Part 33

_The Death of Chao Shu-ch’iao._—This Grand Councillor, one of the Empress’s favourite Ministers, whom to the last she endeavoured to protect from execution, was originally sentenced only to imprisonment for life. He was confined in the prison of the Provincial Judge at Hsi-an, where his family were allowed to visit him. On the day before the issue of the Decree which sentenced him to imprisonment, the Old Buddha had said, at a meeting of the Grand Council, “I do not really believe that Chao sympathised in the very least with the Boxers; the error that he made lay in under-estimating the seriousness of the movement.” This was reported to Chao, who was naturally much elated, and believed that his life would surely be spared. A few days later, however, it was freely rumoured that the foreign Powers were insisting upon his decapitation, and the news created the greatest excitement throughout the city, which was his native place. Some three hundred of the chief men of the city having drawn up a monster petition, proceeded with it to the office of the Grand Council, and begged, in the name of the whole community, that his life be spared. The Grand Councillors were afraid to take the petition to Her Majesty, but, in reply to the deputation, the President of the Board of Punishments (who was related to Chao) declared that his execution would be an act of monstrous injustice.

On the first day of the New Year, these rumours took more definite shape, and on that day Her Majesty’s audience with the Grand Council lasted from six to eleven in the morning; but even then no decision had been come to in regard to complying with the demand for Chao’s execution. Throughout the neighbourhood of the Drum Tower the streets were packed with a huge crowd, who threatened that they would certainly rescue Chao if he were taken out for execution. So great was the clamour that the Grand Council feared a riot, and they determined, therefore, to beg Her Majesty to permit Chao to commit suicide. This was done, and Tzŭ Hsi reluctantly agreeing, issued the Decree at one o’clock on the following morning, which fixed the hour for reporting his death to Her Majesty at five o’clock in the afternoon of the same day. Governor Ts’en was ordered to proceed to the prison, and read the Decree to Chao, which he did in due form. After hearing it in silence to the end, Chao asked: “Will there be no further Decree?” “No,” said Ts’en. “Surely, there must be,” said Chao. At this his wife, intervening, said, “There is no hope; let us die together!” She then gave him poison, of which he took a little, but up till 3 P.M. it appeared to have had no effect whatsoever, for he seemed most vigorous, and discussed at great length with his family the arrangements to be made for his funeral. He was much exercised in mind at the effect which his death would have upon the health of his aged mother. All day long his room was crowded by friends and colleagues; the Governor had endeavoured at first to prevent their coming, but had eventually yielded, so that the number of those present was very large. Chao, addressing them, said: “I have been brought to this pass entirely by the fault of Kang Yi.” The Governor, observing that his voice sounded clear and firm, and that, at this hour, there were no signs of impending death about him, ordered one of the attendants to give him some opium to swallow. At 5 o’clock, the opium having apparently taken no effect, the attendants were ordered to give him a liberal dose of arsenic, after which he rolled over on to the ground, and lay there, groaning and beating his breast with his hands. Later, complaining of extreme pain, he asked that friction might be applied to his chest, but so strong was his constitution, and so determined his will, that even at 11 o’clock it was evident that there was still no little life left in him. The Governor was much disturbed and distressed, being well aware that the Old Buddha would require some adequate explanation of this long delay in the execution of her orders. “I was to report his death at 5 o’clock,” said he, “the man will not die: what is to be done?” The attendants suggested that he should screw up some pieces of thick paper, dip them in strong spirit, and with them close the breathing passages; by this means he would be speedily suffocated. Ts’en approved of the suggestion, and after five wads of paper had been inserted, death ensued. His wife, weeping bitterly, thereupon committed suicide. To the end, Chao could not believe that the Empress Dowager would allow his death, and for this reason it is probable that he purposely took an insufficient dose of opium in order to gain time for a reprieve.

