XXVIII · Part 1

XXVIII

CONCLUSION

“All sweeping judgments,” says Coleridge, “are unjust.” “_Comprendre_,” says the French philosopher, “_c’est tout pardonner_.” To understand the life and personality of the Empress Dowager, it is before everything essential to divest our minds of racial prejudice and to endeavour to appreciate something of the environment and traditions to which she was born. In the words of the thoughtful article in the _Spectator_, already quoted, “she lived and worked and ruled in a setting which is apart from all western modes of thought and standards of action, and the first step in the historian’s task is to see that she is judged by her own standards and not wholly by ours.” Judged by the rough test of public opinion and accumulating evidence in her own country, Tzŭ Hsi’s name will go down to history in China as that of a genius in statecraft and a born ruler, a woman “with all the courage of a man, and more than the ordinary man’s intelligence.”[131]

Pending that reform and liberty of the press which is still the distant dream of “Young China,” no useful record of the life and times of the Empress Dowager is to be expected from any Chinese writer. Despite the mass of information which exists in the diaries and archives of metropolitan officials and the personal reminiscences of those who knew her well, nothing of any human interest or value has been published on the subject in China. From the official and orthodox point of view, a truthful biography of the Empress would be sacrilege. It is true that in the vernacular newspapers under European protection at the Treaty Ports, as well as in Hongkong and Singapore, Cantonese writers have given impressions of Her Majesty’s personality and brief accounts of her life, but these are so hopelessly biassed and distorted by hatred of the Manchus as to be almost worthless for historical purposes, as worthless as the dry chronicles of the Dynastic annals. Reference has already been made to the best known of these publications, a series of letters originally published in a Singapore newspaper and republished under the title of “The Chinese Crisis from within,”[132] by a writer who, under the _nom-de-plume_ of “Wen Ching,” concealed the identity of one of K’ang Yu-wei’s most ardent disciples.

His work is remarkable for sustained invective and reckless inaccuracy, clearly intended to create an atmosphere of hatred against the Manchus (for the ultimate benefit of the Cantonese) in the minds of his countrymen, and to dissuade the foreign Powers from allowing the Empress to return to Peking. Drawing on a typically Babu store of “western learning,” this writer compares the Empress to Circe, Semiramis, Catherine de Medici, Messalina, Fulvia, and Julia Agrippina; quoting Dante and Rossetti to enforce his arguments, and leavening his vituperation with a modicum of verifiable facts sufficient to give to his narrative something of _vraisemblance_. But his judgment is emphatically sweeping. He ignores alike Tzŭ Hsi’s undeniable good qualities and her extenuating circumstances, the defects of her education and the difficulties of her position, so that his work is almost valueless.

Equally valueless, for purposes of historical accuracy, are most of the accounts and impressions of the Empress recorded by those Europeans (especially the ladies of the Diplomatic Body and their friends) who saw her personality and purposes reflected in the false light which beats upon the Dragon Throne on ceremonial occasions, or who came under the influence of the deliberate artifices and charm of manner which she assumed so well. Had the etiquette of her Court and people permitted intercourse with European diplomats and distinguished visitors of the male sex, she would certainly have acquired, and exercised over them also, that direct personal influence which emanated from her extraordinary vitality and will-power, influence such as the western world has learned to associate with the names of the Emperor William of Germany and Mr. Roosevelt. Restricted as she was to social relations with her own sex amongst foreigners, she exerted herself, and never failed, to produce on them an impression of womanly grace and gentleness of disposition, which qualities we find accordingly praised by nearly all who came in contact with her after the return of the Court, aye, even by those who had undergone the horrors of the siege under the very walls of her Palace. The glamour of her mysterious Court, the rarity of the visions vouchsafed, the real charm of her manner, and the apparently artless _bonhomie_ of her bearing, all combined to create in the minds of the European ladies who saw her an impression as favourable as it was opposed to every dictate of common sense and experience. In certain notable instances, the effect of this impression reacted visibly on the course of the Peace Protocol negotiations.

From the diary of Ching Shan we obtain an estimate of Tzŭ Hsi’s character, formed by one who had enjoyed for years continual opportunities of studying her at close quarters—an estimate which was, and is, confirmed by the popular verdict, the common report of the tea-houses and market places of the capital. Despite her swiftly changing and uncontrolled moods, her childish lack of moral sense, her unscrupulous love of power, her fierce passions and revenges, Tzŭ Hsi was no more the savage monster described by “Wen Ching,” than she was the benevolent, fashion-plate Lady Bountiful of the American magazines. She was simply a woman of unusual courage and vitality, of strong will and unbounded ambition, a woman and an Oriental, living out her life by such lights as she knew, and in accordance with the traditions of her race and caste. Says Ching Shan in the Diary: “_The nature of the Empress is peace-loving: she has seen many springs and autumns. I myself know well her refined and gentle tastes, her love of painting, poetry and the theatre. When in a good mood she is the most amiable and tractable of women, but at times her rage is awful to witness._” Here we have the woman drawn from life, without _arrière pensée_, by a just but sympathetic observer, the woman who could win, and hold, the affectionate loyalty of the greatest men of her time, not to speak of that of her retainers and serving maids; the woman whose human interest and sympathy in everything around her, were not withered by age nor staled by custom; yet who, at a word, could send the fierce leaders of the Boxers cowering from her presence.

_Souvent femme varie._ Tzŭ Hsi, her own mistress and virtual ruler of the Empire at the age of twenty-four, had not had much occasion to learn to control either her moods or her passions. Hers, from the first, was the trick and temper of autocracy. Trained in the traditions of a Court where human lives count for little, where power maintains itself by pitiless and brutal methods, where treason and foul deeds lie in waiting for the first signs of the ruler’s weakness, how should she learn to put away from the Forbidden City the hideous barbarities of its ways?

Let us remember her time and place. Consider the woman’s environment and training, her marriage to a dissolute puppet, her subsequent life in that gilded prison of the Imperial City, with its endless formalities, base intrigues and artificial sins. Prior to the establishment of China’s first diplomatic relations with European nations, the Court of Peking and its ways bore a strong resemblance to those of Medieval Europe; nor have successive routs and invasions since that date changed any of its cherished traditions and methods. In the words of a recent writer on medieval history, the life of the Peking Palace, like that of our fourteenth century, “was one of profound learning and crass stupidity, of infantile gaiety and sudden tragedy, of flashing fortunes and swift dooms. There is a certain innocence about the very sinners of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Many of their problems, indeed, arose from the fact that this same childlike candour was allied to the unworn forces of full manhood.” Whatever crimes of cruelty and vengeance Tzŭ Hsi committed—and they were many—be it said to her credit that she had, as a rule, the courage of her convictions and position, and sinned _coram publico_. Beneath the fierceness without which an Oriental ruler cannot hope to remain effective, there certainly beat a heart which could be kind, if the conditions were propitious, and a rough sense of humour, which is a common and pleasing trait of the Manchus.

