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Wou Sankwei had not known the meaning of defeat in his long career of fifty years, but now, in his old age, he saw his affairs in inextricable confusion. His adherents deserted him, many rebel officers sought to come to terms with the Manchus, and Kanghi's armies gradually converged on Wou Sankwei from the east and the north. Driven out of Szchuen, Wou Sankwei endeavored to make a stand in Yunnan.
The garrison were massacred to the last man, and Wou Shufan only avoided a worse fate by committing suicide. The Manchus, not satisfied with his death, sent his head to Pekin to be placed on its principal gate in triumph, and the body of Wou Sankwei himself was exhumed so that his ashes might be scattered in each of the eighteen provinces of China as a warning to traitors.
When the Manchus conquered China, in the middle of the seventeenth century, they received material aid from a Chinese soldier named Wou Sankwei. He was rewarded with the Viceroyalty of the whole of south-western China, in which region he became supreme.
The object of this edict was to make all the governors of Chinese race show their hands, and Kanghi learned the full measure of the hostility he had to cope with by every governor from the sea coast of Fuhkien to Canton defying him, and throwing in their lot with Wou Sankwei.
But the power and reputation of Wou Sankwei were so formidable that Kanghi resolved to proceed with great caution, and the emperor began his measures of offense by issuing an edict ordering the disbandment of all the native armies maintained by the Chinese viceroys, besides Wou Sankwei.
He was destined to reign for more than sixty years and to prove himself one of the best and greatest of the emperors of China. We cannot close without a mention of the final events in the career of Wou Sankwei, to whom China owed her Manchu dynasty.
Placed in this dilemma, between the advancing Manchus, who immediately occupied Ningyuen on his evacuation of it, and the large rebel force in possession of Pekin, Wou Sankwei had no choice between coming to terms with one or other of them.
These two places with the minor forts of Kingchow and Songshan formed a quadrilateral that effectually secured Pekin on its northern side, and being intrusted to the defense of Wou Sankwei, a general of great capacity, of whom much more will be heard, all Taitsong's ability and resources were taxed to overcome those obstacles to his progress south of the Great Wall.
When a Ming prince, Kwei Wang, who had fled into Burmah, returned with the support of the king of that country to make another bid for the throne, he found himself confronted by all the power and resources of Wou Sankwei, who was still as loyal a servant of the Manchu emperor as when he carried his ensigns against Li Tseching.
But even as events turned out he was one of the most remarkable personages the Chinese race ever produced, and his military career shows that they are capable of producing great generals and brave soldiers. The death of Wou Sankwei signified the overthrow of the Chinese uprising which had threatened to extinguish the still growing power of the Manchu under its youthful Emperor Kanghi.
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