_The Death of Prince Chuang._—Prince Chuang, with his concubine and son, went to Tu Chou, in South Shansi, there to await the decision of the Empress Dowager as to his fate. He lodged in an official house of entertainment. When Ko Pao-hua, the Imperial Commissioner, brought thither the Decree commanding him to commit suicide, it was early in the morning; nevertheless, upon his arrival, crackers were fired, in accordance with etiquette, to greet him. The noise greatly irritated Prince Chuang, who turned savagely upon the attendants, and asked what they meant by making such a noise at such an hour. “An Imperial Commissioner has arrived,” they said. “Has he come about me?” asked the Prince. “No,” they replied, “he is merely passing through on business.” When the Imperial Commissioner was ushered in, the Prince began to ply him with questions about the Court, to which Ko briefly replied. After talking for a little while Ko went off to inspect the premises, at the back of which he found an old temple, in which he selected an unoccupied room to be the scene of Prince Chuang’s suicide. From a beam in the roof he hung a silken cord, and, after fastening it securely, he directed the Prefect and the District Magistrate to send some soldiers to keep order. Having made these preparations he returned to the presence of the Prince, and informing him that he had an Imperial Decree to read to him, ordered him to go down on his knees to hear it. The Prince, drawing himself up to his full height, said, “Is it my head that you want?” The Imperial Commissioner made no direct reply, but proceeded to read the Decree to the Prince, who reverently knelt.[116] When the Commissioner had finished, “So it is suicide,” said the Prince, “I always expected they would not be content with anything less than my life. I greatly fear that even our Old Buddha will not be allowed to last much longer.” He next asked the Imperial Commissioner to be permitted to bid farewell to his family, which was allowed him. At this moment, his concubine and his son, having learned of the Imperial Commissioner’s business, entered the room. The Prince, addressing his son, said:—“Remember that it is your duty to do everything in your power for your country; at all costs, these foreigners must not be allowed to possess themselves of the glorious Empire won for us by our ancestors.”[117] His son, bitterly weeping, could not reply, while his concubine passed from frantic grief to a swoon. The Prince, unmoved, asked:—“Where is the death chamber?” The Imperial Commissioner replied:—“Will your Highness please to come to the empty room at the back of the house.” When the Prince, following him, saw the silken cord hanging from the beam, he turned and said:—“Your Excellency has indeed made most admirable and complete arrangements.” With these words he passed the cord around his neck, and in a very few minutes life was extinct.

_The Death of Ying Nien._—Ying Nien was an arrant coward. On the day of the issue of the first Decree, ordering his imprisonment at Hsi-an, his family deserted him, and he remained all through the night, weeping, in great distress of mind. To his attendants he complained bitterly that Prince Ch’ing had not intervened to protect him. The next day was the New Year Festival, and as everybody was busy with preparations for the occasion, little heed was paid to him, and he spent the day weeping. Towards midnight his crying suddenly ceased, and on the following morning he was found by his servant, prone upon the ground, his face covered with mud, quite dead. He had choked himself by swallowing mud, but as the Decree ordering him to commit suicide had not actually been issued, the fact of his death was suppressed for forty-eight hours, after which Governor Ts’en was informed, and he reported it to the Old Buddha.

_The Decapitation of Yü Hsien._—When the Decree, commanding his decapitation, reached Yü Hsien, he had already started under escort for his place of banishment, but he was a sick man and could only totter weakly along. On learning the news, he appeared as one dazed, a very different man indeed from that fierce Governor of Shansi, who had displayed such bloodthirsty activity. On the day before his death he was very seriously ill, and when the time came, he was so weak that he had to be supported to the execution ground. On the previous day the leading citizens of Lan-chou fu expressed their desire to offer him a valedictory banquet, but he declined the honour with thanks, expressing his wish to spend his last day in quietude. He wrote a pair of scrolls as an expression of his gratitude for the courtesy thus shown to him, and the elders of the city decided and informed him that the execution ground would be decorated with red cloth, as for a festival, in his honour. Towards evening, notices were placarded in the principal streets, calling on the people to insist upon his being reprieved, but Yü Hsien knew that this was quite useless. He composed a statement of his actions in the form of an official proclamation, maintaining stoutly that his death was to be regarded as a glorious and patriotic end, and bidding the people on no account to interfere with the execution of his sentence. Finally he wrote, with his own hand, a pair of valedictory scrolls, the text of which was widely quoted after his death all over China. The first may be translated as follows:—

“The Minister dies for his Sovereign; wives and concubines die for their lord. Who shall say that this is unseemly? It is sad that my aged mother is ninety years of age, and my little daughter only seven. Who shall protect them in their old age and tender youth? How shall that filial piety be fulfilled which a man owes to his parent? The Sovereign commanded, and the Minister obeyed. I slew others; now, in my turn, am I slain. Why should I regret it? Only one cause for shame have I—that I have served my Sovereign all these years, and have held high rank in three provinces, without displaying merit more conspicuous than a grain of sand in the desert or a drop of water in the ocean. Alas, that I should thus unworthily requite the Imperial bounty.”