Let us also remember that in the East to-day (as it was with us of Europe before the growth of that humanitarianism which now shows signs of unhealthy exaggeration) pain and death are part of the common, every-day risks of life, risks lightly incurred by the average Oriental in the great game of ambitions, loves and hates that is for ever played around the Throne. Tzŭ Hsi played her royal part in the great game, but it is not recorded of her that she ever took life from sheer cruelty or love of killing. When she sent a man to death, it was because he stood between her and the full and safe gratification of her love of power. When her fierce rage was turned against the insolence of the foreigner, she had no scruple in consigning every European in China to the executioner; when the Emperor’s favourite concubine disputed her Imperial authority, she had no hesitation in ordering her to immediate death; but in every recorded instance, except one, her methods were swift, clean, and, from the Oriental point of view, not unmerciful. She had no liking for tortures, or the lingering death. In all her Decrees of vengeance, we find the same unhesitating firmness in removing human obstacles from her path, combined with a complete absence of that unnecessary cruelty which is so frequently associated with despotism. Her methods, in fact, were Elizabethan rather than Florentine.

If Tzŭ Hsi developed self-reliance early in life, the fact is not to be wondered at, for it was little help that she had to look for in her entourage of Court officials. Amongst the effete classical scholars, the fat-paunched Falstaffs, the opium sots, doddering fatalists and corrupt parasites of the Imperial Clans, she seems, indeed, to have been an anachronism, a “cast-back” to the virility and energy that won China for her sturdy ancestors. She appeared to be the born and inevitable ruler of the degenerate Dynasty, and if she became a law unto herself, it was largely because there were few about her fit to lead or to command.

Imbued with a very feminine love of luxury, addicted to pleasure, and at one period of her life undoubtedly licentious after the manner of her Court’s traditions, she combined these qualities with a shrewd common sense and a marked penchant for acquiring and amassing personal property. To use her own phrase, she endeavoured in all things to observe the principle of the “happy mean,” and seldom allowed her love of pleasure to obscure her vision or to hinder her purposes in the serious businesses of life.

Like many great rulers of the imperious and militant type, she was remarkably superstitious, a punctilious observer of the rites prescribed for averting omens and conciliating the myriad gods and demons of the several religions of China, a liberal supporter of priests and soothsayers. Nevertheless, as with Elizabeth of England, her secular instincts were _au fond_ stronger than all her superstitions. That sturdy common sense, which played so successfully upon the weaknesses and the passions of her corrupt entourage, never allowed any consideration for the powers unseen to interfere seriously with her masterful handling of things visible, or to curb her ruling passion for unquestioned authority.

The qualities which made up the remarkable personality of the Empress were many and complex, but of those which chiefly contributed to her popularity and power we would place, first, her courage, and next, a certain simplicity and directness—both qualities that stand out in strong relief against the timorous and tortuous tendencies of the average Manchu. Of her courage there could be no doubt; even amidst the chaos of the days of the Boxer terror it never failed her, and Ching Shan is only one of many who bear witness to her unconquerable spirit and _sang froid_. Amidst scenes of desolation and destruction that might well shake the courage of the bravest men, we see her calmly painting bamboos on silk, or giving orders to stop the bombardment of the Legations to allow of her excursion on the Lake. How powerful is the dramatic quality of that scene where she attacks and dominates the truculent Boxer leaders at her very doors; or again when, on the morning of the flight, she alone preserves presence of mind, and gives her orders as coolly as if starting on a picnic! At such moments all the defects of her training and temperament are forgotten in the irresistible appeal of her nobler qualities.

Of those qualities, and of her divine right to rule, Tzŭ Hsi herself was fully convinced, and no less determined than His Majesty of Germany, to insist upon proper recognition and respect for herself and her commanding place in the scheme of the universe. Her belief in her own supreme importance, and her superstitious habit of thought were both strikingly displayed on the occasion when her portrait, painted by Miss Carl for the St. Louis Exposition, was taken from the Waiwupu on its departure to the United States. She regarded this presentment of her august person as entitled, in all seriousness of ceremonial, to the same reverence as herself and gave orders for the construction of a miniature railway, to be built through the streets of the capital for its special benefit. By this means the “sacred countenance” was carried upright, under its canopy of yellow silk, and Her Majesty was spared the thought of being borne in effigy on the shoulders of coolies—a form of progress too suggestively ill-omened to be endured. Before the portrait left the Palace, the Emperor was summoned to prostrate himself before it, and at its passing through the city, and along the railway line, the people humbly knelt, as if it had been the Old Buddha of flesh and blood. Incidents of this kind emphasise the impossibility of fairly judging the Empress by European standards of conduct and ideas. To get something of the proper atmosphere and perspective, we must go back to the early days of the Tudors.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THE EMPRESS DOWAGER.

Painted from life by Miss Catharine A. Carl for the St. Louis Exposition, and now the property of the American Nation.

(_Reproduced by permission of the Artist._)]

Blunt of speech herself, she was quick to detect and resent flattery. Those who rose highest in her affection and regard were essentially strong men, blunt outspoken officials of the type of Jung Lu, Tseng Kuo-fan, and Tso Tsung-t’ang; for those who would win her favour by sycophancy she had a profound contempt, which she was at no pains to conceal, though in certain instances (_e.g._, Chang Chih-tung) she overlooked the offence because of ripe scholarship or courage. An amusing example of this trait in her character occurred on one occasion when, after perusing the examination papers for the selection of successful candidates for the Hanlin Literary degrees, she expressed herself in the following trenchant Decree:—

“A certain candidate in the Hanlin examination, named Yen Chen, has handed in some verses, the style of which is excellent, but their subject matter contains a number of allusions laudatory of the present Dynasty. This person has evidently gone out of his way to refer to the present rulers of the Empire, and has even seen fit to display gross flattery, for his essay contains, amongst others, a sentence to the effect that ‘we have now upon the Throne a female embodiment of Yao and Shun.’[133] Now, the Throne defines merit in candidates to-day on the same principles as those which were in force under former Dynasties, its object being to form a correct idea of the moral standards of candidates by perusal of their essays and lyrical compositions. But this effort of Yen Chen is nothing more than a laudatory ode, entirely lacking in high seriousness. This is a grave matter: the question involved is one closely affecting character and moral training; such conduct cannot possibly be permitted to continue. The examiners have placed Yen Chen at the top of the list in the First Class; he is hereby relegated to the last place in that class. Let our examiners for the future take more care in scrutinising the papers submitted.”

