Reform Party to Yuan Shih-kai bearing an alleged
autograph order for him to advance instantly on Peking with all his
troops; to surround the Palace, to secure the person of the Emperor from
all danger, and then to depose the Empress Dowager for ever from power.
What happened is equally well-known. Yuan Shih-kai, after an exhaustive
examination of the message and messengers, as well as other attempts to
substantiate the genuineness of the appeal, communicated its nature to
the then Viceroy of Chihli, the Imperial Clansman Jung Lu, whose
intimacy with the Empress Dowager since the days of her youth has passed
into history. Jung Lu lost no time in acting. He beheaded the two
messengers and personally reported the whole plot to the Empress Dowager
who was already fully warned. The result was the so-called _coup d'etat_
of September, 1898, when all the Reformers who had not fled were
summarily executed, and the Emperor Kwanghsu himself closely imprisoned
in the Island Palace within that portion of the Forbidden City known as
the Three Lakes, having (until the Boxer outbreak of 1900 carried him to
Hsianfu), as sole companions his two favourites, the celebrated
odalisques "Pearl" and "Lustre."

This is no place to enter into the controversial aspect of Yuan
Shih-kai's action in 1898 which has been hotly debated by partisans for
many years. For onlookers the verdict must always remain largely a
matter of opinion; certainly this is one of those matters which cannot
be passed upon by any one but a Chinese tribunal furnished with all the
evidence. Those days which witnessed the imprisonment of Kwanghsu were
great because they opened wide the portals of the Romance of History:
all who were in Peking can never forget the counter-stroke; the arrival
of the hordes composed of Tung Fu-hsiang's Mahommedan cavalry--men who
had ridden hard across a formidable piece of Asia at the behest of their
Empress and who entered the capital in great clouds of dust. It was in
that year of 1898 also that Legation Guards reappeared in Peking--a few
files for each Legation as in 1860--and it was then that clear-sighted
prophets saw the beginning of the end of the Manchu Dynasty.

Yuan Shih-kai's reward for his share in this counter-revolution was his
appointment to the governorship of Shantung province. He moved thither
with all his troops in December, 1899. Armed _cap-a-pie_ he was ready
for the next act--the Boxers, who burst on China in the Summer o