Yet who could think of one when all were threatened? In silence the noble assembly listened to Prince Kung as he stood to announce the evil news. The Emperor, in his golden robes and seated on the Dragon Throne, bowed his head low, his face half hidden by a silken fan he held in his right hand.
When proper greetings had been made Prince Kung proceeded to the hard truth he must tell. “In spite of all the Throne has done to prevent them, the aliens have not remained in the south. They are even now on their way up our coast, their ships armed and carrying warriors. We must hope they will halt at the forts of Taku, and not enter into the city proper at Tientsin, from whence it would be but a short march to this sacred place.”
A groan burst from the kneeling assembly and they bowed their heads to the floor.
Prince Kung faltered and went on. “It is too soon for me to speak. Yet I fear, I fear, that these barbarians will obey neither our laws nor our etiquette! The least delay, and they will come even to the gates of the imperial palaces, unless they are bribed and persuaded to return south again. Let us face the worst, let us cease dreaming. The last hour is come. Ahead is only sorrow.”
When the full text of the memorial which Prince Kung had written was read and presented, the Emperor ended the audience, commanding the assembly to withdraw and consider its judgment and advice. So saying he rose, and supported by two princes, his brothers, he was about to come down from the Throne when suddenly Tzu Hsi’s clear voice rose from behind the Dragon Screen.
“I who should not speak must nevertheless break my proper silence!”
The Emperor stood uncertain, turning his head left and right. Before him the assembly knelt with heads bowed to the floor and they remained motionless. None spoke.
In the silence Tzu Hsi’s voice rose again. “It is I who have counseled patience with these Western barbarians. It is I who have cried delay and wait, and now it is I who say I have been wrong. I change, I declare against patience and waiting and delay. I cry war against the Western enemy—war and death to them all, men, women and children!”
Had her voice been that of a man, they would have shouted yea or nay. But it was the voice of a woman, though she was an empress. None spoke, none moved. The Emperor waited, his head drooping, and then, still supported by his brothers, he came down from the Throne, while all heads were bowed to the floor, and he entered his yellow palanquin and, surrounded by Bannermen and guards, he returned to his palace.
After him in proper time the two Consorts also withdrew, saying not a word to each other, except what was necessary for courtesy, but Tzu Hsi could see that Tzu An shunned her and looked away. And Tzu Hsi returned to her own apartments while the day passed to wait for the imperial summons, but none came. In silence she pored over her books, her mind distracted. When evening came near and she was not called, she inquired of Li Lien-ying, her eunuch, and he told her that the Emperor had dallied all day with one and another of his lesser concubines and had not mentioned her name. This he had heard from the Chief Eunuch, who had been compelled to stay by his master’s side, and bear with his whims.
“Venerable,” Li Lien-ying said, “be sure the Son of Heaven has not forgotten you, but he is afraid now of what may happen. He waits for the judgment of his ministers.”
“Then I am defeated!” Tzu Hsi exclaimed.
This was speech too plain against the Emperor and Li Lien-ying pretended he had not heard. He felt the teapot and muttered that it was cold and he bustled away with the pot in his hands, his ugly face blank and unsmiling.
The next day Tzu Hsi heard the news she had foreseen. There was to be no resistance, even now, against the invaders from the West. Instead, by advice of his councilors and ministers, the Emperor appointed three honorable men to go to Tientsin to negotiate with the Englishman, Lord Elgin. Among these three the chief was Kwei Liang, the father of Prince Kung’s wife, a man known for his good sense and his caution.
“Aie, alas!” Tzu Hsi cried when she heard his name. “This excellent man will never oppose the enemy. He is too old, too careful and too yielding.”
She was right indeed. On the fourth day of that seventh month, Kwei Liang signed a treaty with the Western warriors, which was to be sealed in a year from that day by the Emperor himself. The three noblemen then returned with their treaty. At point of sword, the Englishmen and the Frenchmen, supported by their friends, the Americans and the Russians, had gained their demands. Their governments were to be allowed ministers resident in Peking, their priests and traders could travel throughout the realm without submitting to its laws, opium was to be called the stuff of legal trade, and the great river port of Hankow in the heart of the Empire, a thousand miles from the sea, was named a treaty port where white men could live and bring their families.