As was only natural, Tzŭ Hsi was not above favouring her own people, the Manchus, but one great secret of the solidity of her rule undoubtedly lay in her broad impartiality and the nice balance which she maintained between Chinese and Manchus in all departments of the Government. She had realised that the brains and energy of the country must come from the Chinese, and that if the Manchus were to retain their power and sinecure positions, it must be with the good will of the Chinese and the loyalty of the Mandarin class in the provinces. From the commencement of her rule, down to the day when she handed over her Boxer kinsmen to the executioner, she never hesitated to inflict impartial punishment on Manchus, when public opinion was against them. A case in point occurred in 1863, in connection with one of her favourite generals, named Sheng Pao, who had gained her sincere gratitude by his share in the war against the British and French invaders in 1860, and who, by luck and the ignorance of the Court, had been credited with having stopped the advance of the Allies to Jehol.

For these alleged services she had awarded him special thanks and high honour. In 1863, however, he was engaged in Shensi, fighting the Taipings, and, following a custom not unusual amongst Chinese military commanders, had asked leave to win over one of the rebel leaders by giving him an important official position. Tzŭ Hsi, who had had ample opportunities to learn something of the danger of this procedure, declined to sanction his request, pointing out the objections thereto. Sheng Pao ventured to suppress her Decree, and gave the rebel the position in question. Success might have justified him, but the ex-bandit justified Tzŭ Hsi by going back on his word. Awaiting a good opportunity, he raised once more the standard of revolt, massacred a number of officials, and captured several important towns. General Sheng Pao was arrested and brought in custody to Peking; under cross-examination he confessed, amongst other misdemeanours, that he had permitted women to accompany the troops during this campaign, which, by Chinese military law, is a capital offence. Other charges against him, however, he denied, and, preserving an insolent attitude, demanded to be confronted with his accusers. Tzŭ Hsi issued a characteristically vigorous Decree in which she declared that the proper punishment for his offence was decapitation, but inasmuch as he had acquired merit by good work against the Taipings, as well as against the British and French invaders, she graciously granted him the privilege of committing suicide, of which he promptly availed himself.

Tzŭ Hsi, as we have said, was extremely superstitious; nor is this matter for wonder when we bear in mind the medieval atmosphere of wizardous necromancy and familiar spirits which she had perforce absorbed with her earliest education. Following the precepts of Confucius, she preserved always a broad and tolerant attitude on all questions of religion, but, while reluctant to discuss things appertaining to the unknown gods, she was always prepared to conciliate them, and to allow her actions in everyday affairs to be guided by the words of her wise men and astrologers—“by dreams, and by Urim and by prophets.” Thus we find her in the first year of the Regency of her son’s minority (1861) issuing, in his name, a Decree, which carries back the mind irresistibly to Babylon and those days when the magicians and soothsayers were high personages in the State.

“During the night of the 15th of the 7th Moon,” it begins, “there occurred a flight of shooting stars in the southern hemisphere; ten days later, a comet appeared twice in the sky to the north-west. Heaven sends not these warnings in vain. For the last month Peking has been visited by a grievous epidemic, whereof the continued severity fills us with sore dismay. The Empresses Dowager have now warned us that these portents of Heaven are sent because of serious wrong in our system of government, of errors unreformed and grievances unredressed,” and the Decree ends by exhorting all concerned “to put away frivolous things, so that Heaven, perceiving our reverend attitude, may relent.”

In previous chapters we have shown with what punctilious attention she consulted her astrologers in regard to the propitious day for re-entering her capital on the Court’s return from exile, her anxiety for scrupulous observance of their advice being manifestly sincere. In her concern for omens and portents she seemed, like Napoleon, to obey instincts external and superior to another and very practical side of her nature, which, however, asserted itself unmistakably whenever vital issues were at stake and her supreme authority threatened. She was at all times anxious to secure the goodwill of the ancestral spirits, whose presence she apprehended as a living reality, but even with these, when it came to a direct issue between her own despotic authority and their claims to consideration, she never hesitated to relegate the mighty dead to the background, content to appease them in due season by suitable expressions of reverence and regret. The most notable instance of this kind occurred when, disregarding the Dynastic laws of succession, she deprived her son, the Emperor T’ung-Chih, of the rites of ancestral worship, committing thus a crime which, as she well knew, was heinous in the eyes of the Chinese people.

Her superstitious tendencies were most remarkably displayed in the matter of the selection of the site of her tomb, and its building, an occasion of which the Court geomancers took full advantage. When T’ung-Chih reached his majority in 1873, his first duty was to escort the Empresses Dowager to the Eastern Mausolea, where, with much solemnity, two auspicious sites, encircled by hills and watered by streams, were selected and exorcised of all evil influences. Further ceremonies and mystic calculations were required to determine the auspicious dates for the commencement of building operations; in these, and the adornment of the tomb, Tzŭ Hsi continued to take the keenest interest until the day of her death. In order to secure scrupulous regard for its construction in accordance with the requirements of her horoscope, and to make her sepulchre a fitting and all-hallowed resting-place, she entrusted its chief supervision to Jung Lu, who thus secured a permanent post highly coveted by Manchu officials, in which huge “squeezes” were a matter of precedent. The geomantic conditions of these burial places gave unusual trouble, the tomb of the Empress Tzŭ An having eventually to be shifted fifteen feet two inches northwards, and four feet seven and a half inches westwards, before the spirits of her ancestors were perfectly satisfied, while that of Tzŭ Hsi was removed seven feet four inches to the north and eight inches to the eastward.

Tzŭ Hsi feared no man. From the first moment of her power, secure in the sense of divine right and firmly believing in her “star,” she savoured her authority like a rich wine. The pleasure she derived from delivering homilies to the highest officials in the Empire may be read between the lines of her Decrees. Already in 1862, that is to say, before she was twenty-seven years of age, we find her solemnly admonishing the Grand Council on their duties, urging them to adopt stricter standards of conduct, and to put a check on their corrupt tendencies. “They are, of course, not debarred from seeking advice from persons below them in society, but let them be careful to avoid any attempt at forming cabals or attracting to themselves troops of followers.” And on another occasion, when she specially invited the Censors to impeach Prince Kung, she observed: “In discussing the principles of just government you should remember the precept of the Confucian school, which is, ‘Be not weary in well-doing: strict rectitude of conduct is the road royal to good government. Face and overcome your difficulties, and thus eventually earn the right to ease.’” Tzŭ Hsi could turn out this sort of thing, which appeals to every Chinese scholar, in good style and large quantities. She took pride in the manufacture of maxims for the guidance of the Mandarins, but there was always a suspicion that her tongue was in her cheek while she carefully penned these copybook platitudes, just as we know there was when she set herself to display what _The Times_ correspondent at Peking called her “girlish abandon,” in order to regain the affection of Mrs. Conger and the ladies of the Diplomatic Body.

