China and the Manchus Part 3

Gordon's appointment to the work which will always be a.s.sociated with his name, was speedily followed by disastrous results to the T'ai-p'ings. The Ever Victorious troops, who had recently been worsted in more than one encounter with their now desperate enemies, began to retrieve their reputation, greatly stimulated by the regular pay which Gordon always insisted upon. Towards the close of the year, the siege of Soochow ended in a capitulation on terms which Gordon understood to include a pardon for the eight T'ai-p'ing "princes"

engaged in its defence. These eight were hurriedly decapitated by order of Li Hung-chang, and Gordon immediately resigned, after having searched that same night, so the story goes, revolver in hand, for Li Hung-chang, whose brains he had determined to blow out on the spot.

The Emperor sent him a medal and a present of about 3,000, both of which he declined; and Imperial affairs would again have been in a bad way, but that Gordon, yielding to a sense of duty, agreed to resume command. Foreign interests had begun to suffer badly; trade was paralysed; and something had to be done. Further successes under Gordon's leaders.h.i.+p reduced the T'ai-p'ings to their last extremity.

Only Nanking remained to be captured, and that was already fully invested by Tseng Kuo-fan. Gordon therefore laid down his command, and was rewarded with the t.i.tle of Provincial Commander-in-Chief, and also with the bestowal of the Yellow Riding Jacket. A month or so later (July, 1864), Nanking was carried by storm, defended bravely to the last by the only remaining "prince," the Heavenly King himself having taken poison three weeks beforehand. This prince escaped with the new king, a boy of sixteen, who had just succeeded his father; but he was soon caught and executed, having first been allowed time to write a short history of the movement from the T'ai-p'ing point of view. The boy shared his fate. The Imperial edicts of this date show clearly what a sense of relief came over the Manchu court when once it could be said definitively that the great rebellion was over. On the other hand, there were not wanting some foreigners who would have liked to see the Manchus overthrown, and who severely blamed the British Government for helping to bolster up a dynasty already in the last stage of decay; for it seems to be an indubitable fact that but for British intervention, the rebellion would ultimately have succeeded in that particular direction.

During a great part of the last eight years described above, an ordinary observer would have said that the Manchus had already sufficient troubles on hand, and would be slow to provoke further causes of anxiety. It is none the less true, however, that at one of the most critical periods of the rebellion, China was actually at war with the very power which ultimately came to the rescue. In 1856 the Viceroy of Canton, known to foreigners as Governor Yeh, a man who had gained favour at the Manchu court by his wholesale butchery of real and suspected rebels, arrested twelve Chinese sailors on board the "Arrow," a Chinese-owned vessel lying at Canton, which had been licensed at Hongkong to sail under the British flag, and at the same time the flag was hauled down by Yeh's men. Had this been an isolated act, it is difficult to see why very grave consequences need have followed, and perhaps Justin M'Carthy's condemnation of our Consul, Mr (afterwards Sir Harry) Parkes, as "fussy," because he sent at once to Hongkong for armed a.s.sistance, might in such case be allowed to stand unchallenged; but it must be remembered that Yeh was all the time refusing to foreigners rights which had been already conceded under treaty, and that action such as Parkes took, against an adversary such as Yeh, was absolutely necessary either to mend or end the situation. Accordingly, his action led to what was at first an awkward state of reprisals, in which some American men-of-war joined for grievances of their own; forts being attacked and occupied, the foreign houses of business at Canton being burned down, and rewards offered for foreigners' heads. In January, 1857, an attempt was actually made in Hongkong to get rid of all foreigners at one fell stroke, in which plot there is no doubt that the local officials at Canton were deeply implicated. The bread was one day found to be poisoned with a.r.s.enic, but so heavily that little mischief was done.

The only possible end to this tension was war; and by the end of the year a joint British and French force, with Lord Elgin and Baron Gros as plenipotentiaries, was on the spot. Canton was captured after a poor resistance; and Governor Yeh, whose enormous bulk made escape difficult, was captured and banished to Calcutta, where he died. On the voyage he sank into a kind of stupor, taking no interest whatever in his new surroundings; and when asked by Alabaster, who accompanied him as interpreter, why he did not read, he pointed to his stomach, the Chinese receptacle for learning, and said that there was nothing worth reading except the Confucian Canon, and that he had already got all that inside him. After his departure the government of the city was successfully directed by British and French authorities, acting in concert with two high Manchu officials.

