boldly disregarding the strict etiquette which forbids any provincial
official from visiting the capital without a special summons by Edict,
and the still stricter rules that guard the _entrée_, of the Palace.
Un-ushered he entered the Empress’s presence, and kowtowing thrice,
exclaimed, “Sanctuary, your Majesty!” “What sanctuary do you require
in the Forbidden precincts, where no harm can come to you, and where
you have no right to be?” replied the Old Buddha. Jung Lu proceeded to
lay before her all the details of the plot. Grasping the situation and
rising immediately to its necessities with the courage and masculine
intelligence that enabled her to overcome all obstacles, she directed him
to send word secretly to the leaders of the Conservative party, summoning
them to immediate audience in the Palace by the Lake. (The Emperor was
still in the Forbidden City.) In less than two hours the whole of the
Grand Council, several of the Manchu princes and nobles (Prince Ch’ing,
with his usual fine “flair” for a crisis, had applied for sick leave and
was therefore absent) and the high officials of the Boards, including the
two Ministers whom the Emperor had cashiered (Hsü Ying-ku’ei and Huai Ta
Pu) were assembled in the presence of the Empress. On their knees, the
assembled officials besought her to resume the reins of government and
to save their ancient Empire from the evils of a barbarian civilisation.
It was speedily arranged that the guards in the Forbidden City should
be replaced by men from Jung Lu’s own corps, and that, in the meantime,
he should return to his post in Tientsin and await further orders. The
conference broke up at about midnight. The Emperor was due to enter the
Chung Ho Hall of the Palace at 5.30 the next morning to peruse the litany
drawn up by the Board of Rites, which he was to recite next day at the
autumnal sacrifice to the Tutelary Deities. After leaving that hall, he
was seized by the guards and eunuchs, conveyed to the Palace on the small
island in the middle of the lake (the “Ocean Terrace”) and informed that
the Empress Dowager would visit him later. The following Decree was
thereupon issued by the Empress Dowager in the Emperor’s name:—
“The nation is now passing through a crisis, and wise guidance
is needed in all branches of the public service. WE ourselves
have laboured diligently, night and day, to perform OUR
innumerable duties, but in spite of all OUR anxious energy and
care WE are in constant fear lest delay should be the undoing
of the country. WE now respectfully recall the fact that Her
Imperial Majesty the Empress Dowager has on two occasions since
the beginning of the reign of H. M. T’ung-Chih, performed the
functions of Regent, and that in her administrations of the
Government she displayed complete and admirable qualities of
perfection which enabled her successfully to cope with every
difficulty that arose. Recollecting the serious burden of the
responsibility WE owe to OUR ancestors and to the nation, WE
have repeatedly besought Her Majesty to condescend once more to
administer the Government. Now she has graciously honoured US
by granting OUR prayer, a blessing indeed for all OUR subjects.
From this day forth Her Majesty will transact the business of
Government in the side hall of the Palace, and on the day after
to-morrow WE ourselves at the head of OUR Princes and Ministers
shall perform obeisance before Her in the Hall of Diligent
Government. The Yamêns concerned shall respectfully make the
arrangements necessary for this ceremonial. The words of the
Emperor.”
Another Decree followed close upon the above, cashiering the Censor Sung
Po-lu, on the ground of his generally evil reputation and recommendation
of bad characters (_i.e._, the reformer Liang Ch’i-ch’ao). The Empress
had a special grudge against this Censor because he had ventured to
impeach her morals in a recent memorial, but as he had taken no part in
the conspiracy against her person she spared his life.
[Illustration: CIRCULAR THRONE HALL IN THE GROUNDS OF THE LAKE PALACE
LOOTED BY ALLIED TROOPS IN 1900.
_Photo, Betines, Peking._]
[Illustration: PAVILION ON LAKE TO THE WEST OF FORBIDDEN CITY.