When Tzu Hsi heard such terms she retired to her bedchamber, and for three days she did not wash herself nor take off her garments nor eat food. Nor would she admit any of her ladies. Her woman grew frightened and her eunuch went to Prince Kung secretly to report that the Empress of the Western Palace lay on her bed like one dead, exhausted with weeping and weariness.
Prince Kung received the report in his own palace outside the Forbidden City and he begged audience with her. Tzu Hsi roused herself then and was bathed and dressed and she drank a broth that her woman brought to her, and leaning on her eunuch’s arm she received the Prince in the Imperial Library. There, sitting upon her throne, she listened to his reasonable words.
“Empress, do you think that so honorable a man as my father-in-law would have yielded to the enemy if he could have resisted? No choice was given us. Had we opposed their demands they would have marched forthwith upon this imperial city.”
Tzu Hsi thrust out her red underlip. “A threat!”
“No threat,” Prince Kung repeated firmly. “One thing I have learned about the Englishmen. What they say, they do.”
Whether this good Prince were right or wrong, Tzu Hsi knew him loyal and true and wise beyond his years and she could not argue, now that the treaty was made. Indeed, she was too sad. Were her hopes already lost because her son was too young to fight for himself? She made a gesture of impatient dismissal and when the Prince was gone she returned to her own chamber. There alone in days and nights to come, she planned her secret ways. She would conceal her heart and her mind, she would make friends of all, she would subdue herself wholly to the Emperor, sparing him the smallest reproach, and she would wait. And with this she made her will as hard as iron, as cold as stone.
Meanwhile, content with their victorious treaty, the Western men did not move northward. The year passed as other years had passed, and the new summer of the next year brought the day for the treaty to be sealed. Now Tzu Hsi had determined to win her way against the sealing, and she won, not by talk and threat, but by seduction of that weak man, the Emperor. When he found during this year that she was always gentle, always willing, he became her captive again, his mind with his body. Upon her advice, which she made subtle nowadays, he sent ministers to the white men ruling the city of Canton through the Chinese governors they had appointed, and these ministers were to coax and bribe the white men not to come north again because the treaty was not sealed.
“Let them be content with their southern trade,” the Emperor commanded. “Tell them we are friendly if they remain where they are. Did they not come here for trade?”
“What if they refuse?” Prince Kung asked.
Remembering what Tzu Hsi had said in the long night when they were alone together, the Emperor replied, “Tell them, if you must, that we will meet them later at Shanghai to seal the treaty. This is to go halfway toward them. Can they complain that we are not generous?”
For Tzu Hsi had said, feigning indifference to matters of state, “Why sign the treaty? Let them hope, and if they are impatient, say it will be signed at Shanghai, halfway up the coast. If they come there, then it will be time to decide what to do.”
This she said, while secretly she held war as the final w
eapon. If the invaders came to Shanghai, would it not be proof that only death could end their advance?
The noblemen departed early in the year with these commands and that same spring, as soon as the earth was free of frost, the Emperor commanded that the Taku forts near Tientsin were to be strengthened and to be manned with guns and cannon bought from Americans. This was to be done secretly, so that the English knew nothing of it. Such plans were seeded into his mind in idle hours while Tzu Hsi amused him and made dutiful love to him, and roused him by reading tales and verses from the forbidden books she had found in the eunuchs’ libraries.
What dismay, then, when in early summer couriers brought news from the Emperor’s ministers that the Western men would make no compromise, that once again their ships were sailing northward up the coast far past Shanghai, this time under the Englishman Admiral Hope! But the Court and the commoners of the city declared themselves not afraid. The Taku forts were strong and the imperial soldiers had been promised good reward for bravery. In calm and courage they waited for the attack.
