With the Empress Dowager of China

government. In the turmoil that would follow this upheaval, each hoped to carry out his own designs, quite different in scope. Each party made the Emperor believe that progress was its aim. The coalition of these two diametrically opposed parties was for the purpose of persuading the Emperor to depart from the moderate opportunist policy which had been the motive power of the Empress Dowager’s regime. The adherents of the Reform party were opposed to this moderate policy because it was too conservative. Those of the Reactionaries objected to it because it was too progressive. The power of the central government vested in the young Emperor seemed likely to be crushed between these two self-seeking factions. China’s wisest statesmen saw the peril, sought the Empress Dowager, beseeched her to return from her retirement and, for the salvation of China, to give the Empire again the benefit of her wise counsels. When she realized the danger she returned. Such is the ascendancy of the “ancestor” in China, the Emperor could not refuse to accept the counsel of his August Ancestress, thus forced upon him. He issued an edict in which he recalled “that Her Majesty the Empress Dowager has on two occasions taken the reins of government, with great success, at most critical times. In all she has done, Her Majesty has been moved by a deep regard for the welfare of the Empire. I have implored Her Majesty to be graciously pleased to advise me in government, and I have received her assent.” The Emperor’s authority was not wrested from him⁠—he was not deposed. He still remained the Emperor of China; but the Empress Dowager’s counsels were forced upon him, he could not but accept them, and she became once more the real Ruler of China. This was what foreigners call the coup d’état of 1898.

Her Majesty’s keenness of insight and fine judgment (as far as Chinese questions are concerned), served her well again in this crisis. She dismissed not only the self-seeking Radicals, but the self-seeking ultraconservatives. Such of the Reformers as were caught were tried, convicted of treason, summarily and cruelly punished. Those who escaped, among them Kang-Yu-Wei, the ringleader of the Reformers, were outlawed. The leader of the ultraconservatives, the Emperor’s tutor, was not beheaded, but was sent into exile; for a tutor in China occupies almost the position of a parent to his pupil, and this position exempted him from more cruel punishment. These summary proceedings on the part of the Moderates, led by Her Majesty, were considered by the foreigners, who were altogether in sympathy with the Reformers, as a reversion to anti-progress ideas, and hence were considered anti-foreign. It certainly was an “anti-reform” movement that caused the coup d’état of 1898, but had the adherents of the so-called reformer Kang-Yu-Wei, whose subsequent career has proven how self-seeking he was, carried the day; had his sweeping measures been inaugurated, it might have brought China into a state of anarchy and would certainly have been most pernicious to the Nation, for she was not ready for the drastic measures the Reformers advocated, and the great mass of the people would have rebelled against them.

The coup d’état and the consequent check upon the Emperor’s dreams of progress was a great blow to him. He was not only chagrined at the failure of his efforts for reform, by which he hoped to show the world that China still counted as a power and to retaliate upon Japan, but he was also profoundly discouraged when he discovered the real nature and designs of his chosen instruments. He saw that he had been over-sanguine in hoping to realize at once his enthusiastic dreams for the immediate rehabilitation of China’s prestige; he saw that his ardent desire for progress was not enough, and that to hope to reform in a few years the century-old traditions of his most conservative people was but the wild irrealizable dream of youth, and absolutely impracticable. Though he knew he had been led away by his wishes for reform to expect the impossible, the disappointment was none the less severe and was most depressing to his sensitive nature. The reaction took place. His never-too-strong constitution broke down under the strain, and this breaking down of his health lent color to the reports, which were immediately circulated among Her Majesty’s enemies as well as among the foreigners, that the Empress Dowager was trying to kill the Emperor! She was reported to have imprisoned him, was said to be trying to poison him at one time and at another to starve him to death⁠—the nephew she had brought up through a delicate boyhood and whom she cherished as her own son! Time has shown the truth of these reports, for, had she so desired, she would have had no difficulty in accomplishing his death. She had any number of instruments at her hand, fanatically loyal to her and ready to carry out any of her wishes.

She still “assists” the Emperor in ruling; and, according to Chinese tradition, she, being his “ancestor,” must always take the first place. She sits upon the Throne, he upon a chair at her side. It would be improper, according to all Chinese law, were it otherwise. The foreigners speak of the Empress Dowager forcing the Emperor to stand in her presence and to sit upon a stool while she occupies the Throne. It is not Her Majesty who forces him to do this, it is an immutable thousand-year-old tradition in China that a son must take a lower place than his parent in his presence, be he Emperor or peasant. The Empress Dowager still reigns. The times are still too troublous for her to withdraw her experience from the councils of State, and though longing for the quiet and rest so necessary to a woman of her age, and though really anxious to retire, she feels the time has not yet come.

The Empress Dowager, having crushed the Reformers, and reseated herself upon the