6fi8 INQUIRY INTO THK POPULATION OF CHINA. 



The history of Ch'ang Hsien-chiiiig, tohl by Du Halde," by Father 

 d'Orelaiis,'' l)y Father de Mailhi,'' and others, is an example of what 

 has frequently occurred in China during its long history. In the 

 disturbed period which followed the overthrow of the Ming dynasty 

 this person overran with his troops the provinces of Ho-nan, Kiang- 

 nan, Kiang-hsi, and Ssu-ch'uan. It is said that for the slightest 

 offense not only was the offender himself put to death, but the same 

 punishment was visited on all the inhabitants of the same street. 

 Five thousand eunuchs Avere beheaded because one of their number 

 refused to treat him as Emperor. He called some 10,000 students 

 to the examinations at Ch'eng-tu Fu in Ssu-ch'uan and had them all 

 put to death. He had butchered over 600,000 persons in that prov- 

 ince alone ! On leaving Ch'eng-tu to march into the adjoining 

 province of Shen-hsi he had all the inhabitants chained, led out of 

 the city, and executed. Then he ordered his soldiers to put to death 

 their own wives as troublesome impediments in times of war, and 

 he gave the example by having his own wives executed. So reads 

 his story. If it is not all true much of it certainly is. 



Turning to the nineteenth century, always on the authority of care- 

 ful European investigators. Colonel Kuropatkin (the present com- 

 mander in chief of the Russian army in Manchuria) speaking** of the 

 Mohammedan rebellion in Shen-hsi and Kan-su of 1861 and subse- 

 quent years, states, on the authority of Sosnovski, that on the occa- 

 sion of the siege of Ho-chou in Kan-su, which lasted seven months, 

 20,000 men were put to death by the Chinese on the fall of that place. 

 When the neighboring town of Hsi-ning Fu was captured, 9,000 were 

 put to death. At the capture of Chin-chi P'u, the Mohammedan 

 stronghold, 50,000 were killed and a vast fruitful and thickly popu- 

 lated tract turned into waste. At Chuguchak and its environs 40,000 

 men perished at the hands of the Chinese, and the town was left 

 without a single inhabitant. 



Doctor Macgowan, who was residing in China during the whole 

 of the T'ai-p'ing rebellion, says of it:<' " Nine provinces had been 

 desolated by it ; flourishing towns and cities had been made heaps of 

 ruins, and wild beasts made their dens within them, whilst fully 

 thirty millions of people had been put to death by these ruthless rob- 

 bers " (rebels and imperialists). 



Another authority says : " During the first year of the great Tai- 

 ping rebellion the registered population declined by two-fifths, but 



o Description, I, p. 535. 



''History of the Two Tartar Conquerors of Cliina. Ilakluyt Society edit.. ]>. 2(!. 

 cLIist. Gen. de la Cliine, X, 470-471); XI. 17-2S. 

 d Kashgaria, Englisli trans., p. 1.55. 



-'History of Cliina, p. 575. Conf. S. Wells Wiliiinis, The Middle Kingdom, 

 II, G23. 



