his only wish was to end his days in peace. He also deputed his son to tender his allegiance to the emperor and to perform the Kotao in his name.
He seems to have caught a chill, and after a brief illness he died on the 2oth of December in that year. The place of Kanghi among Chinese sovereigns is clearly defined.
Kanghi intrusted the chief command of his armies to his brother, Yu Tsing Wang, who justified his appointment by bringing the Eleuth forces speedily to an engagement, and by gaming a more or less decisive victory over them at Oulan Poutong.
He and his son Poki had been regarded with no inconsiderable favor by Kanghi, and at one time it was thought that he would have chosen them as his successors; but these expectations were disappointed. He was sent instead to hold the chief command against the Eleuths on the western borders.
Kanghi took personal command of the second, and its strength is given at 37,700 men; and the third army, 35,400 men, was placed under the orders of Sapsu. The fourth, of unstated but greatest numerical strength, acted as the reserve force for the others, and did not, properly speaking, come into action at all.
Kanghi gave the Russian envoy a very honorable reception. A house was set apart for his accommodation, and when the difficulties raised by the mandarins on the question of the kotao ceremony at the audience threatened to bring the embassy to an abortive end, Kanghi himself intervened with a suggestion that solved the difficulty.
Such was the reputation of this great commander, to whose ability and military prowess the Manchus unquestionably were indebted for their conquest of the empire, that a large part of Southern China at once admitted his authority, and from Szchuen to the warlike province of Hunan his lieutenants were able to collect all the fighting resources of the state, and to array the levies of those provinces in the field for the approaching contest with Kanghi.
There is no room to doubt that the Catholic priests had drawn a too hasty and too favorable deduction from the favor of Kanghi. They confounded their practical utility with the intrinsic merit and persuasive force of Christianity. An enlightened ruler had recognized the former, but a skeptical people showed themselves singularly obdurate to the latter.
Then he himself led the mandarin in similar fashion. At the end of the tour he asked how much greater he was than his minister? "The comparison is impossible," said the ready courtier. "Then I must make the estimate myself," replied Kanghi. "I am 20,000 times as great, therefore you will pay me 20,000 taels."
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