It is doubtful if we should have been able to learn so much of the “Forbidden City” and of the beautiful and remarkable things to be seen in the Palace grounds had it not been for this Siege. These are most beautiful from a Chinese point of view, the architecture dating back for many ages. These arches are built of immense blocks of stone, beautifully fitted and arranged.
As soon as Tung Fu Hsiang learned of Colonel Chao’s degradation, he was wild with rage, taking the view at once that the insult was not only upon Chao but also upon himself.
Knowing the Empress was in a precarious condition without troops she could depend upon, this courageous adventurer, at his first audience upon his arrival in Peking, promptly told Her Majesty that unless Chao were restored to his rank immediately, and Governor Hu were removed from his offices as Governor of Peking and Director-General of Railways, as well as prevented from taking his seat in the tsung-li-yamen, or foreign office, to which he had just been appointed, he, Tung, would disband his army and return to Kansu at once.
The Empress remonstrated with him in vain, alleging that Hu had only done his duty, and that with his knowledge of foreigners he would be a valuable official in the tsung-li-yamen. But Tung remained obdurate, and the Empress reluctantly yielded and dismissed Hu to private life, where he has ever since remained.
As Governor Hu was alone responsible, by his firm friendship for the English, for obtaining for the Hong Kong and Shanghai banking corporation, an English company, the loan for extending the Peking-Tientsin railway, and had signed the contract which gave the real control of the railway to the English stockholders, his dismissal from office should have been prevented by diplomatic action. As it was, only a mild remonstrance by the diplomatic representative of Great Britain was made, and the tsung-li-yamen passed it, as usual, unheeded. Governor Hu remarked to me a few days after his dismissal, very bitterly, “If I had been the friend to Russia I have been to England I should not now be in disgrace.”
He was replaced in the office of Governor of Peking by Ho Yun Nai, and in the office of Director-General of Railways by Hsu Ching Ch’eng, ex-minister to Germany and Russia. The first of these officials was a well-known hater of foreigners, who was suggested by General Tung. The latter was a corrupt opium-eater, already in the pay of Russia, as Chinese president of the Manchurian railway, and was suggested by a high palace eunuch, himself in the pay of Russia.
Tung’s influence in Peking now became all-powerful; his soldiers swaggered about the streets in their fancy red and black uniforms, growing daily more menacing to the foreigners they passed, until finally several incipient riots occurred which resulted in one foreigner having several ribs broken and others being assaulted, so that a few of the foreign ministers united and requested that his army corps be removed some distance from the capital. The Empress agreed reluctantly to this, but only sent them a little over a hundred li away.
Tung, early after his arrival, made the acquaintance of Prince Tuan, a stupid, ignorant Manchu, who soon became his complete tool. The question of a successor to the sickly Emperor, Kuang Hsu, had been discussed for several years, as he had as yet no issue, and seemed likely at any time to die childless. The sons of Tuan, of Duke Lan, and of Prince Lien were all considered eligible, and from amongst them must be chosen the future Emperor of China.
Tung saw that Tuan would become his tool much more completely than either of the others, and proposed an alliance between Tuan’s son and a daughter of his own, agreeing to support the younger Tuan’s candidacy for the throne, with his whole army, if necessary, to accomplish the purpose. Tuan agreed to this, but stated the succession must be made without its being known that he was under obligations to favor Tung’s daughter, but that when an apparently open competition for selection of an empress was made, and the various eligible damsels appeared at the court, Tung’s daughter should arrive from Kansu in time and be the favored recipient.