Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (31 page)

It quickly emerged that neither Britain nor the other powers wished to become entangled. China and Japan declared war on each other on 1 August. The burden of conducting China’s first modern war – and its biggest war in more than 200 years – thus fell on the shoulders of a twenty-three-year-old who had led a totally secluded life. He had little knowledge of the world, only haphazard information about his own armed forces and none about his enemy, and relied almost exclusively for guidance on his backward-looking classics tutor. His military commander, Earl Li, laid all his bets on peace efforts and failed to prepare proper defences. Worse, the earl felt unable to share strategic planning with Guangxu – and often concealed the truth from him.

Facing this shambles was Japan’s modern army and outstanding leadership. The outcome of the war was not hard to predict. The Chinese suffered one catastrophic defeat after another, on land in Korea as well as on the sea. By late September, the Japansese had captured the main city in northern Korea, Pyongyang, and had advanced to the Yalu River – the border with China.

During all this time, Emperor Guangxu did not involve Cixi beyond informing her when war looked inevitable, just before 16 July. She was living in her Summer Palace, cut off from the nerve-centre of policy decisions, with only a vague picture of the conflict. He had come to her for her confirmation that war must be fought, and she gave
her full support. She also stressed that China
‘must not do anything that gives the impression of weakness’. The way Earl Li conducted himself in pursuit of peace was an admission of weakness – even desperation. And yet there was no sign that the message was conveyed to the earl. Emperor Guangxu only mentioned it
en passant
to Grand Tutor Weng in his private study. Cixi herself had no contact with the earl and no way to give him, or anyone else, direct instructions.

After this brief consultation, Emperor Guangxu sought Cixi’s views no more. Her role was purely symbolic. In her name an award was given to an army unit that was reported to have won China’s first victory – which turned out to be phoney. There can be no doubt that Cixi was extremely anxious. She appears to have tried to get a couple of Grand Councillors to pass on information to her, through Prince Ching, but Emperor Guangxu learned about it and
reprimanded the Councillors. At the urging of a group of friends close to him, the emperor kept
Cixi out of the policy loop. Reports about the war were presented only to the emperor in sealed envelopes, and he only allowed her to glimpse their headings.

From the outbreak of war at the beginning of August until the eve of the fall of Pyongyang at the end of September, it seems that Emperor Guangxu only consulted Cixi once – when he wanted to sack Admiral Ting, head of the Northern Fleet that was fighting the war. He was bound by the Statutes drawn up governing his assumption of power to obtain Cixi’s approval for major personnel changes. Presenting his case, the emperor accused the Admiral of being
‘cowardly and incompetent’, because he did not send his fleet out to the open sea. In fact the Admiral was adopting a defensive strategy, based on the fact that the Japanese had better and faster ships and their superiority would have been decisive on the open sea. By staying in its base, the fleet was afforded the protection of the forts. But the emperor heeded the advice of a cousin of Imperial Concubine Pearl,
Zhirui, who insisted that as ‘Japan was merely a tiny and poor country, our ships must parade on the open sea . . . and attack and destroy its gunboats. Our canons must fire first, the moment we encounter an enemy ship.’ When Cixi saw the draft edict sacking the Admiral, she was incensed and said with palpable outrage: ‘The Admiral has not been found to have committed any crime!’ She refused to allow the edict to be issued. In a gesture of defiance,
Emperor Guangxu gave a particularly harsh order condemning the Admiral and telling Earl Li to find a replacement. The earl wrote at length entreating the emperor to reconsider, explaining the defensive strategy, pointing out that there was no one to replace the Admiral, and arguing that sacking him would cause an upheaval in the navy. At last, the emperor grudgingly suspended the dismissal, but he continued to scold and berate the Admiral.