_Photo, Betines, Peking._]
Tzŭ Hsi in due course proceeded to the “Ocean Terrace,” accompanied only
by Li Lien-ying, who had been ordered to replace the Emperor’s eunuchs
by creatures of his own. (Kuang Hsü’s former attendants were either put
to death or banished to the post roads.) A Manchu who heard an account
of the interview from Duke Kuei Hsiang, Tz’u Hsi’s younger brother, is
our authority for what occurred at this dramatic meeting. The Empress
Dowager bluntly informed Kuang Hsü that she had decided to spare his life
and, for the present at any rate, to allow him to retain the throne. He
would, however, be kept henceforward under strict surveillance, and every
word of his would be reported to her. As to his schemes of reform, which
at first she had encouraged, little dreaming to what depths of folly his
infatuate presumption would lead him, they would all be repealed. How
dared he forget what great benefits he owed her, his elevation to the
throne and her generosity in allowing him to administer the government,
he a poor puppet, who had no right to be Emperor at all, and whom she
could unmake at will? There was not, she said, a single Manchu in high
place but wished his removal, and urged her to resume the Regency. True,
he had sympathisers among the Chinese, traitors all; with them she would
deal in due course. Kuang Hsü’s secondary consort (the Chen Fei or Pearl
Concubine, the only one of his wives with whom he seems to have been on
affectionate terms) knelt then before Tzŭ Hsi, imploring her to spare the
Emperor further reproaches. She actually dared to suggest that he was,
after all, the lawful Sovereign and that not even the Empress Dowager
could set aside the mandate of Heaven. Tzŭ Hsi angrily dismissed her from
the Presence, ordering her to be confined in another part of the Palace,
where she remained until, in 1900, there came an opportunity in which the
vindictive Empress took summary revenge on the presumptuous concubine.[56]
The Empress Consort, with whom Kuang Hsü was hardly on speaking terms,
was commanded to remain with him. She, as Tzŭ Hsi’s niece, could be
trusted to spy upon the Emperor and report all his doings. He was allowed
to see no one but her and the eunuchs in attendance, except in the
presence of the Empress Dowager.
To the end of his life Kuang Hsü blamed Yüan Shih-k’ai, and him alone,
for having betrayed him. To Yüan he owed his humiliation, the end of all
his cherished plans of government and the twenty-three months of solitary
confinement which he had to endure on the “Ocean Terrace.” Almost his
last words, as he lay dying, were to bid his brothers remember his long
agony and promise to be revenged upon the author of his undoing. Of Jung
Lu he said that it was but natural that he should consider first his duty
to the Empress Dowager and seek to warn her; and, after all, as he had
planned Jung Lu’s death, he could hardly expect from him either devotion
or loyalty. The Old Buddha’s resentment was also natural; he had plotted
against her and failed. But Yüan Shih-k’ai had solemnly sworn loyalty and
obedience. The Emperor never willingly spoke to him again, even when, as
Viceroy of Chihli, Yüan came to the height of his power.
To-day Yüan lives in retirement, and under the constant shadow of fear;
for the Emperor’s brother, the Regent, has kept his promise. Such are
the intricate humanities of the inner circle around and about the Dragon
Throne, the never-ending problem of the human equation as a factor in the
destinies of peoples.
XV
TZŬ HSI RESUMES THE REGENCY (1898)
Kuang Hsü’s reign was over; there remained to him only the Imperial
title. He had had his chance; in the enthusiasm of youth and new ideas
he had played a desperate game against the powers of darkness in high
places, and he had lost. Once more, as after the death of T’ung-Chih, Tzŭ
Hsi could make a virtue of her satisfied ambitions. She had given her
nephew a free hand, she had retired from the field, leaving him to steer
the ship of State: if he had now steered it into troublous and dangerous
seas, if, by common consent, she were again called to take the helm, this
was the doing of Heaven and no fault of hers. She could no more be blamed
for Kuang Hsü’s folly than for the vicious habits and premature death
of her son, which had brought her back to power 23 years before. It was
clear (and there were many voices to reassure her of the fact) that the
stars in their courses were working for the continuance of her unfettered
authority, and that any trifling assistance which she might have given
them would not be too closely scrutinised.
