The effect of China’s defeat at the hands of her despised neighbour, was, if possible, more profound than that of her humiliation by the English and [Page 172] French in 1860.  She saw how the adoption of Western methods had clothed a small Oriental people with irresistible might; and her wisest statesmen set themselves to work a similar transformation in their antiquated empire.  The young Emperor showed himself an apt pupil, issuing a series of reformatory edicts, which alarmed the conservatives and provoked a reaction that constitutes the last act in this tremendous drama.

ACT 5.  THE BOXER WAR

The fifth act opens with the coup d’etat of the Empress Dowager, and terminates with the capture of Peking by the combined forces of the civilised world.

Instead of attempting, even in outline, a narrative of events, it will be more useful to direct attention to the springs of action.  It should be borne in mind that the late Emperor was the adopted son of the Dowager Empress.  After the death of her own son, Tung-chi, who occupied the throne for eleven years under a joint regency of two empresses, his mother cast about for some one to adopt in his stead.  With motives not difficult to divine she chose among her nephews an infant of three summers, and gave him the title Kwangsu, “Illustrious Successor.”  When he was old enough to be entrusted with the reins of government, she made a feint of laying down her power, in deference to custom.  Yet she exacted of the imperial youth that he visit her at her country palace and throw himself at her feet once in five days—­proof enough that she kept her hand on the helm, though she [Page 173] mitted her nephew to pose as steersman.  She herself was noted for progressive ideas; and it was not strange that the young man, under the influence of Kang Yuwei, backed by enlightened viceroys, should go beyond his adoptive mother.  Within three years from the close of the war he had proclaimed a succession of new measures which amounted to a reversal of the old policy; nor is it likely that she disapproved of any of them, until the six ministers of the Board of Rites, the guardians of a sort of Levitical law, besought her to save the empire from the horrors of a revolution.

For her to command was to be obeyed.  The viceroys were her appointees; and she knew they would stand by her to a man.  The Emperor, though nominally independent, was not emancipated from the obligations of filial duty, which were the more binding as having been created by her voluntary choice.  There was no likelihood that he would offer serious resistance; and it was certain that he would not be supported if he did.  Coming from behind the veil, she snatched the sceptre from his inexperienced hand, as a mother takes a deadly weapon from a half-grown boy.  Submitting to the inevitable he made a formal surrender of his autocratic powers and, confessing his errors, implored her “to teach him how to govern.”  This was in September, 1898.