Of the Empress Dowager’s popularity and prestige with all classes of her subjects, there is no doubt. At Peking especially, and throughout the Metropolitan Province, she was the object of a very general and very sincere affection; seldom is her name spoken except with expressions of admiration and regard, very similar in effect to the feelings of the British people for Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Although her share of responsibility for the Boxer rising and for the consequent sufferings inflicted on the people was matter of common knowledge, little or no blame was ever imputed to the Old Buddha. Her subjects loved her for her very defects, for the foolhardy courage that had staked the Empire on a throw. Amongst the lower classes it was the general opinion that she had done her best, and with the best intentions. The scheme itself was magnificent—to drive the foreigner into the sea—and it appealed to her people as worthy of their ruler and of a better fate. If it had failed for this time, it was the will of Heaven, and no doubt at some future date success would justify her wisdom. If they blamed her at all, it was for condescending to intimate relations with the hated foreigner after the Court’s return to Peking; but even in this, she had the sympathy rather than the censure of her subjects.

To the great mass of her people, who had never seen her, but knew her only by cumulative weight of common report, the Old Buddha stood for the embodiment of courage, liberality and kindness of heart. If, as they knew, she were subject to fierce outbursts of sudden rage, the fact did her no injury in the eyes of a race which believes that wrath-matter undischarged is a virulent poison in the system. The simple Chihli folk made allowance, not without its sense of humour, for their august sovereign’s capacity to generate wrath-matter, as for her feminine mutability: To them she was a great ruler and a _bon enfant_. In a country where merciless officials and torture are part of the long-accepted order of things, no more stress was laid on her numerous acts of cold blooded tyranny than, shall we say, was laid on the beheading of Earls at the close of the fifteenth century in England.

One of the writers had the good fortune once to see the Empress when proceeding in her palanquin to the Eastern tombs. She had breakfasted early at the Tung Yueh temple outside the Ch’i Hua gate, and was on her way to T’ung chou. As her chair passed along a line of kneeling peasantry, the curtains were open and it was seen that the Old Buddha was asleep. The good country people were delighted. “Look,” they cried, “the Old Buddha is sleeping. Really, she has far too much work to do! A rare woman—what a pleasure to see her thus!”

Tzŭ Hsi was recognised to be above criticism and above the laws which she rigorously enforced on others. For instance, when, a few weeks after the issue of a Decree prohibiting corporal punishment and torture in prisons, she caused the Reformer Shen Chin to be flogged to death (July, 1904), public opinion saw nothing extraordinary in the event. A few days later, when preparations were being made for the celebration of her seventieth birthday, she issued another Decree, declining the honorific title dutifully proffered by the Emperor, together with its emoluments, on the ground that she had no heart for festivities, “being profoundly distressed at the thought of the sufferings of my subjects in Manchuria, owing to the destruction wrought there by the Russian and Japanese armies. My one desire,” she added, “is that my officials may co-operate to introduce more humane methods of Government, so that my people may live to enjoy good old age, resting on couches of comfortable ease. This is the best way to honour the seventieth anniversary of my birth.” No doubt the shade of Shen Chin was duly appeased.

Of her vindictive ferocity on occasions there can be no question. As Ching Shan admits, even her most faithful admirers and servants were aware that at moments of her wrath it was prudent to be out of her reach, or, if unavoidably present, to abstain from thwarting her. They knew that those who dared to question her absolute authority or to criticise the means by which she gained and retained it, need look for no mercy. But they knew also that for faithful service and loyalty she had a royal memory and, like Catherine of Russia, she never forgot her friends.

Her unpopularity in central and southern China, which became marked after the war with Japan and violent at the time of the _coup d’état_, was in its origin anti-dynastic and political. It was particularly strong in Kuangtung, where for years Her Majesty was denounced by agitators as a monster of unparalleled depravity. The political opinions of the turbulent and quick-witted Cantonese have generally been expressed in a lively and somewhat ribald form, and when we bear in mind the popular tendency (not confined to the Far East) of ascribing gross immorality to crowned heads, we are justified in refusing to attach undue importance to the wild accusations levelled against the Empress Dowager in this quarter. The utterances of the hotspurs and lampooners of southern China are chiefly interesting in that they reveal something of the vast possibilities of cleavage inherent in the Chinese Government system, and prove the Manchu rule to have fallen into something like contempt in that region where the new forces of education and political activity are most conspicuous.

One of the doggerel verses current in 1898 fairly describes the attitude of the Cantonese man in the street towards the Dynasty. Freely translated, it runs thus:—

“_There are three questions which men must not ask about our Great Manchu Dynasty:_

“_At what ancestral grave does His Majesty make filial obeisance?_

“_To what deity does the Empress Dowager sacrifice?_

“_To what husbands are the Imperial Princesses married?_”

The first question is in allusion to the Emperor’s alleged doubtful parentage, while the second refers to a mythical New Year sacrifice, akin to those of Moloch, which the scurrilous Cantonese attributed to Tzŭ Hsi and the ladies of her Court. The last refers to the Manchu clan’s custom of intermarriage which, in the eyes of the Chinese (who disapprove even of marriage between persons of the same surname), is illegal and immoral.

These, however, are but local manifestations, and they lost much of their inspiration after the _coup d’état_. The anti-dynastic tendencies noticeable in the vernacular press of Shanghai, many of which assumed the form of personal hostility to the Empress, were also little more than the local result of Young China’s vague aspirations and desire for change, and reflected little weight of serious opinion. The official class and the _literati_ as a whole were loyal to Her Majesty and regarded her with respect. They do not fail to express admiration of her wisdom and statecraft, which kept the Empire together under circumstances of great difficulty. To her selection and support of Tseng Kuo-fan they generally attribute China’s recovery from the disasters of the Taiping rebellion, and to her sagacity in 1898 they ascribe the country’s escape from dangers of sudden revolution. They admit that had it not been for her masterly handling of the Tsai Yüan conspiracy (1860-61), it is doubtful whether the Dynasty could have held together for a decade, and they realise, now that her strong hand no longer grasps the helm, that the ship of State is likely to drift into dangerous waters.

