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Page 29
Professor Masson's Appended Editorial Note on the Chinese Accounts of
the Migration (Vol. VII, pp. 422-6):
"As has been mentioned in the Preface, these appeared, in translated
form, in 1776, in Vol. I of the great collection of _M�moires
concernant les Chinois_, published at Paris by the enterprise of the
French Jesuit missionaries at Pekin. The most important of them, under
the title _Monument de la Transmigration des Tourgouths des Bords de
la Mer Caspienne dans l'Empire de la Chine_, occupies twenty-seven
pages of the volume, and purports to be a translation of a Chinese
document drawn up by the Emperor Kien Long himself. This Emperor,
described by the missionaries as 'the best-lettered man in his
Empire,' had special reasons for so commemorating, as one of the most
interesting events of his reign, the sudden self-transference in 1771
of so large a Tartar horde from the Russian allegiance to his own.
Much of the previous part of his reign had been spent in that work of
conquering and consolidating the Tartar appendages of his Empire which
had been begun by his celebrated grandfather, the Emperor Kang Hi
(1661-1721); and it so chanced that the particular Tartar horde which
now, in 1771, had marched all the way from the shores of the Caspian
to appeal to him for protection and for annexation to the Chinese
Empire were but the posterity of a horde who had formerly belonged to
that Empire, but had detached themselves from it, in the reign of Kang
Hi, by a contrary march westward to annex themselves to the Russian
dominions. The event of 1771, therefore, was gratifying to Kien Long
as completing his independent exertions among the Tartars on the
fringes of China by the voluntary re-settlement within those fringes,
and return to the Chinese allegiance, of a whole Tartar population
which had been astray, and under unfit and alien rule, for several
generations. With this explanation the following sentences from Kien
Long's Memoir, containing all its historical substance, will be fully
intelligible:
"'All those who at present compose the nation of the Torgouths,
unaffrighted by the dangers of a long and painful march, and full of
the single desire of procuring themselves for the future a better mode
of life and a more happy lot, have abandoned the parts which they
inhabited far beyond our frontiers, have traversed with a courage
proof against all difficulties a space of more than ten thousand
_lys_, and are come to range themselves in the number of my subjects.
Their submission, in my view of it, is not a submission to which they
have been inspired by fear, but is a voluntary and free submission, if
ever there was one.... The Torgouths are one of the branches of the
Eleuths. Four different branches of people formed at one time the
whole nation of the Tchong-kar. It would be difficult to explain their
common origin, respecting which indeed there is no very certain
knowledge. These four branches separated from each other, so that each
became a nation apart. That of the Eleuths, the chief of them all,
gradually subdued the others, and continued till the time of Kang Hi
to exercise this usurped pre-eminence over them. Ts�-ouang-raptan then
reigned over the Eleuths, and Ayouki over the Torgouths. These two
chiefs, being on bad terms with each other, had their mutual contests;
of which Ayouki, who was the weaker, feared that in the end he would
be the unhappy victim. He formed the project of withdrawing himself
forever from the domination of the Eleuths. He took secret measures
for securing the flight which he meditated, and sought safety, with
all his people, in the territories which are under the dominion of the
Russians. These permitted them to establish themselves in the country
of Etchil [the country between the Volga and the Jaik, a little to the
north of the Caspian Sea].... Oubach�, the present Khan of the
Torgouths, is the youngest grandson of Ayouki. The Russians never
ceasing to require him to furnish soldiers for incorporation into
their armies, and having at last carried off his own son to serve them
as a hostage, and being besides of a religion different from his, and
paying no respect to that of the Lamas, which the Torgouths profess,
Oubach� and his people at last determined to shake off a yoke which
was becoming daily more and more insupportable. After having secretly
deliberated among themselves, they concluded that they must abandon a
residence where they had so much to suffer, in order to come and live
more at ease in those parts of the dominion of China where the
religion professed is that of Fo. At the commencement of the eleventh
month of last year [December, 1770] they took the road, with their
wives, their children, and all their baggage, traversed the country of
the Hasaks [Cossacks], skirted Lake Palkach�-nor and the adjacent
deserts; and, about the end of the sixth month of this year [in
August, 1771], after having passed over more than ten thousand _lys_
during the space of the eight whole months of their journey, they
arrived at last on the frontiers of Charapen, not far from the borders
of Ily. I knew already that the Torgouths were on the march to come
and make submission to me. The news was brought me not long after
their departure from Etchil. I then reflected that, as Ileton, general
of the troops that are at Ily, was already charged with other very
important affairs, it was to be feared that he would not be able to
regulate with all the requisite attention those which concerned these
new refugees. Chouh�d�, one of the councillors of the general, was at
Ouch�, charged with keeping order among the Mahometans there. As he
found it within his power to give his attention to the Torgouths, I
ordered him to repair to Ily and do his best for their solid
settlement.... At the same time I did not neglect any of the
precautions that seemed to me necessary. I ordered Chouh�d� to raise
small forts and redoubts at the most important points, and to cause
all the passes to be carefully guarded; and I enjoined on him the duty
of himself getting ready the necessary provisions of every kind inside
these defences.... The Torgouths arrived, and on arriving found
lodgings ready, means of sustenance, and all the conveniences they
could have found in their own proper dwellings. This is not all. Those
principal men among them who had to come personally to do me homage
had their expenses paid, and were honorably conducted, by the imperial
post-road, to the place where I then was. I saw them; I spoke to them;
I invited them to partake with me in the pleasures of the chase; and,
at the end of the number of days appointed for this exercise, they
attended me in my retinue as far as to G�-hol. There I gave them a
ceremonial banquet and made them the customary presents.... It was at
this G�-hol, in those charming parts where Kang Hi, my grandfather,
made himself an abode to which he could retire during the hot season,
at the same time that he thus put himself in a situation to be able to
watch with greater care over the welfare of the peoples that are
beyond the western frontiers of the Empire; it was, I say, in those
lovely parts that, after having conquered the whole country of the
Eleuths, I had received the sincere homages of Tchering and his
Tourbeths, who alone among the Eleuths had remained faithful to me.
One has not to go many years back to touch the epoch of that
transaction. The remembrance of it is yet recent. And now--who could
have predicted it?--when there was the least possible room for
expecting such a thing, and when I had no thought of it, that one of
the branches of the Eleuths which first separated itself from the
trunk, those Torgouths who had voluntarily expatriated themselves to
go and live under a foreign and distant dominion, these same Torgouths
are come of themselves to submit to me of their own good will; and it
happens that it is still at G�-hol, not far from the venerable spot
where my grandfather's ashes repose, that I have the opportunity,
which I never sought, of admitting them solemnly into the number of my
subjects.'
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