Court Life in China, Isaac Taylor Headland [an ebook reader .txt] 📗

prisoner “his heart boiled with wrath” against those who had been the cause of his downfall.

It was not until the Boxer troubles of 1900 were over, and Yuan, by the masterly way in which he had disregarded the imperial edicts, had protected and preserved the lives of all the foreigners in his province, keeping peace the while, that honours began to be heaped upon him. And this not without reason as we shall proceed to show.

In 1901 he was made Governor-General of the metropolitan province, and Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent. In 1902 he was decorated with the Yellow Jacket, placed in charge of the affairs of the Northern Railway, and consulting minister to counsel the government. Wherever he was he gave as much attention to the city government as to that of the province or the nation, and in spite of his having no foreign education himself, he began building up a system of public schools in his province like which there is nothing else in the whole of China. Let us remember also that during ail this time there was suspended over his head, from the palace, a sword of Damocles which was liable to fall at any time. But we will explain that further on as it is the last act of the drama.

When Yuan went to Tientsin as Viceroy of the metropolitan province he found there Dr. C. D. Tenny, the president of the Tientsin University which had been begun by Li Hung-chang some ten or a dozen years before. It had a good course of study and was turning out a large number of young graduates for whom there ought to be a better future than that of interpreters in the various business houses of that and other cities. He therefore called Dr. Tenny to him and inquired particularly about the system of public school education throughout the United States.

“What is to prevent our putting into operation such a system throughout this province?” asked the Viceroy.

“Nothing,” answered Dr. Tenny, “except to be willing to submit to the conditions.”

“And what are those conditions?” asked His Excellency.

“They are that you open schools in every important town, place in them well-educated, competent teachers, whom you are willing to pay a salary equal to what they may reasonably expect to get if they enter business.”

“May I ask if you would be willing to undertake the development of such a system?” he asked further.

“On one condition,” answered Dr. Tenny.

“And what is that?”

“That you allow me to open a school wherever I think there should be one, call my teachers from whatsoever source I please to call them, pay them whatever salary I think they deserve, sending all the bills to Your Excellency, and you pay them without question.”

The Viceroy had known Dr. Tenny for years, had always had the most implicit confidence both in his ability and his honesty, and so, lightening up his duties in the Tientsin and Paotingfu Universities, he commissioned him to establish what may be termed the first public school system of education on modern lines in the whole empire. This one act, if he had done no other, was reason enough for a wise regent to have continued him in office even though he “had rheumatism of the leg.” But it may be that there are extenuating circumstances in this act of the Regent as we shall point out later.

There is one phase of the Boxer uprising that I have never yet seen properly represented in any book or magazine. We all know how the ministers of the various European governments with their wives and children, the customs officials, missionaries, business men, and tourists who happened to be in Peking at the time, with all the Chinese Christians, were confined in the British legation and Prince Su’s palace. We know how they barricaded their defense. We know how they were fired upon day and night for six weeks by the Boxer leaders and the army of the conservatives under the leadership of their general, Tung Fu-hsiang. But the thing which we do not know, or at least which has not been adequately told, is the most interesting secret plot of the liberal progressives, under the leadership of “Prince Ching and others,” to thwart the Empress Dowager and the Boxer leaders, the conservatives and their army, and protect the most noted company of prisoners that have ever been confined in a legation quarter. The plot was this:

When Prince Ching and his progressive associates in Peking discovered that they could not vote down the Boxer princes, they dared not openly oppose them, but they secretly decided that the representatives of the Powers must not be massacred else the doom of China was sealed. When they discovered that Yuan Shih-kai and the other great viceroys had decided by stratagem to foil the Boxers even though they must set all the imperial edicts at naught, they decided, for the sake of the protection of the legations and the preservation of the empire, that they would do the same. They secretly sent supplies of food to the besieged, which the latter feared to use lest they be poisoned. But more than that they kept their own armies in Peking as a guard and as a final resort in case there was danger of the legation being overcome, and as a matter of fact there were regular pitched battles between the troops of Prince Ching and his associates and those of the Boxer leader, Tung Fu-hsiang. Had the Boxers finally succeeded, Yuan Shih-kai and Prince Ching and their associates would have lost their heads, but as the Boxers failed it was they who went to their graves by the short process of the executioner’s knife.

