was emphatically a rule of the sword, was rapidly so weakened that the
emperors became no more than _rois fainéants_ at the mercy of their
minister.[1] The history of the Nineteenth Century is thus logically
enough the history of successive collapses. Not only did overseas
foreigners openly thunder at the gateways of the empire and force an
ingress, but native rebellions were constant and common. Leaving minor
disturbances out of account, there were during this period two huge
Mahommedan rebellions, besides the cataclysmic Taiping rising which
lasted ten years and is supposed to have destroyed the unbelievable
total of one hundred million persons. The empire, torn by internecine
warfare, surrendered many of its essential prerogatives to foreigners,
and by accepting the principle of extraterritoriality prepared the road
to ultimate collapse.

How in such circumstances was it possible to keep alive absolutism? The
answer is so curious that we must be explicit and exhaustive.

The simple truth is that save during the period of vigour immediately
following each foreign conquest (such as the Mongol conquest in the
Thirteenth Century and the Manchu in the Seventeenth) not only has there
never been any absolutism properly so-called in China, but that apart
from the most meagre and inefficient tax-collecting and some
rough-and-ready policing in and around the cities there has never been
any true governing at all save what the people did for themselves or
what they demanded of the officials as a protection against one another.
Any one who doubts these statements has no inkling of those facts which
are the crown as well as the foundation of the Chinese group-system, and
which must be patiently studied in the village-life of the country to be
fitly appreciated. To be quite frank, absolutism is a myth coming down
from the days of Kublai Khan when he so proudly built his _Khanbaligh_