The Last Empress: The She-Dragon of China (23 page)

The meeting was held at dusk, among the blue- and gold-painted columns of the Palace of Mind Nurture, the braziers of the Forbidden City alternately flaring and dying away in the wind that presaged one of the periodic dust-storms that assailed Beijing at this season. The assembled Imperial clansmen and high officials kowtowed as the two Empresses Dowager entered the palace, each sumptuously dressed, Yehonala wearing a ceremonial dragon-robe of Imperial yellow. As soon as they were seated, Yehonala took command of the council. She had already chosen the new Emperor, but she knew that there were two rivals for the Dragon Throne whose challenges must be met and quashed, the son of her erstwhile ally Prince Kung, and Pu Lun, who could trace his lineage back to the august Emperor Tao Kwang, the same ruler of China who had attempted to suppress the opium trade in 1838. And then there was A-lu-te. Yehonala had pre-empted any crisis here by ordering A-lu-te excluded from the council. The problem (as she saw it) of A-lu-te’s pregnancy would be resolved at another time. The astute and ruthless female who had ruled China for over fourteen years had no intention of allowing a newly widowed girl the chance of spoiling her carefully laid plans with an emotional plea to the assembled members.

Characteristically, Yehonala seized the initiative, arrogating to herself the position of ‘chairman’ and launching into a prepared statement which brushed aside the claims of A-lu-te’s unborn child, on the basis that the Dragon Throne should not be held empty on the assumption that a boy-child would be born. Prince Kung begged to disagree. He argued that as the Emperor’s widow was very near full term, the news of the Emperor’s demise could be suppressed until the child was born. If a boy was born, all was well; if a girl, then there was still time to decide the best successor to Tung Chih. Many of the Imperial clansmen supported this view. But with instinctive political savvy, Yehonala immediately took a new tack, bringing to mind the recent Tai Ping rebellion and revolts that still threatened in the south. ‘When the nest is destroyed, how many eggs will remain unbroken?’ she asked pointedly. Fearful that news of the Emperor’s death would fan the flames of rebellion anew, several Grand Councillors, including three representatives from the south, indicated their support for her arguments.

Sakota, in a rare show of initiative (or perhaps as part of a prearranged plan with her old ally), suggested that Prince Kung’s son be chosen as heir. As custom demanded, Prince Kung kowtowed and declared his son unworthy of such a high honour (which he of course coveted) and suggested instead that Pu Lun, a child of just two months, would be the better candidate. He was, as all present knew, the grandson of the esteemed Emperor Tao Kwang’s eldest son. Continuing the age-old dance, Pu Lun’s father (seething with repressed ambition) made obeisance and in turn declared his son unequal to the task.

Yehonala took them both at their word. She was dismissive of Pu Lun’s claim, stating (rightly) that his father was an adoptive son, and not a blood relative, and asking for a historical precedent to support such a move. Prince Kung, after some hesitation, suggested one from the fifteenth century. Yehonala shot back immediately that this was a bad precedent, saying tartly that the Emperor in question ‘was not really the son of his predecessor, but was palmed off on the Emperor by one of the Imperial Concubines. His reign was a period of disaster...’. It was a masterful demolition of the opposition (and a bold one considering the rumours concerning the legitimacy of her own son), but it revealed something far more telling: that this ‘sudden crisis’ had been thought through some time ahead. It is inconceivable that the Western Empress could have simply brought to mind such a fitting rebuttal to Prince Kung’s statement. China has an almost inexhaustible mine of historical events on which to draw. It would have taken much toil to research which historical precedents might be used to support the various claimants, and more time again to prepare a fitting riposte. The speed and appositeness of the response within a day of Tung Chih’s death shows the depth of planning that had gone into this quiet coup. Whatever else she might be guilty of, Yehonala had prepared the ground well.

