The Last Empress: The She-Dragon of China (22 page)

Worse might follow. For if the Emperor himself was to predecease his wife, Yehonala would lose even the title Empress Dowager in favour of the late Emperor’s spouse and with it the remainder of her influence. She would remain an Empress Dowager of a senior generation, theoretically of higher status, but she would not be
the
Empress Dowager. Obscurity beckoned. She would be relegated to some backwater, far from the wellsprings of power, and forgotten. And, quite as hard to stomach, her now-hated cousin Sakota, the Empress of the Eastern Palace, would retain all her ranks and distinctions, as these honours were based on Sakota’s position as wife of the late Emperor, Hsien Feng.

This was more than a simple question of status, of Yehonala’s desire to continue to enjoy the fruits of supreme authority. Her period of autocratic rule had offended many of the Imperial clan. Once stripped of rank, powerless, she knew she could expect no mercy from her foes. The coming danger was redolent with echoes of the Su Shun crisis–but this time she had no Prince Kung, no cousin Sakota, with whom to make common cause. Except for her eunuch allies, Yehonala was alone.

The solution was simple–Tung Chih must have no sons.

Yehonala must have been aware of the implications. A grandchild could threaten not only her power but her existence. She could not allow a grandchild to be born. But Tung Chih’s illicit liaison at the tender age of fourteen was potent evidence that, once married to a fertile female, children were a virtual certainty. This led to a further conclusion, one that seems to fly in the face of all maternal instinct. Tung Chih must die intestate. And so he must die young.

In the normal course of events, such an eventuality was remote–Tung Chih was in his teens, Yehonala was thirty-five. In the normal course of events, it was likely that the Celestial Prince would outlive his mother, and sire a family. But Yehonala had seen to it that the life of the young Emperor had been far from normal. From a very early age, his mother had allowed his eunuch companions to introduce him to a whole series of decadent ‘pastimes’. Members of the Imperial Household, notably Wen Hai and Kuei Pao, aided him in ‘secretly’ leaving the Great Within and disporting himself in brothels and dancing houses in the worst parts of the capital. His licentious habits brought their own reward–reading between the lines of contemporary reports, it is obvious that the Emperor contracted a venereal disease, perhaps even syphilis. And the diarists and commentators are unanimous that, when this occurred, his mother ‘...allowed it to wreak havoc with his delicate constitution, without providing him with such medical assistance as might have been available’.
¹
Yehonala seemed intent on orchestrating the early death of her son–despite his youth, everyone at court knew that Tung Chih would not live to see old age.

There are some who say that Yehonala dearly loved her son and that she was not aware of the debauches and perversions in which he indulged. But this is disingenuous, a refusal to admit the depth to which the Western Empress was prepared to descend in order to maintain her autocratic rule. Yehonala’s intelligence network was the most efficient in the Middle Kingdom. It is inconceivable that she did not know of the shameful exploits of her son, and the fatal consequences of such adventures. It was within her power to forbid these revels, yet she did nothing to prevent them. When a member of the Imperial Household, Kuei Ching, denounced the malefic influence of the eunuchs on the Solitary Prince, and had several of the worst offenders beheaded, Yehonala had this true friend of the Emperor removed from his post. Sadly, Tung Chih, too blind to see the bleak future that awaited him, approved the dismissal.

To many, it appeared that the Western Empress wished only to hasten the demise of her son. Can this be true? Did she really plot the death of her own son? Even though it means their own demise, most parents have no wish to outlive their offspring, and will happily lay down their lives to ensure the survival of the next generation. Did such a selfish, implacable nature dwell within the beautiful, petite figure of Yehonala that she would sacrifice her own child on the altar of her ambition? Or was the motive a mix of personal ambition and the vindictive deep-rooted vendetta between the Aisin Gioro and her own clan that produced such a reversal of maternal affection? That there was nothing she would not do to deny the Imperial clan direct succession to the Dragon Throne? There appears to be no other explanation for her actions.

