Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (22 page)

Then he saw that Cixi did not destroy him when she could, but was rather kind to him; the prince was overcome with gratitude. Fear turned to awe. He spent much of his time in reflection and adopted the motto ‘Step back and think how to make up for past wrongs’ (
tui-si-bu-guo
), which was carved onto a plaque over the door to his study. His mansion was full of reminders of the sentiment, from the calligraphy in the scrolls on his walls, to the inscription engraved on an ivory paperweight on his desk.
He came to recognise that his previous hostility to Cixi’s approach to the West was ‘prejudiced’; and he became one of her keenest supporters.

The prince’s metamorphosis was also due to other, perhaps more important, causes. He came to be impressed by what Cixi had achieved for the empire – such as recapturing Xinjiang, a huge territory in Central Asia the size of Britain, France, Germany and Italy combined. The contemporary historian H. B.
Morse remarked at the beginning of the twentieth century, ‘This possession has been held by China for over two thousand years; held firmly when the central administration was strong, held laxly when the central power was relaxed, and let go in times of confusion . . . it has frequently broken away, only to be again subjected to Chinese rule.’ The latest fracture came in the early 1860s, on the heels of the Taiping rebellion. Much of the breakaway land was controlled by a Muslim leader, Yakub Beg, described as
‘a soldier of fortune’ by Charles Denby, later American envoy to China. Cixi was determined to bring Xinjiang back under Beijing’s control. This decision was made against the
advice of Earl Li, who proposed letting the region go and allowing it to become one of the empire’s vassal states, ‘like Vietnam and Korea’.

The vassal states were small independent countries around China, which administered their own affairs, but recognised the overlordship of the Chinese emperor by periodically presenting tribute and by getting Chinese endorsement for each new ruler. Apart from Vietnam and Korea, the other vassal states included Nepal, Burma, Laos and the Liuqiu (Ryukyu) Islands. Earl Li counselled that Xinjiang be allowed to join their ranks. To the earl, Xinjiang was ‘several thousand
li
of barren land’, was ‘not worth’ recovering and, even if conquered, ‘it could not be kept for long, as its neighbours all had designs on it: Russia to the north, Turkey, Persia and other Muslim countries to the west, and British India close to the south . . .’ Recovering Xinjiang, said the earl, would involve a large army trekking a long way in the desert and fighting a protracted war that was ‘beyond the means’ of the empire. This had been the view of the late
Marquis Zeng, a considerable strategist, and it was now also the
view of Prince Chun himself.

But Cixi refused to let go of Xinjiang, and as soon as she returned to power in 1875 she dispatched General Zuo Zongtang to win it back. The expedition was a matter of urgency for her: Russia had occupied a key area in the region, Ili, for the past four years and, unless China acted now, Russian ownership would become a fait accompli.

In order to finance the expedition, Cixi squeezed money out of the provinces and authorised General Zuo to borrow five million taels from foreign banks. Following Zuo’s journey through his detailed reports, she was at pains to meet his constant requests, mostly for funds. General Zuo, a rugged warrior now in his sixties, had a coffin carried with him as he embarked on the expedition into the desert – to signal his determination to fight for as long as it took. His campaign was successful and excruciatingly brutal. By the beginning of 1878 he had re-conquered most of Xinjiang. Mercy was not in his vocabulary and massacres were commonplace. In accordance with the Qing penal codes, the captured sons and grandsons of Yakub Beg (who had died) were castrated, before being given away as slaves. Westerners were horrified; but even moderate Chinese diplomats were insistent that such punishment was warranted, and they berated Westerners for ‘
minding other people’s businesses’.

Cixi endorsed Zuo – and his methods. After reasserting Beijing’s grip on Xinjiang, she took Zuo’s advice and gradually made it a province, instead of allowing it autonomy. Troops were stationed there; they opened up virgin land to sustain themselves when not suppressing rebellions.

