Beleaguered in Pekin 4

Beleaguered in Pekin 4

As soon as Tung Fu Hsiang learned of Colonel Chao’s degradation, he was

wild with rage, taking the view at once that the insult was not only

upon Chao but also upon himself.

 

Knowing the Empress was in a precarious condition without troops she

could depend upon, this courageous adventurer, at his first audience

upon his arrival in Peking, promptly told Her Majesty that unless

Chao were restored to his rank immediately, and Governor Hu were

removed from his offices as Governor of Peking and Director-General

of Railways, as well as prevented from taking his seat in the

tsung-li-yamen, or foreign office, to which he had just been appointed,

he, Tung, would disband his army and return to Kansu at once.

 

The Empress remonstrated with him in vain, alleging that Hu had only

done his duty, and that with his knowledge of foreigners he would be a

valuable official in the tsung-li-yamen. But Tung remained obdurate,

and the Empress reluctantly yielded and dismissed Hu to private life,

where he has ever since remained.

 

As Governor Hu was alone responsible, by his firm friendship for

the English, for obtaining for the Hong Kong and Shanghai banking

corporation, an English company, the loan for extending the

Peking-Tientsin railway, and had signed the contract which gave the

real control of the railway to the English stockholders, his dismissal

from office should have been prevented by diplomatic action. As it

was, only a mild remonstrance by the diplomatic representative of Great

Britain was made, and the tsung-li-yamen passed it, as usual, unheeded.

Governor Hu remarked to me a few days after his dismissal, very

bitterly, “If I had been the friend to Russia I have been to England I

should not now be in disgrace.”

 

He was replaced in the office of Governor of Peking by Ho Yun Nai, and

in the office of Director-General of Railways by Hsu Ching Ch’eng,

ex-minister to Germany and Russia. The first of these officials was

a well-known hater of foreigners, who was suggested by General Tung.

The latter was a corrupt opium-eater, already in the pay of Russia, as

Chinese president of the Manchurian railway, and was suggested by a

high palace eunuch, himself in the pay of Russia.

 

Tung’s influence in Peking now became all-powerful; his soldiers

swaggered about the streets in their fancy red and black uniforms,

growing daily more menacing to the foreigners they passed, until

finally several incipient riots occurred which resulted in one

foreigner having several ribs broken and others being assaulted, so

that a few of the foreign ministers united and requested that his army

corps be removed some distance from the capital. The Empress agreed

reluctantly to this, but only sent them a little over a hundred li

away.

 

Tung, early after his arrival, made the acquaintance of Prince Tuan,

a stupid, ignorant Manchu, who soon became his complete tool. The

question of a successor to the sickly Emperor, Kuang Hsu, had been

discussed for several years, as he had as yet no issue, and seemed

likely at any time to die childless. The sons of Tuan, of Duke Lan, and

of Prince Lien were all considered eligible, and from amongst them must

be chosen the future Emperor of China.

 

Tung saw that Tuan would become his tool much more completely than

either of the others, and proposed an alliance between Tuan’s son and a

daughter of his own, agreeing to support the younger Tuan’s candidacy

for the throne, with his whole army, if necessary, to accomplish the

purpose. Tuan agreed to this, but stated the succession must be made

without its being known that he was under obligations to favor Tung’s

daughter, but that when an apparently open competition for selection

of an empress was made, and the various eligible damsels appeared at

the court, Tung’s daughter should arrive from Kansu in time and be the

favored recipient.

 

On this understanding everything became smooth sailing, and the

consummation of their plans, as far as Tuan’s interest was concerned,

occurred, when in solemn conclave of all the princes of the blood

and great ministers of state, on January 24, 1900, Pu Chun, son of

Prince Tuan, was solemnly named as successor to the previous emperor,

Tung Chih; and poor sickly little Kuang Hsu was succeeded without a

successor to himself, but a successor to his uncle being appointed,

which, by imperial edict, makes him an interloper.

 

[Illustration: CHINESE STATESMEN

 

A group of Chinese officials of the highest class; in Peking, previous

to the Siege.]

 

This was a nice piece of vengeance the Empress Dowager worked out,

partly to avenge herself on her nephew for his unsuccessful attempt

to shelve her and run his government himself. Tung’s intensely

anti-foreign sentiments soon made him many friends at court, among the

oldest and most conservative Manchus, as well as some of the Chinese.

But it was among the former that his influence was greatest.

 

Many of these men, stupid in the extreme, and too cowardly themselves

ever to have originated any of the designs that have since been worked

out, joyfully fell in with the plans inspired by his ambition for his

own success, but always put forward as for the salvation of his country.

 

Hsu Ting, Kang Yi, Ch’i Shin, Ch’ung Ch’i, Ch’ung Li, Na T’ung, and

Li Ping Heng became his warmest friends and admirers, and formed a

cabal which soon controlled the entire administration of government.

