to purify the standard of morals in the Palace and frighten
evil-doers, unless we make an example of this insolent eunuch,
who has dared to leave Peking without our permission and
to commit these lawless deeds? The Governors of the three
provinces of Shantung, Honan and Kiangsu are ordered to seek
out and arrest the eunuch An, whom we had formerly honoured
with rank of the sixth grade and the decoration of the crow’s
feather. Upon his being duly identified by his companions,
let him be forthwith beheaded, without further formalities,
no attention is to be paid to any crafty explanations which
he may attempt to make. The Governors concerned will be held
responsible in the event of failure to effect his arrest.”
Tzŭ Hsi remained for some time in blissful ignorance of her favourite’s
danger, and even of his death. No doubt the Chief Eunuch’s great
unpopularity enabled Prince Kung and the Empress Tzŭ An to keep the
matter secret until the offender was past helping. Ten days later, Tzŭ An
issued a second Decree, extracted from her like the first by Prince Kung,
in which the eunuch’s execution is recorded, as follows:—
“Ting Pao-chen now reports that the eunuch An was arrested in
the T’ai An prefecture and has been summarily beheaded. Our
dynasty’s house-law is most strict in regard to the proper
discipline of eunuchs, and provides severe punishment for
any offences which they may commit. They have always been
sternly forbidden to make expeditions to the provinces, or
to create trouble. Nevertheless, An Te-hai actually had the
brazen effrontery to violate this law, and for his crimes his
execution is only a fitting reward. In future, let all eunuchs
take warning by his example; should we have further cause to
complain, the chief eunuchs of the several departments of the
Household, will be punished as well as the actual offender.
Any eunuch who may hereafter pretend that he has been sent on
Imperial business to the provinces shall be cast into chains at
once, and sent to Peking for punishment.”
This Decree has a half-hearted ring, as if some of the conspirators’ fear
of the coming wrath of Yehonala had crept into it. Very different in
wording are the Edicts in which Tzŭ Hsi condemns an offender to death.
We miss her trenchant style, that “strength of the pen” which was the
secret of much of her power.
Simultaneously with the death of An, in Shantung, several eunuchs of his
following were put to death by strangling; six others escaped from the
police, of whom five were recaptured and executed. The Chief Eunuch’s
family were sent as slaves to the frontier guards in the north-west.
Several days after the execution of Tzŭ Hsi’s favourite, the eunuch who
had escaped made his way back to Peking, and sent word to the Empress
through Li Lien-ying, another of her confidential attendants. At first
she could scarcely believe that her timorous and self-effacing colleague
could have dared to sign these Decrees on her own responsibility and
in secret, no matter what amount of pressure might have been brought
to bear upon her. When she realised what had occurred, the Palace
witnessed one of those outbursts of torrential rage with which it was to
become familiar in years to come. Swiftly making her way to the “Palace
of Benevolent Peace,” the residence of her Co-Regent, she wrathfully
demanded an explanation. Tzŭ An, terrified, endeavoured to put the whole
blame upon Prince Kung; but the plea did not serve her, and Tzŭ Hsi,
after a fierce quarrel, left, vowing vengeance on them both. This event
marked a turning point in the career of Yehonala, who, until then, had
maintained amicable relations with her less strong-minded colleague,
and all the appearances of equality in the Co-Regency. Henceforward she
devoted more time and closer attention to affairs of State, consolidating
her position and power with a clear determination to prevent any further
interference with her supreme authority. From this time forward she
definitely assumes the first place as ruler of China, relegating her
colleague completely to the background.
When, on the morning after the storm, Prince Kung appeared in the
Audience Hall, Tzŭ sternly rebuked him, threatening him with dismissal
and the forfeiture of his titles. For the time being, however, she
allowed him to go unpunished, but she never forgave the offence, and
she took her revenge in due season: he suffered the effects of her
resentment as long as he lived. Her first act was to pass over his son,
the rightful heir to the Throne, upon the death of T’ung-Chih. It is true
that in after years she permitted him to hold high office, but this was,
firstly, because she could not afford to dispense with his services, and,
secondly, because of her genuine affection for his daughter, whom she had
adopted as her own child.
