Part 8

For four years after the collapse of the rebellion, Tseng Kuo-fan remained at Nanking as Viceroy. (The Hunanese still regard that post as belonging by prescriptive right to a Hunanese official.) His only absence was during a brief expedition against the Mahomedan rebels in Shantung. In September 1868 he was appointed Viceroy of Chihli, and left for Peking at the end of the year, receiving a remarkable ovation from the people of Nanking. In Peking he was received with great honours, and in his capacity of Grand Secretary had a meeting with the Council on the morning after his arrival, followed immediately by an Audience, to which he was summoned and conducted by one of the Princes. The young Emperor was sitting on a Throne facing west, and the Empresses Regent were behind him, screened from view by the yellow curtain, Tzŭ An to the left and Tzŭ Hsi to the right of the Throne. In the Chinese narrative of the rebellion to which we have already referred, the writer professes to report this audience, and several that followed, practically verbatim, and as it affords interesting information as to the manner and methods of Tzŭ Hsi on these occasions, the following extracts are worthy of reproduction. It is to be observed that the writer, like all his contemporaries, assumes _ab initio_ that the Empress Tzŭ An, though senior, is a negligible quantity and that the whole interest of the occasion lies between Tzŭ Hsi and the official in audience.

Upon entering the Throne room, Tseng fell upon his knees, as in duty bound, and in that position advanced a few feet, saying “Your servant Tseng Kuo-fan respectfully enquires after Your Majesties’ health.” Then removing his hat and performing the kowtow, he humbly returned thanks for Imperial favours bestowed upon him. These preliminaries completed, he rose and advanced a few steps to kneel on the cushion prepared for him below the daïs. The following dialogue then took place:—

_Her Majesty Tzŭ Hsi._ When you left Nanking, was all your official work completed?

_Tseng._ Yes, quite completed.

_Tzŭ Hsi._ Have the irregular troops and braves all been disbanded?

_Tseng._ Yes, all.

_Tzŭ Hsi._ How many in all?

_Tseng._ I have disbanded over twenty thousand irregulars and have enrolled thirty thousand regulars.

_Tzŭ Hsi._ From which province do the majority of these men hail?

_Tseng._ A few of the troops come from Hunan, but the great majority are Anhui men.

_Tzŭ Hsi._ Was the disbandment effected quite quietly?

_Tseng._ Yes, quite quietly.

Then follow numerous questions regarding Tseng’s previous career, his family, &c. As soon as the questions cease, after waiting a few minutes, the audience is at an end, and Tseng kowtows and retires. On each occasion, and they were many, the Empress had evidently worked up her questions carefully from study of reports and despatches, and invariably put them in the short sharp form indicated; always peremptory, _de haut en bas_ and Cæsarian, this woman “behind the screen,” addressing the veteran who had saved China for her rule.

After describing Tseng’s important position at the Court banquet given to high officials, Manchu and Chinese, on the 16th day of the 1st Moon (at which six plays were performed and the dishes “passed all reckoning”), the narrative gives an account of his farewell audience, at which Her Majesty closely cross-examined him as to his plans for the reorganisation of the naval and military forces of Chihli. He held the post of Chihli Viceroy for a little over a year. The viceregal residence in those days was at Pao-ting fu, so that when the Tientsin massacre occurred (1870) he was not directly to blame, though officially responsible. In June of that year the Nanking Viceroy was assassinated, and Tseng was ordered to resume duty at that post, his place in Chihli being taken by Li Hung-chang, who held it for twenty-four years. Tseng, whose health was failing, endeavoured to have his appointment to Nanking cancelled, but Tzŭ Hsi would take no excuses. She issued a Decree in which she laid stress on the arduous nature of the work to be done at the southern capital and Tseng’s special fitness for the post which he had so ably administered in the past. “Even if his eyesight troubles him,” she said, “he can still exercise a general supervision.”

