Tzu Hsi, Empress of China
1835 -- 1908
The young girl born in 1835 was named Orchid, following a tradition of giving little girls the names of flowers. She was born to a branch of the Yehonala clan of the Manchus and we know that by age 16 she was educated in painting, calligraphy and the code of ethics found in the “Five Classics” of Confucius.
From an early age it was determined that her husband would be her cousin, Jung Lu, but all this changed in 1850 with the death of the Emperor, Tao Kuang. His successor, Hsien Feng, was 19 and already a widower. His mother issued, in 1852, an edict requiring local officials to send a list of young girls eligible as concubines to live in the Forbidden City. Among those chosen for this honor were Orchid and her cousin, Sakota. The emperor’s mother, after a careful study of the girls’ deportment, manners and appearance, divided them into four classes. She found no one worthy of the first class. Sakota, soon to become Empress Consort, was placed in the second class and Orchid in the third.
Orchid would later observe that she had never liked the Forbidden City.
It is so cold. There is nothing in it but vast buildings, empty save for echoes. Except for the ImperialGardens there are no flowers, no fresh breezes. The place is cold. It has no heart.
What Orchid did for the next three years is not known, but presumably she continued her studies of poets and the classics. She also evidently impressed the emperor, for by 1855, the year the emperor’s mother died, both Sakota and Orchid were pregnant. Now fortune played its role, for Sakota had a girl and Orchid a healthy boy. Orchid was now raised above the other concubines and given the name Quei Fei Yi, or commonly, the Yi Concubine.
The Yi Concubine, now age twenty-two, quickly became the most influential person in the Celestial Empire of China. Brighter than Hsien Feng, and being a natural politician, she was soon reading the confidential State papers presented to the emperor and listening to his audiences.
The 19th century history of China is one of European powers attempting to dismember the country, each wanting a piece of the wealth. No action was more dishonorable than that of England and it so-called Opium Wars, by which it demanded China accept the sale of English opium. When the emperor wanted a truce in 1858, but his ambassador failed, the Yi Concubine committed her first murder, recommending that the ambassador be “presented with the silken cord of self-dispatch, as a mark of the Throne’s benevolent leniency.” That is, the ambassador was forced to commit suicide.
In the subsequent invasion of China, in 1860, the young emperor fled with his court to Jehol. It was at this time that Su Shun, together with some princes of a rival clan, began a plot to kill the Yi Concubine and become regents for her son, it being apparent that the emperor himself was in dangerously poor health. Hsien Feng in fact died while in Jehol and the conspiracy was set in motion. The Yi Concubine, however, was saved by the action of her old lover, Jung Lu, who was now in charge of the Imperial Guard. The conspirators were soon executed.
The Yi Concubine and Sakota became co-regents, known as the Dowager Empresses. They also assumed new individual titles, Sakota, the senior, became Tzu An, “the Motherly and Restful,” and the Yi Concubine became Tzu Hsi, “the Motherly and Auspicious.” The seeds for Tzu An’s eventual destruction were sown when she arranged for Tzu Hsi’s chief eunuch to take a present for her to the governor of Shantung. Then, since there was a rule that no eunuch could ever leave the Forbidden City, she had him beheaded. Tzu Hsi regarded this as a personal insult.
Tzu Hsi’s child, the Emperor Tung Chih, was healthy and fond of horses, hunting and sports. As a teenager, however, he started down the path that had ruined the health of his predecessor. At night, in disguise, he and his favorite eunuch would sneak out of the palace to visit the most sordid brothels and opium dens in Peking. Tzu Hsi made no attempt to discipline the young man, primarily from her own sense of fear in the fact that he was nearing the age when he would assume sole power. That day arrived on November 15, 1872, and one can sense the mother’s concern in handing over power, in the edict she wrote over his name.
His Majesty assumes today the control of the Government and our joy at this auspicious event is in some degree blended with feelings of anxiety as to the possible results of this change; but we bear in mind the fact that his sacred Ancestors have all feared the Almighty, and endeavored to follow in the sacred traditions of their predecessors.
At this time the emperor also took a First Consort, but it was a girl of his choice, A-lu-te, and not that of his mother’s. Moreover, this girl proved to be as strong as Tzu Hsi had been when she was in a similar position. The emperor now no longer permitted his mother to read State documents and an antagonism between them became apparent to all. This was an unacceptable loss of face for Tzu Hsi, heightened by her concern that her son might die, leaving A-lu-te as Empress Dowager instead of herself. When A-lu-te became pregnant, Tzu Hsi concluded that only the death of the couple would return her to power.
