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As the Empress Dowager had been behaving herself so circumspectly
during all the summer months, allowing the Emperor to test
himself as a ruler, one can scarcely blame her for not wanting to
be bottled up in the Summer Palace when she had done nothing to
deserve it. When therefore this second delegation of officials,
consisting of the two highest in rank in the empire, came to
request her to once more take charge of the government, she
called her sedan chair and started for the capital. She went
without an army, but was accompanied by those of her palace
eunuchs on whom she could implicitly depend, and enough of them
to overcome those of the Emperor in case there should be trouble.
That force was necessary is evident from the fact that she
condemned to death a number of his servants after she had taken
the throne.
When the Emperor heard that she was coming he sent a messenger
with letters urging Kang Yu-wei to flee, and to devise some means
for saving the situation, while he attempted to find refuge for
himself in the foreign legations. This however he failed to do,
but was taken by the Empress Dowager, and his career as a ruler
ended, and his life as a prisoner began.
X
Kuang Hsu--As a Prisoner
Kuang Hsu deserves a place in history as the prize iconoclast. He
sent a cold shiver down the spine of the literati by declaring
that a man's fitness for office should not depend upon his
ability to write a poem, or upon the elegance of his penmanship
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