An Te-hai was succeeded in the post of Chief Eunuch and confidential
attendant on her Majesty by Li Lien-ying, of whom mention has already
been made. For the next forty years this Palace servant was destined to
play a leading part in the government of China, to hold in his supple
hands the lives and deaths of thousands, to make and unmake the highest
officials of the Empire, and to levy rich tribute on the eighteen
provinces. As a youth of sixteen, when he “left the family”[23] (as
the Chinese euphemistically describe the making of a eunuch), Li was
remarkable for his handsome appearance and good manners, advantages which
never failed to carry weight with Tzŭ Hsi. It is recorded on trustworthy
authority that at an early stage in his career he had so ingratiated
himself with Her Majesty that he was permitted unusual liberties,
remaining seated in her presence, aye, even on the Throne itself. In the
privacy of her apartments he was allowed to discuss whatever subjects he
chose, without being spoken to, and as years passed and his familiarity
with the Old Buddha increased, he became her regular and authoritative
adviser on all important State business. In later years, when speaking
of Her Majesty to outsiders, even to high officials, he would use the
familiar pronoun “_Tsa-men_” meaning “we two,” which is usually reserved
for blood relations or persons on a footing of familiar equality, and he
was currently known among his followers by the almost sacrilegious title
of “Lord of nine thousand years,” the Emperor being Lord of ten thousand.
Only on solemn State occasions did he observe the etiquette prescribed
for his class and a modest demeanour.
Corrupt, avaricious, vindictive, and fiercely cruel to his enemies and
rivals, it must be said in Li’s favour that he was, at least, wholly
devoted and faithful to his Imperial mistress, and that at times of
peril he never failed to exert himself to the utmost for her comfort and
protection. He possessed moreover, other good qualities which appealed
not only to Tzŭ Hsi but to many of the high Manchu officials, who did not
consider it beneath their pride to throng for admission at his private
residence. He was cheerful, fond of a joke, an excellent actor[24] and
_raconteur_, and a generous host: above all, he was passing rich. At
the Empress Dowager’s funeral, in November 1909, this aged retainer
presented a pathetic and almost venerable spectacle, enough to make
one forget for a moment the accumulated horrors of his seventy years
of wickedness. Smitten with age and sickness, he could scarcely totter
the short distance which the _cortège_ had to make on foot; but of all
that vast throng of officials and Palace servants, he alone showed
unmistakable signs of deep and genuine grief. Watching the intelligent
features of this maker of secret history, one could not but wonder what
thoughts were passing through that subtle brain, as he shuffled past the
Pavilion of the Diplomatic Body, escorting for the last time his great
mistress,—the close confidant, not to say comrade, of all those long and
eventful years. For half a century he had served her with unremitting
zeal and fidelity, no small thing in a country when the allegiance of
servants is so commonly bought and sold. In his youth it was he who
walked and ran beside her chair as body servant; through what scenes of
splendour and squalor had they both passed since then, and now he was
left alone, surrounded by new faces and confronted by imminent peril of
change. Yet in spite of his long life and the enervating influences of
his profession, the old man’s powerful physique was by no means exhausted.
Too wise to follow in the footsteps of his unfortunate predecessor, Li
never made raids on his own account into the provinces, nor did he ever
attempt to gain or claim high official rank, remaining prudently content
with the fourth class button, which is the highest grade to which eunuchs
may legally aspire. But, under the protection and with the full knowledge
of the Empress Dowager, he organised a regular system of _corvées_,
squeezes and _douceurs_, levied on every high official in the Empire,
the proceeds of which he frequently shared with the Old Buddha herself.
