The Chief Eunuch, enjoying intrigue, pretended nevertheless to be much offended at what he had to tell. “And then, Majesty, Prince Kung said since you give ear daily to Jung Lu, whom you, Majesty, he said, now permit to act almost as a father to the young Emperor, that he most sorrowfully gave some credence to a tale he had refused to hear before—”
“Enough!” the Empress Mother cried. She rose, her robes flying, and she drove the Chief Eunuch from her presence by the fury in her long black eyes. He retired, content nevertheless with the seed he had sown, for he knew her quick imagination could see a story whole in a handful of words.
As for the Empress Mother, she went that very afternoon to call upon her cousin Sakota, the Empress Dowager, and speaking sweetly and giving no hint of what she knew, she used greetings and pleasant small talk and gracious flattery. Then changing her voice and manner, she said:
“Sister, my true purpose in coming to you today is to say that you must act with me to bring down the pride of Prince Kung, who has outstripped himself. He goes beyond his place, taking power away from you. I do not speak of myself.”
She saw at once that the Empress Dowager caught her meaning. Something of the old childish Sakota still hid inside this wasted frame. A sickly flush spotted the thin face.
“I see you feel as I do,” the Empress Mother said. “You marked how this Prince spoke ahead of me at our last audience. And much else I find, now that I put my mind upon it. He even comes into the Throne Hall without waiting to be announced by the Chief Eunuch.”
The Empress Dowager put forward her weak defense. “Surely he has proved his faithfulness.”
“I do not forgive him that he dares to presume because he thinks he saved my life,” the Empress Mother made retort.
The Empress Dowager made a small show of courage. “And did he not save your life?”
“He should not remember it if he did,” the Empress Mother said, and her red lips curved in contempt. “Does a large-minded man boast of having done his duty? I think not. And how, pray, did he save my life? By coming to Jehol when I commanded? I think not.” She paused and then said boldly, “It was our kinsman, Jung Lu, who dashed aside the assassin’s dagger.”
The Empress Dowager said nothing, and the Empress Mother, seeming not to notice her silence, went on, her great eyes flashing in bright triumph, her lovely hands eloquent in gesture. “And do you hear how Prince Kung raises his voice when he speaks to us? As though we were stupid women!”
The Empress Dowager smiled faintly. “I am stupid, I know.”
“I am not,” the Empress Mother declared. “Nor are you—I will not have it so. And did we grant that we are stupid, for men think all women stupid, though they are the fools who think so, still Prince Kung must behave with humble courtesy, for we are the Regents, Empresses in our own right, and much more than women. I tell you, Elder Sister, if we do not put this prince down, he will one day usurp the Regency and we shall be imprisoned somewhere in secret rooms inside these walls and who will rescue us? Men will follow a man, and our end will be unknown forever. No, you must act with me, Sakota.”
She spoke the childish name and bent her black brows into a frown upon her cousin. Sakota shrank away, as she had always done, and hastened to agree.
“Do as you think best, Sister,” she said.
With this timid permission, the Empress Mother rose and made obeisance and took her leave while all the ladies watched from the distance, seeing but too far to hear.
Yet this bold and most beautiful woman could bide her time once her plan was perfected. She waited, her plan ripening all the while within her mind. She waited for the rebels to be quelled in the South while the year passed. For the Englishman Gordon did not rush his soldiers into battle. No, he would not risk the least defeat. With proud modesty he asked that he be allowed to make a military survey of the countryside around Shanghai before he became leader of the Ever-Victorious Army, in order that he might know what he must face in battle. Impatient as she was, the Empress Mother gave him his time. Alas, while Gordon prepared slowly, a lesser white man was for the time being put in his place, a pompous small man, who sought glory for himself. With that mixed army of mercenaries of men of many nations, the Ever-Victorious, twenty-five hundred in all, and an imperial brigade of twice the number, he laid siege to the walled city of T’aitan, near Shanghai, dreaming that when he won that city, he could attack Nanking itself. Yet such was his stupidity that he did not go to see how T’aitan stood, but he believed what Chinese mandarins had told him, that the moat surrounding the city wall was no more than a dry ditch. But on the morning when he marched his men to cross it, they found it thirty-five feet wide and brimming with water, and no boats near. Nevertheless he ordered his men to cross it somehow on the bamboo ladders which they had brought to breach the walls, but the ladders broke in midstream and many men fell into the water and were drowned, while on the city wall the rebels stood and fired their guns at those who struggled across, jeering at the drowning men.
