those on our side for
doing that for which we would bitterly condemn our opponents? The same
people who condemn the Empress Dowager for beheading the six young
reformers stand ready to forgive Kuang Hsu for ordering the
decapitation of Jung Lu, and the imprisonment of his foster-mother.

There were two powerful factions in Peking, the progressives, headed by
Prince Ching; and the conservatives, headed by Jung Lu. Now the Empress
Dowager may have reasoned thus: "The progressives and reformers have
had their day. They have tried their plans and they have failed. The
only result they have secured is peace--but peace always at the expense
of territory. Now I propose to try another plan. I will part with no
more ports, and I will resist to the death every encroachment." She
therefore took up Li Ping-heng, who had been deposed from the
governorship of Shantung at the time of the murder of the German
missionaries, and appointed him Generalissimo of the forces of the
Yangtse, where he no doubt promised to resist to the last all
encroachments of the foreigners in that part of the empire while Jung
Lu was retained in Peking as head of all the forces of the province of
Chihli and the Northern Squadron. She then appointed Kang Yi, another
conservative, equally as anti-foreign as Li Ping-heng, to inspect the
fortifications and garrisons of the empire, and to raise an immense sum
of money for the depleted treasury. In his visits to the southern
provinces, Kang Yi at this time raised not less than two million taels,
which was no doubt spent in the purchase of guns and ammunition and
other preparations for war. Yu Hsien, another equally conservative
Manchu, she appointed Governor of Shantung to succeed Li Ping-heng, and
it is to him the whole Boxer uprising is due. Moreover when he, at the
repeated requests of the foreigners, was removed from Shantung, she
received him in audience at Peking, conferred upon him additional
honours and appointed him Governor of the adjoining province of Shansi,
where, and under whose jurisdiction, almost all the massacres were
committed. Indeed Yu Hsien may be considered the whole Boxer movement,
for this seems to have been his plan for getting rid of the foreigners.

But while thus allying herself with the conservatives, the Empress
Dowager did not cut herself off from the progressives. Li Hung-chang
was appointed Viceroy of Kuangtung, Yuan Shih-kai Governor of Shantung
and Tuan Fang of Shensi while Liu