364 Ch'ien Lung . A.D. 1710-1799. The title of the reign ot ^f^ Hnng-li, fourth son of the Emperor Tung Chfing, whom he succeeded in 1735. An able ruler, with an insatiable thirst &r knowledge, and an indefatigable administrator, he riyals his grandfEither's fame as a sovereign and a patron of letters. He disliked missionaries, and forbade the propagation of the Christian religion, whose professors' were persecuted in 1746 and 1785. After ten years of internal reorganisation, his reign became a SQceeesion of wars. The aborigines of Sstich'uan and Kueichou were crushed wholly or for a time; Burmah and Nepaul were forced to pay tribute; the Chinese supremacy was established in Hbet; Kuldja and Eashgaria were added to the empire; and rebellions in loinsuh and Formosa were suppressed. At the same time it was found advisable to cease from interfering with the government of Annam. In 1770 the Turguts, who had emigrated from Sungaria into Russia between 1650 and 1673, returned in one Yast body from the borders of the Caspian Sea, and settled in m among the Altai mountains. Their journey and their sufferings have been poetically described by De Quincey in his essay on The Flight of the Kalmuck Tartars. In fifty years the population nearly doubled itself, and the empire on the whole enjoyed peace and prosperity throughout the reign, in spite of occasional Amines and floods. The year 1792 saw the first outbreak of the White Lily Society. Every effort was made to perfect the conservation of the Yellow Riyer, and to improve the administration in general. With western nations relations were friendly, a Portuguese embassy in 1750 being succeeded by Lord Macartney's miasion and a Dutch mission in 1723, and by a Spanish enyoyin 1705. With Russia, in spite of frontier disputes, carayan trade through Kiachta was maintained. In 1763 two Chinese yisited
Europe. In literature the Thirteen Classics and the Twenty^one