And the second reads:—

“The Minister has by his guilt incurred the sentence of decapitation. At this moment there is no thought in my mind except the hope that my death may be as glorious as my life has been honest.[118] I would far rather die than pine away the rest of my life in degrading imprisonment. I have ill-requited Her Majesty’s kindness. Who shall now relieve her grief? I sincerely hope that you, the Statesmen who surround the Throne, may yet find means to restore our fallen fortunes, and that you will honourably fulfil your bounden duty in ministering to the distress of their Imperial Majesties.”

On the following day, at one o’clock of the afternoon, Yü Hsien’s head was severed from his body, in the presence of a great crowd, which greeted his end with sounds of lamentation.

_The Death of Ch’i Hsiu._—Ch’i Hsin was executed, together with Hsü Ching-yu, outside the wall of the Tartar city, in Peking, early one morning in February, 1901, the execution being witnessed by more than one European. When informed that he was to die, Ch’i Hsiu’s only question was: “By whose commands?” and when told that a Decree had come from Hsi-an fu, he said, “It is by the will of the Empress Dowager; I die happy then, so long as it is not by order of the foreigners.” This Grand Councillor had been arrested several months before by the Japanese, and Prince Ch’ing had been able to obtain his release on the ground that his aged mother was very ill; but when she subsequently died, he strongly advised Ch’i Hsiu “to make his filial piety coincide with his loyalty by committing suicide.” Coming from Prince Ch’ing, the suggestion was one hardly to be misunderstood, but Ch’i Hsiu failed to act upon it, thereby incurring a certain amount of criticism.

XXII

THE OLD BUDDHA PENITENT

When the wrath of the Powers had been appeased by the death and banishment of the leading Boxers, and when the Empress Dowager had come to realise that her future policy must be one of conciliation and reform, she proceeded first of all to adjust the annals of her reign for the benefit of posterity, in the following remarkable Edict (13th February, 1901):—

“In the summer of last year, the Boxers, after bringing about a state of war, took possession of our Capital and dominated the very Throne itself. The Decrees issued at that time were the work of wicked Princes and Ministers of State, who, taking advantage of the chaotic condition of affairs, did not hesitate to issue documents under the Imperial seal, which were quite contrary to our wishes. We have on more than one previous occasion hinted indirectly at the extraordinary difficulty of the position in which we were placed, and which left us no alternative but to act as we did. Our officials and subjects should have no difficulty in reading between the lines and appreciating our meaning.

“We have now punished all the guilty, and we hereby order that the Grand Secretariat shall submit for our perusal all Decrees issued between the 24th day of the 5th moon and the 20th day of the 7th moon (20th June to 14th August), so that all spurious or illegal documents may be withdrawn and cancelled. Thus shall historical accuracy be attained and our Imperial utterances receive the respect to which they are properly entitled.”

Having thus secured the respect of posterity, Tzŭ Hsi proceeded to make the “amende honorable,” (with due regard to the Imperial “face,”) for so many of her sins as she was prepared to admit. In another Decree, in the name of the Emperor, which gives a Munchausen account of the Throne’s part and lot in the crisis of 1900, and a pathetic description of her own and the Emperor’s sufferings during the flight, she makes solemn confession of error and promise of reform. As an example of the manner in which history is made in China, the Edict is of permanent interest and value.

“A PENITENTIAL DECREE

“_26th day, 12th moon of Kuang-Hsü’s 26th year_ (_Feb. 13th, 1901_).

“Last summer the Boxers sowed the seeds of rebellion, which led to our being involved in a war with friendly Powers. Thereafter, our Capital being thrown into a state of great disorder, we escorted the Empress Dowager, our mother, on a progress of inspection throughout the Western Provinces. To Prince Ch’ing and to the Grand Secretary Li Hung-chang we entrusted full powers, and bade them negotiate with the foreign Ministers for the cessation of hostilities and a Treaty of peace. These Plenipotentiaries having lately telegraphed to us the twelve principal clauses of the proposed protocol, we have consented thereto, but at the same time have instructed them carefully to scrutinise their various provisions in the light of China’s ability to fulfil them.

“It having been accorded to us to retrieve our disastrous mistakes, we are in duty bound to promulgate this Penitential Decree, and to let every one of our subjects know how vast and harassing were the perplexities with which the Throne has been beset.

