Tongzhi Emperor

Zaichun (載淳) of the Aisin Gioro clan reigned as the Tongzhi Emperor from 1861 until his death in January 1875. He was the tenth ruler of the Qing Dynasty counting Nurhaci and Hong Taiji, and the eighth to rule China proper. His temple name is Muzong, and his era name, Tongzhi (同治), was in use from 1862 to 1874.

He came to the throne at the age of five, and for almost all of his short life real power lay with the regents, above all his mother, Empress Dowager Cixi. Officials hoped that another child emperor would grow into a ruler like the Kangxi Emperor, who had also succeeded as a boy in 1661. Tongzhi disappointed them: he showed little interest in government, and he died at eighteen after less than two years of personal rule.

Rise to the Throne

Zaichun was born in 1856, the only surviving son of the Xianfeng Emperor and his consort Yehenara, later Empress Dowager Cixi. When Xianfeng died at Chengde in August 1861, the five-year-old prince succeeded him.

Xianfeng had left the government in the hands of eight regents led by Sushun. Within weeks, in the Xinyou Coup of November 1861, the two empresses dowager, Ci'an and Cixi, joined with the late emperor's brother Prince Gong to remove them. Sushun was executed, and the dowagers ruled "from behind the curtain" with Prince Gong as their chief minister.

The regents had chosen the era name Qixiang (祺祥), meaning auspicious. The new government replaced it with Tongzhi, usually understood as "ruling together" in the cause of order, a name that reflected the shared regency.

The Tongzhi Restoration

The years of the regency are known as the Tongzhi Restoration. The Taiping capital at Nanjing fell in 1864 and the Nian rebellion was defeated in 1868. Provincial leaders such as Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang began the Self-Strengthening Movement, founding the Jiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai in 1865 and the Fuzhou Navy Yard in 1866, while the Tongwen Guan was set up in Beijing in 1862 to train interpreters. The aim was to restore Confucian government while adopting Western military technology.

Marriage of the Tongzhi Emperor

In 1872, at the age of sixteen, the emperor married Lady Alute, who became Empress Xiaozheyi. At the same time several consorts entered the palace, among them Lady Fuca, whom Cixi had favoured as empress. The choice of Alute is said to have been supported by Ci'an and by the emperor himself.

The emperor was devoted to his empress, but Cixi disliked her. Court accounts describe the dowager accusing Alute of keeping the emperor to herself and pressing him to spend more time with his other consorts.

Unofficial accounts, written later and hard to verify, claim that the young emperor slipped out of the palace to visit the pleasure quarters of Beijing and that he died of syphilis rather than smallpox. The official record gives smallpox, and most historians accept it.

Personal Rule

The marriage marked the emperor's coming of age, and in February 1873 he formally took over the government. His personal rule soon became associated with his plan to rebuild the Yuanmingyuan, the Old Summer Palace destroyed by British and French troops in 1860, at a time when the treasury could not afford it.

The Zongli Yamen and Foreign Relations

The Zongli Yamen, the office for the management of affairs concerning the various countries, was set up in 1861 under Prince Gong. It was China's first institution dedicated to foreign affairs, and it reflected a new effort to understand and deal with the Western powers.

After the defeat in the Second Opium War, the Treaties of Tianjin (1858) and the Convention of Beijing (1860) had opened more ports and allowed foreign diplomats to live in the capital. The 1860s brought a period of relative calm in relations with the West, which gave the court room for its reforms.

The Audience of 1873

Once the emperor had taken power, the foreign ministers in Beijing asked to present their credentials to him in person. The request raised a long dispute over protocol: the ministers refused to perform the kowtow, the full prostration in which the forehead touches the ground, and the court was unwilling to receive them without it.

A compromise was reached. The audience took place on 29 June 1873, and the envoys bowed instead of kneeling. It was held not in the Forbidden City but in the Pavilion of Purple Light (Ziguangge), one of the lakeside halls to the west of the palace, now part of Zhongnanhai.

The diplomats later learned that the pavilion was where the court had traditionally received envoys from tributary states, and the choice of venue caused lasting resentment.