Lord Elgin then decided to proceed north, in the hope of being able to make satisfactory arrangements for future intercourse; but the obstructive policy of the officials on his arrival at the Peiho compelled him to attack and capture the Taku forts, and finally, to take up his residence in Tientsin. The lips, as the Chinese say, being now gone, the teeth began to feel cold; the court was in a state of panic, and within a few weeks a treaty was signed (June 26, 1858) containing, among other concessions to England, the right to have a diplomatic representative stationed in Peking, and permission to trade in the interior of China. It would naturally be supposed that Lord Elgin's mission was now ended, and indeed he went home; the Emperor, however, would not hear of ratifications of the treaty being exchanged in Peking, and in many other ways it was made plain that there was no intention of its stipulations being carried out. There was the example of Confucius, who had been captured by rebels and released on condition that he would not travel to the State of Wei.

Thither, notwithstanding, he continued his route; and when asked by a disciple if it was right to violate his oath, he replied, "This was a forced oath; the spirits do not hear such."

By June, 1859, another Anglo-French force was at the mouth of the Peiho, only to find the Taku forts now strongly fortified, and the river staked and otherwise obstructed. The allied fleet, after suffering considerable damage, with much loss of life, was compelled to retire, greatly to the joy and relief of the Emperor, who at last saw the barbarian reduced to his proper status. It was on this occasion that Commander Tatnell of the U.S. navy, who was present, strictly speaking, as a spectator only, in complete violation of international law, of which luckily the Chinese knew nothing at that date, lent efficient aid by towing boat-loads of British marines into action, justifying his conduct by a saying which will always be gratefully a.s.sociated with his name,--"Blood is thicker than water."

By August, 1860, thirteen thousand British troops, seven thousand French, and two thousand five hundred Cantonese coolies, were ready to make another attempt. This time there were no frontal attacks on the forts from the seaward; capture was effected, after a severe struggle, by land from the rear, a feat which was generally regarded by the Tartar soldiery as most unsportsmanlike. High Manchu officials were now hurriedly dispatched from Peking to Tientsin to stop by fair promises the further advance of the allies; but the British and French plenipotentiaries decided to move up to T'ung-chow, a dozen miles or so from the capital. It was on this march that Parkes, Loch, and others, while carrying out orders under a flag of truce, were treacherously seized by the soldiers of Seng-ko-lin-sin, the Manchu prince and general (familiar to the British troops as "Sam Collinson"), who had just experienced a severe defeat at the taking of the Taku forts. After being treated with every indignity, the prisoners, French and English, numbering over thirty in all, were forwarded to Peking. There they were miserably tortured, and many of them succ.u.mbed; but events were moving quickly now, and relief was at hand for those for whom it was not already too late. Seng-ko-lin-sin and his vaunted Tartar cavalry were completely routed in several encounters, and Peking lay at the mercy of the foreigner, the Emperor having fled to Jehol, where he died in less than a year. Only then did Prince Kung, a younger brother of Hsien Feng, who had been left to bear the brunt of foreign resentment, send back, in a state too terrible for words, fourteen prisoners, less than half the original number of those so recently captured. Something in the form of a punitive act now became necessary, to mark the horror with which this atrocious treatment of prisoners by the Manchu court was regarded among the countrymen of the victims. Accordingly, orders were given to burn down the Summer Palace, appropriately condemned as being the favourite residence of the Emperor, and also the scene of the unspeakable tortures inflicted. This palace was surrounded by a beautiful pleasance lying on the slope of the western hills, about nine miles to the north-west of Peking. Yuan-ming Yuan, or the "Bright Round Garden," to give it its proper name, had been laid out by the Jesuit fathers on the plan of the Trianon at Versailles, and was packed with valuable porcelain, old bronzes, and every conceivable kind of curio, most of which were looted or destroyed by the infuriated soldiery.

The ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin (1858) was now completed, and before the end of the year the allied forces were gone, save and except garrisons at Tientsin and Taku, which were to remain until the indemnity was paid.

