The palace coup against the Hundred Days Reform has long been shrouded in mysteries. But the successive appearance of historical materials in recent years, especially archival sources, has for the most part enabled us to unearth the true sequence of events: on the third day of the eighth month, Empress Dowager Cixi ordered that the Guangxu Emperor be stripped of authority to handle political matters. This, in fact, already constituted a coup. On the sixth day she announced the political tutelage of the emperor and the seizure of the “Offensive perpetrator of political disorder” Kang Youwei leader of the reform party, thereby ending the“The Hundred Days Reform.” Furthermore, the Censor Yang Chongyi had, not carried the so-called secret report of Yuan Shikai, back from Tianjin until the evening of the seventh. Empress Dowager Cixi commanded the arrest of Tan Sitong and others the next day, and on the thirteenth she ordered the execution of the“Six Gentlemen of the Hundred Days Reform.”On the fourteenth the Empress Dowager publicly announced criminal charges against reform party members for secretly plotting against her. Outsiders, unclear with the entire course of the coup, saw the Qing court’s proclamation of the“criminal charges” and supposed the political tutelage announced on the sixth was prompted by Yuan Shikai’s secret report, moreover this led to many inaccurate rumors some of which continue to have influence today.