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Indiscreet Letters From Peking

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Title: Indiscreet Letters From Peking

Editor: B. L. Putnam Weale


        
Release date: November 4, 2005 [eBook #17003]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDISCREET LETTERS FROM PEKING ***


E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)



INDISCREET LETTERS FROM PEKING

Being the Notes of an Eye-Witness,
Which Set Forth in Some Detail, from
Day to Day, the Real Story of the
Siege and Sack of a Distressed Capital
in 1900--the Year of Great Tribulation

Edited by

B.L. PUTNAM WEALE

Author of "Manchu and Muscovite,"
and "The Re-shaping of the Far East."







China Edition

1922

Shanghai
Kelly and Walsh, Limited
British Empire and Continental
Copyright Excepting Scandinavian Countries
by Putnam Weale from 1921





CONTENTS


FOREWORD

PART I--THE WARNING


     I FRAGMENTS
    II MUTTERINGS
   III OVERCAST SKIES
    IV OUR GUARDS ARRIVE
     V THE PLOT THICKENS
    VI THE LICKING FLAMES APPROACH
   VII THE CITY OF PEKING AND ALL ITS GLORIES
  VIII SOME INCIDENTS AND THE ONE MAN
    IX THE COMING OF THE BOXERS
     X BARRICADES AND RELIEFS
    XI SOME MEN AND THINGS
   XII HELL HOUNDS
  XIII A FEW CRUMBS
   XIV THE ULTIMATUM
    XV THE DEBACLE BEGINS

PART II--THE SIEGE

     I CHAOS
    II THE RETREAT AND THE RETURN
   III FIRES AND FOOD
    IV THE BONDS TIGHTEN
     V THE MYSTERIOUS BOARD OF TRUCE
    VI SHELLS AND SORTIES
   VII THE HOSPITAL AND THE GRAVEYARD
  VIII THE FAILURE
    IX AN INTERLUDE
     X THE GUNS
    XI SNIPING
   XII THE GALLANT FRENCH
  XIII THE BRITISH LEGATION BASE
   XIV THE EVER-GROWING CASUALTY LIST
    XV THE ARMISTICE
   XVI THE RESUMPTION OF A SEMI-DIPLOMATIC LIFE
  XVII DIPLOMACY CONTINUES
 XVIII THE UNREST GROWS AND DIPLOMACY CONTINUES
   XIX THE FIRST REAL NEWS
    XX THE THIRD PHASE CONTINUES
   XXI MORE DIPLOMACY
  XXII THE WORLD BEYOND OUR BRICKS
 XXIII TRIFLES
  XXIV DIPLOMATIC CONFIDENCES
   XXV THE PLOT AGAIN THICKENS
  XXVI MORE MESSENGERS
 XXVII THE ATTACKS RESUMED
XXVIII THE THIRTEENTH
  XXIX THE NIGHT OF THE THIRTEENTH
   XXX HOW I SAW THE RELIEF

PART III-THE SACK

     I THE PALACE
    II THE SACK
   III THE SACK CONTINUES
    IV CHAOS
     V SETTLING DOWN
    VI THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT
   VII THE FEW REMAINS
  VIII THE PALSY REMAINS
    IX DRIFTING
     X PICKING UP THREADS
    XI THE IMPOSSIBLE
   XII SUSPENSE
  XIII STILL DRIFTING
   XIV PUNITIVE EXPEDITIONS
    XV THE CLIMAX
   XVI THE END




