Page:Eminent Chinese Of The Ch’ing Period - Hummel - 1943 - Vol. 1.pdf/145

Rh selves chün-tzŭ and those who were appointed to office would have been branded as hsiao-jên. Ch'i-ying was severely reprimanded for this memorial and thereafter he remained at home on the plea of illness. On November 30, 1850 he was denounced by the emperor for having oppressed the people to please foreigners and for having overstated to the throne the power of British resistance. In the same edict was condemned for making false reports to Emperor Hsüan-tsung and for suppressing Lin Tse-hsü and other patriots. Although it was not mentioned in the edict, the fact that the British had addressed letters to Ch'i-ying and Mu-chang-a (see under ) was one of the causes of their downfall. Mu-chang-a was discharged and Ch'i-ying was degraded to a fifth rank official and an expectant assistant department director in one of the Six Boards.

In 1852 Ch'i-ying was appointed an assistant department director of the Board of Works. A year later he was sent to serve on the staff of Mien-yü (see under ), commander-in-chief of the forces guarding Peking against the Taiping invaders. Early in 1853 Ch'i-ying, Mu-chang-a, Cho Ping-t'ien 卓秉恬, and fifteen other affluent men in Peking were ordered by the emperor to make contributions to the depleted national treasury for use in fighting the rebels. According to, who was one of the fifteen contributors, the three old ministers together were forced by the commissioners, , , and , to pay forty thousand taels. For this contribution, Ch'i-ying was decorated, early in 1854, with the symbols of a fourth rank official. However, in 1855 his son, Ch'ing-hsi 慶錫, a brigade-general, was banished for borrowing money from his subordinates and for establishing near Peking, without permission, an office for distributing horses to the various regiments. Ch'i-ying was condemned to dismissal and imprisonment for sending letters through this office when aware that his act was illegal. He was imprisoned in the Imperial Clan Court but was probably released in a short time.

When in 1858 the British and French allies forced their way to Tientsin, they threatened to advance on Peking if high officials with full powers "like those bestowed on Ch'i-ying [in 1842]" were not sent immediately to open negotiations with them (see under ). On May 28, 1858 Kuei-liang and Hua-sha-na (see under ) were dispatched to Tientsin as Imperial Commissioners, but their authority was questioned by the allies. On June 1 they were instructed by the emperor to consent to anything not too disastrous to China, and a day later Ch'i-ying was sent to Tientsin to help them in the negotiations with the allies and with the envoys of the United States and Russia. Ch'i-ying was given the rank of vice-president of a Board with authority to conduct foreign affairs. He was selected mainly because he had negotiated the earlier treaties and was known to Westerners. Old and half blind, he accepted the appointment, probably in the hope of retrieving his standing. On June 3 the emperor ordered him to use the seal of the governor-general of Chihli in summoning troops or issuing orders and hoped that when Kuei-liang and Hua-sha-na encountered difficulties in the negotiations, Ch'i-ying would come to their aid by granting more concessions. Special seals were made for the three commissioners. While the first two commissioners were conferring with the envoys of the four countries, Ch'i-ying arrived in Tientsin (June 6) but was denied a meeting with the British and French envoys, although he was respectfully received by the Americans and Russians. The British commissioners, suspecting that Ch'i-ying might put obstacles in the path of the negotiations, preferred to deal with the less experienced Kuei-liang and Hua-sha-na. On June 11 Thomas Francis Wade (see under ) and H. N. Lay (李泰國), interpreters for the British mission, called on the three commissioners to demand their written consent to the British terms of peace. At this meeting Wade and Lay produced a memorial which thirteen years previously Ch'i-ying had written about Westerners and how to deal with them. This memorial was found, with other documents, in the yamen of when Canton fell in 1857. The interpreters seized upon certain remarks in that memorial as hostile to Westerners and as ground for their fear that Ch'i-ying's participation would wreck the negotiations. By bullying and threatening, Wade and Lay finally obtained from the commissioners a written document virtually consenting to all the British demands. This was the last official act of Ch'i-ying, and so frightened was he by the attitude of the interpreters that he hastily left Tientsin the following day (June 12). Kuei-liang and Hua-sha-na, who probably suspected that Ch'i-ying was sent to spy upon them, reported that his presence might jeopardize the peace conference. On seeing the 133