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Fighting stubbornly, Nurhachu, the founder of this new enterprise, steadily broke through Chinese resistance in the Liaotung, then a Chinese province colonised from Chihli, and slowly but surely reached out towards Peking, the goal which beckons to everyone.
The Great Wall, built eighteen hundred years before as a protection against other barbarians of the same stock, stopped Nurhachu a hundred times, and although he captured Moukden and made it a Manchu capital, he died worn out by half a century of warfare.
Attila and his Huns, Arpad and his Magyars, Isperich and his Bulgars, Alp Arslan and his Seljuks, Ertogrul and his Ottomans, Jenghiz Khan and Tamerlane with their "inflexible" Mongol hordes, Baber in India, even Kubilai Khan and Nurhachu in far-off Cathay: the type is ever the same. The hoof-print of the Turanian "man on horseback" is stamped deep all over the palimpsest of history.
Meanwhile Nurhachu gradually extended his borders eastward, until in 1625, the year in which he placed his capital at Mukden, his frontiers reached to the sea on the east and to the river Amur on the north, the important city of Ning-yüan being almost the only possession remaining to the Chinese beyond the Great Wall. The explanation of this is as follows.
For a time, Nurhachu had been held in check by his skilful dispositions of troops, Mukden was strongly fortified, and confidence generally was restored; but the fatal policy of the new general rapidly alienated the Chinese inhabitants, and caused them to enter secretly into communication with the Manchus. It was thus that in 1621 Nurhachu was in a position to advance upon Mukden.
In a word, Nurhachu defeated his Chinese antagonists in detail, finally inflicting such a crushing blow that he was left completely master of the situation, and before very long had realised the chief object of his ambition, namely, the reunion under one rule of those states into which the Golden Dynasty had been broken up when it collapsed before the Mongols in 1234.
Nurhachu seized the opportunity, and delivered a violent attack, with which he seemed to be making some progress, until at length artillery was brought into play. The havoc caused by the guns at close quarters was terrific, and the Manchus fled. This defeat was a blow from which Nurhachu never recovered; his chagrin brought on a serious illness, and he died in 1626, aged sixty-eight.
In 1587, Nurhachu built a walled city, and established an administration in his tiny principality, the even-handed justice and purity of which soon attracted a large number of settlers, and before very long he had succeeded in amalgamating five Manchu States under his personal rule.
Nurhachu, the real founder of the Manchu power, was born in 1559, from a virile stock, and was soon recognised to be an extraordinary child. We need not linger over his dragon face, his phoenix eye, or even over his large, drooping ears, which have always been associated by the Chinese with intellectual ability.
Later on, when his descendants were sitting upon the throne of China, he was canonised as T`ai Tsu, the Great Ancestor, the representatives of the four preceding generations of his family being canonised as Princes. Nurhachu was succeeded by his fourth son, Abkhai, then thirty-four years of age, and a tried warrior.
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