Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang Read Free Book Online

emperor-to-be, Cixi’s future husband, was eight when the Opium War broke out and he saw in the ensuing years how it had broken his father, leaving him tormented. When he succeeded to the throne in 1850, one of his first acts was to write a long edict condemning Qiying, the conciliatory Imperial Commissioner who had signed the Treaty of Nanjing and had persuaded his father to lift the ban on Christian missions. In the edict, Emperor Xianfeng denounced Qiying for ‘always caving in to foreigners at the cost of the country’, ‘extreme incompetence’ and ‘having not a shred of conscience’.Qiying was demoted, and was later ordered to commit suicide.
    Once, the emperor was told that the roof of a church in Shanghai had collapsed in a thunderstorm, and the big wooden cross bearing the figure of Christ had been destroyed. He saw this as Heaven doing the job that he ought to be doing, and wrote on the report: ‘I am so awed and moved, and feel all the more ashamed.’ His loathing of Christianity and Westerners was made yet more intense by the fact that the Taiping rebels who were rocking his throne claimed to believe in Christianity, and their leader, Hong Xiuquan, declared that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. Emperor Xianfeng would fight tooth and nail, every inch of the way, to keep Westerners out of China.
    Meanwhile, the British wanted even more ports to be opened for trade and their representatives to be stationed in Beijing. The man Emperor Xianfeng designated to deal with them, Viceroy Ye Mingchen of Canton, was a kindred spirit of the emperor and turned a deaf ear to all their requests. In the end, the British decided that‘ships of war are absolutely necessary’. An incident involving a boat called Arrow triggered what is often called ‘the Second Opium War’ in 1856 – the year Cixi’s son was born. Next year Lord Elgin (son of the 7th Earl, of Elgin Marbles repute) was dispatched to China with a fleet of warships. The French went along as an ally, wanting to gain unlimited access to the interior for their missionaries. The allies occupied Canton and carted Viceroy Ye off to Calcutta, where he soon died. The Europeans sailed north. In May 1858 they seized the Dagu Forts, which lay some 150 kilometres southeast of Beijing, and entered the nearby city of Tianjin. With enemy troops on his doorstep, Emperor Xianfeng still categorically rejected their requests. Eventually, as Lord Elgin threatened to march on Beijing, he was forced to send in negotiators, who accepted all the demands: envoys to station in Beijing, more ports to open for trade and missionaries to be admitted to the interior. After a few agonising days, Emperor Xianfeng succumbed to what the French envoy Baron Gros called a‘pistol at the throat’ and gave his endorsement. The allies were satisfied and left the Dagu Forts in their gunboats.
    Emperor Xianfeng hated the new deal that had been forced on him. Racking his brain to find a way out, he even proposed that Britain and France be exempt from all import duties, if they would agree to its annulment. But the two countries said that while they would be glad to be exempt from import duties, they wanted to stick to the agreements. The emperor kept berating his representatives who were in Shanghai talking to the Europeans – but to no avail.
    A year passed and, as had been stipulated, it was time for the agreements to be ratified in Beijing. Lord Elgin’s younger brother, Frederick Bruce, headed for the city in June 1859 accompanied by British troops and a small French force. (France at this time was busy fighting to colonise Indochina.) EmperorXianfeng created all sorts of hurdles in an attempt to thwart Bruce and his colleague. He required that the envoys’ ships had to dock at a small coastal town; they must then ‘travel to Beijing with an entourage of no more than 10 men, no arms . . . no sedan-chairs or processions . . . and leave Beijing the moment the ratification