FOREWORD


The publication of these letters, dealing with the startling events
which took place in Peking during the summer and autumn of 1900, at this
late date may be justified on a number of counts. In the first place,
there can be but little doubt that an exact narrative from the pen of an
eye-witness who saw everything, and knew exactly what was going on from
day to day, and even from hour to hour, in the diplomatic world of the
Chinese capital during the deplorable times when the dread Boxer
movement overcast everything so much that even in England the South
African War was temporarily forgotten, is of intense human interest,
showing most clearly as it does, perhaps for the first time in realistic
fashion, the extraordinary _bouleversement_ which overcame everyone; the
unpreparedness and the panic when there was really ample warning; the
rivalry of the warring Legations even when they were almost _in
extremis_, and the curious course of the whole seige itself owing to the
division of counsels among the Chinese--this last a state of affairs
which alone saved everyone from a shameful death. In the second place,
this account may dispel many false ideas which still obtain in Europe
and America regarding the position of various Powers in China--ideas
based on data which have long been declared of no value by those
competent to judge. In the third place, the vivid and terrible
description of the sack of Peking by the soldiery of Europe, showing the
demoralisation into which all troops fall as soon as the iron hand of
discipline is relaxed, may set finally at rest the mutual recriminations
which have since been levelled publicly and privately. Everybody was
tarred with the same brush. Those arm-chair critics who have been too
prone to state that brutalities no longer mark the course of war may
reconsider their words, and remember that sacking, with all the
accompanying excesses, is still regarded as the divine right of soldiery
unless the provost-marshal's gallows stand ready. In the fourth place,
those who still believe that the representatives assigned to Eastern
countries need only be second-rate men--reserving for Europe the
master-minds--may begin to ask themselves seriously whether the time has
not come when only the most capable and brilliant diplomatic
officials--men whose intelligence will help to shape events and not be
led by them, and who will act with iron firmness when the time for such
action comes--should be assigned to such a difficult post as Peking. In
the fifth place, the strange idea, which refuses to be eradicated, that
the Chinese showed themselves in this Peking seige once and for all
incompetent to carry to fruition any military plan, may be somewhat
corrected by the plain and convincing terms in which the eye-witness
describes the manner in which they stayed their hand whenever it could
have slain, and the silent struggle which the Moderates of Chinese
politics must have waged to avert the catastrophe by merely gaining time
and allowing the Desperates to dash themselves to pieces when the
inevitable swing of the pendulum took place. Finally, it will not escape
notice that many remarks borne out all through the narrative tend to
show that British diplomacy in the Far East was at one time at a low
ebb.

Of course the Peking seige has already been amply described in many
volumes and much magazine literature. Dr. Morrison, the famous Peking
correspondent of the _Times_, informs me that he has in his library no
less than forty-three accounts in English alone. The majority of
these, however, are not as complete or enlightening as they might be;
nor has the extraordinarily dramatic nature of the Warning, the Siege,
and the Sack been shown. Thus few people, outside of a small circle in
the Far East, have been able to understand from such accounts what
actually occurred in Peking, or to realise the nature of the fighting
which took place. The two best accounts, Dr. Morrison's own statement
and the French Minister's graphic report-to his government, were both
written rather to fix the principal events immediately after they had
occurred than to attempt to probe beneath the surface, or to deal with
the strictly personal or private side. Nor did they embrace that most
remarkable portion of the Boxer year, the entire sack of Peking and
the extraordinary scenes which marked this latter-day Vandalism. A
veil has been habitually drawn over these little-known events, but in
the narrative which follows it is boldly lifted for the first time.

The eye-witness whose account follows was careful to establish with as
much lucidity as possible each phase of existence during five months
of extraordinary interest. Much in these notes has had to be
suppressed for many reasons, and much that remains may create some
astonishment. Yet it is well to remember that "one eye-witness,
however dull and prejudiced, is worth a wilderness of sentimental
historians." The historians are already beginning to arise; these
pages may serve as a corrective to many erroneous ideas. Perhaps some
also will allow that this curious tragedy, swept into Peking and
playing madly round the entrenched European Legations, has intense
human interest still. The vague terror which oppressed everyone
before the storm actually burst; the manner in which the feeble chain
of fighting men were locked round the European lines, and suffered
grievously but were providentially saved from annihilation; the
curious way in which diplomacy made itself felt from time to time only
to disappear as the rude shock of events taking place near Tientsin
and the sea were reflected in Peking; the final coming of the strange
relief--all these points and many others are made in such a manner
that everyone should be able to understand and to believe. The
description of the last act of the upheaval--the complete sack of
Peking--shows clearly how the lust for loot gains all men, and hand in
hand invites such terrible things as wholesale rape and murder.

The eye-witness attempts to account for all that happened; to make
real and living the hoarse roll of musketry, the savage cries of
desperadoes stripped to the waist and glistening in their sweat; to
give echo to the blood-curdling notes of Chinese trumpets; to limn the
tall mountains of flames licking sky high. If there is failure in
these efforts, it is due to the editing.

The summer of 1900 in Peking will ever remain as famous in the annals
of the world's history as the Indian Mutiny; it was something unique
and unparalleled. With the curious movements now at work in the Far
East, it may not be unwise to study the story again. And after Port
Arthur these pages may show something about which little has been
written--the psychology of the seige. The seige is still the rudest
test in the world. It is well to know it.

B. L. PUTNAM WEALE.

CHINA, June, 1906.




