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

of President of the Grand Council—Prince Kung and Prince Ching. While the former was degraded many times and had his honours all taken from him, the latter “has kept himself on top of a rolling log for thirty years” without losing any of the honours which were originally conferred upon him. The same is true of Chang Chih-tung, Liu Kun-yi and Wang Wen-shao, three great viceroys and Grand Secretaries whom the Empress Dowager has never allowed to be without an important office, but whom she has never degraded. Need we ask the reason why? The answer is not far to seek. They were the most eminent progressive officials she had in her empire, but none of them were great enough to be a menace to her dynasty, and hence need not be reminded that there was a power above them which by a stroke of her pen could transfer them from stars in the official firmament to dandelions in the grass. Not so with Yuan Shih-kai—but we will speak of him in another chapter.

All the great officials thus far mentioned have belonged to the progressive rather than the conservative party, all of them the favourites of the Empress Dowager, placed in positions of influence and kept in office by her, all of them working for progress and reform, and yet she has been constantly spoken of by European writers as a reactionary. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as we shall see. Nevertheless she kept some of the great conservative officials in office either as viceroys or Grand Secretaries that she might be able to hear both sides of all important questions.

One of these conservatives was Jung Lu, the father-in-law of the present Regent. When she placed Yuan Shih-kai in charge of the army of north China, she also appointed Jung Lu as Governor-General of the metropolitan province of Chihli. One was a progressive, the other a conservative. Neither could make any important move without the knowledge and consent of the other. Whether the Empress Dowager foresaw the danger that was likely to arise, we do not know, but she provided against it. We refer to the occasion when in 1898 the Emperor ordered Yuan Shih-kai to bring his troops to Peking, guard the Empress Dowager a prisoner in the Summer Palace, and protect him in his efforts at reform. The story belongs in another chapter, but we refer to it here to show how the Empress Dowager played one official against another, and one party against another, to prevent any such calamity or surprise. It would have been impossible for Yuan Shih-kai to have taken his troops to Peking for any purpose without first informing his superior officer Jung Lu unless he put him to death, much less to have gone on such a mission as that of imprisoning as important a personage as the Empress Dowager, to whom they were both indebted for their office.

Another instance of the way in which the Empress Dowager played one party against another was the appointment of Prince Tuan as a member of the Foreign Office. After his son had been selected as the heir-apparent it seemed to the Empress Dowager that for his own education and development he should be made to come in contact with the foreigners. Most of the foreigners considered the appointment objectionable on account of the “Prince’s anti-foreign tendencies. But to my mind,” says Sir Robert Hart, “it was a good one; the Empress Dowager had probably said to the Prince, ‘You and your party pull one way, Prince Ching and his another—what am I to do between you? You, however, are the father of the future Emperor, and have your son’s interests to take care of; you are also head of the Boxers and chief of the Peking Field Force, and ought therefore to know what can and what cannot be done. I therefore appoint you to the yamen; do what you consider most expedient, and take care that the throne of your ancestors descends untarnished to your son, and their empire undiminished! yours is the power,—yours the responsibility—and yours the chief interests!’ I can imagine the Empress Dowager taking this line with the Prince, and, inasmuch as various ministers who had been very anti-foreign before entering the yamen had turned round and behaved very sensibly afterwards, I felt sure that responsibility and actual personal dealings with foreigners would be a good experience and a useful education for this Prince, and that he would eventually be one of the sturdiest supporters of progress and good relations.”

IV

The Empress Dowager—As a Reactionist

The most interesting personage in China during the past thirty years has been and still is without doubt the lady whom we style the Empress Dowager. The character of the Empress’s rule can only be judged by what it was during the regency, when she was at the head of every movement that partook of the character of reform. Foreign diplomacy has failed, for want of a definite centre of volition and sensation to act upon. It had no fulcrum for its lever. Hence only force has ever succeeded in China. With a woman like the Empress might it not be possible really to transact business? —Blackwood’s Magazine.

IV

THE EMPRESS DOWAGER—AS A REACTIONIST

It was between November 1, 1897, and April 16, 1898, that Germany, Russia, France and England wrested from the weak hands of the Emperor Kuang Hsu the four best ports in the Chinese empire, leaving China without a place to rendezvous a fleet. The whole empire was aroused to indignation, and even in our Christian schools, every essay, oration, dialogue or debate was a discussion of some phase of the subject, “How to reform and strengthen China.” The students all thought, the young reformers all thought, and the foreigners all thought that Kuang Hsu had struck the right track. The great Chinese officials, however, were in doubt, and it was because of their doubt—progressives as well as conservatives—that the Empress Dowager was again called to the throne.

