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Updated: June 19, 2025
There can be no doubt that this course was both the wiser and the more patriotic, for Li Tseching was nothing more than a successful brigand on a large scale; whereas the Manchu government was a respectable one, was well organized, and aspired to revive the best traditions of the Chinese. Having come to a prompt decision, Wou Sankwei lost no time in promptly carrying it out.
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.
This woman was the princess Wou, a youthful widow of the late emperor, and now an inmate of a Buddhist convent. So strong was the passion of the young ruler for the princess that he set aside the opposition of his ministers, divorced his lawful empress, and, in the year 655, made his new love his consort on the throne. It was a momentous act.
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.
It was an unwise act of ferocity, since it rendered impossible any future reconciliation with his opponent. Li made no effort to defend the city, but fled precipitately with all the plunder he could convey. Wou, marching round its walls, pressed hard upon his track, attacking his rear-guard in charge of the bulky baggage-train, and defeating it with the slaughter of ten thousand troops.
A Chinese slave, wishing to save his master, gave him notice of the danger, and this Manchu officer at once informed Kanghi of the conspiracy. The son of Wou Sankwei and the other conspirators were immediately arrested and executed without delay.
Had he been a capable ruler, with qualities suited to call Wou Sankwei to his support and enlist the energies of the people, the tide of Manchu conquest would very probably have been stayed.
The public morality deteriorated very much under this family, and it is said that when one of the emperors wanted an honest man as minister he could only find one in the person of a common laborer. At last, in the twelfth century before our era, the enormities of the Chang rulers reached a climax in the person of Chousin, who was deposed by a popular rising headed by Wou Wang, Prince of Chow.
It was not until 1677 that Kanghi ventured to move his armies against Wou Sankwei in person. Although he obtained no signal success in the field, the divisions among the Chinese commanders were such that he had the satisfaction of compelling them to evacuate Hunan, and when Wou Sankwei took his first step backward the sun of his fortunes began to set. Calamity rapidly followed calamity.
There is no certain reason for saying that Wou Sankwei nursed any scheme of personal aggrandizement, but the measures he took and the reforms he instituted were calculated to make his authority become gradually independent of Manchu control.
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