Kuang Hsü’s reign was over; but his person (frail, melancholy tenement)
remained, and Tzŭ Hsi was never enamoured of half measures or ambiguous
positions. From the day when the pitiful monarch entered his pavilion
prison on the “Ocean Terrace,” she began to make arrangements for his
“mounting the Dragon” and “visiting the Nine Springs” in the orthodox
classical manner, and for providing the Throne with another occupant
whose youth, connections and docility would enable her to hold the
Regency indefinitely. Nevertheless, because of the turbulent temper of
the southern provinces and possible manifestations of Europe’s curious
sympathy with the Emperor’s Utopian dreams, she realised the necessity
for proceeding with caution and decorum. It was commonly reported
throughout the city in the beginning of October that the Emperor would
die with the end of the Chinese year.
Kuang Hsü was a prisoner in his Palace, doomed, as he well knew; yet must
he play the puppet Son of Heaven and perform each season’s appointed
posturings. On the 8th day of the 8th Moon he appeared therefore, as
ordered by his attendants, and in the presence of his whole Court
performed the nine prostrations and other proper acts of obeisance before
Her Majesty Tzŭ Hsi, in recognition of his own nonentity and her supreme
authority. In the afternoon, escorted by a strong detachment of Jung
Lu’s troops, he went from the Lake Palace to sacrifice at the Altar of
the Moon. Thus, pending the _coup-de-grâce_, the wretched Emperor went
through the empty ceremonies of State ritual; high priest, that was
himself to be the next victim, how bitter must have been his thoughts as
he was borne back with Imperial pomp and circumstance to his lonely place
of humiliation!
Tzŭ Hsi then settled down to her work of government, returning to it
with a zest by no means diminished by the years spent in retreat. And
first she must justify the policy of reaction to herself, to her high
officials, and the world at large. She must get rid of offenders and
surround herself with men after her own heart.
A few days after the Autumn festival and the Emperor’s melancholy
excursion, Her Majesty proceeded to remind the Imperial Clansmen that
their position would not protect them against the consequences of
disloyalty; she was always much exercised (remembering the Tsai Yüan
conspiracy) at any sign of intriguing amongst her Manchu kinsmen. In
this case her warning took the form of a Decree in which she sentenced
the “Beileh” Tsai Ch’u[57] to perpetual confinement in the “Empty
Chamber” of the Clan Court. Tsai Ch’u had had the audacity to sympathise
with the Emperor’s reform schemes; he had also had the bad luck to marry
one of Tzŭ Hsi’s nieces and to be upon the worst of terms with her.
When therefore he advised the Emperor, in the beginning of the Hundred
Days, to put a stop, once and for all, to the Old Buddha’s interference
in State affairs, the “mean one of his inner chamber” did not fail to
report the fact to Her Majesty, and thus to enlist her sympathies and
activities, from the outset, on the side of the reactionaries.
At the time immediately following the _coup d’état_, public opinion
at the Capital was divided as to the merits of the Emperor’s proposed
reforms and the wisdom of their suppression, but the political instincts
of the tribute-fed metropolis are, generally speaking, dormant, and what
it chiefly respects is the energetic display of power. So that, on the
whole, sympathy was with the Old Buddha. She had, moreover, a Bismarckian
way of guiding public opinion, of directing undercurrents of information
through the eunuchs and tea-house gossip, in a manner calculated to
appeal to the instincts of the _literati_ and the _bourgeois_; in the
present instance stress was laid on the Emperor’s lack of filial piety,
as proved by his plotting against his aged and august aunt (a thing
unpardonable in the eyes of the orthodox Confucianist), and on the fact
that he enjoyed the sympathy and support of foreigners—an argument
sufficient to damn him in the eyes of even the most progressive Chinese.
