Secret Society with its headquarters in the remote province of
Szechuan, owed its origin to the last of the Ming adherents, who
after waging a desperate guerilla warfare from the date of their
expulsion from Peking, finally fell to the low level of inciting
assassinations and general unrest in the vain hope that they might
some day regain their heritage. At least, we know one thing
definitely: that the attempt on the life of the Emperor Chia Ching
in the Peking streets at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century
was a Secret Society plot, and brought to an abrupt end the
pleasant habit of travelling among their subjects which the great
Manchu Emperors K'anghsi and Ch'ien Lung had inaugurated and
always pursued and which had so largely encouraged the growth of
personal loyalty to a foreign House.

From that day onwards for over a century no Emperor ventured out
from behind the frowning Walls of the Forbidden City save for
brief annual ceremonies such as the Worship of Heaven on the
occasion of the Winter Solstice, and during the two "flights"--
first, in 1860 when Peking was occupied by an Anglo-French
expedition and the Court incontinently sought sanctuary in the
mountain Palaces of Jehol; and, again, in 1900, when with the
pricking of the Boxer bubble and the arrival of the International
relief armies, the Imperial Household was forced along the stony
road to faroff Hsianfu.

The effect of this immurement was soon visible; the Manchu rule,
which was emphatically a rule of the sword, was rapidly so
weakened that the emperors became no more than rois faineants at
the mercy of their ministers.