“Oh, how we laughed!” the rebels boasted after victory. “We watched the Ever-Victorious Army come nearer to the creek with no bridges upon which to cross. How we laughed when we saw their ladders grow weak and fall into the moat! Our Heavenly King laughed loudest of all! ‘What general is he?’ he cried, ‘who sends his men to take a city without finding out first whether there is water in the moat?’ Then he grew angry to see the small number of the enemy who had come to conquer us. ‘Do they think we are cowards?’ he asked. ‘Arise!’ he shouted to us, ‘drive these devils from the land!’ We rose together and we shouted with one mighty voice, ‘Blood—Blood—Blood!’ And we advanced upon the foolish Ever-Victorious ones and we pursued them until all were dead or scattered, the English officers among them. These English did wrong in overstepping the boundary that they themselves had set between us, and we let them suffer. Indeed, we thank the English captain for the guns he left behind for us, and for the thirty-two pounders which we have now mounted on our walls as proof of our victory. It is not possible to believe how foolish he was, for he took the small guns before he removed the large ones and thus had no weapons wherewith to cover his retreat. Meanwhile let not the Imperial Armies think that they alone have the help of the foreigners. In our armies, too, are many white men, and it was a Frenchman who directed the guns at T’aitan. As for us, we will not transgress the boundary line, but the country we possess we will hold and we will utterly destroy those devils who come against us.”
When this monstrous boast was presented to the Dragon Throne the Empress Mother rose up in her wrath and she sent her emissaries to Gordon and commanded him at once to take the leadership of the Ever-Victorious and the Imperial Armies, and to avenge the Throne for the loss of T’aitan. Gordon obeyed, but he would not avenge that city alone. Indeed, he obeyed no one, but still taking such time as he thought needful, he sought in battle to find the very heart of the rebellion. Thus he trained his men to strike sudden blows where they were not expected, changing his ground with vigor and speed, always winning until he had forced the rebels into defense. He worked in closest union with Li Hung-chang, all forces converging upon the pivotal cities of Chanzu and Quinsan, near Shanghai, and from there he advanced steadily toward victory.
Meanwhile, lulled by the Empress Mother’s mildness during this crisis, Prince Kung had forgotten earlier rebukes, and worn with his cares and grown familiar with her ways, more often than ever he omitted small courtesies in her presence. She saw and still said nothing until one day, his mind upon affairs of state, he rose unbidden from his knees when holding audience with her. Swift as a tigress she pounced upon him.
Her eyes fixed under frowning brows, her voice majestic, she said, “You forget yourself, Prince! Is it not law and custom, declared by our ancestors, that all must kneel before the Dragon Throne? The purpose of this law is to protect the Throne from sudden attack. Dare you stand when every other must kneel? You plot treachery against the Regents!” She turned to the eunu
chs. “Summon the guards and let Prince Kung be seized!”
Now Prince Kung was so dazed that he only smiled, thinking the Empress Mother jested. But the waiting eunuchs heard the command and they made haste to call the Imperial Guards who laid hold upon the Prince to force him from her presence.
He protested. “What—after all these years?”
She forbade him even one complaint. “None, however many years, nor if he be a kinsman, no, not one, may violate the safety of the Dragon Throne.”
He gave her one long look and let himself be led away. And she that same day sent out an edict sealed with the imperial seal upon her own name and the Empress Dowager’s as Regents. “Inasmuch,” thus she declared, “as Prince Kung has shown himself unworthy of Our confidence and has shown unrighteous favor to his own nephews in appointing them to high office, he is relieved of his duties as Grand Councilor and all other high offices wherewith he has been rewarded are taken from him. By this act We do sternly check his rebellious spirit and usurping ambition.”