CHAPTER IX

T'UNG CHIH

On the death of the Emperor, a plot was concocted by eight members of the extreme anti-foreign party at Court, who claimed to have been appointed Regents, to make away with the Empress Dowager, the concubine mother, known as the Western Empress, of the five-year-old child just proclaimed under the t.i.tle of Chi Hsiang (good omen), and also the late Emperor's three brothers, thus securing to themselves complete control of the administration. Prince Kung, however, managed to be "first at the fire," and in accordance with the Chinese proverb, was therefore "first with his cooking." Having got wind of the scheme, in concert with the two Empresses Dowager, who had secured possession of the Emperor, he promptly caused the conspirators to be seized. Two of them, Imperial princes, were allowed to commit suicide, and the others were either executed or banished, while Prince Kung and the two Empresses formed a joint regency for the direction of public affairs, after changing the style of the reign from Chi Hsiang to T'ung Chih (united rule).

The position of these two Empresses was a curious one. The Empress Dowager _par excellence_--for there is only one legal wife in China--had no children; a concubine had provided the heir to the throne, and had in consequence been raised to the rank of Western Empress, subordinate only to the childless Eastern Empress. Of the latter, there is nothing to be said, except that she remained a cipher to the end of her life; of the concubine, a great deal has been said, much of which is untrue. Taken from an ordinary Manchu family into the palace, she soon gained an extraordinary influence over Hsien Feng, and began to make her voice heard in affairs of State. Always on the side of determined measures, she had counselled the Emperor to remain in Peking and face the barbarians; she is further believed to have urged the execution of Parkes and Loch, the order luckily arriving too late to be carried out. For the next three years the Regents looked anxiously for the final collapse of the T'ai-p'ings, having meanwhile to put up with the hateful presence of foreign diplomats, now firmly established within the Manchu section of the city of Peking. No sooner was the great rebellion entirely suppressed (1864), than another rising broke out. The Nien-fei, or Twist Rebels, said to have been so called because they wore as a badge turbans twisted with grease, were mounted banditti who, here to-day and gone to-morrow, for several years committed much havoc in the northern provinces of China, until finally suppressed by Tso Tsung-t'ang.

Turkestan was the next part of the empire to claim attention. A son and successor of Jehangir, ruling as va.s.sal of China at Khokand, had been murdered by his lieutenant, Yakoob Beg, who, in 1866, had set himself up as Ameer of Kashgaria, throwing off the Manchu yoke and attracting to his standard large numbers of discontented Mahometans from all quarters. His attack upon the Dunganis, who had risen on their own account and had spread rebellion far and wide between the province of Shensi and Kuldja, caused Russia to step in and annex Kuldja before it could fall into his hands. Still, he became master of a huge territory; and in 1874 the t.i.tle of Athalik Ghazi, "Champion Father," was conferred upon him by the Ameer of Bokhara. He is also spoken of as the Andijani, from Andijan, a town in Khokand whence he and many of his followers came. Luckily for the Manchus, they were able to avail themselves of the services of a Chinese general whose extraordinary campaign on this occasion has marked him as a commander of the first order. Tso Tsung-t'ang, already distinguished by his successes against the T'ai-p'ings and the Nien-fei, began by operations, in 1869, against the Mahometans in Shensi. Fighting his way through difficulties caused by local outbreaks and mutinies in his rear, he had captured by 1873 the important city of Su-chow in Kansuh, and by 1874 his advance-guard had reached Hami. There he was forced to settle down and raise a crop in order to feed his troops, supplies being very uncertain. In 1876 Urumtsi was recovered; and in 1877 Turfan, Harashar, Yarkand, and Kashgar. At this juncture, Yakoob Beg was a.s.sa.s.sinated, after having held Kashgaria for twelve years. Khoten fell on January 2, 1878. This wonderful campaign was now over, but China had lost Kuldja. A Manchu official, named Ch'ung-hou, who was sent to St Petersburg to meet Russian diplomats on their own ground, the main object being to recover this lost territory, was condemned to death on his return for the egregious treaty he had managed to negotiate, and was only spared at the express request of Queen Victoria; he will be mentioned again shortly. His error was afterwards retrieved by a young and brilliant official, son of the great Tseng Kuo-fan, and later a familiar figure as the Marquis Tseng, Minister at the Court of St James's, by whom Kuldja was added once more to the Manchu empire.

