In Such An Atmosphere There Is Often
Grievous Peril To The Lives Of Inconvenient Personages.
Ahluta sickened
and died.
Her child was never born. The charitable gave her credit for
having refused food through grief for her husband, Tungche. The skeptical
listened to the details of her illness with scorn for the vain efforts to
obscure the dark deeds of ambition. In their extreme anxiety to realize
their own designs, and at the same time not to injure the constitution,
the two empresses had been obliged to resort to a plan that could only
have been suggested by desperation. For the first time since the Manchu
dynasty occupied the throne it was necessary to depart from the due line
of succession, and to make the election of the sovereign a matter of
individual fancy or favor instead of one of inheritance. The range of
choice was limited; for the son of Prince Kung himself, who seemed to
enjoy the prior right to the throne, was a young man of sufficient age to
govern for himself; and moreover his promotion would mean the compulsory
retirement from public life of Prince Kung, for it was not possible in
China for a father to serve under his son, until Prince Chun, the father
of the present reigning emperor, established quite recently a precedent to
the contrary. The name of Prince Kung's son, if mentioned at all, was only
mentioned to be dismissed. The choice of the empresses fell upon Tsai
Tien, the son of Prince Chun or the Seventh Prince, who on January 13 was
proclaimed emperor.
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Page 609 of 704
Words from 165171 to 165434
of 191255