Before leaving for the south, Tseng celebrated his sixtieth birthday, receiving many marks of Imperial favour and rich gifts. The Empress sent him a poem of congratulation in her own handwriting, and a tablet bearing the inscription “My lofty pillar and rock of defence,” together with an image of Buddha, a sandalwood sceptre inlaid with jade, a dragon robe, ten rolls of “auspicious” silk, and ten of crape. At his farewell audience the following interesting conversation took place:—

_Tzŭ Hsi._ When did you leave Tientsin?

_Tseng._ On the 23rd.

_Tzŭ Hsi._ Have the ringleaders in the massacre of foreigners been executed yet?

_Tseng._ Not yet. The Consul told me that the Russian Minister was coming to Tientsin and that the French Minister was sending a deputy to witness the executions, so that the decapitations could not be summarily carried out.

_Tzŭ Hsi._ What date has Li Hung-chang fixed for the executions?

_Tseng._ On the day of my departure, he sent me word that he expected to dispose of them yesterday.

_Tzŭ Hsi._ Have the Tientsin populace calmed down?

_Tseng._ Yes, things are now quite settled and orderly.

_Tzŭ Hsi_. What made the Prefect and Magistrate run away to Shun-Tê after the massacre?

_Tseng._ When first removed from their posts, they knew not what sentence would be decreed against them, so they boldly and shamelessly ran away from the city.

_Tzŭ Hsi._ Have you quite lost the sight of your right eye?

_Tseng._ Yes, it is quite blind; but I can still see with the left.

_Tzŭ Hsi._ Have you entirely recovered from your other maladies?

_Tseng._ Yes, I think I can say that I have.

_Tzŭ Hsi_. You appear to kneel, and to rise from that posture quite briskly and freely, as if your physique were still pretty good?

_Tseng._ No; it is not what it used to be.

_Tzŭ Hsi._ That was a strange thing, the assassination of Ma Hsin-yi (the late Viceroy of Nanking), was it not?

_Tseng._ Extraordinary.

_Tzŭ Hsi._ He was a first-rate administrator.

_Tseng._ Yes, he took great pains, and was honest and impartial.

_Tzŭ Hsi._ How many regular troops have you raised in Chihli?

_Tseng._ Three thousand. The former Viceroy had four thousand men trained under the old system. I had intended to raise three thousand more, making a total force of ten thousand. I have arranged with Li Hung-chang to carry out this programme.

_Tzŭ Hsi._ It is of vital importance that we should have a force of properly trained troops in the south. You must see to this.

_Tseng._ Yes. At present peace prevails, but we must be prepared for all possible emergencies. I propose to build forts at several places on the Yangtsze.

_Tzŭ Hsi._ It would be a fine thing if we could secure ourselves properly against invasion. These missionary complications are perpetually creating trouble for us.

_Tseng._ That is true. Of late the missionaries have created trouble everywhere. The native converts are given to oppressing those who will not embrace Christianity (literally “_eat the religion_”) and the missionaries always screen the converts, while the Consuls protect the missionaries. Next year, when the time comes for revising the French Treaty, we must take particular pains to reconsider carefully the whole question of religious propaganda.