INDISCREET LETTERS FROM PEKING

PART I--THE WARNING

I

FRAGMENTS


12th May, 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

The weather is becoming hot, even here in latitude 40 and in the month
of May. The Peking dust, distinguished among all the dusts of the
earth for its blackness, its disagreeable insistence in sticking to
one's clothes, one's hair, one's very eyebrows, until a grey-brown
coating its visible to every eye, is rising in heavier clouds than
ever. In the market-places, and near the great gates of the city,
where Peking carts and camels from beyond the passes--_k'ou wai_, to
use the correct vernacular--jostle one another, the dust has become
damnable beyond words, and there can be no health possibly in us. The
Peking dust rises, therefore, in clouds and obscures the very sun at
times; for the sun always shines here in our Northern China, except
during a brief summer rainy season, and a few other days you can count
on your fingers. The dust is without significance, you will say, since
it is always there more or less. It is in any case--healthy; it chokes
you, but is reputed also to choke germs; therefore it is good. All of
which is true, only this year there is more of it than ever, meaning
very dry weather indeed for this city, hanging near the gates of
Mongolian deserts--a dry weather spelling the devil for the Northern
farmer.

Meanwhile, is there anything special for me to chronicle? Not much,
although there is a cloud no bigger than your hand in Shantung not a
thousand miles from Weihaiwei, and the German Legation is consequently
somewhat irate. It was noticed at our club, for instance, which, by
the way, is a humble affair, that the German military attache, a
gentleman who wears bracelets, is somewhat effeminate, and plays vile
tennis and worse billiards, had a "hostile attitude" towards the
British Legation--that is, such of the British Legation as gather
together each day at the "ice-shed"--which happens to be the club's
peculiar Chinese name. The military attache is somewhat irate, because
the spectacle of the Weihaiwei regiment, six hundred yellow men under
twelve white Englishmen, chasing malcontents in Shantung, is
derogatory to Teutonic aspirations. Germany has earmarked Shantung,
and it is just like English bluntness to remind the would-be dominant
Power that there is a British sphere and a British colony in the
Chinese province, as well as a German sphere and a German colony. But
the German Minister, a _beau garcon_ with blue eyes and a handsome
moustache, says nothing, and is quite calm.

Meanwhile the cloud no bigger than your hand is quite unremarked by
the rank and file of Legation Street--that I will swear. Chinese
malcontents--"the Society of Harmonious Fists," particular habitat
Shantung province--are casually mentioned; but it is remembered that
the provincial governor of Shantung is a strong Chinaman, one Yuan
Shih-kai, who has some knowledge of military matters, and, better
still, ten thousand foreign-drilled troops. Shantung is all right,
never fear--such is the comment of the day.

But the political situation--the _situation politique_ as we call it
in our several conversations, which always have a diplomatic
turn--although not grave, is unhappy; everybody at least acknowledges
that. Peking has never been what it was before the Japanese war. In
the old days we were all something of a happy family. There were
merely the eleven Legations, the Inspectorate of Chinese Customs, with
the aged Sir R---- H---- at its head, and perhaps a few favoured
globe-trotters or nondescripts looking for rich concessions. Picnics
and dinners, races and excursions, were the order of the day, and
politics and political situations were not burning. Ministers
plenipotentiary and envoys extraordinary wore Terai hats, very old
clothes, and had an affable air--something like what Teheran must
still be. Then came the Japanese war, and the eternal political
situation. Russia started the ball rolling and the others kicked it
along. The Russo-Chinese Bank, appeared on the scenes led by the great
P----, a man with an ominous black portfolio continually under his
arm, as he hurried along Legation Street, and an intriguing expression
always on his dark face--a veritable master of men and moneys, they
say. This intriguing soon found Expression in the Cassini Convention,
denounced as untrue, and followed by a perfectly open and frank
Manchurian railway convention, a convention which, in spite of its
frankness, had future trouble written unmistakably on the face of it.
Besides these things there were always ominous reports of other
things--of great things being done secretly.

After the Russo-Chinese Bank and the Manchurian railway business,
there was the Kiaochow affair, then the Port Arthur affair, the
Weihaiwei and Kwangchowwan affairs, nothing but "affairs" all tending
in the same direction--the making of a very grave political situation.
The juniors to-day make fun of it, it is true, and greet each other
daily with the salutation, "_La situation politique est tres grave_,"
and laugh at the good words. But it is grave notwithstanding the
laughter. Once in 1899, after the Empress Dowager's _coup d'etat_ and
the virtual imprisonment of the Emperor, Legation Guards had to be
sent for, a few files for each of the Legations that possess squadrons
in the Far East, and, what is more, these guards had to stay for a
good many months. The guards are now no more, but it is curious that
the men they came mainly to protect us against--Tung Fu-hsiang's
Mohammedan braves from the savage back province of Kansu who love the
reactionary Empress Dowager--are still encamped near the Northern
capital.