Suddenly in December, 1874, the Emperor, Tung Chih, published a curious decree, “We have had the good fortune this month to contract smallpox....” Some thought he contracted smallpox in the brothels, but some believed the chief eunuch, on behalf of Tzu Hsi, had placed the germs on the emperor’s napkin and wiped his face with it -- an emperor would never wipe his own face. In any case, he was dead within two weeks. Three weeks later, his pregnant wife, A-lu-te, according to the official announcement, was so sad over her husband’s death that she committed suicide.
Once again the co-empresses were made regents, but Tzu Hsi quickly took the initiative and forced the ruling council to accept as heir her young nephew, Kuang Hsu. A member of a rival clan sent her a memorandum pointing out in detail her failure to follow correct procedures in this process. In her answer to him, we can sense the power she now held, as well as the courage it would require for anyone to question her actions in the future.
We have already issued an absolutely clear Decree on this subject, providing for an heir to the late Emperor, and this Decree has been published all over the Empire. The writer of the memorandum’s present request gives evidence of unspeakable audacity and an inveterate habit of fault-finding, which has greatly enraged us, so that we hereby convey to him a stern rebuke.
By 1880 Tzu Hsi had raised her old lover, Jung Lu, to the position of Comptroller of the Household, but now in a rash moment he had an affair with another lady. Although he was her most dependable ally, Tzu Hsi exiled him to a remote military command, where he would remain seven years. In March, 188l, the other co-regent, Tzu An, who had had a previous chief eunuch of Tzu Hsi beheaded, once again attempted to remove Tzu Hsi’s chief eunuch, Li Lien-ying. This was a serious mistake, for Tzu Hsi had depended on Li Lien-ying to carry out her will since the time, as a young eunuch, he had helped save her in Jehol. Poor Tzu An ate some poisoned cakes and within a day was dead! Tzu Hsi made sure there was no autopsy.
For six years now, until the Emperor reached age 17, Tzu Hsi would rule alone. She took advantage of this period to rid herself of the powerful Prince Kung, who had been an ally of Tzu An. She did this in a decree in 1884 in which she dismissed the entire Grand Council. The document took particular aim at Prince Kung, who was ordered to retire and “care for his health.”
Prince Kung, at the outset of his career, was wont to render us most zealous assistance; but this attitude became modified, as time went by, to one of self-confident and callous contentment with the sweets of office; and of late he has become unduly inflated with his pride of place, displaying nepotism and slothful inefficiency.
It was now necessary to find a bride for her nephew, the Emperor, Kuang Hsu. Tzu Hsi, herself apparently not concerned with nepotism, choose for his bride her niece, Lung Yu. But she did not repeat the mistake she had made in the previous bride, A-lu-te. This girl was not strong, but pliant, and was trained to be a loyal spy for Tzu Hsi, who had come to hate her nephew, the emperor. Moreover the two young people had hated each other since childhood. Finally, the emperor, due to a genetic defect, could not have children. His closest companion was a lovely girl known as the Pearl Concubine. And with this cast of characters, the marriage took place, Kuang Hsu became Emperor and Tzu Hsi retired to the SummerPalace, where it was expected she would live for the rest of her life.
Now aged 54, Tzu Hsi still retained considerable power, due to her seniority in the dynastic hierarchy. For example, when the emperor came to visit, once or twice a week, like any lesser petitioner, he was required to dismount from his palanquin and await, humbly, on his knees, the summons to the presence of the dowager empress by the chief eunuch, Li Lien-ying. Li would keep him in this position for nearly an hour, while the emperor’s presents were distributed to the lesser eunuchs, before he was allowed to see the empress.
Li Lien-ying himself came under attack for having influenced the empress during China’s defeat by the Japanese, which had occurred just prior to this time. An official government Censor, An Wei-chun, sent a strongly worded memorandum, reading in part,
What sort of a person is this Li Lien-ying who dares to interfere in Government matters? If there be any truth whatsoever in the rumor, it is assuredly incumbent upon your Majesty to inflict severe punishment on this creature, if only because of the House-law of your Dynasty which forbids eunuchs to concern themselves in State affairs.
The power of the empress was such that she forced the emperor to publish an answer which ended,
Language of this kind reveals depths of audacity unspeakable, the unbridled license of a madman’s tongue. Were we to fail in inflicting stern punishment in a case of this kind, the result might well be to produce estrangement between Her Majesty the Empress and ourselves. The Censor is, therefore, dismissed from office and sentenced to banishment at the post-roads on the western frontier, where he shall expiate his guilt and serve as a wholesome warning to others. His memorandum is handed back to him, with the contempt it deserves.
It was at this time, also, that the empress brought back from exile her faithful old lover, Jung Lu.