It was against this background that the Admiral conducted a major sea battle on 17 September 1894, in which four out of eleven of his warships were sunk. This event, together with the imminent fall of Pyongyang, forced Emperor Guangxu to involve Cixi, who had also just found an opportunity to leave the Summer Palace and go and stay in the Sea Palace adjacent to the Forbidden City. So, on the day of the devastating sea battle, and after two full months of disastrous warfare,
Cixi saw the Grand Council for the first time in years. She still did not have a mandate to conduct the war. Her stay was initially supposed to be short, only ten days, after which she was
scheduled to return to the Summer Palace on 26 September. But because of her status and her track record, she assumed a certain authority – especially in the eyes of those who had worshipped her. To brief her about the development of the war, Earl Li
presented detailed reports attaching past telegrams that he had received. As a bleak picture began to emerge, Cixi announced that she was
donating three million taels for the upkeep of the army. Then she extended her stay in the Sea Palace for another ten days, to 6 October – ‘provisionally’ – meaning it could be longer. Simultaneously she
cancelled all celebrations for her sixtieth birthday,
^fn2
which fell on 7 November.

The preparations for this birthday had started three years earlier, overseen by Grand Tutor Weng, amongst others. The sixtieth birthday was a milestone for the Chinese, and that of the empress dowager required glorious celebrations. One of the central responsibilities of the Ministry of Rites, a major government ministry, was to issue programmes for such occasions. The programme this time followed the precedent set by Qianlong the Magnificent for his own and his mother’s sixtieth birthdays, and filled two booklets bound with red satin. The files of imperial decrees were thick with lists of honours to be bestowed, promotions to be made, criminals to be amnestied, and a thousand and one other things to be done. Along the route from the Forbidden City to the Summer Palace, sixty sites had been selected, where richly decorated arches, pavilions, marquees and stages for operas and dances were being constructed. These were now scrapped. Cixi would only receive congratulations in the Forbidden City, in a much-reduced ceremony.

For several days Cixi studied the history of the war, and she concluded that Earl Li had bungled China’s position through a series of miscalculations – and misconduct, such as misleading the emperor. Given that the army had a personal allegiance to him, she felt that he could not be dismissed. To calls for his blood, she replied: ‘
Hold it for now. There is no one to replace him.’ Prince Gong was reinstated and made the chief Grand Councillor. But the prince could conjure up no miracles. There were more defeats – and heroism. In one sea battle a captain called Deng Shichang sailed straight at a Japanese ship to try and ram it, and when that failed and his own ship was sunk, he refused to be rescued and drowned himself (apparently together with his pet dog).

By the end of September, all the Chinese troops had been driven out of Korea to their side of the Yalu River. Beijing knew, in the words of Robert Hart, that
‘further fighting is unreliable and an early settlement the best step to be taken’. Two Grand Councillors approached Hart to ask Britain to broker a peace. The British suggested two terms as the basis for stopping the war: that Korea become a protectorate of the international powers, and that China pay a war indemnity to Japan. Under the circumstances, these terms were not at all bad. But they sent Grand Tutor Weng into a fury. Condemning the British minister who presented the proposal as ‘vicious’, he demanded that the Grand Councillors reject the terms.
Cixi spent a long time trying to persuade him to agree to the British proposal, letting him know this was her wish. The courtier bowed to the will of the empress dowager with great reluctance, and the British put the proposal to the Japanese.

This episode showed Cixi that her current position was very different from what it had been in her pre-retirement days. She was now only a ‘consultant’, albeit one with clout. Indeed, she was not adequately informed, as the emperor only gave her access to some of the reports he received, which meant that her picture of the war was patchy. As a result, she entertained the illusion that, with the mediation of the British and the payment of an indemnity, settlement could be reached. She underestimated Japan’s appetite, believing that at this stage it would be satisfied with gobbling up Korea. While waiting for Japan’s response to the British proposal, she did something that was out of character with her as a statesman, but in character with another side of her, that of a woman avid for beautiful things. Earl Li had just sent her a list of his gifts for her birthday, and they consisted of nine sets of treasures:
^fn3
‘Nine jade inlaid
ru-yi
, nine pure gold statues of the Buddha of Longevity, nine gold watches studded with diamonds, nine pairs of gold cups of “good fortune” and “longevity”, nine diamond headdress flowers, nine bolts of pure yellow velvet, nine bolts of floral yellow brocade, nine gold incense burners inlaid with seven jewels, and nine gold vases inlaid with seven jewels.’