Cixi sent Chonghou to St Petersburg to negotiate for the return of Ili. Chonghou, an affable man, was the official who had tried to protect Westerners during the Tianjin massacre in 1870. He was not a tough negotiator, and after months of talks he signed an agreement that obliged China to cede a large hunk of Xinjiang to Russia in exchange for Ili. There was uproar in Beijing about the deal, and a council of grandees sentenced him to ‘imprisonment awaiting execution’, with Cixi’s authorisation. Western envoys expressed strong disapproval: it was, they said, unworthy of
‘China’s new diplomacy’ that a diplomat should be ‘condemned to death by decapitation . . . charged, not with treason, but with failure’. Queen Victoria even addressed a personal appeal for clemency ‘to the great empress dowager of China’. Cixi took the point and released Chonghou.

But she refused to recognise the treaty. Russia threatened war and moved 90,000 troops to the disputed territory.
Chinese Gordon, the Englishman who had helped defeat the Taiping rebels, gave this advice: ‘If you will make war, burn suburbs of Peking, remove the archives and emperor from Peking . . . and fight . . . for five years . . . If you want peace, then give up Ili
in toto
 . . .’ Neither of these extreme scenarios appealed to Cixi. War was out of the question, as China could ill afford it, while Russia might rather welcome it, in order to grab more land. But peace must not come at the cost of losing territory, either Ili or the land that Chonghou had signed away. Cixi gave every impression that China was ‘
ready for war – as ready as her rival’, but dispatched a new representative, Marquis Zeng Jr, to Russia to renegotiate.
She gave him detailed instructions, and the most important was the bottom line: if he was unable to get back all the territory in dispute, then he should settle for the pre-Chonghou status quo and leave Ili in Russian hands for the time being, while maintaining China’s claim to it. The marquis went to the talks equipped with a marked-up Chonghou treaty making clear which items were absolutely unacceptable and which were negotiable. Throughout, he kept in telegram contact with Cixi.

A clear and precise strategy, as well as detailed preparations, paid off. China recovered most of the territory Chonghou had ceded, as well as Ili. The new treaty, a compromise,
^fn1
was hailed by Western observers as a
‘diplomatic triumph’.
Lord Dufferin, then British ambassador to St Petersburg, remarked: ‘China has compelled Russia to do what she has never done before, disgorge territory that she had once absorbed.’ For his country’s first victory in modern diplomacy, Marquis Zeng Jr received numerous plaudits. But the pivotal role was played by Cixi.

At the height of the crisis, facing the prospect of war and loss of territory,
Cixi collapsed under intense nervous strain. For days on end she could not sleep, felt depleted of energy and coughed blood. In line with tradition, the court sent out a request in July 1880 asking provincial chiefs to recommend doctors to help the royal physicians, and ‘to have them escorted to Beijing in steamers so they arrive quickly’. A Dr Xue from Zhejiang province described his first session with Cixi. It began with his obligatory prostration before her, and her telling him to stand up and come to her bedside. She sat cross-legged inside the yellow silk curtains that fell around the bed. One of her lower arms was outside the curtain, resting on a little pillow on top of a small side-table. A plain handkerchief covered it, leaving only the part where the doctor could feel the pulse, a crucial diagnostic procedure. On his knees, Dr Xue pressed his fingers to the wrist. He diagnosed ‘exceeding distress and anxiety’ and informed the empress dowager that she would be all right soon, so long as she refrained from racking her brains. To this Cixi replied: ‘I know, but it’s just impossible to do.’ Eventually she recovered, much helped by Marquis Zeng Jr’s optimistic reports.

During the dispute, Prince Chun was involved. Having ensured his resignation from all posts, Cixi made a point of including him in the decision-making process, telling those who objected that the prince had ‘
begged to be excused, knocking his head on the ground over and over’, and that it was she who had insisted on his participation. Cixi intended to win over the prince by letting him observe how she dealt with state matters. So the prince saw that Cixi was committed to the interests of the empire and defended it vigorously and ably. He was struck by her steeliness in launching the Xinjiang campaign and in facing down Russia, as well as by her ability to compromise and direct negotiations. By comparison, he who had bragged about ‘revenge’ against foreigners had no inkling of what to do when faced with real foreign threats. All this convinced the prince that he was serving a mistress who was a great asset to the empire, and he submitted himself as her humble servant.