Unless one of the wilder stories concerning her pregnancy is true. Several rumours were widespread before and after the birth of Tung Chih in April 1856. One claimed that the child was the result of the union between Yehonala and her former love, Jung Lu. This can be safely discounted. Jung Lu exercised considerable influence over Yehonala throughout her life, and for him to have allowed her to do away with their child requires a degree of pitiless, unnatural behaviour in the Manchu warrior that is quite contrary to everything we know of him. However, one tale may fully explain Yehonala’s incomprehensible actions, without our having recourse to branding her a heartless filicide. This story claims that Yehonala’s son was not her son at all. The child had been purchased secretly from Chinese peasants and smuggled into the Forbidden City at the time of Yehonala’s confinement. She subsequently passed the infant off as her own, and the offspring of the Emperor. Fanciful though the story appears to be, it does fit with Yehonala’s temperament. We know that she would prefer death to obscurity and the life of an nonentity within the Forbidden City. The risks were undoubtedly enormous, she was gambling with her life and facing a certain, hideous death were she to be discovered. But if Yehonala did pass off another couple’s child as the Emperor’s son she knew that the doors to power and wealth would fly open. Perhaps she was prepared to chance it.

If so, it would explain her indifference to Tung Chih’s fate and her active connivance in an early death for the Emperor. Given the Manchu disdain for their Chinese subjects, especially the ‘stupid people’, she may have regarded Tung Chih (were he the child of Chinese peasants) as little better than an animal, as simply a tool to achieve power, one that could be discarded at any time should it prove expedient.

Whatever the truth of this, despite his illness and lack of proper medical care, the Emperor survived until his sixteenth year. This was the age of majority according to the Manchu house-laws, the time when he should assume the reins of government, and the Empresses Regent should stand down. He was also eligible to marry, and marriage meant that a new heir to the throne might well be born within a year. Certainly, for Yehonala, time was running out.

Worse was to follow. Unlike his father, Hsien Feng, Tung Chih insisted on being allowed to select his own wife from among the Manchu maidens summoned to the Great Within. His choice fell on A-lu-te, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Ch’ung-chi, the assistant Imperial tutor, and member of a prestigious Mongol clan. Many at court approved his choice: not only was A-lu-te possessed of surpassing beauty, such a union would help to cement the unequal alliance between the Mongol and Manchu nations, strengthening the Dynasty’s increasingly shaky hold on the Middle Kingdom. Yehonala was less pleased. With a perhaps unconscious acknowledgement of her own ‘strategic’ marriage (which ostensibly strengthened the ties between the Yeho-Nala and the Aisin Gioro clans) Yehonala mistrusted her daughter-in-law: ‘How could we tell that her beauty was false? She was so very beautiful, but she hated us.’
²
She might have been speaking about herself.

The young couple seem to have been genuinely happy together, and to have possessed that naive belief in the infinite continuation of their own good fortune that true love often imparts. The Emperor began to assert himself, refusing to submit official papers to Yehonala for her comments, and gradually but inexorably reducing his mother’s participation in government. By himself, the Emperor might never have dared so much, but A-lu-te applauded and encouraged his increasing confidence and autonomy, and eager to please his new wife, the slow paring away of his mother’s authority continued. Tung Chih’s moon was waxing as Yehonala’s waned.

Then suddenly, disaster struck. In December 1874 a decree was issued in Tung Chih’s name announcing that he had had the ‘good fortune to contract smallpox’, the Chinese of the time believing that the disease augured well for the future. ‘Their Majesties the Empresses Dowager,’ the decree continued, ‘have shown the greatest possible tenderness in the care of our person. They have also consented to peruse all Memorials and State papers, on our behalf, and to carry on the business of the State, for which we are deeply grateful. We feel bound to confer upon their Majesties additional titles of honour, so as to make some return, however small, for their infinite goodness.’
³

It is hard not to see the hand of Yehonala in the composition of this decree. It granted her all she required: the official papers that Tung Chih had proscribed were now hers to ‘peruse’ at will; she was the recipient of new honorifics–and the additional yearly stipend that accompanied them; and the decree even documents the gratitude of her son the Emperor for compassionate ministrations during his illness. Until the Emperor recovered, a forlorn hope given his weakened constitution and the consequences of his licentious past, Yehonala was again the supreme power in the land (for no one believed that the co-Regent, Sakota, could oppose her cousin’s implacable will).

