The Decapitation of Yü Hsien.—When the Decree, commanding his decapitation, reached Yü Hsien, he had already started under escort for his place of banishment, but he was a sick man and could only totter weakly along. On learning the news, he appeared as one dazed, a very different man indeed from that fierce Governor of Shansi, who had displayed such bloodthirsty activity. On the day before his death he was very seriously ill, and when the time came, he was so weak that he had to be supported to the execution ground. On the previous day the leading citizens of Lan-chou fu expressed their desire to offer him a valedictory banquet, but he declined the honour with thanks, expressing his wish to spend his last day in quietude. He wrote a pair of scrolls as an expression of his gratitude for the courtesy thus shown to him, and the elders of the city decided and informed him that the execution ground would be decorated with red cloth, as for a festival, in his honour. Towards evening, notices were placarded in the principal streets, calling on the people to insist upon his being reprieved, but Yü Hsien knew that this was quite useless. He composed a statement of his actions in the form of an official proclamation, maintaining stoutly that his death was to be regarded as a glorious and patriotic end, and bidding the people on no account to interfere with the execution of his sentence. Finally he wrote, with his own hand, a pair of valedictory scrolls, the text of which was widely quoted after his death all over China. The first may be translated as follows:—
“The Minister dies for his Sovereign; wives and concubines die for their lord. Who shall say that this is unseemly? It is sad that my aged mother is ninety years of age, and my little daughter only seven. Who shall protect them in their old age and tender youth? How shall that filial piety be fulfilled which a man owes to his parent? The Sovereign commanded, and the Minister obeyed. I slew others; now, in my turn, am I slain. Why should I regret it? Only one cause for shame have I—that I have served my Sovereign all these years, and have held high rank in three provinces, without displaying merit more conspicuous than a grain of sand in the desert or a drop of water in the ocean. Alas, that I should thus unworthily requite the Imperial bounty.”
And the second reads:—
“The Minister has by his guilt incurred the sentence of decapitation. At this moment there is no thought in my mind except the hope that my death may be as glorious as my life has been honest.[118] I would far rather die than pine away the rest of my life in degrading imprisonment. I have ill-requited Her Majesty’s kindness. Who shall now relieve her grief? I sincerely hope that you, the Statesmen who surround the Throne, may yet find means to restore our fallen fortunes, and that you will honourably fulfil your bounden duty in ministering to the distress of their Imperial Majesties.”
On the following day, at one o’clock of the afternoon, Yü Hsien’s head was severed from his body, in the presence of a great crowd, which greeted his end with sounds of lamentation.
The Death of Ch’i Hsiu.—Ch’i Hsin was executed, together with Hsü Ching-yu, outside the wall of the Tartar city, in Peking, early one morning in February, 1901, the execution being witnessed by more than one European. When informed that he was to die, Ch’i Hsiu’s only question was: “By whose commands?” and when told that a Decree had come from Hsi-an fu, he said, “It is by the will of the Empress Dowager; I die happy then, so long as it is not by order of the foreigners.” This Grand Councillor had been arrested several months before by the Japanese, and Prince Ch’ing had been able to obtain his release on the ground that his aged mother was very ill; but when she subsequently died, he strongly advised Ch’i Hsiu “to make his filial piety coincide with his loyalty by committing suicide.” Coming from Prince Ch’ing, the suggestion was one hardly to be misunderstood, but Ch’i Hsiu failed to act upon it, thereby incurring a certain amount of criticism.
XXII
THE OLD BUDDHA PENITENT
When the wrath of the Powers had been appeased by the death and banishment of the leading Boxers, and when the Empress Dowager had come to realise that her future policy must be one of conciliation and reform, she proceeded first of all to adjust the annals of her reign for the benefit of posterity, in the following remarkable Edict (13th February, 1901):—
“In the summer of last year, the Boxers, after bringing about a state of war, took possession of our Capital and dominated the very Throne itself. The Decrees issued at that time were the work of wicked Princes and Ministers of State, who, taking advantage of the chaotic condition of affairs, did not hesitate to issue documents under the Imperial seal, which were quite contrary to our wishes. We have on more than one previous occasion hinted indirectly at the extraordinary difficulty of the position in which we were placed, and which left us no alternative but to act as we did. Our officials and subjects should have no difficulty in reading between the lines and appreciating our meaning.