Meha was "a wicked and faithless man, who had
risen to power by the murder of his father, and one with whom oaths and
treaties carried no weight." In the mean while the Tartars were
continuing their victorious career. The capital itself could not be
pronounced safe from their assaults, or from the insult of their
presence.
In this crisis counsels of craft and dissimulation alone found favor in
the Emperor's cabinet. No voice was raised in support of the bold and
only true course of going forth to meet the national enemy. The
capitulation of Pingching had for the time destroyed the manhood of the
race, and Kaotsou held in esteem the advice of men widely different to
those who had placed him on the throne. Kaotsou opened fresh
negotiations with Meha, who concluded a treaty on condition of the
Emperor's daughter being given to him in marriage, and on the assumption
that he was an independent ruler. With these terms Kaotsou felt obliged
to comply, and thus for the first time this never-ceasing collision
between the tribes of the desert and the agriculturists of the plains of
China closed with the admitted triumph of the former.
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