The Emperor, Kuang Hsu, by 1898 was 27 years old, lonely, with no male friends and shamed by his physical disabilities. Nevertheless, he showed signs of brilliant leadership, particularly in a series of sudden edicts aimed at bringing China into the modern age. He established railroads and factories, tried to modernize education, reorganized the army and placing emphasis on the development of capital.
The person who had most influenced the emperor was a Cantonese scholar named Kang Yu-wei. But Kang made the fatal error of not informing, much less engaging the support of, the empress for these radical new ideas. Soon she began to organize opposition to the modernization. To prevent her from interfering in his reforms, the emperor decided on a bold plan. The confidant of the empress, Jung Lu, was now viceroy of Chihli and the Judicial Commissioner in the same province was Yuan Shi-kai. The emperor sent for Yuan and gave him the necessary orders to isolate both Jung Lu and the empress. Yuan, a man of 40, was amazed at the daring, and the folly, of the emperor’s plot. He was also smart, and instead of arresting Jung Lu, he immediately went to him and revealed the entire plot.
The result of all of this was that the empress had the Emperor, Kuang Hsu, brought to her palace, where, according to his own account, she leashed out at him as follow,
I have treated you as a son. You have taken the place with me of the son I lost, and this is how you repay me! I save your life and you seek to take mine. You are ungrateful! You are unfit to rule from the Throne of the Manchus! You have fallen into the trap set for you by the Cantonese, whose one desire is to drive out the Manchus and usurp the Throne! What you have done may be instrumental in causing the downfall of the great Ching Dynasty.... Do you know the punishment for raising your hand against the person who stands as mother to you in the Imperial Household?
The emperor made no attempt to defend himself, “Punish me according to the law! I deserve it! I am not fit to rule!”
Accordingly, the eunuchs brought out writing materials and the emperor was forced to write the document of his own abdication in favor of the empress. She had him imprisoned in a small building on a promontory on the WinterPalaceLake. He had no light, a rough bed and food similar to that thrown to coolies. All of his personal servants were killed. When he became ill, a doctor was brought to examine him, the value of which may be gained from the doctor’s own account in The Times, March 31, 1899, “It is difficult to look at a patient’s tongue when his exalted rank compels you to keep your eyes rigidly fixed on the floor.”
The empress was once again in sole power and she now turned her attention to ridding China of foreigners, beginning with the missionaries, whom she had long imagined were experimenting upon Chinese children with foreign medicines. When an organization, called I Ho Ch’uan, “Righteous Harmony Fists,” was formed with the purpose of removing the empress and her dynasty, she managed to persuade its leaders to redirect their fury against foreigners. They became known as the Boxers and, in 1900, began to kill Christians throughout China.
The most famous incident of the Boxer Rebellion was the attack on the foreign Legation quarter and the subsequent attempt by the allies to rescue the diplomats and their families. Although Tzu Hsi was responsible for the entire episode, ever the politician, she had her faithful Jung Lu posted on the eastern side of the Legation quarter where they could sneak in food and supplies for the foreigners. She also prevented any final attack, no doubt realizing the greater calamity the murder of the innocents would bring.
When the British arrived to ‘save’ the Legation, it became necessary for the empress to leave Peking. She summoned the emperor and his concubines to tell them they would not be going. Now the Pearl Concubine, whom the emperor loved, and whom had also been kept in virtual imprisonment since his abdication, threw herself at the feet of the empress, begging that she not leave the emperor behind. Tzu Hsi responded by commanding the eunuchs, “Throw this wretched minion down the well!” Li Lien-ying and another eunuch threw her down a large well. Tzu Hsi later issued an edict praising the Pearl Concubine for her courage, “which led her virtuously to commit suicide when unable to catch up with the Court on its departure.”
Tzu Hsi spent a long period in the provinces, while her politicians worked out the details of the treaty following the Boxer Rebellion. When she was able to return to Peking, to cross the Yellow River she had a boat in the shape of a dragon built at great cost to the local officials. Upon her return to Peking, she found the almost total looting and plunder of the Forbidden City by the allied soldiers, but they had failed to find her great store of gold, which had been hidden in a well. Among the changes required of her by the allies was making herself available to foreigners. She responded by giving lavish receptions for the wives of the diplomats, who fell over themselves in praise and admiration.
In 1903, her faithful Jung Lu died at age 67 and it was a severe blow to Tzu Hsi. Her own health was seriously impaired by a stroke in 1907, at the age of 72. In 1908 the Emperor, Kuang Hsu, was also nearing death and once again the empress had to appoint an heir. Her choice was Pu Yi, the infant son of the daughter of her old lover, Jung Lu.