﻿312 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 47 



inces of Kiang-nan, Ho-nan, and Shan-tung. The people in vast 

 numbers sought to reach other provinces, but thousands upon 

 thousands died on the roads and their corpses were devoured by the 

 survivors. 



As regards the extraordinary loss of life attending militarv opera- 

 tions in China, Du Halde states 1 that in 1635 the Chinese, to de- 

 fend the city of K'ai-feng Fu in Ho-nan against the rebels, cut the 

 Yellow River dykes. The whole city was submerged and 300,000 

 persons lost their lives. 



The history of Ch'ang Hsien-chung, told by Du Halde, 2 by Father 

 d'Orleans, 3 by Father de Mailla, 4 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 were 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 XIX century, always on the authority of careful 

 European investigators, Colonel Kuropatkin (the present Com- 

 mander-in-chief of the Russian army in Manchuria) speaking 5 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 



•Op. cit., 1, p. 530. 

 -' Description, 1, p. 535. 



3 History of the Two Tartar Conquerors of China, Hakluyt Society edit., 

 p. 26. 



1 Hist. Gen. de la Chine, x, 470-479; xi, 17-28. 

 5 Kashgaria, English trans., p. 155. 



