Colonel Denby tells us that "A Frenchman and his wife were carried off from Tonquin by bandits who took refuge in China. The Chinese government was asked to rescue these prisoners and restore them to liberty. China sent a brigade of troops, who pursued the bandits to their den and recovered the prisoners. The French government thanked the Chinese government for its assistance, and bestowed the decoration of the Legion of Honour on the brigade commander, and then shortly afterwards demanded the payment of an enormous indemnity for the outrage on the ground that China had delayed to effect the rescue. The Chinese were aghast, but they paid the money."
This incident does not stand alone, but is one of a number of similar experiences which the Chinese government had in her relation with the powers of Europe, and which have been reported by such writers as Holcomb, Beresford, Gorst Colquhoun and others in trying to account for the feelings the Chinese have towards us, all of which was embodied in the years of training of our little concubine.
It should be remembered that many concubines are selected whom the Emperor never takes the trouble to see. After being taken in, their temper and disposition are carefully noted, their faithfulness in the duties assigned them, their diligence in the performance of their tasks, their kindness to their inferiors, their treatment of their equals, and their politeness and obedience to their superiors, and upon all these things, with many others, as we shall see, their promotion will finally depend.
When Miss Chao entered the palace, like most girls of her class or station in life, she was uneducated. She may have studied the small "Classic for Girls" in which she learned:
"You should rise from bed as early in the morning as the sun, Nor retire at evening's closing till your work is wholly done."
Or, further, she may have been told,
When the wheel of life's at fifteen,
Or when twenty years have passed,
As a girl with home and kindred these will surely be your last;
While expert in all employments that compose a woman's life,
You should study as a daughter all the duties of a wife."
Or she may have read the "Filial Piety Classic for Girls" in which she learned the importance of the attitude she assumed towards those who were in authority over her, but certain it is she was not educated.
She had, however, what was better than education—a disposition to learn. And so when she had the good fortune—or shall we say misfortune—for as we have seen it is variously regarded by Chinese parents to be taken into the palace, she found there educated eunuchs who were set aside as teachers of the imperial harem. She was bright, attractive, and I think I may add without fear of contradiction, very ambitious, and this in no bad sense. She devoted herself to her studies with such energy and diligence as not only to attract the attention of the teacher, but to make herself a fair scholar, a good penman, and an exceptional painter, and it was not long until, from among all the concubines, she had gained the attention and won the admiration—and shall we say affection—not only of the Empress, but of the Emperor himself, and she was selected as the first concubine or kuei fei, and from that time until the death of the Empress the two women were the staunchest of friends.
The new favourite had been a healthy and vigorous girl, with plenty of outdoor life in childhood, and it was not long before she became the happy mother of Hsien Feng's only son. She was thenceforward known as the Empress-mother. In a short time she was raised to the position of wife, and given the title of Western Empress, as the other was known as the Eastern, from which time the two women were equal in rank, and, in the eyes of the world, equal in power.
The first Empress was a pampered daughter of wealth, neither vigorous of body nor strong of mind, caring nothing for political power if only she might have ease and comfort, and there is nothing that exhibits the Empress Dowager's real greatness more convincingly than the fact that she was able to live for thirty years the more fortunate mother of her country's ruler, and, in power, the mistress of her superior, without arousing the latter's envy, jealousy, anger, or enmity. Let any woman who reads this imagine, if she can, herself placed in the position of either of these ladies without being inclined to despise the less fortunate, ease-loving Empress if she be the dowager, or hating the more powerful dowager if she be the Empress. Such a state of affairs as these two women lived in for more than a quarter of a century is almost if not entirely unique in history.
Perhaps the incident which made most impression upon her was one which happened in 1860 and is recorded in history as the Arrow War. A few years before a number of Chinese, who owned a boat called the Arrow, had it registered in Hongkong and hence were allowed to sail under the British flag. There is no question I think but that these Chinese were committing acts of piracy, and as this was one of the causes of disturbance on that southern coast for centuries past, the viceroy decided to rid the country of this pest. Nine days after the time for which the boat had been registered, but while it continued unlawfully to float the British colours, the viceroy seized the boat, imprisoned all her crew, and dragged down the British flag. This was an insult which Great Britain could not or would not brook and so the viceroy was ordered to release the prisoners, all of whom were Chinese subjects, on penalty of being blown up in his own yamen if he refused.
Frightened at the threat, and remembering the result of the former war, the viceroy sent the prisoners to the consulate in chains without proper apologies for his insult to the flag. This angered the consul and he returned them to the viceroy, who promptly cut off their heads without so much as the semblance of a trial, and Britain, anxious, as she was, to have every door of the Chinese empire opened to foreign trade, found in this another pretext for war. We do not pretend to argue that this was not the best thing for China and for the world, but it can only be considered so from the bitter medicine, and corporal punishment point of view, neither of which are agreeable to either the patient or the pupil.
Britain went to war. The viceroy was taken a prisoner to India, whence he never returned. As though ashamed to enter upon a second unprovoked and unjust war alone, she invited France, Russia, and America to join her. France was quite ready to do so in the hope of strengthening her position in Indo-China, and with nothing more than the murder of a missionary in Kuangsi as a pretext she put a body of troops in the field large enough to enable her to checkmate England, or humiliate China as the exigencies of the occasion, and her own interests, might demand. America and Russia having no cause for war, no wrongs to redress, and no desire for territory, refused to join her in sending troops, but gave her such sympathy and support as would enable her to bring about a more satisfactory arrangement of China's foreign relations—that is more satisfactory to themselves regardless of the wishes, though not perhaps the interests, of China.
We know how the British and French marched upon Peking in 1860; how the summer palace was left a heap of ruins as a punishment for the murder of a company of men under a flag of truce; and how the Emperor Hsien Feng, with his wife, and the mother of his only son, our Empress Dowager, were compelled to flee for the first time before a foreign invader. Their refuge was Jehol, a fortified town, in a wild and rugged mountain pass, on the borders of China and Tartary, a hundred miles northeast of Peking. At this place the Emperor died, whether of disease, chagrin, or of a broken heart—or of all combined, it is impossible to say, and the Empress-mother was left AN EXILE AND A WIDOW, with the capital and the throne for the first time at the mercy of the Western barbarian.
This was the beginning of two important phases of the Empress Dowager's life—her affliction and her power, and her greatness is exhibited as well by the way in which she bore the one as by the way in which she wielded the other. In most cases a woman would have been so overcome by sorrow at the loss of her husband, as to have forgotten the affairs of state, or to have placed them for the time in the hands of others. Not so with this great woman. Prince Kung the brother of Hsien Feng, had been left in Peking to arrange a treaty with the Europeans, which he succeeded in doing to the satisfaction of both the Chinese and the foreigners.