The year 1868 is remarkable for a singular episode. The Regents and other high authorities in Peking decided, at whose instigation can only be surmised, to send an emba.s.sy to the various countries of Europe and America, in order to bring to the notice of foreign governments China's right, as an independent Power, to manage her internal affairs without undue interference from outside. The mission, which included two Chinese officials, was placed under the leaders.h.i.+p of Mr Burlingame, American Minister at Peking, who, in one of his speeches, took occasion to say that China was simply longing to cement friendly relations with foreign powers, and that within some few short years there would be "a s.h.i.+ning cross on every hill in the Middle Kingdom."

Burlingame died early in 1870, before his mission was completed, and only four months before the Tientsin Ma.s.sacre threw a shadow of doubt over his optimistic p.r.o.nouncements. The native population at Tientsin had been for some time irritated by the height to which, contrary to their own custom, the towers of the Roman Catholic Cathedral had been carried; and rumours had also been circulated that behind the lofty walls and dark mysterious portals of the Catholic foundling hospital, children's eyes and hearts were extracted from still warm corpses to furnish medicines for the barbarian pharmacopoeia. On June 21, the cathedral and the establishment of sisters of mercy, the French Consulate and other buildings, were pillaged and burnt by a mob composed partly of the rowdies of the place and partly of soldiers who happened to be temporarily quartered there. All the priests and sisters were brutally murdered, as also the French Consul and other foreigners. For this outrage eighteen men were executed, a large indemnity was exacted, and the superintendent of trade, the same Manchu official whose subsequent diplomatic failure at St Petersburg has been already noticed, was sent to France with a letter of apology from the Emperor.

In 1872 T'ung Chih was married, and in the following year took over the reins of government. Thereupon, the foreign Ministers pressed for personal interviews; and after much obstruction on the part of the Manchu court, the first audience was granted. This same year saw the collapse of the Panthays, a tribe of Mahometans in Yunnan who, so far back as 1855, had begun to free themselves from Chinese rule. They chose as their leader an able co-religionist named Tu Wen-hsiu, who was styled Sultan Suleiman, and he sent agents to Burma to buy arms and munitions of war; after which, secure in the natural fortress of Ta-li, he was soon master of all western Yunnan. In 1863 he repulsed with heavy loss two armies sent against him from the provincial capital; but the end of the T'ai-p'ing rebellion set free the whole resources of the empire against him, and he remained inactive while the Imperialists advanced leisurely westwards. In 1871 he tried vainly to obtain aid from England, sending over his son, Prince Ha.s.san, for that purpose. The following year saw the enemy at the gates of Ta-li, and by and by there was a treacherous surrender of an important position. Then a promise of an amnesty was obtained at the price of Tu's head, and an enormous indemnity. On January 15, 1873, his family having all committed suicide, the Sultan pa.s.sed for the last time through the crowded streets of Ta-li on his way to the camp of his victorious adversary. He arrived there senseless, having taken poison before setting forth. His corpse was beheaded and his head was forwarded to the provincial capital, and thence in a jar of honey to Peking.

His conqueror, whose name is not worth recording, was one of those comparatively rare Chinese monsters who served their Manchu masters only too well. Eleven days after the Sultan's death, he invited the chief men of the town to a feast, and after putting them all to death, gave the signal for a general ma.s.sacre, in which thirty thousand persons are said to have been butchered.

In 1874 the j.a.panese appear on the scene, adding fresh troubles to those with which the Manchus were already encompa.s.sed. Some sailors from the Loo-choo Islands, over which j.a.panese sovereignty had been successfully maintained, were murdered by the savages on the east coast of Formosa; and failing to obtain redress, j.a.pan sent a punitive expedition to the island, and began operations on her own account, but withdrew on promises of amendment and payment of all expenses incurred.

CHAPTER X

KUANG HSu

In 1875 the Emperor T'ung Chih died of smallpox, and with his death the malign influence of his mother comes more freely into play. The young Empress was about to become a mother; and had she borne a son, her position as mother of the baby Emperor would have been of paramount importance, while the grandmother, the older Empress Dowager, would have been relegated to a subordinate status.