“There are ignorant persons who believe that the recent crisis was partly caused by our government’s support of the Boxers; they must have overlooked our reiterated Decrees of the 5th and 6th moons, that the Boxers should be exterminated, and the Christians protected. Unfortunately these rebels and their evil associates placed us in a position from which it was impossible to escape; we exhausted every possible effort of strong remonstrance, appalled at the impending ruin of our Empire. Events moved swiftly until, on the 21st of the 7th moon, our Capital fell; on that day, both Her Majesty the Empress Dowager and ourselves decided to commit suicide in the presence of the tutelary deities of our Dynasty and the gods of the soil, thus making atonement and offering propitiation to the spirits of our nine Imperial ancestors. But, at the critical moment of dire lamentation and confusion, we were seized by our Princes and Ministers, and forcibly led away from that place where bullets fell like rain, and where the enemies’ guns gathered thick as forest trees. Hastily, and with souls perturbed, we started on our Western tour. Were not all these disasters caused by the Boxers? The imminent danger of her sacred Majesty, the overwhelming ruin of our ancestors’ inheritance, our prosperous Capital turned to a howling wilderness, its ravines filled with the dead bodies of our greatest men: how can it possibly be said that the Throne could protect the rebels who brought such disasters upon us?

“There was, however, an explicable cause for the Boxer movement and for its disastrous results.” (_The Decree proceeds here to ascribe blame to local Magistrates for not administering even justice between Christians and non-Christians, and thus producing a state of discontent and unrest, which afforded opportunities to the Boxers. The latter received a further impetus by reason of the inefficiency of the Imperial troops sent to quell the first rising. Finally, references are made to the evil advice and ignorance of the highly placed clansmen and Ministers of State who favoured the Boxer cause. This Decree is in fact a complete justification of the views expressed in the three memorials by Yüan Ch’ang and Hsü Ching-ch’eng, for which these patriotic officials laid down their lives. After describing the entry of the Boxers into Peking, and lamenting the position of the Throne as resembling “a tail which is too big to wag,” the Decree proceeds_):—“Nevertheless, and while the Legations were being besieged, we repeatedly directed our Ministers of the Tsungli Yamên to put a stop to hostilities, and at the same time to keep up communication with the foreign Ministers, assuring them of our kindly and sympathetic regard. This latter order, however, was not carried out because of the continuous artillery and rifle fire between the besiegers and the besieged, and it was impossible for us, under such conditions, to insist upon its execution. Supposing, by some horrible fatality, the Legations had actually fallen, how could China have hoped to preserve her integrity? To the Throne’s strenuous efforts is really due the avoidance of such a dreadful catastrophe, and the gifts of wine, fruit and water-melons to the besieged Legations, were an indication of Her Majesty’s benevolent intentions. It was but natural and right that the friendly Powers should appreciate these our feelings, and the fact that at such a crisis they have respected the integrity of our Empire as a Sovereign State, goes to prove that the Allies attribute no longer any blame to the Throne. This, however, only adds to our wrath at the ignorance and violence of our offending subjects; when we look back upon the past, we are filled with shame and indignation. We are convinced that, in these peace negotiations, the foreign Powers will not attempt to extract from us more than we are able to concede. We have ordered Prince Ch’ing and Li Hung-chang, negotiating this Treaty, to continue patiently in friendly discussion, maintaining all questions of vital principle, while recognising the special circumstances which attach to any given case. Foreign Powers are lovers of justice, and they are bound to consider what China is capable of doing if they wish to see this negotiation brought to a successful conclusion. To this end we expect that our Plenipotentiaries will display their virtue of patriotism to the very best of their ability.

“At the time of the terror in Peking, our provincial authorities were ordered to keep the peace in their respective provinces, and to take no part in provoking hostilities. If the Southern and Eastern parts of our Empire enjoyed full protection from disorders, the fact was solely due to our Decrees, which insisted upon the rigid maintenance of peace. The trade of foreign Powers was in no way injured, our Viceroys and Governors being able to preserve normal conditions in those parts of our Empire. As regards the Southern provinces, however, which are always talking loudly of strengthening their defences, it cannot be gainsaid that, upon the outbreak of any trouble, they fall into a state of hopeless confusion. Caring nothing for the innumerable difficulties which beset our Throne, they stand idly by, contenting themselves with delivering oracular opinions and catch-words, and they even go so far as to reproach their Sovereign, the father of his people. We would have them bear in mind that when our Imperial chariot departed in haste from the Forbidden City, the moaning of the wind and the cry of the heron overhead seemed to our startled ears as the tramp of an advancing enemy. As we fled through Ch’ang-ping chou northward to Hsüan-hua, we personally attended on the wants of the Empress Dowager. We were both clad in the meanest of garments, and to relieve our hunger we were scarcely able to obtain a dish of beans or porridge. Few of our poorest subjects have suffered greater hardships of cold and hunger than befell us in this pitiful plight. We wonder whether those who call themselves our faithful Ministers and servants have ever taken real thought of their bounden duty towards their afflicted and outraged Sovereigns?