Now may I request the enemies of the Empress Dowager to ask themselves what they would have done if they had been placed at the head of their own government when it was thus being filched from them? You say she was anti-foreign—would you have been very much in love with Germany, Russia, France and England under those circumstances? That she acted unwisely in placing herself in the hands of the conservatives and allying herself with the superstitious Boxers, we must all frankly admit. But what would you have done? Might you not—I do not say you would with your intelligence—but might you not have been induced to have clutched at as great a log as the patriotic Boxers seemed to present, if you had been as near drowning as she was?

“It is generally supposed,” says one of her critics, “that Kang Yu-wei suggested to the Emperor, that if he would render his own position secure, he must retire the Empress Dowager, and decapitate Jung Lu.” If that be true, and I think it very reasonable, the condition must have been desperate, when the reformers had to begin killing the greatest of their opponents, and imprisoning those who had given them their power, though neither of these at that time had raised a hand against them. Have you noticed how ready we are to forgive those on our side for doing that for which we would bitterly condemn our opponents? The same people who condemn the Empress Dowager for beheading the six young reformers stand ready to forgive Kuang Hsu for ordering the decapitation of Jung Lu, and the imprisonment of his foster-mother.

There were two powerful factions in Peking, the progressives, headed by Prince Ching; and the conservatives, headed by Jung Lu. Now the Empress Dowager may have reasoned thus: “The progressives and reformers have had their day. They have tried their plans and they have failed. The only result they have secured is peace—but peace always at the expense of territory. Now I propose to try another plan. I will part with no more ports, and I will resist to the death every encroachment.” She therefore took up Li Ping-heng, who had been deposed from the governorship of Shantung at the time of the murder of the German missionaries, and appointed him Generalissimo of the forces of the Yangtse, where he no doubt promised to resist to the last all encroachments of the foreigners in that part of the empire while Jung Lu was retained in Peking as head of all the forces of the province of Chihli and the Northern Squadron. She then appointed Kang Yi, another conservative, equally as anti-foreign as Li Ping-heng, to inspect the fortifications and garrisons of the empire, and to raise an immense sum of money for the depleted treasury. In his visits to the southern provinces, Kang Yi at this time raised not less than two million taels, which was no doubt spent in the purchase of guns and ammunition and other preparations for war. Yu Hsien, another equally conservative Manchu, she appointed Governor of Shantung to succeed Li Ping-heng, and it is to him the whole Boxer uprising is due. Moreover when he, at the repeated requests of the foreigners, was removed from Shantung, she received him in audience at Peking, conferred upon him additional honours and appointed him Governor of the adjoining province of Shansi, where, and under whose jurisdiction, almost all the massacres were committed. Indeed Yu Hsien may be considered the whole Boxer movement, for this seems to have been his plan for getting rid of the foreigners.

But while thus allying herself with the conservatives, the Empress Dowager did not cut herself off from the progressives. Li Hung-chang was appointed Viceroy of Kuangtung, Yuan Shih-kai Governor of Shantung and Tuan Fang of Shensi while Liu Kun-yi, Chang Chih-tung, and Kuei Chun were kept at their posts, so that she had all the greatest men of both parties once more in her service. Then she began sending out edicts, retracting those issued by Kuang Hsu, and what could be more considerate of the feelings of the Emperor, or more diplomatic as a state paper than the following, issued in the name of Kuang Hsu, September 26,

1898.

 

“Our real desire was to make away with superfluous posts for the sake of economy: whereas, on the contrary, we find rumours flying abroad that we intended to change wholesale the customs of the empire, and, in consequence, innumerable impossible suggestions of reform have been presented to us. If we allowed this to go on, none of us would know to what pass matters would come. Hence, unless we hasten to put our present wishes clearly before all, we greatly fear that the petty yamen officials and their underlings will put their own construction on what commands have gone before, and create a ferment in the midst of the usual calm of the people. This will indeed be contrary to our desire, and put our reforms for strengthening and enriching our empire to naught.

“We therefore hereby command that the Supervisorate of Instruction and other five minor Courts and Boards, which were recently abolished by us and their duties amalgamated with other Boards for the sake of economy, etc., be forthwith restored to their original state and duties, because we have learned that the process of amalgamation contains many difficulties and will require too much labour. We think, therefore, it is best that these offices be not abolished at all, there being no actual necessity for doing this. As for the provincial bureaus and official posts ordered to be abolished, the work in this connection can go on as usual, and the viceroys and governors are exhorted to work earnestly and diligently in the above duty. Again as to the edict ordering the establishment of an official newspaper, the Chinese Progress, and the privilege granted