HER MAJESTY THE EMPRESS DOWAGER
The current story that the Empress Dowager was a slave-girl and is
of low origin is absolutely false. Her Majesty is the daughter of a
Lieutenant-General of the Manchu forces, a position only attainable by
members of the highest Manchu nobility. She belongs to the family of
the White Banner, second only to that of the Yellow Banner, of which
the Emperor of China, himself, is the head. At the time of the conquest
of China by the Manchus, there was a fierce struggle between these two
powerful families for the supremacy, and the Yellow Banner finally
carried the day. The Empress Dowager was brought up with great care and
highly educated by her father, a noble of great acquirements.
Like all young Manchu ladies of rank, she went to the Palace for
presentation to the then Empress and Empress Dowager between the
ages of seventeen and twenty. She immediately attracted them by her
cleverness and wit, as well as by her charm and beauty, and, being
of an honorable and high Manchu family, was at once considered as a
possible wife for the Emperor. On presentation to the Emperor, she met
also with his approval and was then chosen as one of the wives and
given her establishment at Court. She was the fifth chosen, and hence
ranked fifth on her marriage and was taken precedence of by the four
others who were married before she was.
She became at once a favorite, both with the Dowager Empress and
Empress, the first wife, as well as with the Emperor. She soon took
precedence over the wife just over her and became fourth wife,
for secondary wives can mount in degree. A brilliant woman, with
exceptional qualities, takes her place in a Chinese family, as in the
world, above that of her less endowed sister, unless this latter should
be the first wife. Her place can never be taken, except in case of
her death. The first wife of the Emperor Hsien-Feng died two months
before he came to the Throne and was never Empress. There were two
years of mourning, prescribed by the rites, during which time there was
no official Empress. Then the first of his secondary wives was made
Empress, and she it was who was the first wife when the present Empress
Dowager went into the Palace as fifth wife.
Two years after her marriage, she gave birth to a son, and five
years later, on the death of his father, this son became the Emperor
Tung-Chih; the young mother, together with the Empress, the first wife,
who had adopted him, were given the title of “Dowager Empress.” They
were appointed Co-Regents for the boy Emperor, and bore, respectively,
the titles of Empress of the Eastern Palace and Empress of the Western
Palace, with equal rank and power. She of the Eastern Palace was a
woman of quiet tastes, given to literary pursuits, with none of the
remarkable executive ability of her Co-Regent, the Empress of the
Western Palace, the great Tze-Hsi, who still rules the destiny of
China. Though so different, they lived amicably together, thoroughly
appreciated each other’s qualities, and are said to have had a sincere
affection for each other, which never weakened during the whole of
their long association, first as wives of the Emperor Hsien-Feng,
then as Regents for his son, and afterward as Regents for the present
Emperor Kwang-Hsu. The amicable relations of these two Empresses were
only severed by the death of the Empress of the Eastern Palace in 1881,
when posthumous honors were lavished upon her by the present Empress
Dowager.
China was passing through troublous times when the young Tung-Chih, son
of the Empress Dowager, came to the Throne. His father, the Emperor
Hsien-Feng died at Jehol, far from Peking, where the Court had gone at
the approach of the foreigners, who were aiding in quelling the Taiping
rebellion. The times were critical. The integrity of China, the future,
even, of the Empire, depended upon the action of its ministers and
its rulers at this crisis. In the absence of the Court from Peking,
some reactionary ministers, strongly anti-foreign, claimed they had
been appointed by the late Emperor as Regents for young Tung-Chih.
Had his mother and adopted mother, the two Empress Dowagers, joined
them, anarchy might have followed; and, at least, there would have
been serious foreign complications, for this anti-foreign party would
never have come to terms with the foreigners, who were then in Peking.
It was most important for the ruling Power, that is, the party which
should become Regents, to have the support of the Empresses who held
the Sacred Person of the young Emperor, under their care. They were
approached by both parties. The young Empress of the Western Palace,
absolutely unversed in Statecraft, and, up to that time, ignorant
of all that was passing outside the Palace walls, showed wonderful
perspicacity and rare judgment in her keen grasp of the situation at
this time. She repudiated the anti-foreign party and joined forces
with Prince Kung, whose name was then synonymous with Progress in
China--an enlightened Prince and the most pro-foreign of all the
Imperial Family--and she and the first Empress were appointed Regents
for the young Emperor. Prince Kung was the Minister who, thanks to
this coöperation of the Empress of the Western Palace, carried the
negotiations with France and England to a successful conclusion.