Consequently,--it may now be said, having regard to subsequent happenings,--the death of the Empress followed that of her husband at an indecently short interval, for no particular reason of health; and the old Empress Dowager became supreme. In order to ensure her supremacy, she had previously, on the very day of the Emperor's death, caused the succession to be allotted, in utter violation of established custom, to a first cousin, making him heir to the Emperor Hsien Feng, instead of naming one of a lower generation who, as heir to T'ung Chih, would have been qualified to sacrifice to the spirit of his adopted father. Thus, the late Emperor was left without a son, and his spirit without a ministrant at ancestral wors.h.i.+p, the only consolation being that when a son should be born to the new Emperor (aged four), that child was to become son by adoption to his late Majesty, T'ung Chih. Remonstrances, even from Manchus, were soon heard on all sides; but to these the Empress Dowager paid no attention until four years afterwards (1879), on the occasion of the deferred funeral of the late Emperor, when a censor, named Wu K'o-tu, committed suicide at the mausoleum, leaving behind him a memorial in which he strongly condemned the action of the two Empresses Dowager, still regarded officially as joint regents, and called for a re-arrangement of the succession, under which the late Emperor would be duly provided with an heir. Nothing, however, came of this sacrifice, except promises, until 1900. A son of Prince Tuan, within a few months to espouse the Boxer cause, was then made heir to his late Majesty, as required; but at the beginning of 1901, this appointment was cancelled and the spirit of the Emperor T'ung Chih was left once more unprovided for in the ancestral temple. The first cousin in question, who reigned as Kuang Hsu (= brilliant succession), was not even the next heir in his own generation; but he was a child of four, and that suited the plans of the Empress Dowager, who, having appointed herself Regent, now entered openly upon the career for which she will be remembered in history. What she would have done if the Empress had escaped and given birth to a son, can only be a matter of conjecture.

In 1876 the first resident Envoy ever sent by China to Great Britain, or to any other nation, was accredited to the Court of St James's.

Kuo Sung-tao, who was chosen for the post, was a fine scholar; he made several attempts on the score of health to avoid what then seemed to all Chinese officials--no Manchu would have been sent--to be a dangerous and unpleasant duty, but was ultimately obliged to proceed. It was he who, on his departure in 1879, said to Lord Salisbury that he liked everything about the English very much, except their shocking immorality.

The question of railways for China had long been simmering in the minds of enterprising foreigners; but it was out of the question to think that the Government would allow land to be sold for such a purpose; therefore there would be no sellers. In 1876 a private company succeeded in obtaining the necessary land by buying up connecting strips between Shanghai and Woosung at the mouth of the river, about eight miles in all. The company then proceeded to lay down a miniature railway, which was an object of much interest to the native, whose amus.e.m.e.nt soon took the form of a trip there and back.

Political influence was then brought to bear, and the whole thing was purchased by the Government; the rails were torn up and sent to Formosa, where they were left to rot upon the sea-beach.

The suppression of rebellion in Turkestan and Yunnan has already been mentioned; also the retrocession of Kuldja, which brings us down to the year 1881, when the Eastern Empress died. Death must have been more or less a relief to this colourless personage, who had been entirely superseded on a stage on which by rights she should have played the leading part, and who had been terrorized during her last years by her more masterful colleague.

In 1882 there were difficulties with France over Tongking; these, however, were adjusted, and in 1884 a convention was signed by Captain Fournier and Li Hung-chang. A further dispute then arose as to a breach of the convention by the Chinese, and an _etat de represailles_ followed, during which the French destroyed the Chinese fleet. After the peace which was arranged in 1885, a few years of comparative tranquillity ensued; the Emperor was married (1889), and relieved his aunt of her duties as Regent.

