troops; to surround the Palace, to secure the person of the Emperor from all danger, and then to depose the Empress Dowager for ever from power.  What happened is equally well-known.  Yuan Shih-kai, after an exhaustive examination of the message and messengers, as well as other attempts to substantiate the genuineness of the appeal, communicated its nature to the then Viceroy of Chihli, the Imperial Clansman Jung Lu, whose intimacy with the Empress Dowager since the days of her youth has passed into history.  Jung Lu lost no time in acting.  He beheaded the two messengers and personally reported the whole plot to the Empress Dowager who was already fully warned.  The result was the so-called coup d’etat of September, 1898, when all the Reformers who had not fled were summarily executed, and the Emperor Kwanghsu himself closely imprisoned in the Island Palace within that portion of the Forbidden City known as the Three Lakes, having (until the Boxer outbreak of 1900 carried him to Hsianfu), as sole companions his two favourites, the celebrated odalisques “Pearl” and “Lustre.”

This is no place to enter into the controversial aspect of Yuan Shih-kai’s action in 1898 which has been hotly debated by partisans for many years.  For onlookers the verdict must always remain largely a matter of opinion; certainly this is one of those matters which cannot be passed upon by any one but a Chinese tribunal furnished with all the evidence.  Those days which witnessed the imprisonment of Kwang Hsu were great because they opened wide the portals of the Romance of History:  all who were in Peking can never forget the counter-stroke; the arrival of the hordes composed of Tung Fu-hsiang’s Mahommedan cavalry—­men who had ridden hard across a formidable piece of Asia at the behest of their Empress and who entered the capital in great clouds of dust.  It was in that year of 1898 also that Legation Guards reappeared in Peking—­a few files for each Legation as in 1860—­and it was then that clear-sighted prophets saw the beginning of the end of the Manchu Dynasty.

Yuan Shih-kai’s reward for his share in this counter-revolution was his appointment to the governorship of Shantung province.  He moved thither with all his troops in December, 1899.  Armed cap-a-pie he was ready for the next act—­the Boxers, who burst on China in the Summer of 1900.  These men were already at work in Shantung villages with their incantations and alleged witchcraft.  There is evidence that their propaganda had been going on for months, if not for years, before any one had heard of it.  Yuan Shih-kai had the priceless opportunity of studying them at close range and soon made up his mind about certain things.  When the storm burst, pretending to see nothing but mad fanatics in those who, realizing the plight of their country, had adopted the war-cry “Blot out the Manchus and the foreigner,” he struck at them fiercely, driving the whole savage horde headlong into the metropolitan province of Chihli.