ina has
been under foreign rule, its emperors, its state officials, its generals
and trusted battalions, being of Tartar blood, and the whole nation
being forced to wear, in the shaved head and pigtail of every man from
the highest to the lowest, a badge of servitude. The firm position
gained by the Manchu dynasty was largely due to the ability of two
emperors, Kanghi and Keen Lung, who stamped out the spirit of rebellion
in China, added Thibet to the empire, and conquered Mongolia, subduing
those restless tribes which for so many centuries had been a sword in
the side of the great empire of the East. Their able administration was
aided by their long reigns, Kanghi being on the throne for sixty-one
years, while Keen Lung abdicated after a reign of sixty years, that he
might not take from his esteemed grandfather the honor of the longest
reign. Keen Lung died three years afterwards, in 1799, thus bringing up
the history of China almost to the opening year of the nineteenth
century. His eventful life was largely devoted to the consolidation of
the Tartar authority, and was marked by brilliant military exploits and
zeal in promoting the interests of China in all directions. It is our
purpose here to tell the story of one of the famous military exploits of
his reign.

The conquest of Thibet had brought the Chinese into contact with the
bold and restless hill-tribes which occupy the region between China and
India. South of the Himalaya range there existed several small mountain
states, independent alike of Mogul and of British rule, and defiant in
their mountain fastnesses of all the great surrounding powers. Of these
small states the most important was Nepal, originally a single kingdom,
but afterwards divided into three, which were in frequent hostility with
one another. West of Nepal was a small clan, the Goorkhas, whose people
were noted for their warlike daring. It is with these that we are here
concerned.

In 1760 the king of Bhatgaon, one of the divisions of Nepal, being
threatened by his rival kings, begged aid from the Goorkha chief. It was
readily given, and with such effect as to win the allies a signal
triumph. The ease of his victory roused the ambition of Narayan, the
leader of the Goorkhas, and by 1769 the three kings of Nepal were either
slain or fugitives in India and their country had fallen under the
dominion of its recently insignificant and little-considered neighbor.

The Goorkhas differed essentiall