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. Not so with Yuan Shih-kai--but we
will speak of him in another chapter.
All the great officials thus far mentioned have belonged to the
progressive rather than the conservative party, all of them the
favourites of the Empress Dowager, placed in positions of
influence and kept in office by her, all of them working for
progress and reform, and yet she has been constantly spoken of by
European writers as a reactionary. Nothing could be farther from
the truth, as we shall see. Nevertheless she kept some of the
great conservative officials in office either as viceroys or
Grand Secretaries that she might be able to hear both sides of
all important questions.
One of these conservatives was Jung Lu, the father-in-law of the
present Regent. When she placed Yuan Shih-kai in charge of the
army of north China, she also appointed Jung Lu as
Governor-General of the metropolitan province of Chihli. One was
a progressive, the other a conservative. Neither could make any
important move without the knowledge and consent of the other.
Whether the Empress Dowager foresaw the danger that was likely to
arise, we do not know, but she provided against it. We refer to
the occasion when in 1898 the Emperor ordered Yuan Shih-kai to
bring his troops to Peking, guard the Empress Dowager a prisoner
in the Summer Palace, and protect him in his efforts at reform.
The story belongs in another chapter, but we refer to it here to
show how the Empress Dowager played one official against another,
and one party against another, to prevent any such calamity or
surprise
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