j.a.pan, in earlier centuries contemptuously styled the Dwarf-nation, and always despised as a mere imitator and brain-picker of Chinese wisdom, now swims definitively into the ken of the Manchu court. The Formosan imbroglio had been forgotten as soon as it was over, and the recent rapid progress of j.a.pan on Western lines towards national strength had been ignored by all Manchu statesmen, each of whom lived in hope that the deluge would not come in his own time. So far back as 1885, in consequence of serious troubles involving much bloodshed, the two countries had agreed that neither should send troops to Korea without due notification to the other. Now, in 1894, China violated this contract by dispatching troops, at the request of the king of Korea, whose throne was threatened by a serious rebellion, without sufficient warning to j.a.pan, and further, by keeping a body of these troops at the Korean capital even when the rebellion was at an end. A disastrous war ensued. The j.a.panese were victorious on land and sea; the Chinese fleet was destroyed; Port Arthur was taken; and finally, after surrendering Wei-hai-wei (1895), to which he had retired with the remnant of his fleet, Admiral Ting, well known as "a gallant sailor and true gentleman," committed suicide together with four of his captains. Li Hung-chang was then sent to j.a.pan to sue for peace, and while there he was shot in the cheek by a fanatical member of the Sos.h.i.+ cla.s.s. This act brought him much sympathy--he was then seventy-two years old; and in the treaty of s.h.i.+monoseki, which he negotiated, better terms perhaps were obtained than would otherwise have been the case. The terms granted included the independence of Korea, for centuries a tribute-paying va.s.sal of China, and the cession of the island of Formosa. j.a.pan had occupied the peninsula on which stands the impregnable fortress of Port Arthur, and had captured the latter in a few hours; but she was not to be allowed to keep them. A coalition of European powers, Russia, Germany, and France--England refused to join--decided that it would never do to let j.a.pan possess Port Arthur, and forced her to accept a money payment instead. So it was restored to China--for the moment; and at the same time a republic was declared in Formosa; but of this the j.a.panese made short work.

The following year was marked by an unusual display of initiative on the part of the Emperor, who now ordered the introduction of railways; but in 1897 complications with foreign powers rather gave a check to these aspirations. Two German Catholic priests were murdered, and as a punitive measure Germany seized Kiaochow in Shantung; while in 1898 Russia "leased" Port Arthur, and as a counterblast England thought it advisable to "lease" Wei-hai-wei. So soon as the Manchu court had recovered from the shock of these events, and had resumed its normal state of torpor, it was rudely shaken from within by a series of edicts which peremptorily commanded certain reforms of a most far-reaching description. For instance, the great public examinations, which had been conducted on much the same system for seven or eight centuries past, were to be modified by the introduction of subjects suggested by recent intercourse with Western nations. There was to be a university in Peking, and the temples, which cover the empire in all directions, were to be closed to religious services and opened for educational purposes. The Manchus, indeed, have never shown any signs of a religious temperament. There had not been, under the dynasty in question, any such wave of devotional fervour as was experienced under more than one previous dynasty. Neither the dreams of Buddhism, nor the promises of immortality held out by the Taoist, seem to have influenced in a religious, as opposed to a superst.i.tious sense, the rather Boeotian mind of the Manchu. The learned emperors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries accepted Confucianism as sufficient for every-day humanity, and did all in their power to preserve it as a quasi-State religion. Thus, Buddhism was not favoured at the expense of Taoism, nor _vice versa_; Mahometanism was tolerated so long as there was no suspicion of disloyalty; Christianity, on the other hand, was bitterly opposed, being genuinely regarded for a long time as a cloak for territorial aggression.

To return to the reforms. Young Manchus of n.o.ble family were to be sent abroad for an education on wider lines than it was possible to obtain at home. This last was in every way a desirable measure. No Manchu had ever visited the West; all the officials previously sent to foreign countries had been Chinese. But other proposed changes were not of equal value.

At the back of this reform movement was a small band of earnest men who suffered from too much zeal, which led to premature action. A plot was conceived, under which the Empress Dowager was to be arrested and imprisoned; but this was betrayed by Yuan s.h.i.+h-k'ai, and she turned the tables by suddenly arresting and imprisoning the Emperor, and promptly decapitating all the conspirators, with the exception of K'ang Yu-wei, who succeeded in escaping. He had been the moving spirit of this abortive revolution; he was a fine scholar, and had completely gained the ear of the Emperor. The latter became henceforth to the end of his life a person of no importance, while China, for the third time in history, pa.s.sed under the dominion of a woman. There was no secret about it; the Empress Dowager, popularly known as the Old Buddha, had succeeded in terrorizing every one who came into contact with her, and her word was law. It was said of one of the Imperial princes that he was "horribly afraid of her Majesty, and that when she spoke to him he was on tenter-hooks, as though thorns p.r.i.c.ked him, and the sweat ran down his face."