The everyday routine of Tzŭ Hsi’s life has been well described in Miss Carl’s accurate and picturesque account of the Palace ceremonial and amusements,[134] the first authoritative picture of _la vie intime_ of the Chinese Court. Apart from a keen natural aptitude for State affairs (similar to that of Queen Victoria, whom she greatly admired from afar), Tzŭ Hsi maintained to the end of her days a lively interest in literature and art, together with a healthy and catholic appetite for amusement. She had an inveterate love for the theatre, for masques and pageants, which she indulged at all times and places, taking a professional interest in the players and giving much advice about the performances, which she selected daily from a list submitted to her. It was a matter of comment, and some hostile criticism by Censors, that even during the sojourn of the Court in the provincial wilderness at Hsi-an, she summoned actors to follow the Court and perform as usual.

Her private life had, no doubt, its phases. Of its details we know but little prior to the period of the restoration of the Summer Palace in the early nineties. In middle age, however, when she had assimilated the philosophy and practice of the “happy mean,” her tastes became simple and her habits regular. She was passionately fond of the Summer Palace, of its gardens and the lake amongst the hills, and towards the end of her life went as seldom as possible into the city. She loved the freedom of the I-ho Yüan, its absence of formal etiquette, her water-picnics and the familiar intercourse of her favourite ladies, with whom she would discuss the day’s news and the gossip of the Imperial Clans. With these, especially with the wife of Jung Lu and the Princess Imperial, she would talk endlessly of old times and make plans for the future.

Her love of literature and profound knowledge of history did much to win for her the respect of the Mandarin class, with whom the classics are a religion. In her reading she was, however, broad-minded, not to say omnivorous; it was her custom to spend a certain time daily in having ancient and modern authors read aloud by eunuchs specially trained in elocution. She believed thoroughly in education, though realising clearly the danger of putting new wine into old skins; and she perceived towards the end of her life that the rapidly changing conditions of the Empire had rendered the wisdom of China’s Sages of little practical value as a basis of administration. Her clearness of perception on this point, contrasted with her action in 1898, is indeed remarkable, but it should be remembered that much of her opposition to the Emperor’s policy of reform was the result of personal pique and outraged dignity, as in the case of her decision to become a Boxer leader in 1900. As far back as 1876, at the time of the establishment of the T’ung Wen College at Peking for the teaching of languages and science, we find her publicly rebuking a Censor who had declared that mathematics was a subject suitable only for the Court of Astronomers.

“The Throne has established this College,” she observed, “because it is incumbent on our scholars to learn the rudiments of mathematics and astronomy. These are not to be regarded, as the Memorialist suggests, as cunning and mechanical branches of knowledge. Let our officials study them earnestly, and they will soon acquire proficiency; at the same time let them avoid that undesirable specialisation which comes from concentrated study of the classics. We are now borrowing educational methods from foreign countries with a view to broadening our own and increasing its accuracy, but we have no intention of abandoning the teachings of the Sages. How, then, can our action prove detrimental to the minds of scholars?”

Frequent reference has been made in previous chapters to the extravagance and licentious display of Tzŭ Hsi’s Court during the years of the first Regency. The remonstrances of the Censors on the subject were so numerous and outspoken, so circumstantial in their charges, as to leave little room for doubt that the Empress deserved their indignant condemnation. All the records of that period, and particularly from 1862 to 1869, point to the evil and steadily-increasing influence of the eunuchs, whose corruption and encouragement of lavish expenditure resulted in continual demands on the provincial exchequers. But even at the height of what may fairly be called her riotous living, Tzŭ Hsi always had the good grace to concur publicly in the virtuous suggestions of her monitors, and to conciliate public opinion by professions of a strong desire for economy. She would have her Imperial way, her splendid pageants and garnered wealth of tribute, but the Censors should have their “face.” On the occasion of the Emperor T’ung-Chih’s wedding in 1869, when the Grand Council had solemnly deprecated any increase in her Palace expenditure because of the impoverished state of the people brought about by the Taiping rebellion, she issued a Decree stating that, “so great was her perturbation of mind at the prevalent sufferings of her people, that she grudged even the money spent on the inferior raiment she was wearing, and the humble fare that was served at her Palace table.”

She was, in fact, as lavish of good principles as of the public funds. But it is to be remembered that a large proportion of the vast sums spent on her Palaces, on the building of her tomb, and on her Court festivities, represents the squeezes of officials and eunuchs, which, however solemnly the Grand Council might denounce extravagance, are in practice universally recognised as inseparable from the Celestial system of government. Tzŭ Hsi was fully aware that much of the enormous expenditure charged to her Privy Purse went in “squeeze,” but she good-humouredly acquiesced in a custom as deeply ingrained in the Chinese as ancestral worship, and from which she herself derived no small profit. At her receptions to the ladies of the Diplomatic Body she would frequently enquire as to the market prices of household commodities, in order, as she cheerfully explained, to be able to show her Chief Eunuch that she was aware of his monstrous over-charges.

Combined, however, with her love of sumptuous display and occasional fits of Imperial munificence, Tzŭ Hsi possessed a certain housewifely instinct of thrift which, with advancing age, verged on parsimony. The Privy Purse of China’s ruler is not dependent upon any well-defined civil list, but rather upon the exigencies of the day, upon the harvests and trade of the Empire, whence, through percentages of squeezes levied by the provincial authorities, come the funds required to defray the expenses of the Court.[135] The uncertainty of these remittances partly explains the Empress Dowager’s hoarding tendencies, that squirrel instinct which impelled her to bury large sums in the vaults of the Palace, and to accumulate a vast store of silks, medicines, clocks, and all manner of valuables in the Forbidden City. At the time of her death her private fortune, including a large number of gold Buddhas and sacrificial vessels stored in the Palace vaults, was estimated by a high official of the Court at about sixteen millions sterling. The estimate is necessarily a loose one, being Chinese, but it was known with tolerable certainty that the hoard of gold[136] buried in the Ning-Shou Palace at the time of the Court’s flight in 1900, amounted to sixty millions of taels (say, eight millions sterling), and the “tribute” paid by the provinces to the Court at T’ai-yüan and Hsi-an would amount to as much more.

Tzŭ Hsi was proud of her personal appearance, and justly so, for she retained until advanced old age a clear complexion and youthful features. (To an artist who painted her portrait not long before her death she expressed a wish that her wrinkles should be left out.) By no means free from feminine vanity, she devoted a considerable amount of time each day to her toilet, and was particularly careful about the dressing of her hair. At the supreme moment of the Court’s flight from the Palace, in 1900, she was heard to complain bitterly at being compelled to adopt the Chinese fashion of head-dress.

