The Emperor insisted that he should go on his knees like the tribute-bearer from a vassal state.  “Tell them,” said Mr. Ward, “that I go on my knees only to God and woman”—­a speech brave and chivalrous, but undignified for a minister and unintelligible to the Chinese.  With this he quitted the capital and left China to her fate.  He was not the first envoy to meet a rude rebuff at the Chinese court.  In 1816 Lord Amherst was not allowed to see the “Dragon’s Face” because he refused to kneel.  At that date England was not in a position to punish the insult; but it had something to do with the war of 1839.  In 1859 it was pitiful to see a power whose existence was hanging in the scales alienate a friend by unseemly insolence.

The following year (1860) saw the combined forces of two empires at the gates of Peking.  The summer palace was laid in ashes to punish the murder of a company of men and officers under a flag of truce; and it continues to be an unsightly ruin.  The Emperor fled to Tartary to find a grave; and throne and capital were for the first time at the mercy of an Occidental army.  On the accession of Hien-feng, in 1850, an old counsellor advised him to make it his duty to “restore the restrictions all along the coast.”  His attempt to do this was one source of his misfortunes.  Supplementary articles were signed within the walls, [Page 169] by which China relinquished her absurd pretensions, abandoned her long seclusion, and, at the instance of France, threw open the whole empire to the labours of Christian missions.  They had been admitted by rescript to the Five Ports, but no further.

Thus ends the second act of the drama; and a spectator must be sadly deficient in spiritual insight if he does not perceive the hand of God overruling the strife of nations and the blunders of statesmen.

ACT 3.  WAR WITH FRANCE

The curtain rises on the third act of the drama in 1885.  Peking was open to residence, and I had charge of a college for the training of diplomatic agents.

I was at Pearl Grotto, my summer refuge near Peking, when I was called to town by a messenger from the Board of Foreign Affairs.  The ministers informed me that the French had destroyed their fleet and seized their arsenal at Foochow.  “This,” they said, “is war.  We desire to know how the non-combatants of the enemy are to be treated according to the rules of international law.”  I wrote out a brief statement culled from text-books, which I had myself translated for the use of the Chinese Government; but before I had finished writing a clerk came to say that the Grand Council wished to have it as soon as possible, as they were going to draw up a decree on the subject.  The next day an imperial decree proclaimed a state of war and assured French people in China that if they refrained from taking part in any hostile act they might remain in their places, and count on full protection.  Nobly did the government of the day redeem its pledge. [Page 170] Not a missionary was molested in the interior; and two French professors belonging to my own faculty were permitted to go on with the instruction of their classes.