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There is not the least doubt that Kiaking would then have fallen but for the unexpected valor of his son Prince Meenning, afterward the Emperor Taoukwang, who, snatching up a gun, shot two of the intruders.
Sung Tajin, who had been specially recalled from his governorship in Ili to take part in the reception of the Europeans, and whose sympathy for them was well known, was also disgraced, and did not recover his position until after the death of Kiaking.
What had been merely a sentiment under the great rulers of the eighteenth century became an absolute conviction when Kiaking found himself the mark of conspirators and assassins. The first of the plots to which he nearly fell a victim occurred at such an early period of his reign that it could not be attributed to popular discontent at his misgovernment.
Scarcity of food and want of work increased the growing discontent, which did not require even secret societies to give it point and expression, and as far as could be judged it was worse than when the Water-Lily Society inspired Kiaking with most apprehension. Kiaking, as has been observed, escaped the most serious consequences of his own acts.
Without an exact knowledge of the intentions or resources of its secret enemies, it failed to grapple with them, and, as its sole remedy, it could only decree that proof of membership carried with it the penalty of death. During the last years of the reign of Kiaking the secret societies rather threatened future trouble than constituted a positive danger to the state.
The experience of the next fifteen years was to show how inaccurately he had measured the situation, and how far the troubles of the fifteen years following his death were to exceed those of his reign; for just as he had inherited from his father, Kiaking, a legacy of trouble, so did he pass on to his son an inheritance of misfortune and difficulty, rendered all the more onerous by the pretension of supreme power without the means to support it.
The beginning of this century found a secret society in existence known as the "Triads," whose avowed object was the expulsion of the Manchus and the restoration of the Mings. In 1803 the emperor Kiaking was attacked in open day while being carried in a chair of state through the streets of Peking. He was saved by his attendants, several of whom lost their lives.
In the discussion which arose between Lord Amherst and the celestials on this question, the Chinese, to a man, insisted inflexibly that Lord Macartney had performed the Kotow; and Kiaking, the successor of Kienlung, who had been present at the reception of Lord Macartney, personally pledged himself that he had seen his lordship in that attitude.
Toward the close of his reign, and very soon after the departure of Lord Amherst, Kiaking was brought face to face with a very serious conspiracy, or what he thought to be such, among the princes of the Marichu imperial family.
Some time before his death Kiaking drew up his will, and on account of his great virtues he specially selected as his successor his second son, Prince Meenning, who had saved his life from assassins in the attack on the palace. Kiaking died on September 2, 1820, in the sixty-first year of his age, leaving to his successor a diminished authority, an enfeebled power, and a discontented people.
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