In November Tseng had his farewell audience, and Tzŭ Hsi never saw him again. A month later he took over the seals of office at his old post, one of his first acts being to try the assassin of his predecessor, who was condemned to death by the slicing process. In the following summer he went for a cruise of inspection and visited various places of interest, noting with satisfaction the complete restoration of law and order in the districts which had been for so long the scene of the Taipings’ devastations. On one occasion, seeing the gaily decked “flower-boats” and listening to the sounds of their revelries, he joyfully exclaimed: “I am glad to have lived to see my province as it was before the rebellion.” In December he moved into the Viceregal residence which he had known as the Palace of the Taiping “Heavenly King.” But he was not long to administer that high office, for in the early part of 1872 he had a first stroke of paralysis. A few days later, going in his chair to meet a high official arriving from Peking, and reciting, as was his wont, favourite passages from the classics, he suddenly made a sign to his attendants, but speech failed him and he could only mumble. In his diary that same evening, he wrote:—“This illness of mine prevents me from attending to my work. In the 26th and 27th years of Tao-Kuang (1846-7) I found that efforts at poetical composition brought on attacks of eczema and insomnia. Now it is different. I feel all dazed and confused. Spots float before my eyes and my liver is disordered. Alas, that I can neither obtain a speedy release, like the morning dew which swiftly passes away, nor hope for the restoration of energies to enable me to perform my duty. What sadder fate than thus to linger on, useless, in the world!” On the next day he wrote:—“My strength is rapidly failing, and I must leave behind me many unsettled questions and business half completed. The dead leaves of disappointed hopes fill all the landscape, and I see no prospect of settling my affairs. Thirty years have passed since I took my degree, and I have attained to the highest rank; yet have I learned nothing, and my character still lacks true solidity. What shame should be mine at having reached thus uselessly old age!” Next day, while reading a despatch, he had another stroke. Rallying, he told his eldest son, Tseng Chi-tsê, to see to it that his funeral ceremonies were conducted after the old usages, and that neither Buddhist nor Taoist priests be permitted to chant their liturgies over his corpse. On the following morning, though very weak, he insisted on perusing one of the essays which had been successful at the provincial examination. In the evening he was taken out into his garden and was returning thence with his son when the last seizure occurred. They carried him into the great Hall of audience, where he sat upright, as if presiding at a meeting of Council, and thus passed away, well stricken in age, though only sixty-two by the calendar. “Every man in Nanking,” says the writer of this narrative, “felt as if he had lost a parent; it was rumoured that a shooting star had fallen in the city at the very moment of his death. The news was received by the Throne with profound grief. All Court functions were suspended for three days.”

The Empress Dowager issued a Decree praising her faithful servant in unmeasured terms of gratitude and esteem, describing him as the “very backbone of the Throne,” reciting his glorious achievements and ordering the erection of Temples in his honour in all the provinces that had been the scene of his campaign against the Taipings, in order “to prove our sincere affection for this good and loyal man.”

VI

TZŬ HSI AND THE EUNUCHS

One of the facts upon which modern Chinese historians, Censors, Imperial Tutors and Guardians of the Heir Apparent have repeatedly laid stress, is that the Ming Dynasty became effeminate, then degenerate, and was eventually lost, because of the demoralising influence of the eunuch system on the Court and its official entourage. Upon this text, moral exhortations in the best classical manner have been addressed to the Throne for centuries, regardless of the consideration that most of the writers owed their positions, and hoped to owe further advancement, to the eunuchs, who had the sovereign’s ear. These Memorials were usually only a part of the hoary fabric of pious platitudes and shadowy shibboleths which loom so large in the stock in trade of China’s bureaucracy (in which matter China stands not alone), and the Empress Dowager, under whose rule the evil grew and assumed monstrous proportions, was ever wont to play her part in this elaborate farce, by solemnly approving the views of the bold critics and by professing the greatest indignation at the misdeeds of her eunuch myrmidons and retainers.