This first political act of the young Empress of the Western Palace
brought her into immediate notice, and showed the progressive statesmen
of China that they had an intelligent aid in her. The Grand Council
and the Princes of the Imperial Family at once recognized her superior
ability and they have always stanchly supported her throughout her
career and remained true to her in all vicissitudes. In fact, she has
known how to inspire loyalty and great devotion in all by whom she has
been surrounded.
It was through her wonderful grasp of the situation at this time and
the great executive ability she showed later, that the two Empresses
brought the Emperor Tung-Chih through his minority, and when he began
to reign in his eighteenth year, internal troubles had been quelled and
foreign complications avoided, and China was in a much more settled
and prosperous condition than when he came to the Throne, twelve years
before.
There was an interval of but two years in their long Regency for the
two Emperors, when the Emperor Tung-Chih, having reached his majority,
reigned. The death of her son, the Emperor, at the early age of twenty,
after only two years of actual reigning, was a dreadful blow to the
Empress of the Western Palace. She had, however, but a short time for
grief. With heart bleeding and sore, she was obliged almost immediately
to again assume the duties of Co-Regent with the Empress of the Eastern
Palace, for her nephew and adopted son, the young Emperor Kwang-Hsu.
The two Empresses had then another boy Emperor only five years old, to
protect, prepare for reigning, and to govern for.
One has only to be cognizant of events in China since the Dowager
Empress Tze-Hsi has ruled, to know the facts of her government. When
she took up the Regency, China was seething with rebellion and there
were foreign complications, requiring great tact and keen intelligence.
She has steered the ship of State between the two extremes, though she
has sometimes run it against the rocks of Scylla in trying to avoid the
whirlpool of Charybdis, and she has always been a “moderate” in her
political course. China having, for so many centuries, had no relations
with foreign powers, her statesmen being so absolutely unversed in
modern methods of diplomacy, has not made a brilliant record in her
foreign relations, and she has so frequently been made the dupe of
European diplomacy, it is not wonderful China has tried to defend
herself by duplicity: using what she thought the same methods she saw
were so efficacious in the hands of Europeans.
When the Empress Dowager gave up the reins of government to the Emperor
Kwang-Hsu, in the year 1889, after twenty-eight years of Regency, the
Great Empire was at that time in a prosperous condition. Its ports had
been opened to foreign trade, a fine Customs organization had been
established upon a firm basis, and China was at peace with the world.
The first part of the young Emperor’s reign was uneventful. He was
directed in most things by his ministers, and followed the moderate
policy laid down by the Empress Dowager. He seemed to have no special
views of his own and no designs of progress for China. Until the war
with Japan with reference to the suzerainty of Corea, in 1894, he
was a passive figurehead. The Japanese victories changed all this.
Their victory gave China one of her most humiliating lessons; for the
Chinese, who had given Japan the nucleus of its literature, its art
and architecture, looked down upon the Japanese as a race of imitators
and had a deep-seated contempt for them as a nation. This victory
almost awoke the passive leviathan--that is, China--from its long
sleep of national self-content. The young Emperor, smarting under this
galling defeat, felt that China had only been conquered by Japan’s
use of modern methods of warfare and determined on sweeping reforms
in the government. Full of youthful enthusiasm, he felt he could
put the Great Empire on the road to progress and wished to institute
sweeping reforms in all departments. He immediately abandoned the
moderate policy of the Regency and surrounded himself by a number of
hot-headed, self-seeking reformers, each pushing some new method of
reform. The reformers wished, at one fell swoop, to change the system
of education, the system of government--in fact to make such sweeping
changes that this conservative nation would have risen in a mass had
they been carried out. Besides the Radicals, who were the reform party,
there were also a number of discontents among the ultra-Conservatives,
who, seeing the Emperor’s anxiety and desire for change, began to push
forward certain schemes of their own. Finally, the ultra-conservatives
and reactionaries decided they would join forces with the Radicals,
hoping by so doing to change the National policy and the then existing
state of government. In the turmoil that would follow this upheaval,
each hoped to carry out his own designs, quite different in scope. Each
party made the Emperor believe that progress was its aim. The coalition
of these two diametrically opposed parties was for the purpose of
persuading the Emperor to depart from the moderate opportunist policy
which had been the motive power of the Empress Dowager’s régime. The
adherents of the Reform party were opposed to this moderate policy
because it was too conservative. Those of the Reactionaries objected to
it because it was too progressive. The power of the central government
vested in the young Emperor seemed likely to be crushed between these
two self-seeking factions. China’s wisest statesmen saw the peril,
sought the Empress Dowager, beseeched her to return from her retirement
and, for the salvation of China, to give the Empire again the benefit
of her wise counsels. When she realized the danger she returned. Such
is the ascendancy of the “ancestor” in China, the Emperor could not
refuse to accept the counsel of his August Ancestress, thus forced upon
him. He issued an edict in which he recalled “that Her Majesty the
Empress Dowager has on two occasions taken the reins of government,
with great success, at most critical times. In all she has done, Her
Majesty has been moved by a deep regard for the welfare of the Empire.
