“To your Majesty, greeting!—The Empires of China and Japan hang together, even as the lips and the teeth, and the relations existing between them have always been sympathetic. Last month we were plunged in deep grief when we learned of the murder of the Chancellor of your Legation in Peking; we were about to arrest and punish the culprits when the Powers, unnecessarily suspicious of our motives, seized the Taku Forts, and we found ourselves involved in all the horrors of war. In face of the existing situation, it appears to us that at the present time the Continents of Europe and Asia are opposed to each other, marshalling their forces for a conflict of irreconcilable ambitions; everything therefore depends upon our two Asiatic Empires standing firm together at this juncture. The earth-hungry Powers of the West, whose tigerish eyes of greed are fixed in our direction, will certainly not confine their attention to China. In the event of our Empire being broken up, Japan in her turn will assuredly be hard pressed to maintain her independence. The community of our interests renders it clearly imperative that at this crisis we should disregard all trifling causes of discord, and consider only the requirements of the situation, as comrade nations. We rely upon your Majesty to come forward as arbitrator, and anxiously await your gracious reply to this appeal.”
These remarkable effusions have been inscribed in the annals of the Dynasty, by order of Her Majesty, those same annals from which all her Boxer Edicts have been solemnly expunged for purposes of historic accuracy. One cannot but hope that, in process of time, consideration of facts like these may cure European diplomacy and officialdom generally of its unreasoning reverence for the Chinese written character, a species of fetish-worship imbibed from the native pundit and aggravated by the sense of importance which knowledge of this ancient language so frequently confers.
These Imperial messages throw into strong relief the elementary simplicity of China’s foreign policy, a quality which foreigners frequently misunderstand, in the general belief that the Oriental mind conceals great depths of subtlety and secret information. Looking at these documents in the light of the known facts of China’s political situation at that moment, and stripping them of all artificial glamour, it becomes almost inconceivable that any Government should publish to the world and file in its archives such puerile productions. But it is frequently the case that this very kindergarten element in Chinese politics is a stumbling-block to the elaborate and highly specialised machinery of European diplomacy, and that, being at a loss how to deal with the suspiciously transparent artifices of the elderly children of the Waiwupu, the foreigner excuses and consoles himself by attributing to them occult faculties and resources of a very high order. If one must be continually worsted, it is perhaps not unwise to attribute to one’s adversary the qualities of Macchiavelli, Talleyrand and Metternich combined. As far as British interests are concerned, one of the chief lessons emphasised by the events of the past ten years in China is, that the reform of our diplomatic machinery (and particularly of the Consular service) is urgently needed, a reform for which more than one British Minister has vainly pleaded in Downing Street.
XX
THE FLIGHT FROM PEKING AND THE COURT IN EXILE
The diarist, Ching Shan, has described in detail the flight of the Empress Dowager and Emperor from Peking, before dawn, on the morning of the 15th August. From an account of the Court’s journey, subsequently written by the Grand Secretary, Wang Wen-shao, to friends in Chekiang, and published in one of the vernacular papers of Shanghai, we obtain valuable corroboration of the diarist’s accuracy, together with much interesting information.
Wang Wen-shao overtook their Majesties at Huai-lai on the 18th August; for the past three days they had suffered dangers and hardships innumerable. On the evening of the 19th they had stopped at Kuanshih (seventy li from Peking), where they slept in the Mosque. There the Mahommedan trading firm of “Tung Kuang yü” (the well-known contractors for the hire of pack animals for the northern caravan trade) had supplied them with the best of the poor food available—coarse flour, vegetables, and millet porridge—and had provided mule litters for the next stage of the journey. As the troops of the escort had been ordered to remain at some distance behind, so long as there was any risk of pursuit by the Allies’ cavalry, their Majesties’ arrival was unannounced, and their identity unsuspected. As they descended from their carts, travel-stained, weary, and distressed, they were surrounded by a large crowd of refugee idlers and villagers, eager for news from the capital. An eye-witness of the scene has reported that, looking nervously about him, the Emperor said, “We have to thank the Boxers for this,” whereupon the Old Buddha, undaunted even at the height of her misfortunes, bade him be silent.
Next day they travelled, by mule litter, ninety li (thirty-two miles), and spent the night at Ch’a-Tao, just beyond the Great Wall. Here no preparations of any kind had been made for their reception, and they suffered much hardship, sleeping on the brick platform (k’ang) without any adequate bedding. But the Magistrate of Yen-Ch’ing chou had been able to find a blue sedan-chair for Her Majesty, who had thus travelled part of the day in greater comfort. Also at midday, stopping to eat at Chü-yung kuan, Li Lien-ying, the chief eunuch, had obtained a few tea cups from the villagers.
On the 16th they travelled from Ch’a-Tao to Huai-lai, a hard stage of fifty li. Some of the officials and Chamberlains of the Court now joined their Majesties, so that the party consisted of seventeen carts, in addition to the Old Buddha’s palanquin and the Emperor’s mule litter. As the cortège advanced, and the news of their flight was spread abroad, rumours began to be circulated that they were pretenders, personating the Son of Heaven and the Old Buddha, rumours due, no doubt, to the fact that Her Majesty was still wearing her hair in the Chinese manner, and that her clothes were the common ones in which she had escaped from the Forbidden City. In spite of these rumours the Magistrate of Huai-lai, a Hupeh man (Wu Yung), had received no intimation of their Majesties’ coming, and, when the Imperial party, accompanied by an enormous crowd, entered his Yamên, he had no time to put on his official robes, but rushed down to receive them as he was. After prostrating himself, he wanted to clear out the noisy and inquisitive rabble, but the Old Buddha forbade him, saying, “Not so; let them crowd around us as much as they like. It amuses me to see these honest country folk.” Here, after three days of coarse fare, the Empress Dowager rejoiced once more in a meal of birds’-nest soup and sharks’ fins, presented by the Magistrate, who also furnished her with an outfit of woman’s clothing and suits for the Emperor and the Heir Apparent, for all of which he received Her Majesty’s repeated and grateful thanks.