This time, by the help of Heaven, they did indeed repulse the enemy and with such force that three ships of war and more than three hundred of the enemy were destroyed. The Emperor was overjoyed and he praised Tzu Hsi and hearing his praise she encouraged him to refuse everything to the invaders. The treaty was not sealed.
The white men retreated, and peace was proclaimed. The whole nation exclaimed their surprise at the wisdom of the Son of Heaven, who, they declared, had known when to delay and when to make war. Observe, they cried, how easily the invaders were overcome! Yet could they have been so overcome had not the stratagem of delay and compromise persuaded them to false estimates of weakness in the capitol and their own strength? A master of cleverness and wisdom, they declared their Emperor.
Yet all knew who was the Emperor’s advisor. The Empress of the Western Palace was called powerful and magic, her beauty was extolled in private, for it would not have been seemly to speak of it in public, and in the palaces every eunuch and courtier deferred to her smallest wish.
Only Prince Kung was still fearful and he said, “The Western men are tigers who retire when they are wounded and return again to attack.”
He was wrong, it seemed, for a year passed, another strange quiet year. Tzu Hsi deepened her knowledge of books, and the Heir grew strong and willful. He learned to ride his horse, a black Arabian, he loved to sing and laugh and was always in high humor, for everywhere he looked he saw only friendly faces. Serene in her present power, Tzu Hsi felt no fear while she watched her son increase in beauty. The spring grew late, the summer came again, and she made her plans to go to the Summer Palace with her ladies and her son. This year had passed in peace and she could take delight in holiday.
Alas, who could know what was to come? The Court had only just made its summer journey to Yüan Ming Yüan when those warriors of England, without warning and aided and supported by other warriors from France, came roaring in full force up the coast, furious for revenge. In the seventh month of that year, two hundred vessels of war, as if they dropped from the sky, and carrying twenty thousand armed men, landed at the port of Chefoo, in the province of Chihli, and pausing neither for treaty-making nor for bargaining, they prepared instantly to invade the capital.
Couriers ran day and night to bring the black tidings. In the Forbidden City there was no time for reproach or for delay. Kwei Liang, that wise old man, accompanied by other noblemen, was sent to persuade the invaders to stand.
“Make promises,” the frightened Emperor commanded when they came to make farewell obeisance. “Concede and yield! We are outdone!”
Tzu Hsi stood at the Emperor’s side, the place his private audience chamber.
“No, no, my lord,” she cried. “That’s shameful! Do you forget your victory? More soldiers, my lord, more strength—now is the time for battle, my lord!”
He would not hear her. He put out his right arm, suddenly grown strong, and pushed her back. “You hear what I save said,” he told Kwei Liang.
“I hear and obey, Most High,” the old man replied.
With this command he and his escorts entered their mule carts and made haste to Tientsin, for, alas, the invaders had again seized the forts of Taku. But when Kwei Liang was gone, Tzu Hsi, stern with anxiety for her son, in secret used her clinging arms, her coaxing lips and tender eyes, and by such means she made the Emperor uncertain again.
“What if the white men will not be persuaded?” she argued in the night, in the Emperor’s bedchamber. “It is wisdom to be ready to save the lives of our own.” And then she persuaded the Emperor to order Seng-ko-lin-chin, his Mongol general, to lead the Imperial Armies in ambush against the white men. This general belonged to the house of Korchiu princes of Inner Mongolia, favored by the Manchu emperors for their loyalty, and he was called Prince Seng. A brave man, he had by his courage and skill prevented the southern rebels from invading the northern provinces and twice he had slaughtered them in battle, the first time when they were only twenty-four miles from Tientsin, and again he captured them in their retreat in Lien-chin, and he had pursued those remnants who fled into the province of Shantung.
To this invincible man Tzu Hsi now turned. The Emperor yielded, not daring to tell even his brother that he did so, and Prince Seng, receiving the private orders, led his men forthwith into ambush near the Taku forts, determined that he would drive the white men into the sea as he had driven away the rebels. Meanwhile, the English and French emissaries, knowing nothing of the ambush, came forward, they thought, to meet the Imperial Commission under Kwei Liang, their leader bearing a white flag of truce. But this flag Prince Seng took to be the sign of surrender. He summoned his men, who ran forward shouting and raging, and they fell upon the Western contingent and took the two leaders captive, and then seized all who were with them. The flag was torn and stamped into the dust, the captives were imprisoned and put to torture for their boldness in daring to invade the country.
