On the eve of the great national holiday of China, the Feast of Lanterns, the imperial court reviewed a section of the army, drawn up in military array along the principal street of Peking. The emperor, surrounded by the principal functionaries of the government, occupied a throne on a raised platform from which the whole scene could be surveyed, while strains of martial music filled the air. The culminating scene in the ceremony took place when Feyanku approached the throne, received on his knees from the emperor's hand a cup of wine, and retired down the steps, at whose foot he quaffed the wine amid the shouts of thousands of spectators. This ceremony was repeated with each of the subordinate generals, and then with the lower officers of the army, ten at a time. Success being thus drunk to the army, Feyanku left the capital to assume the active command in the field, while Kanghi, bent on complete success, set to work to recruit in all haste a second army, which he proposed to command himself. The whole force raised was an immense one, considering the character of the country to be traversed and the limited resources of the enemy. It marched in four divisions, of which that under Feyanku numbered about thirty-five thousand men. Despite the great distance to be traversed, the desert-like condition of much of the country, and the fact that deficiency of resources cost thousands of lives and forced many detachments to retreat, a powerful force at length reached the borders of Galdan's territory. After a march of more than three months' duration Feyanku pitched his camp near the sources of the Tula, his army being reduced to twelve thousand available men. These were placed in a fortified position within the Mongol camping-ground of Chowmodo. Meanwhile how was Galdan engaged? He had sought, but in vain, to win the alliance of a powerful Mongol tribe, and had conducted fruitless negotiations with the Russians of Siberia. His only remaining hope lay in the desert barrier which lay between him and his great enemy, and this vanished when the Chinese army made its appearance in his territories, though its success had been gained at a frightful loss of life. The situation of the desert chief had become desperate, his only hope lying in an attack on the advance body of the Chinese before it could be joined by the other detachments, and while exhausted by its long march across the desert of Gobi. He therefore made a rapid march and vigorously assailed the Chinese intrenchments at Chowmodo.