As shown in another place, the Empress and her Chief Eunuch practically
made common cause and a common purse in collecting “tribute” and squeezes
during the wanderings of the Court in exile after 1900. At that time
the Chief Eunuch, less fortunate than his mistress, had lost the whole
of his buried treasure in the capital. It had been “_cached_” in a safe
place, known only to his intimate subordinates, but one of these sold the
secret to the French troops, who raided the hoard, a rich booty. One of
Li’s first steps after the Court’s return was to obtain the Old Buddha’s
permission to have the traitor beheaded, which was done without undue
formalities. The Chief Eunuch’s fortune is estimated by Peking bankers
to-day at about two millions sterling, invested chiefly in pawn-shops and
money-changing establishments at the capital; this sum represents roughly
his share of the provincial tribute and squeezes on official appointments
for the last eight years, and the total is not surprising when we bear
in mind that the price of one official post has been known to bring him
in as much as three hundred and twenty thousand taels, or say forty
thousand pounds.
One of the secrets of his wealth was that he never despised the day of
small things. The following is the text of a letter in our possession (of
which we reproduce a facsimile), written by him to one of the regular
contractors of the Palace, with whom he must have had many similar
transactions. The paper on which it is written is of the commonest,
and the visiting card which, as usual, accompanies it, is that of an
unpretentious business man; the style of the writer is terse and to the
point:—
“To my worthy friend, Mr. Wang, the Seventh (of his family):—
“Since I last had the pleasure of seeing you, you have been
constantly in my thoughts. I wish you, with all respect, long
life and prosperity: thus will your days fulfil my best hopes
of you. And now I beg politely to tell you that I, your younger
brother,[25] am quite ashamed of the emptiness of my purse and
I therefore beg that you, good Sir, will be so good as to lend
me notes to the amount of fifteen hundred taels, which sum
kindly hand to the bearer of this letter. I look forward to a
day for our further conversation,
“Your younger brother,
“Li Lien-ying.”
As to the amount, Li knew exactly how much the contractors and furnishers
of the Palace should pay on every occasion, and that there was no need to
question the possibility of the “loan” not being forthcoming.
[Illustration: Facsimile of Letter written by Chief Eunuch Li Lien-ying.]
That he encouraged lavish expenditure at the Court is certain, and
scarcely a matter for wonder, but his control of finance extended far
beyond the Privy Purse, and wrought great harm to the Empire on more
than one historic occasion. For instance, China’s humiliating defeat
at the hands of Japan in 1894 was very largely due to his diversion of
vast sums of money from the Navy to the reconstruction and decoration
of the Summer Palace, a work from which he and his underlings profited
to no small extent. In 1885, Prince Ch’un had been appointed head of the
Admiralty Board, assisted by Prince Ch’ing, Li Hung-chang and the Marquis
Tseng. After the death of the Marquis, however (who had been a moving
spirit in the organisation of the Board), Naval affairs passed into the
control of a clique of young and inexperienced Princes, and when, in
1889, the Emperor assumed the direction of the Government, one of his
first acts was to order the re-building of the Summer Palace, which
Imperial residence had remained in ruins since its destruction by the
Allies in 1861. There being no funds available, Li advised that the Naval
appropriations should be devoted to this purpose, so that the Old Buddha
might be suitably provided with a residence; this was accordingly done,
and the Naval Department became a branch of the Imperial Household (Nei
Wu Fu) for all purposes of Government finance. When the war with Japan
broke out, the Empress Dowager issued orders that the Naval Department
should be abolished. This order evoked very general criticism, but, as
the Department and the Summer Palace rebuilding fund had come to be
treated as one and the same account, her Decree simply meant that as
the Palace restoration was now complete, and as the funds were quite
exhausted, the account in question might be considered closed. There
was obviously nothing to be gained by useless enquiries for money to be
transferred from the Palace to the Navy.
In 1889 the Chief Eunuch accompanied Prince Ch’un on his first tour of
inspection to the northern Naval ports, including the Naval bases of Port
Arthur and Weihaiwei. It was a matter of very general comment at the time
that the honours paid to the eunuch were noticeably greater than those
shown to the Prince. Every officer in the Peiyang squadron, from Admiral
Ting downwards, did his best to ingratiate himself with this powerful
Chamberlain, and to become enrolled on the list of his _protégés_, so
that he was _entouré_ with all manner of bribery and adulation. Many
critics, foreign and Chinese, have cast on Li Hung-chang the blame for
the disasters of the Japanese war, but they surely overlook the fact, to
which even the great Viceroy dared not openly refer, that nine-tenths
of the funds which should have gone to the upkeep and provisioning of
the Navy and the maintenance of the Coast Defences, had been diverted by
the Chief Eunuch to the Palace (and much of them to his own pocket), so
that the ships’ crews were disaffected, and their ordnance defective, in
the hour of need. Readers of Pepys will remember a very similar state
of affairs obtaining in the British Navy, happily without affecting
the _moral_ of its officers and men, at a similarly critical period of
British history.