The old Peking society has therefore vanished, and in its place are
highly suspicious and hostile Legations--Legations petty in their
conceptions of men and things--Legations bitterly disliking one
another--in fact, Legations richly deserving all they get, some of the
cynics say.

The Peking air, as I have already said, is highly electrical and
unpleasant in these hot spring days with the dust rising in heavy
clouds. Squabbling and cantankerous, rather absurd and petty, the
Legations are spinning their little threads, each one hedged in by
high walls in its own compound and by the debatable question of the
_situation politique_.

Outside and around us roars the noise of the Tartar city. At night the
noise ceases, for the inner and outer cities are closed to one another
by great gates; but at midnight the gates are opened by sleepy Manchu
guards for a brief ten minutes, so that gorgeous red and blue-trapped
carts, drawn by sleek mules, may speed into the Imperial City for the
Daybreak Audience with the Throne. These conveyances contain the high
officials of the Empire. It has been noticed by a Legation stroller on
the Wall--the Tartar Wall--that the number of carts passing in at
midnight is far greater than usual; that the guards of the city gates
now and again stop and question a driver. It is nothing.

Meanwhile the dust rises in clouds. It is very dry this year--that is
all.




II

MUTTERINGS


24th May, 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

We are beginning to call them Boxers--grudgingly and sometimes harking
back and giving them their full name, "Society of Harmonious Fists,"
or the "Righteous Harmony Fist Society"; but still a beginning has
been made, and they are becoming Boxers by the inevitable process of
shortening which distinguishes speech.

have been talking about them a good deal to-day, these Boxers,
since it has been the birthday of her most excellent Majesty Queen
Victoria, and the British Legation has been _en fete_. Her Majesty's
Minister, in fine, has been entertaining us in the vast and princely
gardens of the British Legation at his own expense. Weird Chinese
lanterns have been lighted in the evening and slung around the
grounds; champagne has been flowing with what effervescence it could
muster; the eleven Legations and the nondescripts have forgotten their
cares for a brief space and have been enjoying the evening air and the
music of Sir R---- H----'s Chinese band. Looking at lighted lanterns,
drinking champagne cup, listening to a Chinese band--where the devil
is the protocol and the political situation, you will say? Not quite
forgotten, since the French Minister attracted the attention of many
all the evening by his vehement manner. I pushed up once, too, and
with a polite bow listened to what he was saying. Ah, the old words,
the eternal words, the political situation, or the _situation
politique_, whichever way you like to use them. But still you listen a
bit, for it is droll to hear the yet unaccustomed word Boxers in
French. "_Les Boxeurs_," he says; and what the French Minister says is
always worth listening to, since he has the best Intelligence corps in
the world--the Catholic priests of China--at his disposal.

Curiously enough, he was speaking of the arch-priest of priests,
renowned above all others in this Peking world, Monseigneur F----,
Vicar Apostolic of the Manchu capital--almost Vicar of God to
countless thousands of dark-yellow converts. It is Monseigneur F----'s
letter of the 19th May, written but five days ago, and already locally
famous through leakage, which was the subject-matter of his impromptu
oration. Monseigneur F---- wrote and demanded a guard of marines for
his cathedral, his people and his chattels--_quarante ou cinquante
marins pour proteger nos personnes et nos biens_, were his exact
words, and his request has been cruelly refused by the Council of
Ministers on the ground that it is absurd. The Vicar Apostolic,
however, gave his grounds for making such a demand calmly and
logically--depicted the damage already done by an anti-foreign and
revolutionary movement in the districts not a thousand miles from
Peking, and solemnly forecasted what was soon to happen....

The French Minister was irate and raised his fat hands above his fat
person, took a discreet look around him, and then hinted that it was
this Legation, the British Legation, which stopped the marines from
coming.

The French Minister was quite irate, and after his discourse was ended
he slipped quietly away--possibly to send some more telegrams. The
crumbs of his conversation were soon gathered up and distributed and
the conviviality somewhat damped. As yet, however, the Boxers are only
laughed at and are not taken quite seriously. They have killed native
Christians, it is true, and it has been proved conclusively now that
it was they who murdered Brooks, the English missionary in Shantung.
But Englishmen are cheap, since there is a glut in the home market,
and their government merely gets angry with them when they get into
trouble and are killed. So many are always getting killed in China.

