Historians have argued that she was a ruthless despot whose reactionary policies – although successful in managing to prolong the ailing Qing dynasty – led to its humiliation and eventual downfall in the Wuchang Uprising.

Informal seals numbered in the thousands and were not considered political accoutrements, rather objects of art commissioned for pleasure by emperors to stamp on items such as paintings, or given as presents to the concubines.

In Rehe Province, while waiting for an astrologically favourable time to transport the emperor's coffin back to Beijing, Cixi conspired with court officials and imperial relatives to seize power.

Cixi's early return to Beijing meant that she had more time to plan with Prince Gong and ensure that the power base of the eight regents was divided between Sushun and his allies, Zaiyuan and Duanhua.

In order to remove them from power, history was rewritten: the regents were dismissed for having carried out incompetent negotiations with the "barbarians" that had caused Xianfeng to flee to Rehe Province "greatly against his will", among other charges.

As one of the first acts of "ruling behind the curtain" from within the Hall of Mental Cultivation, the political and governmental hub during this era, Cixi, nominally along with Ci'an, issued two imperial edicts on behalf of the boy emperor.

[11] The first stated that the two empresses dowager were to be the sole decision-makers "without interference," and the second changed the emperor's regnal title from Qixiang (祺祥; "auspicious") to Tongzhi (同治; "collective stability").

Despite being designated as the sole decision-makers, both Ci'an and Cixi were forced to rely on the Grand Council and a complex series of procedures in order to deal with affairs of state.

Cixi had two prominent officials executed to serve as examples for others: Qingying, a military shilang who had tried to bribe his way out of demotion, and He Guiqing, then Viceroy of Liangjiang, who fled Changzhou in the wake of an incoming Taiping army instead of trying to defend the city.

Cixi, again in a reversal of imperial tradition, entrusted the country's most powerful military unit against the Taiping rebels into the hands of a Han Chinese, Zeng Guofan.

At the time, three prominent Han Chinese officials, Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang, had all begun industrial programs in the country's southern regions.

Under the joined influence of court eunuchs and Zaicheng, Prince Gong's eldest son and Tongzhi's best friend, the emperor managed to escape the palace in search of pleasure in the unrestricted parts of Beijing.

[citation needed] Tongzhi received a rigorous education from four famous teachers of Cixi's own choosing: Li Hongzao, Qi Junzao, Weng Xincun, and Woren.

Shortly after Guangxu's accession, Cixi fell severely ill.[22] This rendered her largely inaccessible to her young nephew and had the result of leaving Ci'an to attend to most of the affairs of state.

[34] In spite of her residence for a period of time at the Summer Palace, which had been constructed with the official intention of providing her a suitable place to live after retiring from political affairs, Cixi continued to influence the decisions and actions of the Guangxu Emperor even after he began his formal rule at age 19.

After a humiliating defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894, during which the Chinese Beiyang Fleet was virtually destroyed by the Imperial Japanese Navy, the Qing government faced unprecedented challenges internally and abroad, with its very existence at stake.

Under the influence of reformist-officials Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, Guangxu believed that by learning from constitutional monarchies such as Japan and Germany, China would become politically and economically powerful.

The Manchu general Ronglu on 21 September 1898, took the emperor to Ocean Terrace, a small palace on an island in the middle of Zhongnanhai linked to the rest of the Forbidden City only by a controlled causeway.

According to research by Professor Lei Chia-sheng (雷家聖),[39] during the Hundred Days' Reform, former Japanese prime minister Itō Hirobumi arrived in China on 11 September 1898.

[42] In another memorial written the next day, Song Bolu also advocated the formation of a federation and the sharing of the diplomatic, fiscal, and military powers of the four countries under a hundred-man committee.

Bowing to increasing pressure from the West and general civil discontent, Cixi did not forcibly remove Guangxu from the throne, although she attempted to have Pujun, a boy of 14 who was from a close branch of the imperial family, installed as crown prince.

[50][51] When Cixi received an ultimatum demanding that China surrender total control over all its military and financial affairs to foreigners,[51] she defiantly stated before the Grand Council, "Now they [the Powers] have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent.

Today, at last, the opportunity for revenge has come", and said that millions of Chinese would join the cause of fighting the foreigners since the Manchus had provided "great benefits" to China.

[56] The Western powers needed a government strong enough to suppress further anti-foreign movements, but too weak to act on its own; they supported the continuation of the Qing dynasty, rather than allowing it to be overthrown.

The anarchist Wu Zhihui, who had leveled some of the most vitriol at Cixi in life, wrote from exile in Paris of the "vixen empress and vermin emperor" that "their lingering stench makes me vomit.

The Eastern Mausoleum together with other Imperial Tombs of the Ming and Qing Dynasties are now protected legally by central and local governments and a systems of protection and management put in place to improve the conservation and management of the tombs, which are included in the UNESCO World Heritage List [64] For many years, the mainstream view of Cixi was that she was a devious despot who contributed in no small part to China's slide into corruption, chaos, and revolution.

[70] Their portrait included contradictory elements, writes one recent study, "on the one hand... imperious, manipulative, and lascivious" and on the other "ingenuous, politically shrewd, and conscientious..."[71] Backhouse and Bland told their readers that "to summarize her essence simply, she a woman and an Oriental".

When Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing, was arrested in 1976 for abuse of power, an exhibit at the Palace Museum put Cixi's luxurious goods on display to show that a female ruler weakened the nation.

Sterling Seagrave's Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China portrays Cixi as a woman stuck between the xenophobic faction of Manchu nobility and more moderate influences.

Although Crossley was sympathetic to restoring women's place in Chinese history, she found "rewriting Cixi as Catherine the Great or Margaret Thatcher is a poor bargain: the gain of an illusory icon at the expense of historical sense".