There have been, of course, sincere and eloquent critics of this pernicious system and its attendant evils; in fact, scarcely a reformer worthy of the name during the past fifty years has failed to place the abolition of eunuchs in the front rank of the measures necessary to bring China into line with the civilised Powers. There is no doubt that one of the first causes of the _coup d’état_ in 1898 arose from the hatred of the Chief Eunuch, Li Lien-ying, for the Emperor Kuang-Hsü (who years before had ventured to have him beaten), and his not unnatural apprehension that the Emperor intended to follow up his reforms of the Peking Administration by devoting his attention to the Palace and to the abolition of eunuchs. As to the Boxer rising, it has been clearly proved that this notorious and powerful Chamberlain used all the weight of his great influence with his Imperial mistress on behalf of the anti-foreign movement, and that, if justice had been done (that is to say had he not been protected by the Russian Legation), his should have been one of the very first names on the Peace Protocol “Black List.” The part which Li Lien-ying played in these two national crises of recent years is mentioned here chiefly to emphasise the fact that the platitudinous utterances of the orthodox express, as usual, a very real and widespread grievance, and that the falsetto notes of the Censorate are answered by a deep undertone of dissatisfaction and disgust throughout the provinces. It is for this reason that, especially during the past five years, progressive and patriotic Chinese officials (_e.g._ men like the Viceroy Yüan Shih-k’ai and T’ang Shao-yi, who realise how greatly the persistence of this barbarous medievalism lowers China in the eyes of the world), as well as the unanimous voice of the vernacular Press, have urged that the Court should now dispense with eunuchs, a measure which the Regent is said to favour, but which—such is the power wielded by these “fawning sycophants”—would undoubtedly be difficult and possibly dangerous. As early as 1906, _The Times_ correspondent at Peking was discussing the possibility of their early removal as one of the many reforms which then shone so brightly on the horizon. In the Chinese conservative’s opinion, however, which still weighs heavily in China, there are centuries of precedents and arguments to be adduced in favour of a system which has obtained continuously since long before the beginning of the Christian era, which coincides with the Chinese accepted ideas of polygamy, and recognises the vital importance of legitimacy of succession in relation to the national religion of ancestor worship. On the other hand, it is true that in the golden days of the Sage Emperors at the beginning of the Chou Dynasty, eunuchs had no place in the body politic. Later, during the period of that Dynasty’s decay and the era of the feudal States, Confucius refers with disapproval to their baneful influence, so that the Sage’s authority may be adduced against them and their proceedings.

With the establishment of the present Dynasty at Peking (1644), the Manchus took over, as conquerors, all the existing machinery and _personnel_ of the Chinese Court, eunuchs included, but they lost no time in restricting the latter’s activities and opportunities. At the first audience held by the young Emperor Shun-Chih, the high officials, Manchu and Chinese, united to protest against the recent high-handed proceedings of the Court menials, declaring them to be “fit only to sweep floors, and in no wise entitled to have access to the Monarch.” Regulations were promptly introduced, which remain in force (on paper) to this day, forbidding any eunuch to occupy any official position, or to hold any honorific rank or title higher than a Button of the fourth class. More important still, in view of the far-reaching conspiracy of the Chief Eunuch, Wei Chung (whom the last of the Mings had beheaded), was the law then introduced, which forbade any eunuch to leave the capital on any pretext whatsoever. For the next two hundred years, thanks to the wise rule and excellent traditions handed down by the two famous Emperors K’ang-Hsi and Ch’ien-Lung, the Palace eunuchs were kept generally under very strict discipline; but with the present century, when degeneration had set in strongly under the dissolute monarch Hsien-Feng, and even before the appearance of Yehonala on the scene, their evil influence had again become paramount in the Forbidden City. With Tzŭ Hsi’s accession to power, all the corruption, intrigues and barbarous proceedings, that had characterised the last Mings, were gradually re-established and became permanent features of her Court.