So the Boxers, with half the governments of Europe, led by England, as
we know by our telegrams, seeking to minimise their importance--in
fact, trying to stifle the movement by ignoring it or lavishing on it
their supreme contempt--have already moved from their particular
habitat, which is Shantung, into the metropolitan province of Chihli.
Already they are in some force at Chochou, only seventy miles to the
southeast of Peking--always massacring, always advancing, and driving
in bodies of native Christians before them on their march. Nobody
cares very much, however, except a vicar apostolic, who urgently
requests forty or fifty marines or sailors "to protect our persons and
our chattels." Foolish bishop he is, is he not, when Christians have
been expressly born to be massacred? Does he not know his history?

Lead on, blind ministers plenipotentiary and envoys extraordinary;
lead on, with your eternal political situations in embryo, your
eternal political situations that have not yet hatched out; while one
that is more pregnant than any you have ever conceived is already
born under your very noses and is being sniffed at by you. But no
matter what happens outside, Peking is safe, that is your dictum, and
the dictum of the day. So, yawning and somewhat tired of the evening's
convivialities, we go our several ways home, in our Peking carts and
our official chairs, and are soon lost in sleep--dreaming, perhaps,
that we have been too long in this dry Northern climate, and that it
is really affecting one's nerves.




III

OVERCAST SKIES


28th May, 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is only four days since we discussed the Vicar Apostolic's letter,
and laughed somewhat at French excitability; but in four days what a
change! The cloud no bigger than your hand is now bigger than your
whole body, bigger, indeed, than the combined bodies of all your
neighbours, supposing you could spread them fantastically in great
layers across the skies. What, then, has happened?

It is that the Boxers, christened by us, as you will remember, but two
or three short weeks ago, have blossomed forth with such fierce growth
that they have become the men of the hour to the exclusion of
everything else, and were one to believe one tithe of the talk
babbling all around, the whole earth is shaking with them. Yet it is a
very local affair--a thing concerning only a tiny portion of a
half-known corner of the world. But for us it is sufficiently grave.
The Peking-Paotingfu railway is being rapidly destroyed; Fentai
station, but six miles from Peking--think of it, only six miles from
this Manchu holy of holies--has gone up in flames; a great steel
bridge has succumbed to the destroying energy of dynamite. All the
European engineers have fled into Peking; and, worst of all, the Boxer
banners have been unfurled; and lo and behold, as they floated in the
breeze, the four dread characters, "_Pao Ch'ing Mien Yang_," have been
read on blood-red bunting--"Death and destruction to the foreigner and
all his works and loyal support to the great Ching dynasty."

Is that sufficiently enthralling, or should I add that the
invulnerability of the Boxer has been officially and indisputably
tested by the Manchus, according to the gossip of the day? Proceeding
to the Boxer camp at Chochou, duly authorised officers of the Crown
have seen recruits, who have performed all the dread rites, and are
initiated, stand fearlessly in front of a full-fledged Boxer; have
seen that Boxer load up his blunderbuss with powder, ramming down a
wad on top; have witnessed a handful of iron buckshot added, but with
no wad to hold the charge in place; have noticed that the master Boxer
gesticulated with his lethal weapon the better to impress his audience
before he fired, but have not noticed that the iron buckshot tripped
merrily out of the rusty barrel since no wad held it in place; and
finally, when the fire-piece belched forth flames and ear-breaking
noise at a distance of a man's body from the recruit's person, they
have seen, and with them thousands of others, that no harm came. It is
astounding, miraculous, but it is true; henceforth, the Boxer is
officially invulnerable and must remain so as long as the ground is
parched. That is what our Chinese reports say.

There are myriads of men already in camp and myriads more speeding on
their way to this Chochou camp of camps, while in village and hamlet
local committees of public safety against the accursed foreigner and
all his works are being quite naturally evolved, and red cloth--that
sign manual of revolt--is already at a premium. The whole-province of
Chihli is shaking; North China will soon be in flames; any one with
half a nose can smell rebellion in the air....

This is one side of the picture, the side which friendly Chinese are
painting for us. Yet when you glance at the eleven Legations, placidly
living their own little lives, you will see them cynically listening
to these old women's tales, while at heart they secretly wonder what
political capital each of them can separately make out of the whole
business, so that their governments may know that Peking has clever
diplomats. Clever diplomats! There have been no clever diplomats in
Peking since G---- of the French Legation took his departure, and that
purring Slav P---- went to Seoul.

Of course Peking is safe, that goes without saying; but merely because
there are foolish women and children, some nondescripts, and a good
many missionaries, we will order a few guards. This, at least, has
just been decided by the Council of Ministers--a rather foolish
council, without backbone, excepting one man. All the afternoon
everybody was occupied in telegraphing the orders and reports of the
day, and these actions are now beyond recall.