It was a magnificent list – even for the empress dowager of China. And it was particularly tempting for Cixi, who took much pleasure in art and luxury. The earl, who did not have fabulous wealth, was really desperate to ingratiate himself with Cixi, clearly in the hope that she would save his skin. He presented the
gifts knowing that Cixi had actually issued a decree two years before announcing
‘No presents, please’ for her sixtieth birthday.

The earl’s present-giving confirmed that he was an expert at pleasing his bosses through their weak spots. Indeed, Cixi found it hard to turn down this haul. And if she accepted the earl’s gifts, she had to accept other people’s. Birthdays celebrating a new decade were the chief gift-giving occasions, but her fiftieth birthday had been hit by the war with France, and she had had to veto all presents. Must she really forgo this opportunity again? The temptation proved too strong. After a few days’ agonising, Cixi persuaded herself that accepting birthday presents was not incompatible with fighting the war. This was similar to her self-delusion in the past when she thought that taking a relatively small sum of money each year from the naval funds made no difference to the navy. Now she effectively rescinded her own decree, and
sent eunuchs to announce that officials above a certain high rank could present gifts if they wished to do so.

Her words immediately caused disquiet among top officials in the court. Some, like Grand Tutor Weng, said that they had not prepared anything because they had been following the empress dowager’s own decree, and their admiration for her could not be measured by material things anyway (as per a Confucian dictum). But the general flow was set: everyone began to rack their brains about what to give, and Weng and a few others employed an agent to scout for them. Realising she had made a mistake, Cixi quickly issued an edict
attempting to explain herself, saying that she thought it would be wrong of her to spurn people’s good will. But the damage had been done. The fighting spirit, which was already lacking in the court, was dissipating. Robert Hart wrote in a letter:
‘Things look bad here. The officials have no fight in them and despair is generally settling down on all: it is a very bad lookout indeed, and if Japan will not accept “the olive leaf”, I don’t know how we’ll get out of it . . .’

The Japanese did not accept ‘the olive leaf’. Without replying to the British, they launched assaults on the Chinese border defences, which collapsed like a pack of cards. The Japanese were inside China itself by 27 October. Cixi belatedly tried to make amends. She offered to donate another two million taels to the war effort. But this gesture could not salvage either the war or her image. Her much-reduced birthday rituals were performed to the beat of a marching Japanese army. The ceremonies were a façade she simply had to preserve: cancelling them would have amounted to announcing a national catastrophe and would have caused bewilderment in the empire. But even the prescribed pomp could not dispel a bleak and dreary atmosphere.

Western powers were scandalised and contemptuous that the empire seemed incapable of one decent fight, and only capable of a birthday fanfare. Cixi’s reputation plummeted. Robert Hart wrote ironically, his former reverence for the empress dowager now gone:
‘we shall probably have the Emp. Dow.’s birthday (7 Nov.) celebrated by the capture of
Liao Yang
– I don’t think [the Japanese] can march to Moukden by that date!’ Liao Yang was right in the middle of the Liaodong Peninsula in southern Manchuria, close to Korea, and Moukden was the old capital of the Manchus, further north.

On 21 November, the Japanese seized the strategic fortress harbour of Port Arthur on the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula – the gateway to Manchuria by land, and to Tianjin and Beijing across a short stretch of water. This catastrophic development made Cixi see the full scale of Japan’s ambitions and capabilities. She bitterly regretted the birthday-gifts fiasco, and the ceremony, however reduced in scale. Later on, she would declare no celebrations or gifts for any of her birthdays.
Her seventieth birthday, a major occasion, would be no exception. On that occasion, calls for her to accept tributes echoed across the provinces, but she stood firm.

Back in November 1894, Cixi also blamed her misjudgement on her restricted access to information. She acted to break her adopted son’s embargo on sharing with her the reports addressed to him. As his refusal had very much been on the advice of friends who had gained his ear through Pearl, Emperor Guangxu’s favourite concubine, Cixi tackled her first.