I have implored Her Majesty to be graciously pleased to advise me in
government, and I have received her assent.” The Emperor’s authority
was not wrested from him--he was not deposed. He still remained the
Emperor of China; but the Empress Dowager’s counsels were forced upon
him, he could not but accept them, and she became once more the real
Ruler of China. This was what foreigners call the “coup d’état” of 1898.
Her Majesty’s keenness of insight and fine judgment (as far as Chinese
questions are concerned), served her well again in this crisis. She
dismissed not only the self-seeking Radicals, but the self-seeking
ultra-Conservatives. Such of the Reformers as were caught were tried,
convicted of treason, summarily and cruelly punished. Those who
escaped, among them Kang-Yu-Wei, the ringleader of the Reformers,
were outlawed. The leader of the ultra-Conservatives, the Emperor’s
tutor, was not beheaded, but was sent into exile; for a tutor in
China occupies almost the position of a parent to his pupil, and
this position exempted him from more cruel punishment. These summary
proceedings on the part of the Moderates, led by Her Majesty, were
considered by the foreigners, who were altogether in sympathy with
the Reformers, as a reversion to anti-progress ideas, and hence were
considered anti-foreign. It certainly was an “anti-reform” movement
that caused the “coup d’état” of 1898, but had the adherents of the
so-called reformer Kang-Yu-Wei, whose subsequent career has proven how
self-seeking he was, carried the day; had his sweeping measures been
inaugurated, it might have brought China into a state of anarchy and
would certainly have been most pernicious to the Nation, for she was
not ready for the drastic measures the Reformers advocated, and the
great mass of the people would have rebelled against them.
The “coup d’état” and the consequent check upon the Emperor’s dreams
of progress was a great blow to him. He was not only chagrined at
the failure of his efforts for reform, by which he hoped to show the
world that China still counted as a power and to retaliate upon Japan,
but he was also profoundly discouraged when he discovered the real
nature and designs of his chosen instruments. He saw that he had been
over-sanguine in hoping to realize at once his enthusiastic dreams
for the immediate rehabilitation of China’s prestige; he saw that his
ardent desire for progress was not enough, and that to hope to reform
in a few years the century-old traditions of his most conservative
people was but the wild irrealizable dream of youth, and absolutely
impracticable. Though he knew he had been led away by his wishes for
reform to expect the impossible, the disappointment was none the less
severe and was most depressing to his sensitive nature. The reaction
took place. His never-too-strong constitution broke down under the
strain, and this breaking down of his health lent color to the reports,
which were immediately circulated among Her Majesty’s enemies as well
as among the foreigners, that the Empress Dowager was trying to kill
the Emperor! She was reported to have imprisoned him, was said to
be trying to poison him at one time and at another to starve him to
death--the nephew she had brought up through a delicate boyhood and
whom she cherished as her own son! Time has shown the truth of these
reports, for, had she so desired, she would have had no difficulty in
accomplishing his death. She had any number of instruments at her hand,
fanatically loyal to her and ready to carry out any of her wishes.
She still “assists” the Emperor in ruling; and, according to Chinese
tradition, she, being his “ancestor,” must always take the first
place. She sits upon the Throne, he upon a chair at her side. It would
be improper, according to all Chinese law, were it otherwise. The
foreigners speak of the Empress Dowager forcing the Emperor to stand
in her presence and to sit upon a stool while she occupies the Throne.
It is not Her Majesty who forces him to do this, it is an immutable
thousand-year-old tradition in China that a son must take a lower place
than his parent in his presence, be he Emperor or peasant. The Empress
Dowager still reigns. The times are still too troublous for her to
withdraw her experience from the councils of State, and though longing
for the quiet and rest so necessary to a woman of her age, and though
really anxious to retire, she feels the time has not yet come.