All promise of reform now disappeared from the Imperial programme, and the recent edicts, which had raised premature hope in this direction, were annulled; the old regime was to prevail once more. The weakness of this policy was emphasized in the following year (1899), when England removed from j.a.pan the stigma of extra-territorial jurisdiction, by which act British defendants, in civil and criminal cases alike, now became amenable to j.a.panese tribunals. j.a.pan had set herself to work to frame a code, and had trained lawyers for the administration of justice; China had done nothing, content that on her own territory foreigners and their lawsuits, as above, should be tried by foreign Consuls. One curious edict of this date had for its object the conferment of duly graded civil rank, the right to salutes at official visits, and similar ceremonial privileges, upon Roman Catholic archbishops, bishops, and priests of the missionary body in China. The Catholic view was that the missionaries would gain in the eyes of the people if treated with more deference than the majority of Chinese officials cared to display towards what was to them an objectionable cla.s.s; in practice, however, the system was found to be unworkable, and was ultimately given up.

The autumn of this year witnessed the beginning of the so-called Boxer troubles. There was great unrest, especially in Shantung, due, it was said, to ill-feeling between the people at large and converts to Christianity, and at any rate aggravated by recent foreign acquisitions of Chinese territory. It was thus that what was originally one of the periodical anti-dynastic risings, with the usual scion of the Ming dynasty as figure-head, lost sight of its objective and became a bloodthirsty anti-foreign outbreak. The story of the siege of the Legations has been written from many points of view; and most people know all they want to know of the two summer months in 1900, the merciless bombardment of a thousand foreigners, with their women and children, cooped up in a narrow s.p.a.ce, and also of the awful butchery of missionaries, men, women, and children alike, which took place at the capital of Shansi. Whatever may have been the origin of the movement, there can be little doubt that it was taken over by the Manchus, with the complicity of the Empress Dowager, as a means of getting rid of all the foreigners in China.

Considering the extraordinary position the Empress Dowager had created for herself, it is impossible to believe that she would not have been able to put an end to the siege by a word, or even by a mere gesture. She did not do so; and on the relief of the Legations, for a second time in her life--she had accompanied Hsien Feng to Jehol in 1860--she sought safety in an ignominious flight. Meanwhile, in response to a memorial from the Governor of Shansi, she had sent him a secret decree, saying, "Slay all foreigners wheresoever you find them; even though they be prepared to leave your province, yet must they be slain." A second and more urgent decree said, "I command that all foreigners, men, women, and children, be summarily executed.

Let not one escape, so that my empire may be purged of this noisome source of corruption, and that peace may be restored to my loyal subjects." The first of these decrees had been circulated to all the high provincial officials, and the result might well have been indiscriminate slaughter of foreigners all over China, but for the action of two Chinese officials, who had already incurred the displeasure of the Empress Dowager by memorializing against the Boxer policy. These men secretly changed the word "slay" into "protect,"

and this is the sense in which the decree was acted upon by provincial officials generally, with the exception of the Governor of Shansi, who sent a second memorial, eliciting the second decree as above. It is impossible to say how many foreigners owe their lives to this alteration of a word, and the Empress Dowager herself would scarcely have escaped so easily as she did, had her cruel order been more fully executed. The trick was soon discovered, and the two heroes, Yuan Ch'ang and Hsu Ching-ch'eng, were both summarily beheaded, even although it was to the former that the Empress Dowager was indebted for information which enabled her to frustrate the plot against her life in 1898.