It came, therefore, to be the generally accepted opinion that His
Majesty had shown deplorable want of judgment and self-control, and
that the Empress Dowager was fully justified in resuming control of the
government. This opinion even came to be accepted and expressed by those
Legations which had originally professed to see in the Emperor’s reforms
the dawn of a new era for China. So elastic is diplomacy in following
the line of the least resistance, so adroit (in the absence of a policy
of its own) in accepting and condoning any _fait accompli_, that it
was not long before the official attitude of the Legations—including
the British—had come to deprecate the Emperor’s unfortunate haste in
introducing reforms, reforms which every foreigner in China had urged
for years, and which, accepted in principle by the Empress since 1900,
have again been welcomed as proof of China’s impending regeneration. In
June 1898, the British Minister had seen in the Emperor’s Reform Edicts
proof that “the Court had at last thoroughly recognised a real need for
radical reform.”[58] In October, when the Chief Reformer (K’ang Yu-wei)
had been saved from Tzŭ Hsi’s vengeance by the British Consul-General
at Shanghai and conveyed by a British warship to the protection of a
British Colony (under the mistaken impression that England would actively
intervene in the cause of progress and on grounds of self-interest if not
of humanity), we find the tide of expediency turned to recognition of
the fact that “the Empress Dowager and the Manchu party were seriously
alarmed for their own safety, and looked upon the Reform movement as
inimical to Manchu rule”![58] And two months later, influenced no doubt
by the impending season of peace and good will, the Marquess of Salisbury
is seriously informed by Sir Claude Macdonald that the wives of the
foreign Representatives, seven in all, had been received in audience by
the Empress Dowager on the anniversary of her sixty-fourth birthday,
and that Her Majesty “made a most favourable impression, both by the
personal interest she took in all her guests and by her courteous
amiability.”[58] On which occasion the puppet Emperor was exhibited, to
comply with the formalities, and was made to shake hands with all the
ladies. And so the curtain was rung down, and the Reform play ended, to
the satisfaction of all (or nearly all) concerned.
Nevertheless, the British Minister and others, disturbed at the
persistent rumours that “the Empress Dowager was about to proceed to
extreme steps in regard to the Emperor,”[58] went so far as to warn
the Chinese Government against anything so disturbing to the European
sense of fitness and decency. Foreign countries, the Yamên was told,
would view with displeasure and alarm his sudden demise. When the news
of the British Minister’s intervention became known in the tea-houses
and recorded in the Press, much indignation was expressed: this was a
purely domestic question, for which precedents existed in plenty and in
which foreigners’ advice was inadmissible. The Emperor’s acceptance of
new-fangled foreign ideas was a crime in the eyes of the Manchus, but his
enlistment of foreign sympathy and support was hateful to Manchus and
Chinese alike.
Matters soon settled down, however, into the old well-worn grooves,
the people satisfied and even glad in the knowledge that the Old
Buddha was once more at the helm. In the capital the news had been
sedulously spread—in order to prepare the way for the impending drama
of expiation—that Kuang Hsü had planned to murder Her Majesty, and his
present punishment was therefore regarded as mild beyond his deserts.[59]
Scholars, composing essays appropriate to the occasion, freely compared
His Majesty to that Emperor of the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 762) who had
instigated the murdering of the Empress Dowager of his day. Kuang Hsü’s
death was therefore freely predicted and its effects discounted; there
is no doubt that it would have caused little or no comment in the north
of China, however serious its consequences might have been in the south.
The public mind having been duly prepared, the Empress Dowager, in the
name of the prospective victim, issued a Decree stating that the Son of
Heaven was seriously ill; no surprise or apprehension was expressed, and
the sending of competent physicians from the provinces to attend His
Majesty was recognised as a necessary concession to formalities. “Ever
since the 4th Moon,” said this Decree (_i.e._, since the beginning of the
hundred days of reform), “I have been grievously ill; nor can I find any
alleviation of my sickness.” It was the _pro formâ_ announcement of his
impending despatch, and as such it was received by the Chinese people.
Amongst the doctors summoned to attend His Majesty was Ch’en Lien-fang,
for many years the most celebrated physician in China. The following
account of his experiences at the capital and the nature of his duties,
was supplied by himself at the time, to one of the writers, for
publication in _The Times_.