Prince Kung’s own son was dismissed in a similar peremptory manner, and again by manipulating Chinese tradition to her own ends. In Confucian society a child should always kowtow to family members of an older generation, and especially to its own father. But equally, tradition demanded that all should make obeisance to the Emperor. If a man were chosen as Son of Heaven, a terribly embarrassing situation arose, for the Emperor as the son of his father should kowtow, but as the Son of Heaven he could never abase himself to anyone. The Chinese circumvented this problem by having the father retire from all duties and confine himself to public areas where there was no possibility that he should meet his son. Yehonala claimed that the worthy Prince Kung was so valuable a resource for his country that he simply could not be allowed to retire, as must perforce occur if his son became Emperor. His son, therefore (despite having perhaps the best claim to the throne of all those present), simply could not be Emperor. It was not the strongest argument, but it was backed up with the presence of Jung Lu’s troops–and violence has its own, unique form of logic. As she stared truculently from face to face, no one, not even Prince Kung, could find the courage to gainsay the Western Empress.

Yehonala’s light, silvery voice spoke out into the heavy silence that had descended on the audience chamber. ‘As for me, I propose as heir to the Throne, Tsai Tien, the son of Yi Huan,’ adding ominously, ‘and I advise you all that we lose no time.’ The autocrat had spoken. She had given her adversaries face by listening to their arguments, and now proposed to do exactly what she had planned to do from the start. An open vote was taken and the princes and ministers, aided no doubt by the proximity of Jung Lu’s troops, voted fifteen to ten in favour of the Western Empress’s ‘suggestion’.
⁶
Tsai Tien was Emperor, and was given the reign-title Kuang Hsu, ‘Glorious Succession’. Maintaining the initiative, she immediately, despatched Jung Lu and a detachment of mounted bannermen to accompany the Imperial palanquin as it battled in a torchlit procession against the whirling dust-storm towards the house of Prince Ch’un. There, the sleeping three-year-old Tsai Tien was pulled from his warm, quilted bed, and deposited, mewling his resentment, in the royal litter, draped with yellow satin and embroidered with Imperial dragons. Silently (the bearers’ feet and the horses’ hooves had all been muffled with sackcloth), the new Emperor was carried back through the narrow streets of the capital to the Forbidden City, dressed in dragon-robes as befitted his new status, and forced, all-unknowing, to kowtow before the shadowed bier of his dead cousin. It was a mournful beginning, and many viewed the Emperor’s arrival through the swirling sand-blizzard as an ill omen of his coming reign.

Yehonala was safe. Her successful nominee was an infant, which meant that her position as Regent (once the empty formalities of being asked, and giving her reluctant assent, to taking up the Regency had been gone through) was secure for another thirteen years. Moreover, the new Emperor was the son of Prince Ch’un, who had married Yehonala’s younger sister. So the accession of Tsai Tien to the Dragon Throne was not merely a personal victory for Yehonala. It greatly strengthened the power base of her own clan.

But the coup was not without its loose ends. It is difficult to convey to Western ears the enormity of the sacrilege Yehonala had forced upon the Middle Kingdom. The clan-loyalty and nepotism of the choice were obvious to all, but it was the overweening disregard for tradition that rankled most with the conservative element that formed the bedrock of Chinese society. According to the Confucian rites, Tung Chih’s spirit required the performance of regular prescribed prayers and time-honoured rituals for the comfort and security of his departed soul. Unfortunately for Yehonala, not everyone could perform such ceremonies for the dead. Only a direct male descendant (a natural or an adoptive son) could make the necessary obeisance and intercede with the gods on behalf of the departed. Here was the nub of the problem, for Tung Chih had neither sired, nor adopted a son. Of the three possible candidates for the new Emperor only the two-month-old Pu Lun was eligible to care for the shade of the departed Tung Chih. As members of Tung Chih’s own generation, neither Prince Kung’s son, nor Yehonala’s choice, Tsai Tien, were acceptable. Once again, the ostensibly tradition-bound Yehonala had picked her moment and flouted all time-honoured custom to achieve her own ends.

With her usual cunning, Yehonala came up with a solution, which was issued as a decree in the names of the Empresses Dowager. With breathtaking mendacity, the proclamation stated that the Regents had been ‘absolutely compelled to select Tsai Tien for the throne, and that he should become Heir by adoption to his uncle Hsien Feng [Tung Chih’s father], but that, so soon as he should have begotten a son, the Emperor Tung Chih would at once be provided with an heir’. No mention of A-lu-te and Tung Chih’s unborn child. The dead Emperor’s wife had already become a non-person.