Of the power which the eunuchs exercised throughout the whole of Tzŭ Hsi’s reign, there is no possible doubt: the abuses which they practised under her protection, abuses flagrant and unconcealed, increased with the passing years and her own growing indifference to criticism, until, after 1898, her favourite and chief body-servant, Li Lien-ying did not scruple to boast that he could make or mar the highest officials at his pleasure and defy the Son of Heaven on his Throne. Of the countless legends of debauchery in the Palace, of orgies devised for Tzŭ Hsi by the Court eunuchs and actors, there is naturally nothing approaching to direct evidence: the frequent denunciations by Censors and the scurrilous writings of Cantonese and other lampooners, afford at best but circumstantial proof. The writings of K’ang Yu-wei and his associates, in particular, are clearly inspired by blind and unscrupulous hatred, and so inaccurate in matters of common knowledge and history, that one must perforce discount the value of their statements wherever the Empress Dowager or Jung Lu are concerned. But common report in China, as elsewhere, is usually based on some foundation of truth, and in Peking, where the mass of the population has always been conspicuously loyal to Tzŭ Hsi, there have never been two opinions as to the extravagance and general profligacy of her Court and of the evils of the eunuch _régime_. Nor is there room for doubt as to the deplorable effect exercised by these vicious underlings on weak and undisciplined Emperors, rulers of decadent instincts often encouraged in vicious practices to their speedy undoing. That this was the fate of Tzŭ Hsi’s own son, the Emperor T’ung-Chih, is well-known, nor is there any doubt that the deaths of both Hsien-Feng and Kuang-Hsü were hastened, if not caused, by the temptations to which they were exposed by their vicious environment. The inner history of the Celestial Empire and the Manchu Dynasty during the last seventy years is inextricably bound up with that of the Palace eunuchs and their far-reaching intrigues. During the half century of Tzŭ Hsi’s rule, the power behind the Throne (literally a power of darkness in high places) was that of her favourite Chamberlains. Of these the last, who has survived her, Li Lien-ying, is known by his nickname of “Cobbler’s Wax Li” (P’i Hsiao Li)[17] from one end of the Empire to the other as the chief “squeezer” and arch villain of many a Palace tragedy. His influence over his Imperial mistress was indeed remarkable; on all occasions, except State audiences, she was wont to treat him with an affectionate familiarity, and to allow him a _sans-gêne_, to which no courtier, nor any member of her own family (save perhaps Jung Lu) dared ever aspire.

During the Court’s residence, and the Emperor’s illness, at Jehol in 1861, the young Yehonala had occasion to notice and to appreciate the intelligence and willing service rendered by one of the eunuchs in immediate attendance upon her; this servant, by name An Te-hai, became her faithful henchman throughout the crisis of the Tsai Yüan conspiracy, and her intermediary and confidant in her dealings with the young guardsman, Jung Lu. Upon her accession to the Co-Regency, he became her favourite attendant and emissary, and later her _âme damnée_, sharing in all her ambitious hopes and plans, with no small advantage to himself, while at the same time employing his undeniable talents to the diversion of the young widow’s mind by the provision of the elaborate Court pageants and theatrical entertainments which her soul loved. An Te-hai was himself an actor of no mean ability and exceedingly handsome of his person.

It was at this time, before the Regency was firmly established and while yet the reverberating echoes of the Tsai Yüan conspiracy lingered in Chihli, that the leading Censors began to send in Memorials against the self-evident extravagance and the rumoured profligacy of Tzŭ Hsi’s Palace. The young Yehonala, headstrong and already impatient of criticism and restraint, confident also in the strength and loyalty of her immediate following, never allowed these remonstrances to affect her conduct in the slightest degree; nevertheless, a stickler always for etiquette and appearances, and an adept at “face-saving” arts, she had no objection to expressing the heartiest approval of, and agreement with, her professional moralists. On more than one occasion, in those first years, we find her proclaiming in most suitably worded Edicts, pious intentions which were never intended to be taken seriously by anyone, and never were. The following Decree, issued in the third year of the Regency, (1864) is a case in point, and particularly interesting in that it refers to the wholesale pilfering by eunuchs in the Palace, which has continued without interruption to this day.

A Decree in the name of the two Empresses Regent, in the third year of the Emperor T’ung-Chih:—

“The Censor Chia To memorialises, saying that it has come to his knowledge that certain of the eunuchs who perform theatricals in the Imperial Household, have had their costumes made of tribute silks and satins taken from the Imperial storehouses. He asserts that they perform daily before the Throne and regularly receive largesse to the amount of thousands of taels. He asks that these practices be forbidden and discontinued forthwith, in order that all tendency towards vicious courses may be checked.