Li Lien-ying’s hatred of the Emperor Kuang-Hsü was beyond doubt a most
important factor in the _coup d’état_, and in the subsequent estrangement
and hostility between Tzŭ Hsi and the nominal ruler of the Empire; there
are not lacking those who say that it had much to do with the Emperor’s
death, which certainly created no surprise in the capital. The eunuch
hated and feared the Emperor’s reforming zeal, as well as the Cantonese
advisers who in 1898 came swarming to Peking as the apostles of a new
dispensation, and it was therefore only natural that he should become the
foremost adviser and partisan of the reactionaries and their emissary
in urging the Empress to resume control of affairs. It is quite safe to
assert that had his great influence with Tzŭ Hsi been exercised against,
instead of for, the Boxers, had he abstained from encouraging her
superstitious belief in their magic arts, the anti-foreign movement would
never have gone further than the borders of Shantung, and the Chinese
people would have been spared the heavy burden of the indemnities. How
interesting a study of Asiatic politics and Court life presents itself
in the spectacle of this cobbler’s apprentice and his influence on the
destinies of so great a race! Seeing him as he was on the day of his
mistress’s burial, how bitter must have been the innermost thoughts of
the man, left alone on the brink of the grave with the ill-gotten wealth
that his country has paid for so heavily!
At the height of the Boxer crisis when the power wielded by Li Lien-ying
was enormous, it was the custom of Prince Tuan, when explaining his views
to the Empress Dowager and the Grand Council, to emphasise the fact that
no step had been taken except with the advice and approval of the Chief
Eunuch. “Such and such a Decree,” he would say, “is issued with the
chief Chamberlain Li’s approval.” His object in so doing was to head off
opposition, for he well knew that few would dare to oppose any measures
that the Chief Eunuch approved. When Her Majesty granted rewards to the
Boxers and offered head-money to the troops for the killing of Europeans,
it was at Li’s urgent request that she consented to defray these unusual
charges from her Privy Purse.
When the relieving forces drew near to Peking and it became clear, even
to the most obstinate, that the Boxer bolt was shot, the Chief Eunuch
passed through a period of deep depression and mortification, not only
because of the failure of his prophecies, but because it was clear to
all at Court that his Imperial mistress, seeking, as was her wont, a
scapegoat, was disposed to vent her wrath upon him. Herself deeply
stirred by fear and wrath, it was only natural that she should turn
on him, who had been foremost in advising her to follow the path of
destruction. On the day when the relief of the Legations took place, Duke
Lan rushed headlong into the Palace, loudly announcing that the foreign
devils were already within the city walls. Tzŭ Hsi turned on him and
asked how he could reconcile such a statement with his previous boasts.
“I presume that the devils have flown here,” said she, “for you were
telling me only two days ago of our glorious victories near Tientsin;
and yet all the time you knew well, as I knew, that the Viceroy and the
Li Ping-heng were both dead.” Li Lien-ying, who was standing close by,
hearing this, went out and informed the trembling crowd of eunuchs,
adding, “The Old Buddha is in an unspeakable rage. There is nothing for
it; we must make our escape and retire into Shensi. There we will await
the arrival of our reinforcements which will easily drive all these
devils back into the sea.” But the hardships and dangers of the flight
told even more severely on the chief eunuch than on the Old Buddha
herself, and it was not until the Court’s safe establishment at Hsi-an
that he recovered his self-possession.
