Court Life in China | Page 9

disturbance on that southern coast for centuries past, the
viceroy decided to rid the country of this pest. Nine days after the time
for which the boat had been registered, but while it continued
unlawfully to float the British colours, the viceroy seized the boat,
imprisoned all her crew, and dragged down the British flag. This was
an insult which Great Britain could not or would not brook and so the
viceroy was ordered to release the prisoners, all of whom were Chinese
subjects, on penalty of being blown up in his own yamen if he refused.
Frightened at the threat, and remembering the result of the former war,
the viceroy sent the prisoners to the consulate in chains without proper
apologies for his insult to the flag. This angered the consul and he
returned them to the viceroy, who promptly cut off their heads without
so much as the semblance of a trial, and Britain, anxious, as she was, to
have every door of the Chinese empire opened to foreign trade, found
in this another pretext for war. We do not pretend to argue that this was
not the best thing for China and for the world, but it can only be
considered so from the bitter medicine, and corporal punishment point
of view, neither of which are agreeable to either the patient or the pupil.

Britain went to war. The viceroy was taken a prisoner to India, whence
he never returned. As though ashamed to enter upon a second
unprovoked and unjust war alone, she invited France, Russia, and
America to join her. France was quite ready to do so in the hope of
strengthening her position in Indo-China, and with nothing more than
the murder of a missionary in Kuangsi as a pretext she put a body of
troops in the field large enough to enable her to checkmate England, or
humiliate China as the exigencies of the occasion, and her own interests,
might demand. America and Russia having no cause for war, no
wrongs to redress, and no desire for territory, refused to join her in
sending troops, but gave her such sympathy and support as would
enable her to bring about a more satisfactory arrangement of China's
foreign relations--that is more satisfactory to themselves regardless of
the wishes, though not perhaps the interests, of China.
We know how the British and French marched upon Peking in 1860;
how the summer palace was left a heap of ruins as a punishment for the
murder of a company of men under a flag of truce; and how the
Emperor Hsien Feng, with his wife, and the mother of his only son, our
Empress Dowager, were compelled to flee for the first time before a
foreign invader. Their refuge was Jehol, a fortified town, in a wild and
rugged mountain pass, on the borders of China and Tartary, a hundred
miles northeast of Peking. At this place the Emperor died, whether of
disease, chagrin, or of a broken heart--or of all combined, it is
impossible to say, and the Empress-mother was left AN EXILE AND
A WIDOW, with the capital and the throne for the first time at the
mercy of the Western barbarian.
This was the beginning of two important phases of the Empress
Dowager's life--her affliction and her power, and her greatness is
exhibited as well by the way in which she bore the one as by the way in
which she wielded the other. In most cases a woman would have been
so overcome by sorrow at the loss of her husband, as to have forgotten
the affairs of state, or to have placed them for the time in the hands of
others. Not so with this great woman. Prince Kung the brother of Hsien
Feng, had been left in Peking to arrange a treaty with the Europeans,
which he succeeded in doing to the satisfaction of both the Chinese and

the foreigners.
On the death of the Emperor, a regency was organized by two of the
princes, which did not include Prince Kung, and disregarded both of
the dowagers, and it seemed as though Prince Kung was doomed. His
father-in-law, however, the old statesman who had signed the treaties,
urged him to be the first to get the ear of the two women on their return
to the capital. This he did, and as it seemed evident that the regency and
the council had been organized for the express purpose of tyrannizing
over the Empresses and the child, they were at once arrested, the leader
beheaded, and the others condemned to exile or to suicide. The child
had been placed upon the throne as "good-luck," but now a new
regency was formed, consisting of the two dowagers, with Prince Kung
as joint regent, and the title