Among these we shall not seek a parallel for the famous Empress
Dowager, so well known to the readers of magazine literature. In
tragic vicissitudes, if not in length of reign, she stood without
a rival in the history of the world. She also stood alone in the
fact that her destinies were interwoven with the tangle of foreign
invasion. Twice she fled from the gates of a fallen capital; and
twice did the foreign conqueror permit her to return. Without the
foreigner and his self-imposed restraint, there could have been no
Empress Dowager in China. Did she hate the foreigner for driving
her away, or did she thank him for her repeated restoration?
The daughter of Duke Chou (the slave-girl story is a myth), she
became a secondary wife of Hienfung in 1853 or 1854; and her sister
somewhat later became consort of the Emperor's youngest brother.
Having the happiness to present her lord with a son, she was raised
to the rank of Empress and began to exert no little influence in the
character of mother to an heir-apparent. Had she not been protected
by her new rank her childless rival might have driven her from
court and appropriated the boy. She had instead to admit a joint
motherhood, which in a few years led to a joint regency.
Scarcely had the young Empress become accustomed to her new dignity,
when the fall of Taku and Tientsin, in 1860, warned the Emperor
of what he might
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