as the Ming emperors of the past.  The gentry were not inclined to defend him.  A considerable section of the gentry were reduced to utter despair; they had no desire to support the Ming any longer; in their own interest they could not support the rebel leaders; and they regarded the Manchus as just a particular sort of “rebels”.  Interpreting the refusal of some Sung ministers to serve the foreign Mongols as an act of loyalty, it was now regarded as shameful to desert a dynasty when it came to an end and to serve the new ruler, even if the new regime promised to be better.  Many thousands of officials, scholars, and great landowners committed suicide.  Many books, often really moving and tragic, are filled with the story of their lives.  Some of them tried to form insurgent bands with their peasants and went into the mountains, but they were unable to maintain themselves there.  The great bulk of the elite soon brought themselves to collaborate with the conquerors when they were offered tolerable conditions.  In the end the Manchus did not interfere in the ownership of land in central China.

At the time when in Europe Louis XIV was reigning, the Thirty Years War was coming to an end, and Cromwell was carrying out his reforms in England, the Manchus conquered the whole of China.  Chang Hsien-chung and Li Tzu-ch’eng were the first to fall; the pirate Coxinga lasted a little longer and was even able to plunder Nanking in 1659, but in 1661 he had to retire to Formosa.  Wu San-kui, who meanwhile had conquered western China, saw that the situation was becoming difficult for him.  His task was to drive out the last Ming pretenders for the Manchus.  As he had already been opposed to the Ming in 1644, and as the Ming no longer had any following among the gentry, he could not suddenly work with them against the Manchus.  He therefore handed over to the Manchus the last Ming prince, whom the Burmese had delivered up to him in 1661.  Wu San-kui’s only possible allies against the Manchus were the gentry.  But in the west, where he was in power, the gentry counted for nothing; they had in any case been weaker in the west, and they had been decimated by the insurrection of Chang Hsien-chung.  Thus Wu San-kui was compelled to try to push eastwards, in order to unite with the gentry of the Yangtze region against the Manchus.  The Manchus guessed Wu San-kui’s plan, and in 1673, after every effort at accommodation had failed, open war came.  Wu San-kui made himself emperor, and the Manchus marched against him.  Meanwhile, the Chinese gentry of the Yangtze region had come to terms with the Manchus, and they gave Wu San-kui no help.  He vegetated in the south-west, a region too poor to maintain an army that could conquer all China, and too small to enable him to last indefinitely as an independent power.  He was able to hold his own until his death, although, with the loss of the support of the gentry, he had had no prospect of final success.  Not until 1681 was his successor,