Her good health and vitality were always extraordinary. She herself attributed them chiefly to early rising, regular habits, and the frequent consumption of milk, which she usually took curdled, in the form of a kind of rennet. She ate frugally but well, being an epicure at heart and delighting in dainty and _recherché_ menus. Opium, like other luxuries, she took in strict moderation, but greatly enjoyed her pipe after the business of the day was done. It was her practice then to rest for an hour, smoking at intervals, a _siesta_ which the Court knew better than to disturb. She fully realised the evils wrought by abuse of the insidious drug, and approved of the laws, introduced by the initiative of T’ang Shao-yi and other high officials, for its abolition. But her fellow-feeling for those who, like herself, could use it in moderation, and her experience of its soothing and stimulating effect on the mind, led her to insist that the Abolition Decree (November 22nd, 1906) should not deprive persons over sixty years of age of their accustomed solace. She was, in fact, willing to decree prohibition for the masses, but lenient to herself and to those who had sufficiently proved their capacity to follow the path of the happy mean.

Such was Tzŭ Hsi, a woman whose wonderful personality and career cannot fail to secure for her a place amongst the rulers who have become the standards and pivots of greatness in the world’s history. The marvellous success of her career and the passionate devotion of her partisans are not to be easily explained by any ordinary process of analysis or comparison; but there is no doubt that they were chiefly due to that mysterious and indefinable quality which is called charm, a quality apparently independent alike of morals, ethics, education, and what we call civilisation; universal in its appeal, irresistible in its effect upon the great majority of mankind. It was this personal charm of the woman, combined with her intense vitality and accessibility, that won for her respect, and often affection, even from those who had good reason to deplore her methods and deny her principles. This personal charm, this subtle and magnetic emanation, was undoubtedly the secret of that stupendous power with which, for good or evil, she ruled for half a century a third of the population of the earth; that charm it was that won to her side the bravest and best of China’s picked men, and it is the lingering memory and tradition of that charm which already invest the name of the Old Buddha with attributes of legendary virtue and superhuman wisdom.

Europeans, studying the many complex and unexpected phases of her extraordinary personality from the point of view of western moralities, have usually emphasised and denounced her cold-blooded ferocity and homicidal rage. Without denying the facts, or extenuating her guilt, it must, nevertheless, be admitted that it would be unjust to expect from her compliance with standards of morals and conduct of which she was perforce ignorant, and that, judged by the standards of her own predecessors and contemporaries, and by the verdict of her subjects, she is not to be reckoned a wicked woman. Let it be remembered also that within comparatively recent periods of English history, death was dealt out with no niggard or gentle hand to further the alleged interests of the State; men were hanged, drawn and quartered in the days of Elizabeth and Mary Stuart, gentle ladies both, and averse to the spilling of blood, for the greater glory of Thrones, and in defence of the Christian religion.

Tzŭ Hsi died as she had lived, keen to the last, impatient of the bonds of sickness that kept her from the new day’s work, hopeful ever for the future. Unto the last her thoughts were of the Empire, of that new plan of Constitutional Government wherein she had come to see visions of a new and glorious era for China and for herself. And when the end came, she faced it, as she had faced life, with a stout heart and brave words, going out to meet the Unknown as if she were but starting for a summer picnic. Reluctantly she bade farewell to the world of men, to the life she had lived with so keen a zest; but, unlike England’s Tudor Queen, she bowed gracefully to the inevitable, leaving the scene with steadfast and Imperial dignity, confident in her high destinies to come.

FINIS.

[Illustration: THE IMPERIAL DAÏS IN THE CH’IEN CH’ING HALL.

_Photo, Ogawa, Tokio._]

APPENDIX

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON CHANG CHIH-TUNG, TSO TSUNG-T’ANG, SUN CHIA-NAI, AND TUAN FANG

CHANG CHIH-TUNG

Her Majesty was never on terms of any great intimacy with Chang Chih-tung, but she respected him on account of his brilliant literary style and profound knowledge of the classics. The career of this official strikingly illustrates the power of the pen in China. He first came to be known by a critical Memorial in reference to the funeral ceremonies of the Emperor T’ung-Chih, in 1879; his subsequent rapid advancement was due to the Memorial in which he denounced the cession of Ili to Russia by the Manchu Ambassador, Ch’ung Hou, in 1880. At this time Chang was still a poor scholar, earning a precarious livelihood by composing Memorials for certain wealthy Censors. He spoke the Mandarin dialect badly, having been brought up by his father (a Taotai) in the province of Kueichou. By patient study, a splendid memory and a natural talent for historical research and criticism, he became at an early age a recognised authority on all questions of State precedents and historical records, so that his pen found no lack of work in the drafting of official patents of rank, Imperial inscriptions and similar documents. Nevertheless, Tzŭ Hsi never cared for the man, realising that this brilliant scholar was by nature an opportunist, and that his opinion was rarely based on sincere conviction. Her estimate of him was amply justified on more than one occasion, for he frequently changed his views to meet the exigencies of party politics at the capital; it is indeed somewhat remarkable, since this estimate of his character was shared by most of his colleagues, that he should have retained her good will and risen to the highest position in the Government. His successful career[137] is explained by the fact that even men like Jung Lu and Li Hung-chang, who disliked him thoroughly, were unable to deny his claims as an unrivalled scholar.

As an illustration of his historical knowledge and methods, it is interesting to recall the main features of his Memorial against the Treaty of Livadia with Russia. By this Treaty, negotiated by Ch’ung Hou under the direct instructions of the Empress Dowager, Ili was to be retroceded to China upon payment of five million roubles, Russia securing Kuldja in exchange, with the right to open Consulates at certain places in the New Territory and on the Kansu frontier. Russian goods were also to be free of duty in Chinese Turkestan, and a new trade route was to be opened up through Central China, viâ Hsi-an in Shensi. When the terms of the Treaty became known, a storm of angry criticism was directed against the Manchu Ambassador: Tzŭ Hsi promptly ordered him to be cashiered and arrested for disregard of her instructions. The whole matter was referred to the Grand Council, who were directed to consult with Prince Ch’un and the various Government Boards. Chang Chih-tung, who was at this time a junior official in the Department of Public Instruction, drew attention to himself and practically decided the course of events by the advice given in his lengthy Memorial on the subject. The result of the advice therein submitted was, that a son of Tseng Kuo-fan was sent to Russia to negotiate a new Treaty, in which the objectionable clauses were eventually abandoned. Ch’ung Hou considered himself lucky that, as the result of Russia’s diplomatic intervention on his behalf, he escaped with his life.