The whole thing was a charade from start to finish. But it was even more of a sham than appeared on the surface. There was a further problem arising from Yehonala’s selection of Tsai Tien as Emperor, a physical dysfunction far more fundamental than the intricacies of Confucian rites and more far-reaching in its consequences. It was a problem of which Yehonala was perfectly aware, and which increases the suspicion that she was indeed following a secret agenda of tribal vendetta against the ruling Aisin Gioro clan, and fully intended that the Dynasty’s demise should coincide with her own. Tsai Tien was not a normal infant–his testicles were abnormal and he would be infertile as an adult. As Yehonala knew full well, the young Emperor would never be blessed with children and Tung Chih would never ‘be provided with a heir’.

History would show that the Western Empress never intended that the new Emperor should outlive her. And without Yehonala’s strong hand and mind controlling the competing factions for the throne, when Tsai Tien eventually ‘Mounted the Dragon’ the question of the succession would likely descend into bloodshed and civil war. That Tsai Tien’s physiological problems were known to the councillors long before they agreed to the young boy’s accession only serves to reveal the phenomenal power of personality and strength of will that dwelt within the tiny frame of the Empress of the Western Palace.

That left only A-lu-te and her unborn child. On the 27th March it was announced that the late Emperor’s wife had ‘died of grief’. She had committed suicide, and followed Tung Chih to the Nine Springs.

Perhaps she had. Perhaps, as some commentators have suggested, A-lu-te immolated herself and her unborn child as an act of protest against the ‘grievous wrongs done to her, to the memory of her husband, and to the claims of his posthumous heir’.
⁷
Female suicide-as-protest has a long and honoured tradition within China,
⁸
and the insults done to Tung Chih’s shade by denying him an heir was later to produce another suicide that was even better remembered than that of the late Emperor’s widow. But there is another explanation, one that marries well with Yehonala’s implacable nature and which was current at the time in the taverns and tea-houses of Beijing. A-lu-te was the greatest living impediment to Yehonala’s continued rule. The gossipmongers had it that the Western Empress had ordered A-lu-te’s murder, and that of her unborn child.

But was the child unborn?

A granddaughter would have been no threat to Yehonala. Once she had established A-lu-te as a non-person and successfully arranged for the accession of Tsai Tien, she may have felt it expedient to show mercy to Tung Chih’s widow and so appease the Mongol clans–but only if A-lu-te did not bear a son. In that case, did her ruthless temperament and her implacable desire to rule assert itself? Did she order both lives snuffed out?

This proposition becomes more likely when the time interval between the deaths of the Emperor and his wife are considered. Tung Chih died on13th January, A-lu-te on 27th March, a span of some sixty-three days, just over two months. We know from the Chinese records that at the time of Kuang Hsu’s accession (14th January) Prince Kung suggested that, as A-lu-te was close to term, they should await the outcome of the birth before making any firm decision on the succession. But if A-lu-te had not given birth by the time she ‘committed suicide’, she must have been less than seven months pregnant when her husband died and the council was held. For Prince Kung’s plan to work, news of the death of Tung Chih would therefore have had be suppressed for more than two months–an almost impossible task in the hothouse atmosphere of the court, where gossip and innuendo was a way of life. Given that Prince Kung is on record as believing this impossible task easy, it seems likely that A-lu-te was actually much closer to term than the official record of her death would have us believe. If this is true, then the late Emperor’s child would have been born prior to its mother’s death on 27th March.

The possibility therefore exists that Yehonala confined A-lu-te until she had given birth, and that once the sex of the infant was confirmed as male, she knew that the continued existence of her grandson and his mother would jeopardise her power. Her son, her daughter-in-law, and her own grandchild–Yehonala is potentially implicated in all their deaths. If true, we can see how complete was her estrangement from her son (if, of course, Tung Chih was indeed her son), and how total her lust for power. For the former Yi Concubine, the young girl from Anhui Province, no price was too high to maintain her despotic grip on the Celestial Empire.

Since the ending of the Tai Ping rebellion in 1864, relations with the foreign devils, if not entirely amicable, had at least settled down to a state of mutual toleration. In the main, this was due to a slow, reluctant acquiescence on the part of the Chinese. More Western traders were working within the Middle Kingdom, and (a slowly increasing source of friction that was later to explode into xenophobic violence) more and more missionaries practised their proselytising vocation among the ‘heathen’, even in the most remote provinces of the Empire.