By 23rd December, the Emperor appeared to have weathered the worst of the pox and to be on the mend. However, just a few days later, the Emperor suffered a relapse from which he never recovered. One official, Yun Tu-ting, later wrote that the Emperor’s mother had crept into his sick-room while he conversed with his wife. Hearing A-lu-te daring to voice criticisms of her mother-in-law, Yehonala flew into one of her well-documented rages, ‘her cheekbones were sharp and the veins on her forehead projected; she showed her teeth as if she were suffering from lockjaw’.
⁴
She dragged the hapless A-lu-te around the room by the hair, slapping her face repeatedly and, calling on the eunuch attendants, ordered them to take her from the room and beat her. This domestic quarrel, said Yun Tu-ting, had produced the Emperor’s relapse. Tung Chih lingered on until 13th January 1875, dying at eight in the evening, at the age of nineteen. Yehonala was at his deathbed, along with Sakota, Jung Lu, Prince Kung and around twenty of the more important princes and ministers. A-lu-te was refused permission to enter the room. Tung Chih’s short span of authority had been snuffed out, and his mother’s brief eclipse at court was over. From facing certain ruin she was again in command of the Empire. Once more, Heaven had chosen Yehonala to rule.

But many believed that Heaven had been a very small player in the drama of Tung Chih’s death. The timing of the Emperor’s demise was just too convenient for the Empress of the Western Palace, and it stimulated suspicion in many minds. Rumours abounded: it was claimed that she had not only allowed her son to ruin his health in the lowest brothels in Beijing, she had been the source of his fatal smallpox infection.

Except among the peasants and the poor, Chinese meals are sumptuous affairs, with table manners sometimes diametrically opposed to those of the West. Rather than leaving an empty plate, it was considered an insult to the host if all the meal was eaten–the idea being that more than enough courses had been provided to satisfy the guests’ hunger. The meal always consists of many dishes (never less than one hundred at the Imperial table) and between courses, and especially at the end of a meal, hot towels are given to each diner, with which they can refresh themselves by wiping their face, and then their hands. This civilised custom had, on several occasions in Chinese history, been put to foul and infamous ends. Saturated with poison, the towel would be rubbed over the skin and the unsuspecting victim would be the agent of his or her own demise. In the case of Tung Chih, it was alleged that the towel marked for the Emperor had first been rubbed over the open, active pustules of a smallpox victim, and then proffered to the Celestial Prince. As the Son of Heaven would never perform such a menial task himself, it was left to one of the eunuch attendants, under the supervision of Yehonala’s confidant the Grand Eunuch, Li Lien-ying, to diligently wipe the Emperor’s face with the virus-permeated cloth, so ensuring his infection.

The sudden and, from Yehonala’s view, convenient ‘relapse’ of the Emperor following his apparent triumph over the disease also raises questions. Yun Tu-ting’s story of Yehonala’s assault on A-lu-te and the Emperor’s nervous collapse may well be true. But as later events proved, Yehonala was no tiro in the use of subtle poisons. The Emperor’s ‘relapse’ may have had more to do with an induced physiological collapse than any emotional crisis.

Sometime after, Yehonala is quoted as saying of Tung Chih’s passing, ‘Since that time I have been a changed woman, as all happiness was over as far as I was concerned when he died’. But if the Western Empress was crushed by the death of her only son, she managed to hide it well. Within the day she had ordered a solemn conclave of ministers to select a new Emperor. There was good reason for speed: Yehonala knew that she must act quickly to give her enemies the shortest time possible to organise against her. With the Emperor dead, her power base was gone: ‘It was to motherhood she owed her first claims to power; now she had nothing but her own boundless ambition, courage and intelligence to take the place of lawful claims and natural ties.’
⁵

There was another reason, perhaps the reason for the Emperor’s illness and death. Yehonala’s worst nightmare had come true. A-lu-te was said to be pregnant with the dead Emperor’s child. If Tung Chih was indeed Yehonala’s natural son, the foetus was destined to be Yehonala’s own grandchild. But if it was a son, it would be Emperor, A-lu-te would become Empress Mother, and Yehonala’s enemies would pounce. Something had to be done.

The speed with which matters moved forward indicates a preconceived and well-executed plan. Even before the meeting to choose the new Emperor took place, Jung Lu with his predominantly Yeho-Nala bannermen had been placed on special duty within the Forbidden City. Li Hung-chang, the Chinese commander who had distinguished himself during the Tai Ping rebellion and who owed his command to Yehonala, had also sent trusted troops from Anhui to Beijing at the Empress’s express command. And her loyal and trusted confidant the Grand Eunuch Li Lien-ying, had placed his eunuchs at strategic points throughout the palace. The stage had been skilfully set for a silent
coup d’état
. Nothing was said, but it was obvious to the twenty-seven officials attending this historic meeting that defying the will of the Western Empress would result in the most dire consequences.