Chang’s famous Memorial is typical of the mental processes and puerile naïveté of the _literati_. It began by showing that if the Treaty of Livadia were ratified, the whole of China would be open to Russian troops, who would enter the country as merchants accompanying caravans (since the Treaty expressly provided for merchants carrying fire-arms), and that the retrocession of Ili would prove valueless to China in course of time, inasmuch as Russia would remain in command of all strategic points. Chang urged that China could repudiate the Treaty without danger to herself, for several good reasons; the first being the Imperial prerogative and the unpopularity of the Treaty, whereby the martial spirit of the Chinese people would be aroused, and the second, that the future security of the Empire justified the adoption of right and reasonable precautions. He recommended that, in order to show that the displeasure of the Sovereign was sincere, Ch’ung Hou should be decapitated forthwith; this would be a clear intimation that his negotiations were disavowed; an excellent precedent existed in the case of Ch’i Ying,[138] who had been permitted to commit suicide under similar circumstances by the Emperor Hsien Feng.

As regards Russia’s position in the matter, he was of opinion that China had earned the contempt of the whole world by allowing herself to be so easily intimidated. The Russian Minister at Peking might talk as loudly as he liked about hauling down his flag, but this was only bluff, and if he really desired to take his departure he should be allowed to do so. China should then address an identical Note to all the Powers protesting against Russia’s action, which Note would be published throughout the civilised world. Russia had been weakened by her war with Turkey, and the life of her Sovereign was daily threatened by Nihilists. He was therefore of opinion that she could by no means fight a successful war against China.

Russia’s position in the neighbourhood of Ili by this Treaty would eventually involve China in the loss of the New Territory. Now China had not yet taken over Ili, and the Treaty had not been ratified by the Sovereign, so that Russia could have no good ground for insisting upon its terms; if, however, Russia were intent on compelling China to yield or fight, it would be necessary to look to the defences of the Empire in three directions, namely Turkestan, Kirin and Tientsin. As regards Turkestan, Tso Tsung-t’ang’s victorious armies, which had just succeeded in suppressing the Mahomedan rebellion after a campaign of several years, would be quite capable of dealing with Russia’s forces were she to attempt an invasion. As for Manchuria, it was too far from Russia’s base of operations to render success even possible, while the stalwart natives of the Eastern Provinces might be relied upon to dislodge her should she eventually succeed in establishing a foothold. A few months would certainly witness her irrevocable defeat. As to invading China by sea, Russia’s Navy was not to be compared to that of other Powers, and if the huge amount which had been spent by Li Hung-chang on armaments for the Army and Navy were ever to be turned to any good account, now was the time to do it. If at this juncture Li Hung-chang proved incapable of dealing with the situation, he was for ever useless. The Throne should direct him to prepare for war, and he should equip his troops with the latest pattern of French artillery. If victorious, a Dukedom should be his reward, and if defeated, his head should pay the penalty. The money which would be saved by not carrying out the Treaty, might very well be devoted to the equipment of the military forces.

Russia’s designs in Turkestan, he continued, threatened England no less than China. If Li Hung-chang could persuade the British Minister that England’s interests were identical with those of China, surely the British Government’s assistance might be forthcoming? China possessed, moreover, several distinguished generals, who should forthwith be summoned to the capital, and given command of troops at different points between Peking and Manchuria. It was high time that China’s prestige should be made manifest and re-established. And in his peroration he says:—

“I am not indulging in empty resounding phrases, or asking Your Majesties to risk the Empire upon a single throw of the dice, but the crisis daily increases in seriousness: Europe is interfering in our sovereign rights, while even Japan threatens to take territory from us. If now we submit to the arbitrary proceedings of Russia, all the other Powers will imitate her action, and we shall be compelled sooner or later to take up arms in self-defence. The present, therefore, is the moment for a decisive campaign; we have good chances of victory, and even should we meet with defeat in the New Territory it would not serve Russia greatly, for she could scarcely hope to penetrate beyond the Great Wall, or to cross the border into Kansu, so that, even if victorious, she would be severely embarrassed. If we postpone action for a few years Tso Tsung-t’ang will be too old to conduct military operations, and Li Hung-chang will be also advancing in years. Russia will hem us in on all sides, and our courage will suffer from our very inaction. It is better to fight Russia to-day on our furthermost frontier, than to wait until we have to give battle at the gates of Peking: it will then be too late for repentance. We must fight sooner or later, and in any case, we cannot consent to the retrocession of Ili. Come what may, Ch’ung Hou must be beheaded. This is not merely my private opinion, but the unanimous decision of all your leading Statesmen. The provinces may work together to prepare for war, all your servants may set an example of courage. Our Foreign Office may clearly express and insist upon our rights, but in the last instance the decision of affairs rests with Your Majesty the Empress Dowager, to whom we must needs look for a firm and consistent policy.”

In spite of its childish arguments and colossal ignorance of foreign affairs, and in spite of the absurdity of allowing the nation’s military operations to be criticised and dictated by a theoretical scholar, this Memorial had a most remarkable effect on the opinion of the Court, and Tzŭ Hsi commanded that its author should be consulted by the Foreign Office on all important questions of State—a striking case of _parmi les aveugles_. Chang was promoted to be Vice-President of a Board, and within a year was made Governor of Shansi, where he further increased his reputation by his entirely sincere attack upon opium smoking and poppy cultivation. Throughout his career, safe in the comfortable seclusion of his Yamên, and judging every question of foreign policy by the light of the history of previous Dynasties, Chang Chih-tung was always of a bellicose disposition on paper. He displayed it again in 1884, when he advocated the war with France, and became acting Viceroy at Canton. (He was a firm believer in the military genius of the swash-buckling Li Ping-heng, even to the day when this notorious reactionary met his death with the forlorn hope of the Boxers.) When the French troops were defeated by the Chinese forces at Langshan, Chang claimed and received no small credit for an event so unusual in Chinese modern history, and became so elated thereby that he sent in a Memorial strongly recommending that the victory should be followed up by an invasion of all French territory between the Chinese frontier and Hanoi. When this advice was rejected, he put in another bitter Memorial of remonstrance which created an immense impression on public opinion. He denounced the peace which was subsequently signed and by which China lost Annam, and he never forgave his rival and opponent, Li Hung-chang, for his share in this result.

Chang’s share in the _coup d’état_ of 1898 aptly illustrates his opportunism. It was he who from Wuch’ang originally recommended some thirty “progressives” to the notice of the Emperor at the beginning of that fateful year, and amongst these was Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, the chief colleague and henchman of K’ang Yu-wei. Rejoiced at the great Viceroy’s support, the Emperor summoned him to Peking to assume direction of the new movement, hoping the more from his assistance as Chang’s views always carried weight with the Empress Dowager. It is impossible to say what course Chang would have followed had he come to Peking, or what effect his presence might have had in preventing the collapse of the Emperor’s plans, but as luck would have it, he had only proceeded as far as Shanghai, when he was ordered back to his post in Hupei by an Imperial Decree, which directed him first to settle a troublesome missionary case that had just arisen. Immediately after this, the dismissal of Weng T’ung-ho, and the appointment of Jung Lu to Tientsin, showed him that a crisis was impending and that the reactionary party held the better cards; he played therefore for his own hand, anticipating that the Empress Dowager would speedily come to the front as leader of the Manchu Conservatives. It was at this particular juncture that he wrote and published his famous treatise on education, intended to refute the arguments of a revolutionary pamphlet that was then being widely circulated in the provinces of his jurisdiction. His treatise, by its brilliant style rather than by its arguments, created a great impression; its effect on the Chinese reader’s mind was to emphasise the wisdom of learning everything possible of the material arts and forces of Europe, while keeping the foreigner himself at arm’s length.