In great joy this good news was carried back to the capital. Once again the Western men were routed. The Emperor praised Tzu Hsi heartily and gave her a gold coffer filled with jewels. Then he announced seven days of feasting in the nation and in the palaces special theatricals were arranged for the enjoyment and relief of the Court, while high honor and rich reward were announced for Prince Seng when he should return to the capital.
The joy was planned too soon, and the feasting and the plays were never finished. When the Western men heard of the treachery done their comrades, they gathered in a solid square for battle and then attacked the Mongol general and his men so strongly that these men were bewildered by such fury and fled, dying as they fell, for they had no foreign guns. The invaders then marched in triumph toward the capital and none stopped them until they came to a certain marble bridge, called Palikao, which crossed the river Peiho, near the small city of Tungchow, but ten miles away from Peking itself. At this bridge they were met by imperial soldiers, sent in haste and distraction by the Emperor, who by now had heard by courier from Prince Seng of the disaster. A battle took place, a sad battle in which the imperial soldiers were altogether routed. They ran back to the capital, crying their own destruction, and were joined by villagers and weeping people who crowded their way into the walls of the capital, hoping that the gates would be quickly barred and they be saved from the fierceness of the foreign enemy. The whole city was soon in turmoil, the people running everywhere and yet not knowing where to run to save themselves. Women and children wailed aloud, men shouted and cursed one another and called upon Heaven to rescue them. Merchants put up the boards of their shop fronts lest invaders loot their goods, and all citizens who had young and beautiful wives and concubines and daughters hastened to leave the city and escape with them into villages and countryside.
In the Summer Palace all was in like confusion. The princes gathered in haste to decide how to save the Throne and the Heir and how to protect the Empresses and the imperial concubines, and
they could not decide what to do for none agreed with another, while the Emperor trembled and wept and declared that he would swallow opium.
Prince Kung alone remained himself. He went to the Emperor’s private chambers and found Tzu Hsi there with the Heir, surrounded by eunuchs and courtiers, all protesting the decision of the Emperor to kill himself.
“Ah, you have come,” Tzu Hsi cried when she saw the Prince. What comfort indeed to see this man, his face composed, his garments ordered, his manner calm!
Prince Kung made obeisance and spoke to the Emperor, not as to an elder brother but as to the ruler of the people.
“I dare to give advice to the Son of Heaven,” he said.
“Speak—speak,” the Emperor groaned.
Prince Kung continued. “With such permission I beg to be allowed to write a letter to the leader of the approaching enemy and ask a truce. To this letter I will set the imperial seal.”
Tzu Hsi heard and could not speak. What this Prince had foretold had come to pass. The tiger had returned for revenge. She continued in silence, holding her child in her arms, cheek pressed against his head.
“And you, Sire,” Prince Kung went on, “must escape to Jehol and with you must go the Heir and the two Empresses and the Court.”
“Yes—yes,” the Emperor agreed too eagerly and the ladies and the eunuchs murmured their applause.
At this Tzu Hsi rose from the chair where she sat, and still holding her son in her arms, she cried out against Prince Kung.
“Never should the Emperor leave his capital! What will the people think if he deserts them now? They will yield themselves to the enemy, and be utterly destroyed. Let the Heir be taken away and hidden, but the Son of Heaven must remain, and I will stay at his side to serve him.”
All eyes turned to gaze at her when she spoke. Not one could deny the fire and majesty of her beauty. Prince Kung himself could only pity her.
“Empress,” he said in his gentlest voice, “I must protect you from your own courage. Let the people be told only that the Emperor is going north on a hunting trip to his palaces in Jehol. Let the departure be a few days hence, without haste and in the usual manner. Meanwhile, I will hold the invaders with my plea for a truce and promises to punish the Mongol general.”