Guards have been ordered from the ships lying out at the Taku bar. The
guards will soon be here, and when they have come the movement will
cease. Thus have the eleven Legations spoken, each telegraphing a
different tale to its government, and each more than annoyed by this
joint action. Incidentally each one is secretly wondering what is
going to happen, and whether there is really any danger.

It has been directly telegraphed from London by Her Majesty's
Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Lord Salisbury, so gossip says, that as
quite enough has been heard of this Boxer business it must cease at
once. Is not the South African War still proceeding, and has England
not enough troubles without this additional one? It is almost
pathetic, this peremptory order from a vacillating Foreign Office that
never knows its own mind--this Canute-like bidding of the angry waves
of human men to stand still at once and be no more heard of. People in
Europe will never quite understand the East, for the East is ruled by
things which are impossible in a temperate climate.

Meanwhile, in the Palace, whose pink walls we see blinking at us in
the sun just beyond Legation Street, all is also topsy-turvy, the
Chinese reports say. The Empress Dowager, shrewdly listening to this
person and that, must feel in her own bones that it is a bad business,
and that it will not end well, for she understands dynastic disasters
uncommonly well. She has sent again and again for P'i Hsiao-li,
"Cobbler's-wax" Li, as he is called, the reputed false eunuch who is
master of her inner counsels, if Chinese small talk is to be believed.
The eunuch Li has been told earnestly to find out the truth and
nothing but the truth. A passionate old woman, this Empress Dowager of
China, a veritable Catherine of Russia in her younger days they say,
with her hot Manchu blood and her lust for ruling men. "Cobbler's-wax"
Li, son of a cobbler and falsely emasculated, they say, so that he
might become an eunuch of the Palace, from which lowly estate he has
blossomed into the real power behind the Throne, hastens off once more
to the palace of Prince Tuan, the father of the titular heir-apparent.
As Prince Tuan's discretion has long since been cast to the winds,
and Lao t'uan-yeh, or spiritual Boxer chiefs, now sit at the princely
banqueting tables discussing the terms on which they will rush the
Tartar city with their flags unfurled and their yelling forces behind
them, a foolish and irresolute government, made up of the most diverse
elements, and a rouge-smirched Empress Dowager, will then have to side
with them or be begulfed too. Anxiously listening, "Cobbler's-wax" Li
weights the odds, for no fool is this false eunuch, who through his
manly charms leads an Empress who in turn leads an empire. Half
suspicious and wholly unconvinced, he questions and demands the exact
number of invulnerables that can be placed in line; and is forthwith
assured, with braggart Chinese choruses, that they are as locusts,
that the whole earth swarms with them, that the movement is
unconquerable. Still unconvinced, the false eunuch takes his
departure, and then the Throne decrees and counter decrees in agonised
Edicts. It is noticed, too, that the distributors of the official
organ, the _Peking Gazette_, no longer staidly walk their rounds,
pausing to gossip with their friends, but run with their wooden-block
printed Edicts wet from the presses, and shout indiscreetly to the
passers-by, "Aside, our business is important." In all faith there is
something in this movement. It is also noticed that roughness and
rudeness are growing in the streets; little things that are always the
precursors of the coming storm in the East are freely indulged in, and
"foreign devil" is now almost a chorus. The atmosphere is obviously
unwholesome, but guards have been ordered and it will soon be well.
All these other things of which I speak are merely native reports....

Meanwhile each Legation does not forget its dignity, but walks
stolidly alone. Alone in front of the French Legation is there some
commotion almost hourly. It is, however, only the arrival and
departure of Catholic priests posting to and from the Pei-t'ang about
that little business of forty or fifty marines _pour proteger nos
personnes et nos biens_, that is all. A singularly importunate fellow
this Monseigneur F----, our most reverend Vicar Apostolic of the
Manchu capital.




IV

OUR GUARDS ARRIVE


31st May, 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

We had been dining out, a number of us, this evening, with result that
the good wine and the good fare, for the Peking markets are admirable,
left us reasonably content and in quite a valorous spirit. The party I
was at was neither very large nor very small; we were eighteen, to be
exact, and the political situation was represented in all its gravity
by the presence of a Minister and his spouse. The former has always
been pessimistic, and so we had Boxers for soup, Boxers with the
_entrees_, and Boxers to the end. In fact, if the truth be told, the
Boxers surrounded us in a constant vapour of words so formidable that
one might well have reason to be alarmed. P----, the Minister, was,
indeed, very talkative and gesticulative; his wife was sad and sighed
constantly--_elle poussait des soupirs tristes_--at the lurid
spectacle her husband's words conjured up. According to him, anything
was possible. There might be sudden massacres in Peking itself--the
Chinese Government had gone mad. Rendered more and more talkative by
the wine and the good fare, he became alarming, menacing in the end.
But we became more and more valiant as we ate and drank. That is
always so.