By Tung’s direction all important offices, as they became vacant, or

could be readily made so, were to be filled by the Manchu friends of

the cabal or, if Chinese, as rarely occurred, then a Chinese who was

of their own set and their own creature. This gave them a powerful

patronage under their disposal in the lucrative taotaiships and other

posts formerly more or less evenly divided between Manchu and Chinese,

but now almost entirely limited to Manchus.

 

[Illustration: BRIDGE AT WAN SHOA SHAN, NEAR PEKING

 

That the Chinese appreciate the picturesque, both in situation and in

architecture, is shown in this picture.]

 

Kang Yi was sent on a mission southward through all the provinces to

extort money to raise more armies, as well as to feel the pulse of

the people in regard to, and encourage them in, their anti-foreign

tendencies. Li Ping Heng was sent to examine and report on all the

defenses of the Yangtze valley, as well as to denounce any official of

progressive tendencies. Yu Hsien was to succeed the latter as Governor

of Shantung, and to sow in that province the seeds of disorder and

riot that yielded such a bitter crop when they ripened; just as only

a poorly-organized, semi-patriotic, but fully looting society could

do—an organization that was to be called the I Ho Ch’uan or Boxer

organization.

 

This programme has been fully carried out, and what the result has been

will be described in part only (as we in the north only know part) in

the following chapters.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER II

 

_YU HSIEN APPOINTED GOVERNOR OF SHANTUNG, REMOVED BY BRITISH DEMANDS,

ONLY TO BE REWARDED—YUAN-SHIH KAI SUCCEEDS HIM—CAUSES OF HATRED OF

CONVERTS BY PEOPLE AND BOXERS—THE BOXERS AND THEIR TENETS—THE EMPRESS

CONSULTS ASTROLOGERS_

 

 

[Illustration: HSU CHING CHENG

 

Ex-minister to Germany, member of Tsung-li-yamen. Beheaded Aug. 9, for

favoring peace.]

 

WITH the appointment of the Manchu Yu Hsien as Governor of Shantung

province, to be the successor to the anti-foreign Li Ping Heng,

whose removal the Germans had succeeded in effecting, commenced the

governmental recognition of the Boxers’ society as an agent to expel

missionaries, merchants, and diplomats alike. This man, whose hatred of

foreigners exceeded that of his predecessor, was no sooner in office

than he caused the _literati_ all over the province to revive among the

masses the “Great Sword” and “Boxer” organizations, which had been a

bit shaken by the removal of their encourager, Li Ping Heng.

 

The foreign residents of Shantung, who had hoped the new government

would be an improvement over the old, soon found they were worse off

than before. The native Christians were persecuted most bitterly by

their heathen neighbors, and their complaints at the yamens treated

with disdain.

 

Yu Hsien did his work thoroughly and rapidly, knowing the foreign

power which had compelled the removal of Li Ping Heng would also cause

his removal. But as he was only placed in Shantung for the deliberate

purpose of making trouble, his removal would mean for him a better post

as the reward of his success.

 

This came when the “Boxers” of Chianfu prefecture attacked and murdered

a young missionary of the Church of England named Brookes, who was

traveling from Chianfu city to his station of P’ingyin.

 

The British government demanded his removal from office, and the

Chinese government acquiesced; but their treatment of him upon his

arrival in Peking alone would have sufficed for an intelligent observer

to make clear the policy of the Empress without any other confirmatory

evidence, abundance of which, however, was not lacking.

 

Instead of being reprimanded, we find him granted immediate audience

with the Empress, and the next day’s Court Gazette informed an

astonished world that the Empress had written with her own brush the

character “Fu,” happiness, and conferred it upon him publicly. Then

followed his appointment as Governor of Shansi, a rich mineral province

in which the “Peking Syndicate,” an Anglo-Italian company promoted by

Lord Rothschild, held valuable concessions. In this province, too,

were the long-worked missionary establishments of the American Board

(Congregationalist) and the China Inland Missions.

 

The Chinese all understood this as an appreciative approval from the

Empress, and so, too, did all the older foreign residents; but the

diplomatic corps, beyond a feeble remonstrance from the British and

United States ministers, did nothing. So, to-day Yu Hsien is pursuing

in Shansi the same policy he did in Shantung, the results of which must

turn out similarly.

 

The Empress appointed as successor to Yu Hsien the man who had turned

traitor to the unfortunate young Emperor, Kuang Hsu, Yuanshih Kai.

This man is well known to foreigners. He was formerly Chinese resident

at Seoul, and it was largely due to him that the China-Japan war

occurred. After the war he was made commanding-general of a force of

foreign-drilled troops stationed at Hsiao Chan, south of Tientsin.

 

Yuan is one of the shrewdest and most unscrupulous men of China, and

the Empress, in rewarding him by this appointment for his service to

her in making known the Emperor’s purpose to send her into captivity,

gave power to a man who would desert her, when it suited him, as

quickly as he had the weak, but well-meaning, Emperor. Yuan, upon his arrival in Shantung, found himself in a difficult position. If he encouraged the Boxers he would make enemies of the foreigners. If he was severe with the Boxers he would be removed by the Empress, influenced as she was by General Tung Fu Hsiang and his cabal.