Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China
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For an imperial consort to take advantage of her relationship with the monarch to sell official jobs was an offence punishable by death in the Qing court. The emperor would become a laughing stock and would be deemed stupid and unworthy if the scandal was exposed. Cixi knew about Pearl’s misdeeds and Guangxu’s involvement, and she decided to use them to force her adopted son to agree to her demands. She obtained confessions from Pearl and the eunuchs serving her – by having the eunuchs thrashed on their backsides with long flat bamboo bats, and by forcing Pearl to watch as their skins split and their screams weakened from howls to whimpers. Pearl herself was slapped across the face. In great pain, humiliated and terrified, she collapsed. A royal doctor found her ‘unconscious, her teeth clenched, and her whole body twitching and shaking’. Blood trickled from her mouth and nose. She slipped in and out of consciousness for a fortnight.
Some years earlier, when Pearl had just been chosen as an imperial concubine, her mother had sensed an unhappy fate for the girl. Mrs Headland, the American doctor, had been called to see Pearl’s mother and recalled that the aristocratic lady:
was suffering from a nervous breakdown due to worry and sleeplessness. On inquiry I discovered that her two daughters had been taken into the palace as concubines of the Emperor Kuang Hsu [Guangxu] . . . She took me by the hand, pulled me down on the brick bed beside her, and told me in a pathetic way how both of her daughters had been taken from her in a single day. ‘But they have been taken into the palace,’ I urged, to try to comfort her, ‘and I have heard that the Emperor is very fond of your eldest daughter . . .’ ‘Quite right,’ she replied, ‘but what consolation is there in that? . . . I am afraid of the court intrigues, and they are only children and cannot understand the duplicity of court life – I fear for them, I fear for them,’ and she swayed back and forth on her brick bed.
With Pearl’s confession, Cixi compelled her adopted son to accept her ‘deal’. She would allow his role in the scandal to be covered up, and in return Guangxu would give her full access to all the war reports. On 26 November, the emperor absented himself when Cixi told the Grand Council what Pearl had done, and then had a decree issued in her capacity as empress dowager overseeing the harem, announcing the transgressions committed by Pearl and her sister Jade and demoting them both. The decree portrayed the emperor as a monarch of impecable integrity. It said the two imperial concubines had ‘begged the emperor’ to give jobs to people they had recommended, but that he had felt ‘deeply troubled by this behaviour’ and had brought the case to the empress dowager, asking for his two consorts to be censured. When Grand Tutor Weng saw Emperor Guangxu the following day, His Majesty calmly raised the subject as if he had indeed been totally innocent. On that day, the 27th, Emperor Guangxu issued an edict ordering that all the reports addressed to him be presented to the empress dowager – and in their original form. It was only from this day on that Cixi had full access to information about the war.
Meanwhile, as a reminder of the gravity of the scandal, a severely worded reprimand was framed and hung in Pearl’s apartment. A eunuch chief involved was executed. Cixi had wanted the execution to be in public, but was persuaded by Grand Tutor Weng that this would do damage to the dynasty; the death sentence was carried out inside the Forbidden City by the court’s Judicious Punishment Department – using bastinado, namely, beating the eunuch to death with long wooden bats.
Cixi now resolved to separate Emperor Guangxu from his friends who had been urging him to exclude her from the decision-making process. She most wanted to shut out of the court Pearl’s cousin, Zhirui, the man who had also tried to get the emperor to sack Admiral Ting and have him thrown into prison – even executed – all for no reason other than that the Admiral had taken up a (sensible) defensive position. In another petition Zhirui had advised the emperor to cut the pay of the troops defending Manchuria by 80 per cent – to save money, so he said. Why should he single out Manchuria, which borders on Korea, for cuts, when the Japanese were on the doorstep? Cixi could not but regard Cousin Zhirui’s advice as toxic and of benefit to the Japanese. Deeply suspicious of him, she sent him to a post in the far north of the empire, well away from the court.
