Page:China Under the Empress Dowager - ed. Backhouse and Bland - 1914.pdf/292

 XVII THE RETURN OF THE COURT TO PEKING Tue state of mind of the Empress Dowager during the flight from the capital, and subsequently while the Court remained in exile at Hsi-an, was marked by that same quality of indecision and vacillating impulse which had characterised her actions throughout the Boxer crisis and the siege of Peking. This may be ascribed partly to her advancing age and partly to the conflicting influences of astrologers and fortune-tellers, to whose advice she attached the greatest importance in all times of peril. We have dealt in another place with her marked susceptibility to omens and superstitious beliefs;, its effect is most notice- able, however, at this stage of her life, and was conspicuous in matters of small detail throughout the return journey to Pcking. The influence of Jung Lu at Hsi-an, and that of Li Hung-chang at Peking, had been systematically exercised to induce Her Majesty to return to the capital; but until the Peace Protocol conditions had been definitely arranged, and until she had been persuaded to decree adequate punishment upon the Boxer leaders, the predominant feel- ing in her mind was evidently one of suspicion and fear, as was shown when she ordered the hurried flight from T’ai-yiian fu to Hsian. The influence of Li Hung-chang, who, from the outset, had realised the folly committed by the Chinese Government in approving the attack upon the Legations, was exercised to create in the mind of Her Majesty a clearer sense of the folly of that policy. At the height of the crisis (2ist July 1900), realising that the foreign forces brought to bear upon China were steadily defeating both Boxers and Imperial troops, she appointed i Hung-chang to be Viceroy of Chibli, and directed that