It was all the guards' fault. Telegrams despatched in the morning from
Tientsin distinctly told us that the guards were entraining; later
news said the guards had actually started; and yet when we were almost
through dinner, and it was nearly ten o'clock, there was not a sign of
them. That was the distressing point, and in the end, as it thrust
itself more and more on people's attention, the first great valour
began to ooze. For although the Guardian of the Nine Gates--a species
of Manchu warden or grand constable of Peking--has been officially
warned that foreign guards, whose arrival has been duly authorised by
the Tsung-li Yamen, may be a little late and that consequently the
Ch'ien Men, or the Middle Gate, should be kept open a couple of hours
longer, the chief guardian may become nervous and irate and
incontinently shut the gates. This alone might provoke an outbreak.

This train of thought once started, we busily followed it up, and soon
all the wives were sighing in unison more heavily than ever. I shall
always remember what happened at that psychological moment. A strip of
red-lined native writing-paper was placed in somebody's hands with a
long list of the different detachments which had just passed in
through the Main Gate. At last the guards had arrived. Speedily we
became very valorous again. P---- afterwards said that he knew
something which he had not dared to tell any one--not even his
secretaries.

From this little list, it was soon clear that the British, French,
Russian, American, Italian, and Japanese detachments had arrived. The
Germans and the Austrians were missing, but we concluded that they
would arrive by another train within very few hours. The important
point was that men had been allowed to come through--that the Chinese
Government, in spite of its enormous capacity for mischief, could not
yet have made up its mind how to act. That consoled us.

After this, a faint-hearted attempt was made to continue our talk. But
it was no good. We soon discovered that each one of us had been
simulating a false interest in our never-ending discussion. We really
wished to see with our own eyes these Legation Guards who might still
save the situation.

Strolling out in the warm night, just as we were, we first came on
them in the French Legation. The French detachment were merely sailors
belonging to what they call their _Compagnies de debarquement_, and
they were all brushing each other down and cursing the _sacree
poussiere_. Such a leading _motif_ has this Peking dust become that
the very sailors notice it. Also we found two priests from Monseigneur
F----'s Cathedral, sitting in the garden and patiently waiting for the
Minister's return. I heard afterwards that they would not move until
P---- decided that twenty-five sailors should march the next day to
the Cathedral--in fact at daylight.

In all the Legations I found it was much the same thing--the men of
the various detachments were brushing each other down and exchanging
congratulations that they had been picked for Peking service. It was,
perhaps, only because they were so glad to be allotted shore-duty
after interminable service afloat off China's muddy coasts that they
congratulated one another; but it might be also because they had heard
tell throughout the fleets that the men who had come in '98, after the
_coup d'etat_, had had the finest time which could be imagined--all
loafing and no duties. They did not seem to understand or suspect....

I found later in the night that there had actually been a little
trouble at the Tientsin station. The British had tried to get through
a hundred marines instead of the maximum of seventy-five which had
been agreed on. The Chinese authorities had then refused to let the
train go, and although an English ship's captain had threatened to
hang the station-master, in the end the point was won by the Chinese.
By one or two in the morning everybody was very gay, walking about and
having drinks with one another, and saying that it was all right now.
Then it was that I remembered that it was already June--the historic
month which has seen more crises than any other--and I became a little
gloomy again. It was so terribly sultry and dry that it seemed as if
anything could happen. I felt convinced that the guards were too few.




V

THE PLOT THICKENS


4th June, 1900.

        *       *       *       *       *

No matter in what light you look at it, you realise that somehow--in
some wonderful, inexplicable manner--normal conditions have ceased
long ago--in the month of May, I believe. The days, which a couple of
weeks ago had but twenty-four hours, have now at least forty-two. You
cannot exactly say why this strange state of affairs obtains, for as
yet there is nothing very definite to fix upon, and you have
absolutely no physical sensation of fear; but the mercury of both the
barometer and the thermometer has been somehow badly shaken, and the
mainsprings of all watches and clocks, although still much as the
mainsprings of clocks and watches in other parts of the
world--bringing your mind to bear on it you know they are exactly the
same--are merely mechanism, and allow the day to have at least
forty-two hours. It is strange, is it not, and you begin to understand
vaguely some of the quite impossible Indian metaphysics which tell you
gravely that what is, is not, and that what is not can still be.... In
the crushing heat you can understand that.

