Page 199 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

9
The Yuan Dynasty

During the twelfth century, China had come to uneasy terms with
her northern neighbours and, after her custom, civilised them.
But beyond them across the deserts of central Asia there roamed a
horde which Fitzgerald called "the most savage and pitiless race
known to history"—the Mongols. In 1210 their leader, the great
Genghis Khan, attacked the butler state of Chin, and in 12 15 de-
stroyed the capital at Peking. In 1227 he destroyed the Hsi-hsia,
leaving only one-hundredth of the population alive, a disaster by
which the Northwest was permanently laid waste. Three years
later Genghis died, but still the Mongol hordes advanced, and in
1235 they turned southward into China. For forty years the
Chinese armies resisted them, almost unsupported by their own
government. But the outcome was inevitable, and even before the
last Sung ruler perished in 1279, the Mongols had proclaimed
their dynastic title, calling themselves the Yuan. China was spared
the worst of the atrocities which had been visited upon all other
victims, for, as a Khitan advisor had pointed out, the Chinese
were more useful alive, and taxable, than dead. But the wars and
breakup of the administration left the Mongols masters of a weak
and impoverished empire, whose taxpayers had been reduced
from a hundred million under the Sung to fewer than sixty mil-
lion. Although Kublai Khan (1 260-1 294) was an able ruler and a
deep admirer of Chinese culture, the Mongol administration was
ruthless and corrupt. Seven emperors succeeded one another in
the forty years following the death of Kublai.
In 1348, Chinese discontent against the harsh rule of the last
Khan broke into open rebellion. For twenty years rival bandits
and warlords fought over the prostrate country, which the Mon-
gols had long since ceased to control effectively. Finally, in 1368,
the Khan fled northward from Peking, the power of the Mongols
was broken forever, and the short, inglorious rule ofthe Yuan was
at an end. In conquering China they had realised the age-long
dream of all the nomad tribes, but in less than a century the
Chinese drained them of the savage vitality which had made that
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