Empress Dowager Cixi Quotes


I command that all foreigners, men, women, and children, be summarily executed. Let not one escape, so that my empire may be purged of this noisome source of corruption, and that peace may be restored to my loyal subjects.


Context

Two senior Chinese officials Yuan Ch`ang and Hsu Ching-ch`eng, realizing the implications and the vengeance the Western Powers would take on the Empress and China if the order were carried out, rewrote it to require that all foreigners be “protected.” This version went out to all governors except that of Shansi who had received a previous execution order {612690} . When the Empress discovered the change, Yuan Ch`ang and Hsu Ching-ch`eng were both summarily beheaded. However they saved thousands of Western lives and China from an even greater disaster.


Citations

Tzu-Hsi, 1834-1908, [Cixi], Empress Dowager of China, Order during the Boxer Rebellion

Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations

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Empress Dowager Cixi
Empress Dowager Cixi
  • Born: November 29, 1835
  • Died: November 15, 1908
  • Nationality: Chinese
  • Profession: Noblewoman

Empress Dowager Cixi was a Chinese empress dowager and regent who was the de facto supreme ruler of China in the late Qing dynasty for 47 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908. Of the Manchu Yehe Nara clan, she was elected as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor in her adolescence and gave birth to a son, Zaichun, in 1856. After the Xianfeng Emperor's death in 1861, the young boy became the Tongzhi Emperor, and she became the Empress Dowager. Cixi ousted a group of regents appointed by the late emperor and assumed regency, which she shared with Empress Dowager Ci'an. Cixi then consolidated control over the dynasty when she installed her nephew as the Guangxu Emperor at the death of the Tongzhi Emperor in 1875, contrary to the traditional rules of succession of the Qing dynasty that had ruled China since 1644.