The Empress Dowager, having crushed the Reformers, and reseated herself
upon the Throne, was, from the time of the “coup d’état,” considered
to be anti-foreign and responsible for all the attacks upon foreigners
by ignorant Chinese that took place after that event. When, only
two years after the “coup d’état,” the secret society of the Boxers
began their sanguinary attacks upon the foreigners, Her Majesty was
considered responsible for them, was looked upon as aiding and abetting
the Boxers; and, by the foreigners at least, she was considered to
be the high priestess if not the originator of the order. But the
Boxer movement had no such high origin. It started among the people,
the humble people, in the Northern provinces of China, far from the
Capital, and had been in existence for a number of years before the
attack upon the Legations in 1900.
The open contempt of many of the foreigners living in China, not
only for the Chinese as a race, but for their most cherished customs
and traditions; the fact that the Chinese converts of the foreign
missionaries may break Chinese laws and still not be amenable to
Chinese punishment; the constantly renewed demands of the foreign
powers for territory, for the punishment of high Chinese officials and
hundreds of other acts that no body of foreigners in any country but
China would dare to try to force upon the people, finally aroused
even this peaceable, long-suffering Nation.[9] The worm turned. The
secret society of the Boxers took “China for the Chinese” as its motto,
and to “drive out the foreigner,” or, at least, curtail his rapidly
growing power, became its object. This society gained in force and
grew in volume until it reached the Capital. Here, from the obscure
classes among which it had its origin, it spread to the upper stratum
of society and had followers among the highest in the land. Certain
Princes of the Imperial Family even joined the ranks--among these
latter the father of the next heir to the Throne, the Prince Tuan.
These gave the movement an added force and made of it a patriotic
effort.
[9] Since the above was in type I find the following in F. Laur’s
“Siège de Péking.” In speaking of the cause of the Boxer rising, he
quotes Dr. Matignon as saying:
“C’est l’Europe tout entière qu’il faut mettre en cause. C’est parce
qu’elle n’a pas compris les Chinois, c’est parce qu’elle a cru que ce
peuple doux, somnolent, passif, pouvait, sans regimber, accepter toutes
les innovations, toutes les humiliations, que l’Europe s’est laissée
entrainer, et par ses missionnaires, et par ses ingénieurs....
Voilà pourquoi le mouvement Boxeur s’est produit. Ce mouvement, c’est
l’éveil du patriotisme chinois, avec toute l’intransigeance d’un
_nationalisme_ aveugle, ignorant, mais légitime.”
Then from smoldering discontent, it burst into open acts of violence
against the foreigners. The final spark which caused the outbreak in
the Capital and the attack upon the Legations is said to have been
the report, which gained immediate credence among the discontents,
that the Foreign Ministers were going to interfere with the Government
itself, and ask for a change in it; that they were to insist upon the
Empress Dowager’s retiring from the management of State affairs. This
interference, by the foreigners, with the sacred prerogatives of China,
as a Nation; this attempt at the removal of the Person of one of its
Sacred Rulers, aroused the people to a wild fury. Without waiting
to find out the truth of this report, and thinking, in their blind
ignorance, that by getting rid of the representatives of the Foreign
Powers, they might then be left in peace, the mob first attacked and
killed the German Minister, the Baron von Ketteler, as he was on his
way to the Tsung Li Yamen, which the Wai-Wu-Pu now replaces. Then
followed the general attack on the Legations.
The movement then became a veritable torrent, rushing madly along,
dashing aside all opposition and overwhelming right and reason.
The Emperor and Empress Dowager, powerful and autocratic as they are,
could not stem the current, and only by going with it could they ever
hope to bring judgment and reason to the surface again. No ruler in the
world can or ever has been able to stop an uprising of his people when
the latter felt they had right on their side or had been downtrodden
or oppressed. Their Celestial Majesties were obliged to wait until
the popular fury had somewhat abated before they could even attempt
it. No sane person could believe that the Empress Dowager, with her
natural intelligence and after thirty years of government and knowledge
of foreign methods, did not know that this attack on the foreign
representatives by the Chinese people would bring on severe reprisals.
But she was powerless to do more than she did at the time. Their
Majesties could not go against the people in their maddened state of
mind. They hoped by joining the Imperial forces to the wild insurgents
that these seething masses might be brought to reason. The mob was
given a semblance of right by a declaration of war on the part of the
government after the forts of Taku were taken by the foreign war-ships
(which was really the first act of war of this unfortunate episode).
