Page:Eminent Chinese Of The Ch’ing Period - Hummel - 1943 - Vol. 2.pdf/283

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Yang
Yang

mutineers. While other generals were unsuccessful in their attempts to pacify the rebel leaders, he negotiated with one of them for surrender. By November the rebels put their leaders to death and surrendered to him. Most of them were disbanded; a small part rejoined Yang's command, but unfortunately their faithfulness to him proved their undoing. Yang, instead of being rewarded for his swift action in averting a conflict that might have lasted years, was charged with negligence and cowardice, and was exiled to Ili. In the meantime the rebels who had chosen to remain with him were sent to the desert and massacred.

Nevertheless the facts soon came to light and in June 1807, one month after Yang Fang reached Ili, he was pardoned and recalled. He returned to Kweichow, and in 1808 began again in the army as a lieutenant. In 1810 he was made a brigade-general, stationed first in Kwangtung and then at Sian, Shensi, but he retired in the following year to mourn the death of his mother. Coming out of retirement in 1813, he went north just in time to take part in fighting the T'ien-li-chiao rebels at Hua-hsien, Honan (see under Na-yen-ch'êng). Early in 1814 the rebellion ended. Yang Fang was rewarded with the minor hereditary rank of Yün-ch'i yü and was again made brigade-general at Sian. Within a month he helped Ch'ang-ling [q. v.] quell a rebellion of lumbermen at Ch'i-shan, Shensi. In March 1814 he was transferred to Han-chung in the same province and in the following year was promoted to the post of provincial commander-in-chief of Kansu. Thereafter he was transferred, with the same rank, to Chihli (1821–23), to Hunan (1824–25), and then to Ku-yüan, Kansu (1825–33). From 1826 to 1829 he led several thousand men to Aksu and then to Kashgar, to take part in the campaign against Jehangir (see under Ch'ang-ling). As chief assistant commander, he captured Jehangir in 1828 and was rewarded with the hereditary rank of Marquis Kuo-yung of the third class (raised in 1829 to the second class). He returned to his post at Ku-yuan in 1829, but a year later was again sent to Kashgar to assist Ch'ang-ling in driving off new invaders and in settling the question of the recalcitrant Mohammedans. He returned in 1831, and two years later was transferred to Szechwan to quell a rebellion of the aborigines southwest of Chengtu along the River Ta-tu (大渡河). The aborigines of Ch'ing-hsi (present Han-yüan) and Yüeh-chün were easily pacified, but those in the district of O-pien surrendered only after several months of fighting. For this exploit his hereditary rank was raised to Marquis of the first class. However, in 1834 the aborigines of O-pien again rebelled, and as he did little to suppress them in several months, he was degraded to an expectant brigade-general in Kansu, and his hereditary rank was reduced to a Marquis of the second class. In 1835 he retired on grounds of illness, but in the following year was recalled, with the rank of brigade-general to pacify a band of mutineers at Fêng-huang-t'ing, Hunan. In 1838 he was made provincial commander-in-chief of Kwangsi, but in the same year was again transferred to Hunan. In 1841 he was sent to Kwangtung as assistant commander under I-shan [q. v.] to fight the British. The first Anglo-Chinese war broke out in 1840, and would have been settled late that year (see under Ch'i-shan) but for the militant attitude of Emperor Hsüan-tsung. When war was resumed in February 1841, Yang Fang suffered several defeats, and after the British warships left Canton in June, he pleaded illness and returned to his post in Hunan. He retired in 1843 and died three years later. He was canonized as Ch'in-yung 勤勇 and was given many posthumous honors.

It is said that Yang Fang wrote a number of treatises on military tactics and on other subjects. He and his senior, Yang Yü-ch'un, were famous military strategists and were known as the "Two Yangs" (二楊). Yang Fang was noted for his hospitality towards able men of letters such as Hsü Sung, Wei Yüan, and Chang Ch'i [qq. v.].


[1/374/1a; 2/39/6a; 3/324/1a pu-lu; 1/513/20b; 5/85/3a; Sung-t'ao chih-li-t'ing chih (1836); 銅仁府志 T'ung-jên fu-chih (1890); Kuo-yung hou tzŭ-pien nien-p'u (not consulted).]

Fang Chao-ying


YANG Hao 楊鎬 (T. 汝京), d. Nov. 10, 1629, Ming general, native of Shang-ch'iu, Honan, received the degree of chin-shih in 1580. He was appointed magistrate of Nanchang, Kiangsi, and later intendant of the Liao-hai Circuit, which controlled Liaotung. In 1597 he was appointed to military command in Korea where the second Japanese invasion, directed by Hideyoshi (see under Nurhaci), was threatening Seoul. Early in 1598 he attacked the Japanese with an army of forty thousand men, but owing to indecision and mismanagement, his forces were disastrously

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