At seven, the Kangxi Emperor, great-grandson of the Manchu conqueror Nurhaci, was chosen by his grandmother, Xiaozhuang, widow of the first Manchu emperor, who loved him and whom he loved back. After seven years dominated by the regent Oboi, the grandmother and grandson together plotted his arrest and downfall.
Athletic, pitted with smallpox,* his eyes bright and intelligent, Kangxi embraced absolute power, possessing the three necessities of politics – the acumen, the vision and the resources. As a Manchu, he had been trained from childhood in archery and riding, and he spent three months a year hunting. ‘When Manchus go hunting in the north,’ he said, ‘the riders mass like storm clouds, the horse archers are as one with horses, they fly together!’ But as a Chinese prince he was also trained in Confucian ethics. The role of an emperor, he said, was simply ‘giving life to people and killing people’.
Ruler of over 150 million, Kangxi was a workaholic, rising at dawn to pore over reports, 16,000 of which survive, all marked in his red ink. He studied cases carefully. ‘Errors are inexcusable in matters of life and death,’ he reflected. ‘I got into the habit of reading the lists, checking name and registration of each man sentenced to death … then I’d go through the list with the Grand Secretaries and decide who to spare.’* Kangxi waged war on a continental scale, first against overmighty Manchu generals, then against Oirats (western Mongols) in today’s Mongolia and Tibet, but he regarded independent Taiwan, ruled by the pirate king Koxinga, as a special insult to Chinese grandeur.* Koxinga’s son and grandson defeated a joint Dutch–Manchu fleet and thrived, but finally off Penghu, in 1683, Kangxi defeated the Koxingan fleet and stormed Taiwan.
Kangxi upgraded the Grand Canal and improved communications, all the more important given that the population was surging thanks to new strains of rice combined with American crops – sweet potatoes and maize – leading to bigger cities. Chinese merchants exported tea, porcelain and silk and were paid in American silver: Kangxi’s income soared – but he was careful to limit the wealth of merchants and the access of foreigners. Kangxi’s revenues were so large that he was able to cut some taxes, but his multi-fronted wars absorbed much of his income.
His sense of Manchu superiority was tempered by his curiosity about European innovation: he took lessons from Louis’s Jesuit priests on science, mathematics, astronomy and music, and studied the harpsichord. Yet, while Louis was delighted to help a non-Christian potentate, when the Ottomans menaced the heart of Christendom, he refused to help his Habsburg rivals.
Vienna was about to fall.
* ‘He threw me on to the edge of the bed,’ she recalled, ‘pushing me with a hand on my breast, and he put a knee between my thighs to prevent me from closing them. Lifting my clothes, he placed a hand with a handkerchief on my mouth to keep me from screaming. I scratched his face and pulled his hair and, before he penetrated me again, I grasped his penis so tight that I even removed a piece of flesh.’ Afterwards she grabbed a knife and shouted, ‘I want to kill you because you have shamed me!’ ‘Here I am,’ sneered Tassi. She threw the knife but it missed.
* Velázquez was accompanied by a slave, Juan de Pareja, son of an African mother and Spanish father, his studio assistant, who himself showed talent and became a painter in his own right (his
* During the works, Philip enjoyed a macabre audience with the family. ‘I saw the body of Emperor Charles V,’ he wrote, ‘and although he died 96 years ago, his body was whole. In this it can be seen that Our Lord has repaid all that he did in defence of religion.’
* The ailing Philip IV, lacking a male heir, returned to Madrid with Velázquez, who soon after sickened with fever and died. ‘I am crushed,’ said Philip.
* Mazarin was a master of realpolitik – before the word was coined. Still fighting the Habsburgs, he allied with the republican regicide Cromwell against the Spanish, whom they defeated at the battle of the Dunes. And when Oliver died, it was Mazarin who offered to invade England to support Protector Dick. In the twentieth century, Mazarin was the hero of President François Mitterrand, who named his illegitimate daughter Mazarine.