So Yuan was between two fires. He had disobeyed the commands of the Emperor in not coming to Peking and had therefore incurred his displeasure and caused his downfall. He had disobeyed the Empress Dowager in not putting to death the foreigners in his province, and if the Boxers were successful he would surely lose his head on that account. The Boxers, however, were not successful and as his disobedience had helped to save the empire, Yuan, so long as the Dowager remained in power, was safe.

But a day of reckoning must inevitably come. The Empress Dowager was an old woman, the Emperor was a young man. In all human probabilities she would be the first to die, while his only hope was in her outliving the Emperor, who had sworn vengeance on all those who had been instrumental in his imprisonment.

I have a friend in Peking who is also a friend of one of the greatest Chinese officials. This official has gone into the palace daily for a dozen years past and knows every plot and counterplot that has been hatched in that nest of seclusion during all that time, though he has been implicated in none of them. He has held the highest positions in the gift of the empire without ever once having been degraded. One day when he was in the palace the Emperor unburdened his heart to him, thinking that what he said would never reach the ears of his enemies.

“You have no idea,” said the Emperor, “what I suffer here.”

“Indeed?” was the only reply of the official.

“Yes,” continued the Emperor, “I am not allowed to speak to any one from outside. I am without power, without companions, and even the eunuchs act as though they are under no obligations to respect me. The position of the lowest servant in the palace is more desirable than mine.” Then lowering his voice he continued, “But there is a day of reckoning to come. The Empress Dowager cannot live forever, and if ever I get my throne again I will see to it that those who put me here will suffer as I have done.”

It is not unlikely that this conversation of the Emperor reached the ears of Yuan Shih-kai. Walls have ears in China. Everything has ears, and every part of nature has a tongue. If so, here was the occasion for the last plot in the drama of the Emperor’s life, and next to the last in the official life of Yuan Shih-kai.

The problem is to so manipulate the laws of nature as to prevent the Emperor outliving the Empress Dowager, and not allow the world to know that you have been trifling with occult forces. He must die a natural death, a death which is above suspicion. He must not die one day after the Empress Dowager as that would create talk. And he ought to die some time before her. The death fuse is one which often burns very much longer than we expect— was it not one of the English kings who said “I fear I am a very long time a-dying, gentlemen” —and sometimes it burns out sooner than is intended. There were two imperial death fuses burning at the same time in that Forbidden City of Peking. The Empress Dowager had “had a stroke.” Hers was undoubtedly nature’s own work. But the enemies of Yuan Shih-kai tell us that the Emperor had “had a Chinese doctor,” to whom the great Viceroy paid $33,000 for his services. We are told that the Empress Dowager in reality died first and then the Emperor, though the Emperor’s death was first announced, and the next day that of the Dowager.

What then are we to infer? That the Emperor was poisoned? Let it be so. That is what the Japanese believed at the time. But who did it? Most assuredly no one man. One might have employed a Chinese physician for him, but the last man whose physician the Emperor would have accepted would have been Yuan Shih-kai’s. Had you or I been ill would we have allowed the man who was the cause of our fall to select our physician? But granted that Yuan Shih-kai did employ his physician, and that his death was the result of slow poisoning, could Yuan Shih-kai have so manipulated Prince Ching, the Regent (who is the late Emperor’s brother), the ladies of the court, and all those thousands of eunuchs, to remain silent as to the death of the Empress Dowager until he had completed the slow process on His Majesty? No! If the Emperor was poisoned—and the world believes he was—there are a number of others whose skirts are as badly stained as those of the great Viceroy, or long ere this his body would have been sent home a headless corpse instead of with “rheumatism of the leg.”

What then is the explanation? It may be this, that the court, and the officials as a whole, felt that the Emperor was an unsafe person to resume the throne, and that it were better that one man should perish than that the whole regime should be upset. They even refused to allow a foreign physician to go in to see him, saying that of his own free will he had turned again to the Chinese, all of which indicates that it was not the plot of any one man.

Why then should Yuan Shih-kai have been made the scapegoat of the court and the officials, and branded as a murderer in the face of the whole world? That may be another plot. The radical reformers, followers of Kang Yu-wei, have been making such a hubbub about the matter ever since the death of the Emperor and the Empress Dowager that somebody had to be punished. They said that Yuan had been a traitor to the cause of reform, that he had not only betrayed his sovereign in 1898, but that now he had encompassed his death.

Now to satisfy these enemies, the Prince Regent may have decided that the best thing to do was to dismiss Yuan for a time.