Not one dared to plead the Prince’s cause though many went secretly to Jung Lu to beg that he would speak for this noble Prince, whom none believed disloyal. But Jung Lu would not speak—not yet.
“Let the people say what they think,” he told them. “When she finds that the people do not approve her she will change. She is too wise to oppose her will to them.”
For a month all waited, and it was true that everywhere the people complained in rising accord that the Empress Mother as Regent had been unjust to the brother of the late Emperor and her loyal subject. They recalled how Prince Kung had risked his life to stay in the capital when the late Emperor fled, and how he, with Kwei Liang, had made the treaty which provided peace, and how again and again he had negotiated with the foreigners to hold them off from battle.
The Empress Mother heard these complaints and seemingly without concern. She listened, her beautiful face as calm as a lotus flower. Yet secretly she measured the exact reach of her power and when she saw that Prince Kung submitted to his sentence and made no effort to oppose her, thus signifying that he accepted reproof, and when she heard the people muttering much against her, she issued two more edicts, both signed in the names of the Empress Regents. The first edict explained to the people that she must in duty punish with equal severity all who failed in humility before the Throne. In the second edict she wrote:
“Prince Kung has now repented him of evil and he has acknowledged his faults. We have no prejudice against him, being compelled to act only with pure justice. It was not Our wish to deal harshly with a Councilor so able, or to deny Ourselves the aid of such a Prince. We restore him now to the Grand Council but not to his place as advisor to the Throne. We admonish him from this day forward to reward Our leniency by greater faithfulness to duty, and We advise him to purify himself of evil thoughts and jealousies.”
So Prince Kung returned and ever after did his work with proud dignity and correct humility.
From now on the Empress Mother did not allow the Dragon Throne to be empty before the yellow curtain in the Audience Hall. She set her son there and taught him to hold his head high and to place his hands upon his knees and listen to the ministers when they memorialized the Throne. There the boy must sit, dressed from head to foot in yellow satin robes of state, embroidered with five-toed dragons, a ruby button at his shoulder, and on his head the imperial hat. Early in the winter mornings and before dawn in summer, she caused the boy Emperor to be waked and they two walked together in fair weather, for she liked to walk, or rode in palanquins were the weather foul, and in the Audience Hall they took their places, he on the Throne, and she behind the yellow curtain but so close that her lips were at his ear.
When a windy prince had made his plea, or an ancient minister had droned his way through a long memorial, the little Emperor turned his head to whisper, “What shall I say, Mother?” and she told him what to say and he repeated it after her, word by word.
Thus the hours passed, and he, often weary and apt to twist his button or trace the curling dragons with his forefinger, sometimes forgot where he was. Then his mother’s voice struck sharply across his ears.
“Sit up! Do you forget you are the Emperor? Do not behave as would a common child!
She was so tender to him elsewhere that he was shocked and straightened, frightened by a power in her that he did not know.
“What do I say now, Mother?”
It was his constant question, and as often as he asked it, she answered.
As eagerly as though they were love letters the Empress Mother read the daily memorials which her mighty general, Tseng Kuo-fan, sent her from the south. The greatness in herself, like lodestone, sought and found the greatness in others, and next to Jung Lu she now valued best this general. He was no mere mass of brawn and bombast, as soldiers often are, but a scholar, as his grandfather and father had been, and so to his skill was added wisdom. Yet she felt no warmth toward her general. Her interest was in what he did, in the excitement of battles, in the danger of failure, in the pride of victory.