Certain information conveyed by an official of the Household in exile to
a fellow provincial at Peking, throws considerable light on the manner in
which the Court lived during those troublous days, and the part played
in affairs of State by the chief eunuch and Tzŭ Hsi’s other favourites
of the Household. We take the following disconnected notes from this
correspondence.
When Ts’en Ch’un-hsüan (Governor of Shensi) came to meet the Court on the
Shansi frontier, the Old Buddha, raising the curtain of her sedan-chair,
looked out and said to him, “Have you any idea of what we have suffered
in Peking?” “I do not know all,” he replied. Pointing angrily at Li, she
said, “It was all his doing; he has brought ruin upon me.” The chief
eunuch hung his head, and for once had nothing to say. Later on, when the
fearless Ts’en saw the eunuchs under Li’s orders mercilessly harassing
the countryside in their search for plunder, he promptly reported matters
to the Empress and obtained her somewhat reluctant permission to execute
three of the offenders on the spot. He was sorely tempted to include the
chief eunuch in the number of his victims, but realising how greatly Her
Majesty depended upon her favourite attendant, he feared to run the risk
of inconveniencing and offending her. Nevertheless, Li had a narrow
escape. Later on, when Li had recovered his equanimity, and the Court
had settled down to its usual routine, the eunuch revenged himself on
the Governor, with the help of Jung Lu, by having him transferred to the
Governorship of Shansi. He did this, not only because the post in Shansi
was considered a dangerous one, owing to the fear of pursuit by the
Allies, but because Ts’en had gradually made himself most useful to Her
Majesty by superintending the expenditure of her Household. The Governor
was justly famous throughout the Empire for his incorruptible honesty,
so that, when placed in charge of the Palace accounts, these speedily
showed a very considerable reduction in expenditure. The first result
of this _régime_ was to put a stop to all the “squeeze” of the eunuchs,
and to place their salaries upon a definite and moderate basis. Ts’en
rapidly attained an intimate and confidential position with Her Majesty,
to the great and increasing wrath of the chief eunuch, who left no stone
unturned to injure him, and eventually succeeded, with the help of Jung
Lu, in inducing Her Majesty to dispense with his personal services. For
over a month, however, the Old Buddha spent hours daily discussing public
and private affairs with this fearless and upright official, and it would
have been well for her had she retained him and others of his quality
about her to counteract the corrupt tendencies of her Manchu clansmen and
the eunuchs. After Ts’en’s transfer to Shansi, the chief eunuch did not
scruple to suppress and destroy many of the memorials which as Governor
he addressed to the Old Buddha, and which Li did not desire his mistress
to see. Gradually he re-established himself as completely as before in
the confidence and favour of his mistress, and before the Court’s return
to Peking he had become if anything more familiarly arrogant than at any
previous stage in his career. At audiences given to the highest officials
he would even go so far as to refuse to transmit Her Majesty’s orders,
bluntly informing her that he was tired and that there had been enough
public business for that day!
The vast quantities of tribute levied by the Court from the Southern
Provinces at this time were handled in the first instance by Li
Lien-ying, whose apartments were stacked with heaps of dragon robes,
tribute silk and other valuables. Of all the tribute paid in bullion,
the Empress Dowager’s share was one-half, while the eunuchs divided
one-fifth, and the balance was handed over to Jung Lu for military
purposes and his own emolument. So profitable was the eunuchs’ business
at Hsi-an and Kai-feng, that Li Lien-ying did his utmost to dissuade the
Old Buddha from returning to Peking, endeavouring to frighten her by
alarming prognostications of the vengeance of the foreign Powers. Li’s
motives were not entirely mercenary, however, for there is no doubt that
for a long time he fully expected to find his own name on the “black
list” of the Legations, and that it fully deserved to figure there. He
directed the second eunuch, named Ts’ui, to communicate to him daily
the latest news from Peking, and it was only when reassured by reports
from Prince Ch’ing, that his courage returned, and his opposition to the
Court’s return ceased. The conciliatory attitude, which he eventually
adopted towards the Empress Dowager’s reform policy, was largely induced
by the good advice which he received from Jung Lu, who strongly urged him
to control his reactionary opinions and violent temper.