Now, at the very moment of departure, she perpetrated a most brutal crime. A favourite concubine of the Emperor's, who had previously given cause for offence, urged that his Majesty should not take part in the flight, but should remain in Peking. For this suggestion the Empress Dowager caused the miserable girl to be thrown down a well, in spite of the supplications of the Emperor on her behalf. Then she fled, ultimately to Hsi-an Fu, the capital of Shensi, and for a year and a half Peking was rid of her presence. In 1902, she came back with the Emperor, whose prerogative she still managed to usurp. She declared at once for reform, and took up the cause with much show of enthusiasm; but those who knew the Manchu best, decided to "wait and see." She began by suggesting intermarriage between Manchus and Chinese, which had so far been prohibited, and advised Chinese women to give up the practice of footbinding, a custom which the ruling race had never adopted. It was henceforth to be lawful for Manchus, even of the Imperial family, to send their sons abroad to be educated,--a step which no Manchu would be likely to take unless forcibly coerced into doing so. Any spirit of enterprise which might have been possessed by the founders of the dynasty had long since evaporated, and all that Manchu n.o.bles asked was to be allowed to batten in peace upon the Chinese people.

The direct issue of the emperors of the present dynasty and of their descendants in the male line, dating from 1616, are popularly known as Yellow Girdles, from a sash of that colour which they habitually wear. Each generation becomes a degree lower in rank, until they are mere members of the family with no rank whatever, although they still wear the girdle and receive a trifling allowance from the government.

Thus, beggars and even thieves are occasionally seen with this badge of relations.h.i.+p to the throne. Members of the collateral branches of the Imperial family wear a red girdle, and are known as Gioros, Gioro being part of the surname--Aisin Gioro = Golden Race--of an early progenitor of the Manchu emperors.

As a next step in reform, the examination system was to be remodelled, but not in the one sense in which it would have appealed most to the Chinese people. Examinations for Manchus have always been held separately, and the standard attained has always been very far below that reached by Chinese candidates, so that the scholars.h.i.+p of the Manchu became long ago a by-word and a joke. Now, in 1904, it was settled that entry to an official career should be obtainable only through the modern educational colleges; but this again applied only to Chinese and not to Manchus. The Manchus have always had wisdom enough to employ the best abilities they could discover by process of examination among the Chinese, many of whom have risen from the lowest estate to the highest positions in the empire, and have proved themselves valuable servants and staunch upholders of the dynasty.

Still, in addition to numerous other posts, it may be said that all the fat sinecures have always been the portion of Manchus. For instance, the office of Hoppo, or superintendent of customs at Canton (abolished 1904), was a position which was allowed to degenerate into a mere opportunity for piling a large fortune in the shortest possible time, no particular ability being required from the holder of the post, who was always a Manchu.

Then followed a mission to Europe, at the head of which we now find a Manchu of high rank, an Imperial Duke, sent to study the mysteries of const.i.tutional government, which was henceforth promised to the people, so soon as its introduction might be practicable. In the midst of these attractive promises (1904-5) came the Russo-j.a.panese war, with all its surprises. Among other causes to which the Manchu court ascribed the success of the j.a.panese, freedom from the opium vice took high rank, and this led to really serious enactments against the growth and consumption of opium in China. Continuous and strenuous efforts of philanthropists during the preceding half century had not produced any results at all; but now it seemed as though this weakness had been all along the chief reason for China's failures in her struggles with the barbarian, and it was to be incontinently stamped out. Ten years' grace was allowed, at the end of which period there was to be no more opium-smoking in the empire.

One awkward feature was that the Empress Dowager herself was an opium-smoker; the difficulty, however, was got over by excluding from the application of the edict of 1906 persons over sixty years of age.

Whatever may be thought of the wisdom of this policy, which so far has chiefly resulted in the subst.i.tution of morphia, cocaine, and alcohol, the thoroughness and rapidity with which it has been carried out, can only command the admiration of all; of those most who know China best.

CHAPTER XI

HSuAN T'UNG

The health of the Emperor, never very good, now began to fail, and by 1908 he was seriously ill; in this same year, too, there were signs that the Empress Dowager was breaking up. Her last political act of any importance, except the nomination of the heir to the throne, was to issue a decree confirming the previous promise of const.i.tutional government, which was to come into full force within nine years. Not many weeks later the Emperor died (November 14), the Empress Dowager having already, while he lay dying, appointed one of his nephews, a child barely three years old, to succeed him, in the vain hope that she would thus enjoy a further spell of power until the child should be of age. But on the following day the Empress Dowager also died; a singular coincidence which has been attributed to the determination of the eunuchs and others that the Emperor should not outlive his aunt, for some time past seen to be "drawing near the wood," lest his reforming spirit should again jeopardize their nefarious interests.