In 1894 the Empress Dowager reached her sixtieth year, which, according to Chinese ideas, is an event calling for special thanksgiving and honour. Secure in her great and increasing popularity, safely entrenched in her prestige and influence, the Old Buddha had expected to devote her leisure at the Summer Palace to preparations for celebrating this anniversary on a scale of unparalleled magnificence. The I-Ho Yüan, as the Summer Palace is called,[47] had been entirely rebuilt, by the Emperor’s orders, with funds taken from the Navy Department and other Government Boards since 1889, and had just been completed. Most of the high provincial authorities had been summoned to the capital to take part in these festivities (and, incidentally, to help to pay for them), and amongst them the faithful Jung Lu returned once more to his mistress’s side, in high favour, as General in command of the Forces at Peking. (For the last three years he had been at Hsi-an, holding the sinecure post of Tartar General.) Every high official in the Empire had been “invited” to contribute twenty-five per cent. of his salary as a birthday gift to Her Majesty, and the total amount of these offerings must have amounted to several millions of taels. Everything pointed to festivities of great splendour; orders had already been given for the erection of triumphal arches in her honour throughout the whole five miles of the Imperial highway between Peking and the Summer Palace, when the continued disasters which overtook China’s forces, immediately after the outbreak of the war with Japan, caused Her Majesty to reconsider the situation, and eventually to cancel all arrangements for the celebration. In the Emperor’s name she issued the following somewhat pathetic Decree:—
“The auspicious occasion of my sixtieth birthday, occurring in the 10th Moon of this year, was to have been a joyful event, in which the whole nation would unite in paying to me loyal and dutiful homage. It had been intended that His Majesty the Emperor, accompanied by the whole Court, should proceed to offer congratulations to me, and make obeisance at the Summer Palace, and my officials and people have subscribed funds wherewith to raise triumphal arches, and to decorate the Imperial highway throughout its entire length from Peking to the I-Ho Yüan; high altars have been erected where Buddhist Sutras were to have been recited in my honour. I was not disposed to be unduly obstinate and to insist on refusing these honours, because, at the time that the celebration was planned, my people were enjoying peace and prosperity; moreover, there is precedent for such displays of pageantry and rejoicing in the occasions on which the Emperors K’ang-Hsi and Ch’ien-Lung celebrated their sixtieth birthdays. I, therefore, consented to His Majesty’s filial request, and decided to receive birthday congratulations at the Summer Palace. Who would ever have anticipated that the Japanese (literally, ‘dwarf men’) would have dared to force us into hostilities, and that since the beginning of the summer they have invaded our tributary State (Corea) and destroyed our fleet? We had no alternative but to draw the sword and to commence a punitive campaign; at this moment our armies are pressing to the front. The people of both nations (China and Corea) are now involved in all the horrors of war, and I am continually haunted by the thought of their distress; therefore, I have issued a grant of three million taels from my privy purse for the maintenance and relief of our troops at the front.
“Although the date of my birthday is drawing close, how could I have the heart, at such a time, to delight my senses with revelries, or to receive from my subjects congratulations which could only be sincere if we had won a glorious victory? I therefore decree that the ceremonies to be observed on my birthday shall be performed at the Palace in Peking, and all preparations at the Summer Palace shall be abandoned forthwith. The words of the Empress.”
To which the Emperor adds the filial remark on his own account: “That Her Majesty had acted in accordance with the admirable virtue which always distinguished her, and that, in spite of his own wishes, he was bound reverently to obey her orders in the matter.”
China’s complete and ignominious defeat by the Japanese forces undoubtedly inflicted no small loss of prestige on the Manchu Dynasty, and was a direct cause of the violent agitation of the Southern Provinces for reform, which led in turn to the coup d’état and to the Boxer rising. It is doubtful whether war could have been avoided without even greater sacrifices and humiliation, and the Empress Dowager showed her usual sagacity therefore in refraining from expressing any opinion or taking any share of responsibility in the decision taken by the Emperor. She knew, moreover, that, by the action and advice of her Chief Eunuch, the Navy had for years been starved in order to provide her with funds to rebuild and decorate the Summer Palace, a fact of which some of China’s most distinguished advisers were at that time unaware.
