Empress Dowager Cixi by Jung Chang

Author:Jung Chang [Chang, Jung]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-09-25T18:30:00+00:00

20 A Plot to Kill Cixi (September 1898)

WILD FOX KANG had been hatching plots to kill Cixi for some time, knowing that she stood between him and supreme power. For this purpose he needed an armed force, and he first thought of a commander named Nie. He asked Clerk Wang Zhao to approach Nie and persuade him to join them, but the clerk declined to go, telling Kang that the mission was a pipe dream. The army was firmly in Cixi’s hands. The first thing she had done when she launched the Reforms was to make key military appointments, putting the man who had the most unwavering loyalty to her, Junglu, in charge of all the army in the capital and its surrounding area. Junglu’s headquarters were in Tianjin.

Among those reporting to Junglu was General Yuan Shikai – the future first President of China when the country became a republic. Now he was an ambitious and outstanding officer. He noticed that incredibly high posts were being awarded by the emperor on the recommendation of Kang’s men, and so made friends with them. Thanks to Kang, Emperor Guangxu gave General Yuan not one but two audiences, immediately after his altercation with Cixi on 14 September. His Majesty conferred on the General a promotion over the heads of his superiors, and practically told Yuan to detach himself from Junglu and to take orders directly from him. The emperor was doing what the Wild Fox had advised – establishing an army of his own.

After the audiences, one of Kang’s fellow plotters, Tan Sitong, paid General Yuan a late-night visit on 18 September. Tan, one of the four newly appointed Grand Council secretaries, believed that reform could only be achieved through violence. ‘There has been no reform without bloodshed since ancient times; we must kill all those deadbeats before we can start getting things done.’ Known to General Yuan as a ‘newly risen VIP close to the emperor’, Tan claimed that he had come to express the emperor’s wish. General Yuan was to kill Junglu in Tianjin and take his troops to Beijing; there he was to surround the Summer Palace and capture the empress dowager. After that, said Tan, ‘to slay that rotten old woman will be my job, and need not concern Your Excellency’. Tan promised the General that the emperor himself would give him a crimson-inked edict to this effect in his third audience, in two days’ time, on 20 September. Yuan, who thought Tan looked ‘ferocious and semi-deranged’, was non-committal, but said that such a big thing would take time to arrange.

Arrangements were actually being made by the Wild Fox, who had devised a way to transfer General Yuan’s soldiers, numbering 7,000 and stationed outside Beijing, into the capital and position them next to the Summer Palace. He ghosted a proposal for another fellow plotter, Censor Shenxiu, to present to the emperor, claiming that a haul of gold and silver had been buried in the Old Summer Palace, which might now be dug up to help alleviate the state’s financial crisis.

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