She also planned to eliminate the influence of Wen Tingshi, a family friend of Pearl. Wen had written to the emperor saying that Cixi had to be barred entirely from politics, because a woman playing a role in state affairs was like ‘a hen crowing in the morning, which is bound to herald a disastrous day’. In addition, Wen had got a Censor, Weijun, to petition the throne and accuse Cixi of meddling, alleging that she was the puppet of her head eunuch, Lianying. Cixi was distraught by this allegation, which even some top officials tended to believe. One voiced his concern to her in an audience, and her anger was palpable as she interrupted him and told him to ‘rest assured’ that the allegations were untrue. Rumours began to circulate that she was an appeaser and had been ‘putting pressure on the emperor not to fight Japan’. ‘Historians are going to write it in this way. How am I to face the country? And what will the future generations think of me?’ she cried. Emperor Guangxu felt compelled to punish the slanderous Censor and banished him to the frontier for several years. Such a harsh punishment for criticising Cixi was unheard of during her reign, and it caused a sensation. Many believed the accusations (it was – and still is – easy for women to be cast as scapegoats for failures), and feted the Censor as a hero. Much of the sympathy for him was stirred up by Wen, whose closeness to Emperor Guangxu gave him credibility. Wen collected tens of thousands of taels as a morale-boosting gift for the Censor as he went into exile. For all that Wen had done to her, Cixi’s treatment of him was restrained. During the war she left him alone, and afterwards she made her adopted son send Wen out of the court and the capital. Two other friends of the emperor who had been whispering to him words such as ‘Don’t let the Empress Dowager butt in’ were also sacked after the war, charged with ‘setting the Two Majesties against each other’.
The major step Cixi took for now was to try and close the emperor’s study, which was the one place where his friends could come and talk to him without arousing suspicion. This was also where the monarch continued to study the classics and the Manchu language – and even English – in the middle of a disastrous war. Cixi was entitled to close the study since, as a parent, she had overall responsibility for his education. Shutting down the study would also put a stop to the emperor’s tête-à-têtes with Grand Tutor Weng, during which they framed war policy. Cixi wanted policies to be made with the Grand Council, and in her presence. She made Weng a Grand Councillor, so that he would have no reason to impart his advice in private.
Cixi’s move to close the study was unsuccessful. Emperor Guangxu was very annoyed about losing his private world, and asked Prince Gong, now heading the Grand Council, to intervene. Weng was upset, too. So Cixi had to allow his classics lessons to continue, stopping only the language sessions. She had to reassure Weng that she regarded him as ‘loyal and trustworthy’, and shutting the study had not been aimed at him, but only at the likes of Zhirui. She apologised for her order being ‘too blunt’.
Only as a result of this immense struggle did Cixi break into the decision-making process. This was near the end of 1894, months after the war had started, and when China was already doomed to defeat.
* * *
fn1 The troops staying behind in Korea were under a Commander Wu Changqing, who seems to have succeeded in keeping his men strictly disciplined, which earned some goodwill from the Koreans. In 1884, he fell ill and returned to China. When it looked as though nothing could cure him, his despairing teenage son cut two slices of flesh from his own left chest, at a place near his heart, and cooked them with the medicine, in a desperate, but vain, hope that the love and sacrifice would move Heaven and revive his father. The son’s idea had come from Confucian morality stories.
fn2 According to the Chinese method of calculation.
fn3 Nine was considered the most auspicious figure, becau
se it is the highest single-digit number and has the same pronunciation as the word for ‘long-lasting’, jiu.
17 A Peace that Ruined China (1895)
AFTER TAKING PORT Arthur, the Japanese declared that they were ready for peace talks. Two Chinese negotiators set off for Japan. On 5 January 1895, before they left, they saw Cixi and Emperor Guangxu. After the audience, Cixi put the key points of her instructions down on a sheet of royal yellow paper and had it delivered to the envoys, telling them emphatically not to sign anything without referring back to Beijing and, especially, not to make any promises that concerned territory or were beyond the country’s means.
