ess
returned to Peking and put the emperor back into his palace-prison, she
was forced by what had happened to realize that at all events a certain
measure of reform was necessary. The reforms, however, which she
decreed, mainly in 1904, were very modest and were never fully carried
out. They were only intended to make an impression on the outer world
and to appease the continually growing body of supporters of the reform
party, especially numerous in South China. The south remained,
nevertheless, a focus of hostility to the Manchus. After his failure in
1898, K'ang Yo-wei went to Europe, and no longer played any important
political part. His place was soon taken by a young Chinese physician
who had been living abroad, Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), who turned the
reform party into a middle-class revolutionary party.

12 _End of the dynasty_

Meanwhile the dowager empress held her own. General Yuean Shih-k'ai, who
had played so dubious a part in 1898, was not impeccably loyal to her,
and remained unreliable. He was beyond challenge the strongest man in
the country, for he possessed the only modern army; but he was still
biding his time.

In 1908 the dowager empress fell ill; she was seventy-four years old.
When she felt that her end was near, she seems to have had the captive
emperor Te Tsung assassinated (at 5 p.m. on November 14th); she herself
died next day (November 15th, 2 p.m.): she was evidently determined that
this man, whom she had ill-treated and oppressed all his life, should
not regain independence. As Te Tsung had no children, she nominated on
the day of her death the two-year-old prince P'u Yi as emperor (reign
name Hsuean-t'ung, 1909-1911).

The fact that another child was to reign and a new regency to act for
him, together with all the failures in home and foreign policy, brought
further strength to the revolutionary party. The government believed
that it could only maintain itself if it allowed Yuean Shih-k'ai, the
commander of the modern troops, to come to power. The chief regent,
however, worked against Yuean Shih-k'ai and dismissed him at the
beginning of 1909; Yuean's supporters remained at their posts. Yuean
himself now entered into relations with the revolutionaries, whose
centre was Canton, and whose undisputed leader was now Sun Yat-sen. At
this time Sun and his supporters had already made attempts at
revolution, but without success, as his following was as yet too small.
It consisted mainly of y