China under the Empress Dowager

by J. O. P. Bland; Sir E. Backhouse

“To my worthy friend, Mr. Wang, the Seventh (of his family):—

“Since I last had the pleasure of seeing you, you have been constantly in my thoughts. I wish you, with all respect, long life and prosperity: thus will your days fulfil my best hopes of you. And now I beg politely to tell you that I, your younger brother,[25] am quite ashamed of the emptiness of my purse and I therefore beg that you, good Sir, will be so good as to lend me notes to the amount of fifteen hundred taels, which sum kindly hand to the bearer of this letter. I look forward to a day for our further conversation,

“Your younger brother,

“Li Lien-ying.”

As to the amount, Li knew exactly how much the contractors and furnishers of the Palace should pay on every occasion, and that there was no need to question the possibility of the “loan” not being forthcoming.

Facsimile of Letter written by Chief Eunuch Li Lien-ying.

That he encouraged lavish expenditure at the Court is certain, and scarcely a matter for wonder, but his control of finance extended far beyond the Privy Purse, and wrought great harm to the Empire on more than one historic occasion. For instance, China’s humiliating defeat at the hands of Japan in 1894 was very largely due to his diversion of vast sums of money from the Navy to the reconstruction and decoration of the Summer Palace, a work from which he and his underlings profited to no small extent. In 1885, Prince Ch’un had been appointed head of the Admiralty Board, assisted by Prince Ch’ing, Li Hung-chang and the Marquis Tseng. After the death of the Marquis, however (who had been a moving spirit in the organisation of the Board), Naval affairs passed into the control of a clique of young and inexperienced Princes, and when, in 1889, the Emperor assumed the direction of the Government, one of his first acts was to order the re-building of the Summer Palace, which Imperial residence had remained in ruins since its destruction by the Allies in 1861. There being no funds available, Li advised that the Naval appropriations should be devoted to this purpose, so that the Old Buddha might be suitably provided with a residence; this was accordingly done, and the Naval Department became a branch of the Imperial Household (Nei Wu Fu) for all purposes of Government finance. When the war with Japan broke out, the Empress Dowager issued orders that the Naval Department should be abolished. This order evoked very general criticism, but, as the Department and the Summer Palace rebuilding fund had come to be treated as one and the same account, her Decree simply meant that as the Palace restoration was now complete, and as the funds were quite exhausted, the account in question might be considered closed. There was obviously nothing to be gained by useless enquiries for money to be transferred from the Palace to the Navy.

In 1889 the Chief Eunuch accompanied Prince Ch’un on his first tour of inspection to the northern Naval ports, including the Naval bases of Port Arthur and Weihaiwei. It was a matter of very general comment at the time that the honours paid to the eunuch were noticeably greater than those shown to the Prince. Every officer in the Peiyang squadron, from Admiral Ting downwards, did his best to ingratiate himself with this powerful Chamberlain, and to become enrolled on the list of his protégés, so that he was entouré with all manner of bribery and adulation. Many critics, foreign and Chinese, have cast on Li Hung-chang the blame for the disasters of the Japanese war, but they surely overlook the fact, to which even the great Viceroy dared not openly refer, that nine-tenths of the funds which should have gone to the upkeep and provisioning of the Navy and the maintenance of the Coast Defences, had been diverted by the Chief Eunuch to the Palace (and much of them to his own pocket), so that the ships’ crews were disaffected, and their ordnance defective, in the hour of need. Readers of Pepys will remember a very similar state of affairs obtaining in the British Navy, happily without affecting the moral of its officers and men, at a similarly critical period of British history.

Li Lien-ying’s hatred of the Emperor Kuang-Hsü was beyond doubt a most important factor in the coup d’état, and in the subsequent estrangement and hostility between Tzŭ Hsi and the nominal ruler of the Empire; there are not lacking those who say that it had much to do with the Emperor’s death, which certainly created no surprise in the capital. The eunuch hated and feared the Emperor’s reforming zeal, as well as the Cantonese advisers who in 1898 came swarming to Peking as the apostles of a new dispensation, and it was therefore only natural that he should become the foremost adviser and partisan of the reactionaries and their emissary in urging the Empress to resume control of affairs. It is quite safe to assert that had his great influence with Tzŭ Hsi been exercised against, instead of for, the Boxers, had he abstained from encouraging her superstitious belief in their magic arts, the anti-foreign movement would never have gone further than the borders of Shantung, and the Chinese people would have been spared the heavy burden of the indemnities. How interesting a study of Asiatic politics and Court life presents itself in the spectacle of this cobbler’s apprentice and his influence on the destinies of so great a race! Seeing him as he was on the day of his mistress’s burial, how bitter must have been the innermost thoughts of the man, left alone on the brink of the grave with the ill-gotten wealth that his country has paid for so heavily!