The day the two negotiators arrived in Japan the war took a drastic turn for the worse for the Chinese, with the Japanese poised to seize Weihaiwei, the headquarters of the Northern Fleet. The Fleet was under strict orders to break out and, as a last resort, to sink their ships to stop them falling into enemy hands. But officers and men refused to obey orders. Some went down on their knees and begged Admiral Ting not to destroy the ships because, if he did, the Japanese would certainly torture them ferociously before killing them. Under this pressure, Admiral Ting signed a letter of surrender and handed over the gunboats, ten in all, including one of the two ironclads, to the Japanese. The Admiral then committed suicide by swallowing opium. Thus in February 1895 the Northern Fleet – the backbone of the Chinese navy – was lost. While the Japanese warriors contemptuously compared their antagonists to ‘dying swine lying on the ground to be slaughtered and cut up at will’, Tokyo rejected the two negotiators, demanding instead a plenipotentiary with the highest position and prestige. It was clear they wanted Earl Li.
From the way Tokyo was dictating terms, Cixi felt it was impossible for the talks to produce any acceptable outcome. On 6 February, she told the Grand Council that Japan was bound to impose ‘terms to which we can’t possibly agree’, and the government must recall the envoys, break the talks and fight on. The ‘severity of her words and her demeanour’ startled Grand Tutor Weng. The following day, when a top commander called Wang Wenshao had an audience with her, he was similarly struck, as he described in his diary:
The Empress Dowager had outrage written all over her face and in her words. She bade me do everything possible to reignite the fighting spirit of officers and men. She told me to implement strict rules to award bravery and punish cowardice, and to do our utmost to salvage the situation . . . She instructed me long and hard, for three quarters of an hour, anxious that I should grasp her message. I could see how concerned she was for me to get it right, and so I lingered outside while she received the Grand Councillors, in case she had more directions for me.
Cixi gave the commander a decree to take to the troops. It was issued in her own name, and it called on them to fight on bravely.
She sent an order to Viceroy Zhang Zhidong, who was firmly opposed to peace talks based on unacceptable terms and had been cabling the court with ideas about how best to continue fighting. Her letter asked him to go beyond the remit of his viceroyalty and help plan an overall strategy. But when the Viceroy asked Beijing for more information about the war, the emperor, in a tone of displeasure, replied that it was none of his business.
It was clear that Cixi’s words counted for little. The men at the top – Emperor Guangxu, Prince Gong and the rest of the Grand Council – did not want to fight and were willing to accept any Japanese terms. They were mortified by the prospect of their enemy marching on Beijing and overthrowing the dynasty. When he mentioned this possibility to Grand Tutor Weng, the emperor was in floods of tears, and the classics tutor was ‘sweating and trembling’. Cixi was forced to agree to send Earl Li to Japan, but she asked the Grand Council to tell the earl to ‘come and get instructions first’. Prince Gong was terrified that Cixi might impose conditions that would lead to the collapse of the talks, and intervened: ‘But the emperor has said Li doesn’t have to come. This is not in accordance with His Majesty’s wishes.’ Cixi snapped, ‘Are you asking for my views or not? Do my words mean something or not?’
Earl Li did come for an audience. On 25 February, he and Prince Gong informed Cixi of the Japanese demand that he should only go to Japan if he had a mandate to cede territory, in addition to paying a large indemnity. They also told her that Emperor Guangxu had decided to send the earl on those conditions. Cixi objected furiously – to no avail. In the end she said angrily: ‘You do whatever you want to do. Don’t ask me any more!’ When Emperor Guangxu still sought her advice on what Earl Li should give away to Japan, she sent a eunuch to say that she was unwell, and could the emperor please make the decision himself.
As Earl Li did not want to take personal responsibility for the loss of territory – which mattered most for the Chinese – on 3 March Emperor Guangxu gave him written authorisation to ‘cede territory’. This reflected the wishes of all the Grand Councillors, who wrote collectively to the empress dowager on the same day, entreating her to understand the emperor’s dilemma, citing ‘danger to the capital’ as his main concern. Cixi did not reply. She turned her back on her adopted son, who in great distress tiptoed around her apartment trying to see her and get her endorsement.
On 8 April, Japan’s full terms arrived. Apart from an astronomical indemnity, they demanded the cession of Taiwan, known to be a ‘jewel’ of the Chinese empire, and which, as Viceroy Zhang reminded the court, ‘each year earns over 2 million taels for the state coffers, and dozens of times this amount for the merchants and population at large’. As well as Taiwan, Japan wanted the nearby islands of the Pescadores, and the Liaodong Peninsula in south Manchuria. An incensed Cixi told Emperor Guangxu: ‘Cede no land, recall the negotiator and fight on!’