In 1900, at the urgent request of the Viceroy of Nanking (Lui K’un-yi) and of Li Hung-chang, he agreed to join in a Memorial impeaching Prince Tuan, and telegrams were exchanged between these high officials to discuss the form which this document should take. In the first instance, Chang had declined to protest against the Emperor’s deposition for the reason, which he justified by historical precedent, that the suicide of the Censor Wu K’o-tu, twelve years before, had justified Her Majesty in placing a new Emperor on the Throne. He concurred in the decision of the Nanking Viceroy to head off any Boxer rising in the Yangtsze Provinces, but he was obviously uneasy at his own position in having to disobey the Empress Dowager’s anti-foreign Decrees, and he hedged to the best of his ability by beheading two prominent reformers at Wuch’ang. No sooner had the form of the document impeaching Prince Tuan been practically decided, than he took fright at the thought that the Prince might eventually triumph and, as father of the Emperor-elect, wreak vengeance on his enemies; he therefore telegraphed to Li Hung-chang at Shanghai, begging that his signature be withheld from the Memorial. Li Hung-chang, who dearly loved his joke, promptly sent off the Memorial with Chang Chih-tung’s signature attached thereto, and then telegraphed informing him that he had done so, and asking whether he desired that a second telegram be sent to Her Majesty cancelling his signature? Chang was for several days in a state of the greatest distress (which was only relieved when the Boxers were finally routed), and his mood was not improved when a pair of scrolls were sent to him anonymously, with inscriptions which may be roughly translated as follows:—

“Full of patriotism, but quite devoid of any real ability or intelligence.”

“As an administrator a bungler, but remarkable for originating magnificent schemes.”

Before his death, Chang had achieved a curiously mixed reputation, revered as he was by all scholars throughout the Empire, yet denounced on all sides for administrative incapacity. As an instance of the childish self-sufficiency which characterised him to the end, nothing is more remarkable than the suggestion which he solemnly submitted to the Throne, during the course of the peace negotiations for the Portsmouth Treaty after the conclusion of the war between Russia and Japan. At this juncture, the Empress Dowager had telegraphed inviting suggestions for China’s future policy from all the high provincial authorities. Chang telegraphed five suggestions in reply, one of which was that China should come to an agreement with Japan to send two hundred thousand Japanese troops to Manchuria, and in the event of Russia proceeding to attack Chinese territory, that Japan should be requested to garrison Urga. This was the idea of China’s foremost literary statesman in July, 1905, but there were not lacking enemies of his who avowed that his political views were considerably affected by the fact that he had contracted loans from Japanese financiers. Whatever the cause of his views, he had reason to change them completely before he died.

TSO TSUNG-T’ANG

The Chinese look upon Tseng Kuo-fan, the conqueror of the Taiping rebels, as the greatest military commander in modern history; but they regard Tso Tsung-t’ang, the hero of the long Mahomedan campaign, as very near to him in glory. Both Generals were natives of Hunan (a fact which seems to entitle the people of that province to assume something of a truculent attitude to the rest of the Empire), and both were possessed of indisputable qualities of leadership and organisation, remarkable enough in men trained to literary pursuits. Both were beloved of the people for their personal integrity, courage and justice.

Tso was born, one of nine sons in a poor family, in 1812. He took his provincial graduate degree at the age of twenty; thereafter, he seems to have abandoned literary work, for he never passed the Metropolitan examination. This did not prevent the Empress Dowager from appointing him, after his victorious campaign, to the Grand Secretariat, the only instance of a provincial graduate attaining to that high honour. For three years he was Tseng Kuo-fan’s ablest lieutenant against the Taipings, and became Governor of Fukhien in 1863. In 1868 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial forces against the Mahomedan rebels, and began a campaign which lasted, with breathing spaces, until the beginning of 1878. His victorious progress through the western and north-western provinces began at Hsiang-Yang, on the Han river, in Hupei. Thence, after driving the rebels from Hsi-an, through Shansi and Kansu, he came to a halt before the strong city of Su-chou fu, on the north-west frontier of Kansu. The siege of this place lasted nearly three years, for his force was badly off for ordnance, and he was compelled to wait until his deputies purchased artillery for him from a German firm at Shanghai. The guns were sent up in the leisurely manner affected by the Mandarins, and Tso was obliged to put his troops to agricultural work in order to provide himself with commissariat.

Su-chou had been for ten years in the hands of the rebels. It fell to the Imperialists in October, 1873, some say by treachery, according to others by assault. Be this as it may, Tso, whose method of dealing with rebels was absolutely pitiless, reduced the place to a heap of ruins, killing men, women and children indiscriminately, throughout large tracts of country. So fearful were the wholesale massacres and treacherous atrocities committed by his Hunanese troops, that General Kauffmann, commanding the Russian forces on the frontier, considered it his duty to address him on the subject, and to protest indignantly at the indiscriminate killing of non-combatants. General Kauffmann alluded chiefly to the massacre which had followed the taking of the town of Manas (November, 1876), but similar atrocities had been perpetrated at Su-chou, Hami, and many other important places. At Hami the entire population was put to the sword. Eye-witnesses of the scene of desolation, which stretched from Hsi-an in Shensi to Kashgar, have recorded that scarcely a woman was left alive in all those ruined cities—one might ride for days and not see one—a fact which accounts for the failure of the country unto this day to recover from the passing of that scourge. In more than one instance, Tso said with pride that he had left no living thing to sow new seeds of rebellion.[139]

Nor do the Chinese find anything reprehensible in his action. Instinctively a peace-loving people, they have learned through centuries of dreadful experience that there can be no humanitarianism in these ever-recurring rebellions, which are but one phase of the deadly struggle for life in China, and that the survival of the fittest implies the extermination of the unfit. Tso had first learned this lesson in the fierce warfare of the Taiping rebellion, where there was no question of quarter, asked or given, on either side. “If I destroy them not,” he would say with simple grimness, “if I leave root or branch, they may destroy me.”