When I saw the position of the Legation quarter and especially
that of the British Legation, where all the foreigners finally
congregated--open to attack on every side, lying under the very walls
of the Palace and the Imperial City--I felt convinced that had there
not been some restraining force within their own ranks, the Chinese
could have wiped out the foreigners in less than a week. Bad firing on
their part could only have averted, for a short space, the inevitable
result to the Legations. Had there not been some power that was acting
as a check upon the Chinese, no European would have been left to tell
the tale; and this restraining force I feel confident came from the
Emperor and the Empress Dowager themselves.
The Empress Dowager (with the Emperor) was at the Summer Palace, as
usual, during the summer of 1900. Though urged by her ministers and
the Princes to remain there, where she was out of danger or could
easily escape at its approach, she insisted on returning to the Capital
and went into the Winter Palace a week before the Allies reached the
city. She hoped as a “dernier resort” that the presence of the Sacred
Persons, Their Majesties, in the city might serve as a check upon the
soldiers and people, now maddened by their own fury; for the Imperial
troops, instead of checking the insurgents and leavening the masses
by their right and reason, had, instead, become imbued with the same
spirit as the Boxers themselves! But the Empress Dowager, on this
occasion, counted too strongly on her popularity and upon the respect
that the people felt for the “Sacred Persons,” for even after their
return to the Capital, even Their Majesties’ presence--even the issuing
of Imperial edicts posted all over the city for the people to protect,
or at least cease their attacks on the Legations--were powerless to do
more than intermittently check the attacks.
Finally the Allies reached and entered the city! The Empress Dowager,
discouraged and finding herself powerless, finally succumbed to the
fears of her entourage for her Person. She, herself, became almost
panic-stricken at the thought of falling into the hands of the
foreigners, whose depredations and cruelty to the Chinese on that
memorable march from Tientsin had all been reported to her with the
usual exaggerations. Her indomitable spirit was broken. She consented,
in an agony of womanly fear, to fly. She was disguised as a common
woman, her long finger nails, which would have revealed her exalted
rank, were cut off, and, in a common cart, she made her escape from
the city. As she had refused to go until the last moment, everything
at the Palace was left in the wildest confusion. Neither her jewelry,
nor hardly sufficient clothing, was taken. She did not leave the Palace
until several hours after the foreign troops had passed the Water Gate
and were already within the walls of the English Legation. She had held
out as long as possible.
The memorable flight to Singan Fu began that night. The Court was
accompanied by a regiment of Imperial troops, but such was their
demoralized condition, so many Boxers were among the soldiers, that
rank insubordination prevailed. Neither the officers, nor even the
presence in their midst of the Sacred Persons, served as any check
upon the soldiers. The greatest confusion prevailed. The maddest of
the insurgents had begun to look forward to retribution and to realize
that punishment would be inevitably visited upon them either by the
foreigners or by the Chinese Government when things calmed down, and
this thought seemed but to madden them further.
As the flight led the Imperial party through the section of country
where the society of Boxers had the greatest number of adherents, the
people, in many instances, refused food and shelter to the Imperial
fugitives. They felt the Court had been against them and for the
foreigners. Prince Su, in his account of the journey to Singan Fu,
relates that neither Her Majesty nor the Emperor had enough to eat;
that the soldiers stole the food that was prepared for Their Majesties.
I heard at the Palace that it was only His Majesty who suffered the
pangs of hunger. He, as well as all in the great company that formed
the Court party, deprived himself rather than see the Empress Dowager
suffer. I heard Her Majesty say that the Emperor’s food was stolen,
and she did not know for several days that he was depriving himself
for her. She thought all the Imperial party had her own, meager enough
allowance.
The Empress Dowager saw and heard many new and strange things on that
memorable journey, but she bore it all bravely. After the first panic
of fear, her indomitable spirit resumed its natural poise. Her capacity
for seeing the humorous side of things also helped her to bear it,
and furnished her with a fund of witty anecdotes later, though she
once remarked that, at the time, she did not appreciate the humorous
side to its full extent. Their experiences at this time were often the
theme of conversation among the Ladies at the Palace. While I was there
they were constantly referred to by the Princesses and even by the
eunuchs of the Court. These pampered individuals had then their first
experience with the hardships of the outer world, though, to do them
justice, they rarely referred to their own hardships, which must have
been severe, only speaking of what Their Majesties and the Ladies had
to endure. This flight from Peking to Singan Fu marks an epoch in the
Palace. Everything is dated as before or after that time. After Her
Majesty had accomplished this perilous journey and borne it so bravely,
she was given a new title, a dearer, higher one. She was called
Lao-Tzu-Tzung (the Great Ancestress) by her enthusiastic admirers.