But of course there was no ace up her sleeve. What she had was a determination not to cave in, and a readiness to take risks. She was ignored by the men, who wanted no risks. Upon receiving an ultimatum from Prime Minister Itō, warning that 100,000 troops were on their way to Beijing, Emperor Guangxu, on 14 April, told Earl Li to accept the Japanese terms. On the 17th, the earl signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Itō. Japan got the territories it demanded, plus 200 million taels in indemnity.
During this period Cixi was consumed by outrage and despair, made worse by her powerlessness. So acute was her anguish that she would frequently pass out. A eunuch ‘often spotted Cixi weeping when she thought she was alone’. He said that ‘Cixi’s private tears revealed untold agony in her heart . . . If one were to ask me to name one thing about Cixi, I would say she was the most tormented person on earth.’
Compared with the two previous indemnities, to Britain in 1842, and to Britain and France in 1860, the sum forced out of China in 1895 reveals the rising Asian power’s unparalleled appetite and mercilessness. The European demands – sixteen million taels in the first case, and eight million to each country in the latter – had been more or less related to their war costs and the damages inflicted on non-combatants. The 200 million to Japan bore little relation to the costs incurred, as Japan had only thirty million taels in total in its state coffers at the beginning of the war, and the war bonds it had sold subsequently – eighty million – were only partially cashed. Prime Minister Itō did not dispute these figures when Earl Li cited them.
The treaty enraged the entire Chinese ruling elite. Many hundreds of officials in the capital signed petitions calling for its rejection, joined by more than a thousand members of the literati who were in Beijing from the provinces for the Imperial Examination. The scale of the ‘No’ campaign was unprecedented. Even though the treaty was not officially made public, word had got round. All petitioners implored the emperor to refuse to ratify it – some urging him to move the capital to the interior and settle for a protracted war. But their impassioned words were dismissed as ‘a voice and nothing besides’ (to quote Hart). Public opinion carried little weight with Emperor Guangxu, for whom the only domestic threat was armed peasant rebellion; otherwise, the only menace was Japan, which could topple the Great Qing.
Seeing clear proof of Europe’s concern, Cixi judged that it was highly unlikely that Japan would attack Beijing and finish off the Qing dynasty. Japan was not yet in a position to challenge the West. (As it happened, Japan eventually accepted the three European powers’ demand and withdrew from the Liaodong Peninsula – albeit at a cost.) She hoped that Emperor Guangxu and the grandees could recognise that the capital and the dynasty were secure, and would then stand firm and refuse the Japanese terms. Of course Japan might go ahead and seize Beijing regardless, but Cixi reckoned that it was a risk worth taking. The terms of the treaty were too damaging to the empire for its leaders not to take that risk. In her calculation, pressured by Western powers and facing a China that showed a determination to fight a protracted war, Japan might well settle for a peace treaty that was far less fatal than the Treaty of Shimonoseki.
Hoping the court would think the same way as she did, on 26 April Cixi asked the Grand Council to reconsider the peace treaty thoroughly and give her their thoughts. But these men all agreed with the emperor that they must be certain that Europe would definitely intervene on their behalf before deciding to fight, and the emperor ordered cables sent to the three countries for a definitive commitment. Unsurprisingly, there was no immediate reply. While waiting, Emperor Guangxu became obsessed about meeting the deadline for the ratification of the treaty, petrified that once it had passed, the Japanese would march into Beijing. Stretched to breaking point, the twenty-three-year-old looked haggard beyond his years. No grandee advised against ratification: none wanted to be the one responsible for the fall of the dynasty. Grand Tutor Weng just groaned that he was ready to smash his head to smithereens if it were of any help. All eyes were on Prince Gong, even though he had in fact contributed little and was gravely ill. Characteristically, the prince advised endorsing the treaty. For all his qualities, he was essentially a weak man who was prone to buckle in a major crisis.