Titans of History

Like War and Peace, Anna Karenina was a vehicle for Tolstoy’s moral convictions. From 1877 he became more and more obsessed with the spiritual side of his life and suffered various crises of faith. He was excommunicated from the Orthodox Church in 1901 for his distinctive reinterpretation of Christianity, in which he emphasized pacifist resistance to evil, love for one’s enemies, extreme asceticism and avoidance of anger and lust. He soon had a growing band of disciples across the world.

Tolstoy continued to write, using the profits from his third major novel, Resurrection (1899), to help the persecuted Doukhobor Christian sect to emigrate to Canada.

Deeply unhappy in his marriage and his divided court of disciples, the ailing Tolstoy escaped from home with one of his daughters and a doctor but collapsed and died in the winter of 1910 in a railway station, refusing to see his wife. He had a simple burial on his family estate. Though frequently eccentric, his moral, ethical and spiritual ideas became highly influential; Gandhi, for one, was impressed by his doctrine of nonviolent resistance. But it is his contribution to literature that towers above all else.

EMPRESS CIXI

1835–1908

After this notice is issued to instruct you villagers … if there are any Christian converts, you ought to get rid of them quickly. The churches which belong to them should be unreservedly burned down. Everyone who intends to spare someone, or to disobey our order by concealing Christian converts, will be punished according to the regulation … and he will be burned to death to prevent his impeding our program.

Boxer poster, 1900

Beautiful, cunning and cruel, Empress Dowager Cixi was the archetypal dragon lady. She rose from obscurity to become the effective ruler of China for forty-seven years, during which time she presided over a humiliating decline in the country’s fortunes. In the second half of the 19th century, the Qing dynasty that had ruled China for more than 250 years struggled to cope with the challenges posed by modernization and increasing pressure from the European powers. Having suffered military defeats at the hands of its foreign rivals, and faced with growing internal unrest, China’s last imperial dynasty finally fell in 1911. No one had contributed more to this collapse than the empress dowager herself.

When she entered Emperor Xianfeng’s household as his concubine in 1851, the future empress dowager was known as Lady Yehenara, daughter of Huizheng. She was renamed Yi soon after, and then Noble Consort Yi following the birth of her son Zaichun in 1856. When the emperor died in 1861, Zaichun assumed the throne, and to reflect her new position as Divine Mother Empress Dowager, Yi was given the title Cixi, meaning motherly and auspicious.

Before his death, Xianfeng had charged eight “regent ministers” to govern during his son’s minority, but a palace coup saw power pass instead to the late emperor’s consort, Mother Empress Dowager Ci’an, and the Divine Mother Empress Dowager Cixi. Aided by the ambitious Prince Gong, they were to enjoy a twelve-year period of shared rule, exercising power “from behind the curtain.”

Zaichun, renamed Tongzhi (meaning collective rule), was belatedly allowed to begin his “reign” in 1873, but the two matriarchs, having gained a taste for power, had no intention of quietly slipping into retirement. Cixi in particular continued to dominate the young emperor, cowing him into accepting her authority.

After just two years, Tongzhi died, but the accession of Cixi’s four-year-old cousin, Emperor Guangxu, saw the two women restored as regents. Six years later, in 1881, Empress Ci’an died suddenly, leading to rumors that Cixi had poisoned her. Ci’an’s death opened the way for Cixi to exercise unfettered power, reinforced in 1885 when she stripped Prince Gong of his offices.

By this time the empress dowager had accumulated a huge personal fortune. At a time of growing financial crisis for China, she built a string of extravagant palaces and gardens, and a lavish tomb for herself. Meanwhile, she stifled all efforts at reform and modernization. In 1881, she banned Chinese nationals from studying abroad because of the possible influx of liberal ideas. When proposals were brought forward for a vast new railway that would open up much of China, she vetoed the plans, claiming it would be “too loud” and would “disturb the emperors’ tombs.”