As Viceroy of the Metropolitan Province, Li Hung-chang was generally blamed for advising the Court to maintain China’s suzerainty over Corea by force of arms, but, speaking from personal knowledge of this subject, we may state that, like many other Ministers similarly situated, he hesitated until the very last moment before taking risks which he knew to be enormous in both directions. The documents upon which history might have been written with full knowledge of the facts were unfortunately destroyed in the Viceroy’s Yamên at Tientsin and in the Inspector-General of Customs’ quarters at Peking, in 1900, so that the immediate causes of that disastrous war will probably never be established with complete accuracy. Li Hung-chang was aware that twice already Japan had been bought off from a war of aggression against China, the first time (in 1874) by payment of an indemnity, and again (in 1885) by admitting her to a share in the control of Corea, a concession which had led directly to the present crisis. He realised that even had he been willing to surrender China’s rights over Corea (which were of no real advantage to the Chinese Government) the concession might have purchased peace for the time being, but it would certainly have led before long to the loss of the Manchurian Provinces; just as certainly, in fact, as the doom of those provinces was sealed in 1905, on the day that China acquiesced in the terms of the Portsmouth Treaty. Japan’s attack on China’s positions was diplomatically as unjustifiable as the methods which she adopted in commencing hostilities. Li Hung-chang was fully aware of the preparations that Japan had been making for years, and equally aware of the disorganised state of his own naval and military resources, but he was surrounded by officials who, like the Manchus in 1900, were convinced of China’s immense superiority, and he was assured by the Chinese Resident in Corea (Yüan Shih-k’ai) that help would be forthcoming from England in the event of Japan’s commencing hostilities. There was no doubt of the British Government’s sympathy, which was clearly reflected in the attitude and actions of the Consul-General at Seoul.[48]
Chinese historians have openly accused Li Hung-chang of instigating the Court and the Emperor to a war of aggression, and the accusation has been generally credited abroad. The truth is, that while Li was originally all in favour of sending a Chinese force to suppress the Corean insurrection, he became opposed to taking any steps that might lead to war with Japan, as soon as he realised that war was Japan’s object; nevertheless, it is certain that, in the last instance, he was persuaded against his better judgment by the military enthusiasm of his German advisers, and that the sending of the ill-fated “Kow-hsing” and her doomed crew to Corea was a step which he authorised only after consultation with Peking and in full knowledge of the fact that it meant war. No sooner had the “Kow-hsing” been sunk, and the first military disasters of the campaign reported, than he naturally endeavoured to minimise his own share of responsibility in the matter.
Foreigners blamed him for making war on Japan, while his own countrymen attacked him for betraying China to the Japanese, as they subsequently attacked him for selling Manchuria to Russia. Tzŭ Hsi had no great love for the Viceroy, although she admired his remarkable intelligence and adroit methods: but when, after the war, he was fiercely attacked by several of the Censors, and when she found her own name associated with the blame imputed to him, she loyally defended him, as was her wont. In 1895, a Censor named An Wei-chün boldly blamed Her Majesty and the Viceroy for the disasters which had overtaken China. He said:—
“Li Hung-chang has invariably advanced himself because of his relations with foreigners, and thus been led to conceive an inflated opinion of his own merits. The ‘dwarf bandits’[49] having rebelled, he seems to have been afraid that the large sums of money, saved from numerous peculations, which he had deposited in Japan might be lost; hence his objections to the war. When the Decree declaring war reached him, his disappointment was great, and he showed his resentment and treachery by supplying the ‘dwarf bandits’ with supplies and munitions of war. His only hope was that the ‘dwarfs’ would prove victorious and his prophecy would thus be justified; to this end he curtailed the supplies for our troops at the front, diverting the funds for the same to his own pockets. He would strongly oppose all those who urged a vigorous prosecution of the campaign, rejoicing at our defeats and deploring our successes. All the military commanders of the forces under his orders humbly complied with his wishes, and invariably ran away at the first sight of the enemy. The Censorate has been full of Memorials denouncing the treacherous and unpatriotic action of Li Hung-chang, so that there is no need for me to say anything further on this subject.
“But I would like to add that Generals Yeh and Wei, who have been cashiered and whose arrest has been decreed, are at this very moment in hiding at Tientsin; they have made the Viceroy’s Yamên itself a place of refuge for absconding criminals. This is a matter of common knowledge and undoubtedly true. Then again we have the case of Ting Ju-chang, who was ordered to be arrested, but who persuaded Li Hung-chang to intercede for him, on the plea that he was indispensable to China, being in possession of a mysterious secret, an American invention which he alone could manipulate, whereby all surrounding objects can be rendered invisible. Li Hung-chang actually had the audacity to make mention of this ridiculous invention in addressing your Majesty, and it seems to me that if he is to be permitted to refer to fables and unclean magic of this kind, he is treating the Throne with shameless disrespect. Nevertheless, none of your Majesty’s Councillors have ever dared to oppose him, possibly because they themselves are too far gone in senile decay to be able to bear any further burden of distress. Their thoughts are far away, wool-gathering, or it may be that they too have been smitten with fear at the thought of this marvellous invention of Li Hung-chang’s whereby the landscape may be completely befogged. If so, the fact would account for the nebulous tendencies of their policy, and for their remaining in ignorance of Li Hung-chang’s remarkable mendacity.