While these prescribed years of mourning for the dead Emperor came nearer to their end, and that peace might be secure before the great day of his burial, the Empress Mother thus devoted herself wholly to crushing the rebels in the south. Daily her couriers ran between the imperial city and Nanking, in relays so swift that in a single day men’s feet covered four hundred miles. Each night at midnight the Chief Eunuch, An Teh-hai, delivered to her the packet containing the day’s news from Tseng Kuo-fan, and she read the pages alone in her chamber by the light of the great twin candlesticks beside her pillow. Thus throughout the chill winter months she read of his masterful strategy and how with the help of two other generals under his high command, one P’eng Yu-lin and the other his own younger brother, Tseng Kuo-ch’uan, he attacked the rebels by land and water, recovering during that one winter more than a hundred cities in the four provinces of Kiangsu, Kiangsi, Anhui and Chekiang. More than a hundred thousand rebels were slain, and slowly all retreated to their stronghold in Nanking.
Each day before dawn and the hour of audience the Empress Mother walked through the palace corridors to the temple of the Great White Buddha, he of the thousand heads and hands, and before this image of the Unknown Source she knelt and gave thanks and besought help for Tseng Kuo-fan. The priests prostrated themselves while she prayed, and remained motionless while she lit incense in the golden urn. And Buddha heard her prayers so that in the summer of that same year, in the sixth moon month and the seventh solar month, on the sixteenth day, Tseng Kuo-fan, having captured the outer ramparts of Nanking, ordered great bombs filled with gunpowder to be laid beneath the city wall and so made breaches through which his men poured by the thousand into the city. The palace of the Heavenly King was their last goal, but it was surrounded by desperate defenders. Nevertheless, an iron bomb filled with gunpowder was thrown into the center of the buildings to set a fire, and at one hour after noon of that day, flames burst as high as heaven, and the dwellers in the palace rushed out like rats from a burning house. They were all seized and put to death, except for the leader, one Li Wan-ts’ai, who was kept alive. This man, when questioned, confessed that the Heavenly King had killed himself by poison some thirty days before and that his death had been hidden from his followers until his son could be proclaimed king in his place. Now this son, too, was killed.
When the Empress Mother read these memorials from Tseng Kuo-fan she sent out the news in one edict after another so that all the people might know that the rebels were dead, and she proclaimed a month of feasting. Then she commanded that the body of the Heavenly King be dug up from its grave and the head cut off and sent everywhere throughout the provinces so that all her subjects might see it and know the fate of rebels, and those leaders of the rebels who still survived were to be brought to the imperial city and questioned and then put to death by slow slicing of their flesh. As for herself, she declared that she would accompany the young Emperor t
o all the imperial shrines and temples and give thanks to the gods for their fortunate aid, and to the Imperial Ancestors for their ever-present protection.
When Tseng Kuo-fan himself came to report to the Throne, he told further of strange and pitiful doings of the Heavenly King, reported to him by captives before they were put to death. This Heavenly King, in truth only a common fellow whose mind had gone awry, nevertheless had boasted mightily even when he knew his cause was doomed. He sat upon his throne and he said to his dwindling followers, “The Most High has issued to me his sacred decree. God the Father and my divine Elder Brother, Jesus Christ, commanded me to descend into this world of flesh and to become the one true Lord of all nations and kindreds upon earth. What cause have I then to fear? Remain with me or leave me, as you choose; my inheritance of this empire will be protected by others if you will not protect it, for I have a million angels at my side, a heavenly host. How then can a mere hundred thousand of these cursed imperial soldiers take my city?”
Nevertheless by the middle of the fifth moon month, the Heavenly King knew he was lost and he mixed a deadly poison with wine and drank it in three gulps. Then he cried out, “It is not God the Father who has deceived me, but it is I who have disobeyed God the Father!” So he died, and his body was wrapped in a cover of yellow satin embroidered with dragons and he was buried without a coffin, secretly and by night, in a corner of his own palace grounds. His followers plotted to put his sixteen-year-old son on the throne in his place, but the rebels heard of his death, too, and they lost hope and yielded the city.
All this Tseng Kuo-fan reported in the Imperial Audience Hall, before the Dragon Throne, upon which now sat the young Emperor, and behind the yellow silk curtain the Empress Mother listened to hear every word, while Sakota sat beside her motionless.