d upon the Chinese by their Manchu
conquerors as a badge of subjection, had gradually become the most
characteristic and most cherished feature of the national dress. But the
bureaucracy of China, which had battened for centuries on corruption and
ignorance, had no taste for self-sacrifice. Other vested interests felt
themselves equally threatened, and behind them stood the whole latent
force of popular superstition and unreasoning conservatism.

The Empress's coup d'etat.

The dowager-empress saw her opportunity. The Summer Palace, to which she
had retired, had been for some time the centre of resistance to the new
movement, and in the middle of September 1898 a report became current
that, in order to put an end to the obstruction which hampered his
reform policy, the emperor intended to seize the person of the
dowager-empress and have her deported into the interior. Some colour was
given to this report by an official announcement that the emperor would
hold a review of the foreign-drilled troops at Tientsin, and had
summoned Yuan Shihkai, their general, to Peking in order to confer with
him on the necessary arrangements. But the reformers had neglected to
secure the goodwill of the army, which was still entirely in the hands
of the reactionaries. During the night of the 20th of September the
palace of the emperor was occupied by the soldiers, and on the following
day Kwang-su, who was henceforth virtually a prisoner in the hands of
the empress, was made to issue an edict restoring her regency. Kang
Yu-wei, warned at the last moment by an urgent message from the emperor,
succeeded in escaping, but many of the most prominent reformers were
arrested, and six of them were promptly executed. The _Peking Gazette_
announced a few days later that the emperor himself was dangerously ill,
and his life might well have been despaired of had not the British
minister represented in very emphatic terms the serious consequences
which might ensue if anything happened to him. Drastic measures were,
however, adopted to stamp out the reform movement in the provinces as
well as in the capital. The reform edicts were cancelled, the reformers'
associations were dissolved, their newspapers suppressed, and those who
did not care to save themselves by a hasty recantation of their errors
were imprisoned, proscribed or exiled. In October the reaction had
already been accompanied by such a recrudescence of anti-foreign feeling
that the forei