Perhaps the event that most impressed Prince Chun and turned him definitively into Cixi’s ‘slave’ was her handling of the war with France in 1884–5. France had started a military campaign in 1859 to colonise Vietnam, China’s neighbour and a vassal state. As France annexed the south and was advancing north,
the Qing government took no action – not least because the Vietnamese did not ask for help (which a vassal state was entitled to do). The only times Cixi sent troops into Vietnam were to round up
Chinese
bandits there, at the request of the Vietnamese. As soon as the jobs were done, the troops were pulled back.

By now, it seems, Cixi had formed a well-considered policy regarding the boundary of the empire. She was determined to preserve the territory that it regarded as its own, but was ready to let go of the vassal states, if and when she was forced to do so. A pragmatic woman, she knew that there were now stronger European forces and her empire was not in a position to keep the vassal states. So while she dispatched a large army to regain Xinjiang and made all efforts to hold on to Taiwan, she did no more than issue verbal protests when a vassal state, the Liuqiu (Ryukyu) Islands, was annexed by Japan by the end of the 1870s. Similarly, her action with regard to Vietnam was limited to securing the border, rather than retaining Vietnam. In August 1883, Vietnam was forced to become a protectorate of France. The French Prime Minister, Jules Ferry, aspired to acquire a colonial empire and initiated imperial adventures in countries as diverse as Tunis, Congo, Niger and Madagascar, as well as Indochina. And now French forces were moving steadily towards Vietnam’s border with China.

Cixi began to prepare for war. Court and amateur astrologers saw signs of major battles coming, from the abnormally flaming sky that lasted for days, to the angle of a shooting comet. Cixi was a believer in astrology. To her, comets were warnings from Heaven. In the past, when comets appeared in the sky, she had reflected on what she might have done wrong and issued edicts soliciting comments on whether incompetent officials had been employed or the poverty of the population had been neglected. Now she was filled with apprehension. With a heavy cold that lasted for months, she coughed incessantly during her audiences. When officials tried to comfort her, she said: ‘
I can’t but worry in this situation when I see those celestial signs.’

With the French pressing against the border, Cixi sent troops into Tonkin, the northernmost region of Vietnam, adjoining the Chinese provinces of Guangxi and Yunnan. The latter was particularly rich in mineral resources desirable to the French. Cixi’s intention was to keep part of Tonkin as a buffer, if possible, but, if not, only to defend the border. From December to April the following year, 1884, Chinese troops fought French forces in this area and suffered repeated defeats. It looked as though the French might even penetrate into China itself.

Prince Gong, head of the Grand Council, was an appeaser by inclination. Fatalistic about winning a war with a Western power, he took no active part in helping Cixi conduct the fighting. According to Grand Tutor Weng’s diary, the prince talked ‘vaguely and offered no ideas’. ‘He went on and on to the Empress Dowager for an extraordinary amount of time, all about nothing.’ Sometimes he was listless; at other times he failed to turn up at his office. The fact that he had been in poor health did not help. Prince Gong had been suffering serious illnesses in the last few years, passing blood at times, and Cixi had given him long leaves. His energy had been sapped and his judgement blunted. And yet he did not offer to resign, and it was difficult for Cixi to dismiss him because of his status, and because he had been working with her since the very beginning. But she had been seething for some time.

The last straw came on
30 March 1884, when, right in the middle of a series of devastating defeats at the hands of the French, the prince insisted on discussing with Cixi her forthcoming fiftieth birthday
^fn2
in the autumn, in particular the arrangements for presenting the gifts. Prostrating himself before her, the prince talked for an hour and a half. An irate Cixi told him off: ‘With the border situation like this, you are talking about birthday presents! It shouldn’t be on the agenda at such a time; why are you bothering me with this business?’ But the prince went on unabashed, kneeling for so long that he had difficulty standing up when he was finished. Grand Tutor Weng, who witnessed the scene, recorded it in his diary, with open contempt for the prince. The next day Prince Gong returned and resumed his blather, ‘begging the Empress Dowager to be so kind as to accept birthday presents’. Cixi ‘reproached him in words that showed a heavy heart’, and yet her words seemed to make no impression. The Grand Tutor felt that he had to ‘go above my station’ and give the prince a piece of his mind. He told him to heed the empress dowager, and ‘don’t dwell any longer on trivialities’. In his diary, the Grand Tutor wrote scornfully: ‘This highest nobleman has such low intelligence!’