Another point is required to complete the parallel:  [Page 270] each victor has given the conquered country a better government than any in its previous history.  To Confucius feudalism was a beau-ideal, and he beautifully compares the sovereign to the North Star which sits in state on the pole of the heavens while all the constellations revolve around it, and pay it homage.  Yet was the centralised government of the First Hwang-ti an immense improvement on the loose agglomeration of the Chous.  The great dynasties have all adopted the principle of centralisation; but not one has applied it with such success, nor is there one which shows so large a proportion of respectable rulers as the house of Ta-ts’ing.  Of the first six some account has been given in Part II.  As to the next two it is too soon to have the verdict of history.  One died after a brief reign of two years and three months, too short to show character.  The other now sits at the foot of the throne, while his adoptive mother sways the sceptre.  Both have been overshadowed by the Empress Dowager and controlled by her masterful spirit.

China has had female rulers that make figures in history, such as Lu of the Han and Wu of the T’ang dynasties, but she has no law providing for the succession of a female under any conditions.  A female reign is abnormal, and the ruler a monstrosity.  Her character is always blackened so as to make it difficult to delineate.  Yet in every instance those women have possessed rare talent; for without uncommon gifts it must have been impossible to seize a sceptre in the face of such prejudices, and to sway it over a submissive people.  Usually they are described much as the Jewish chronicler sketches the character of Jezebel [Page 271] or Athaliah.  Cruel, licentious, and implacable, they “destroy the seed royal,” they murder the prophets and they make the ears of the nation tingle with stories of shameless immorality.

Among these we shall not seek a parallel for the famous Empress Dowager, so well known to the readers of magazine literature.  In tragic vicissitudes, if not in length of reign, she stood without a rival in the history of the world.  She also stood alone in the fact that her destinies were interwoven with the tangle of foreign invasion.  Twice she fled from the gates of a fallen capital; and twice did the foreign conqueror permit her to return.  Without the foreigner and his self-imposed restraint, there could have been no Empress Dowager in China.  Did she hate the foreigner for driving her away, or did she thank him for her repeated restoration?

The daughter of Duke Chou (the slave-girl story is a myth), she became a secondary wife of Hienfung in 1853 or 1854; and her sister somewhat later became consort of the Emperor’s youngest brother.  Having the happiness to present her lord with a son, she was raised to the rank of Empress and began to exert no little influence in the character of mother to an heir-apparent.  Had she not been protected by her new rank her childless rival might have driven her from court and appropriated the boy.  She had instead to admit a joint motherhood, which in a few years led to a joint regency.