“When the Edict was issued calling upon the provincial Viceroys
and Governors to send native doctors of distinction to Peking
to advise in regard to the Emperor’s illness, Chen Lien-fang
received orders from the Governor at Soochow to leave for the
north without delay. This in itself, apart from the uncongenial
and unremunerative nature of the duty (of which Ch’en was well
aware), was no light undertaking for a man of delicate physique
whose age was over three score years and ten; but there was no
possibility of evading the task. He according left his large
practice in the charge of two confidential assistants, or
pupils, and, having received from the Governor a sum of 6,000
taels for travelling expenses and remuneration in advance, made
his way to Peking and reported for duty to the Grand Council.
When he arrived there, he found three other native physicians
of considerable repute already in attendance, summoned in
obedience to the Imperial commands. Dr. Déthève, of the French
Legation, had already paid his historical visit to the Emperor,
and his remarkable diagnosis of the Son of Heaven’s symptoms
was still affording amusement to the Legations. The aged native
physician spoke in undisguised contempt both of the French
doctor’s comments on the case and of his suggestions for its
treatment. His own description of the Emperor’s malady was
couched in language not unlike that which writers of historical
novels attribute to the physicians of Europe in the Middle
Ages; he spoke reverently of influence and vapours at work in
the august person of his Sovereign, learnedly of heat-flushings
and their occult causes, and plainly of things which are more
suited to Chinese than to British readers. Nevertheless, his
description pointed clearly to disease of the respiratory
organs—which he said had existed for over twelve years—to
general debility, and to a feverish condition which he ascribed
to mental anxiety combined with physical weakness. Before he
left Peking (about the middle of November) the fever had abated
and the patient’s symptoms had decidedly improved; the case
was, however, in his opinion, of so serious a nature that he
decided to leave it, if possible, in the hands of his younger
_confrères_—an object which by dint of bribing certain Court
officials he eventually achieved. Asked if he considered the
Emperor’s condition critical, he replied oracularly that if he
lived to see the Chinese New Year his strength would thereafter
return gradually with the spring, and the complete restoration
of his health might be expected.
“Some few days after his arrival in Peking, Ch’en was summoned
to audience by orders conveyed through a member of the Grand
Council; the Emperor and the Dowager Empress were awaiting
his visit in a hall on the south side of the Palace. The
consultation was curiously indicative of the divinity which
hedges about the ruler of the Middle Kingdom; suggestive,
too, of the solidity of that conservatism which dictates
the inner policy of China. Ch’en entered the presence of
his Sovereign on his knees, crossing the apartment in that
position, after the customary kowtows. The Emperor and the
Dowager Empress were seated at opposite sides of a low table
on the daïs, and faced each other in that position during the
greater part of the interview. The Emperor appeared pale and
listless, had a troublesome irritation of the throat, and was
evidently feverish; the thin oval of his face, clearly defined
features, and aquiline nose gave him, in the physician’s eyes
(to use his own words), the appearance of a foreigner. The
Empress, who struck him as an extremely well-preserved and
intelligent-looking woman, seemed to be extremely solicitous
as to the patient’s health and careful for his comfort. As it
would have been a serious breach of etiquette for the physician
to ask any questions of His Majesty, the Empress proceeded to
describe his symptoms, the invalid occasionally signifying
confirmation of what was said by a word or a nod. During this
monologue, the physician, following the customary procedure at
Imperial audiences, kept his gaze concentrated upon the floor
until, at the command of the Empress, and still kneeling, he
was permitted to place one hand upon the Emperor’s wrist. There
was no feeling of the pulse; simply contact with the flat of
the hand, first on one side of the wrist and then on the other.
This done, the Empress continued her narrative of the patient’s
sufferings; she described the state of his tongue and the
symptoms of ulceration in the mouth and throat, but as it was
not permissible for the doctor to examine these, he was obliged
to make the best of a somewhat unprofessional description. As
he wisely observed, it is difficult to look at a patient’s
tongue when his exalted rank compels you to keep your eyes
fixed rigidly on the floor. The Empress having concluded
her remarks on the case, Ch’en was permitted to withdraw
and to present to the Grand Council his diagnosis, together
with advice as to future treatment, which was subsequently
communicated officially to the Throne. The gist of his advice
was to prescribe certain tonics of the orthodox native type
and to suggest the greatest possible amount of mental and
physical rest.”[60]