Perhaps it is all because the hours are now split into ten separate
and different parts by the fierce rumours which rage for a few minutes
and then, dissipating their strength through their very violence, die
away as suddenly as they came. The air is charged with electricity of
human passions until it throbs painfully, and then.... You are
merrily eating your _tiffin_ or your dinner, and quite calmly cursing
your "_boy_" because something is not properly iced. Your "_boy_," who
is a Bannerman or Manchu and of Roman Catholic family, as are all
servants of polite Peking society, does not move a muscle nor show any
passing indignation, as he would were the ordinary rules and
regulations of life still in existence. He, like everyone of the
hundreds of thousands of Peking and the millions of North China, is
waiting--waiting more patiently than impatient Westerners, but waiting
just as anxiously; waiting with ear wide open to every rumour; waiting
with an eye on every shadow--to know whether the storm is going to
break or blow away. There is something disconcerting, startling,
unseemly in being waited on by those who you know are in turn waiting
on battle, murder, and sudden death. You feel that something may come
suddenly at any moment, and though you do not dare to speak your
thoughts to your neighbour, these thoughts are talking busily to you
without a second's interruption. For if this storm truly comes, it
must sweep everything before it and blot us all out in a horrible way.
Our servants tell us so.

These servants of polite Peking society are favoured mortals, for they
one and all are of the Eight Banners, direct descendants of the Manchu
conquerors of China. And, strangely enough, although they are thus
directly tied to the Manchu dynasty, and that some of them may be even
Red Girdles or lineal descendants of collateral branches of the
Imperial house, they are still more tightly tied to the foreigner
because they are Roman Catholic dating from the early days of
Verbiest and Schall, when the Jesuits were all supreme. On Sundays and
feast days they all proceed to the Vicar Apostolic's own northern
cathedral, and witness the Elevation of the Host to the discordant and
strange sound of Chinese firecrackers, a curious accompaniment,
indeed, permitted only by Catholic complacency. This they love more
than the Throne.

Your Bannerman servant is now the medium of bringing in countless
rumours which he barefacedly alleges are facts, and in impressing on
you that everyone must certainly die unless we quickly act. The three
Roman Catholic Cathedrals of Peking, placed at three points of the
compass, are almost strategic centres surrounded by whole lanes and
districts of Catholics captured to the tenets of Christ, or that
portion deemed sufficient for yellow men, in ages gone by. Every
household of these people during the past few weeks has seen
fellow-religionists from the country places running in sorely
distressed in body and mind, and but ill-equipped in money and means
for this impromptu escape to the capital which everyone vainly hopes
generally is to be a sanctuary. The refugees, it is true, do not
receive all the sympathy they expect, for the Peking Catholic being
the oldest and most mature in the eighteen provinces of China, holds
his head very high, and "new people"--that is, those whose families
have only been baptized, let us say, during the nineteenth
century--are somewhat disdained. In a word, the Peking cathedrals and
their Manchu and other adherents are the Blacks; and not even in papal
Rome could this aristocracy in religion be excelled. But although the
newcomers are disdained, their news is not. Everything they say is
believed. The servants, therefore, browsing rumours wherever they go,
bring back a curious hotchpotch after each separate excursion.
Sometimes the balance swings this way, sometimes that; sometimes it is
ominously black, sometimes only cloudy. You never know what it will be
ten minutes hence, and you must content yourself as best you can. Your
body-servant being a Bannerman (my particular one is a Manchu), and
being reasonably young, is also a reservist of the Peking Field Force,
and consorts with other Bannermen who may be actually on guard at one
of the Palace gates. Who passes in and who passes out of the Palace
now spreads like wildfire round the whole city, for the success of the
Boxers will depend upon the support the Peking Government intends to
give them when the worst comes to the worst. And the Peking Government
is still fencing, because the Palace cannot make up its mind whether
the time has really come when it must act. This lack of decision is
fatal.

Late in the afternoon it transpired that the Empress Dowager was not
in the Imperial city at all, but out at the Summer Palace on the
Wan-shou-shan--the hills of ten thousand ages, as these are poetically
called. Tung Fu-hsiang, whose ruffianly Kansu braves were marched out
of the Chinese city--that is the outer ring of Peking--two nights
before the Legation Guards came in, is also with the Empress, for his
cavalry banners, made of black and blue velvet, with blood-red
characters splashed splendidly across them, have been seen planted at
the foot of the hills. Tung Fu-hsiang is an invincible one, who
stamped out the Kansu rebellion a few years ago with such fierceness
that his name strikes terror to-day into every Chinese heart. As for
P'i Hsiao-li--the false eunuch--he is everywhere, they say, sometimes
here, sometimes there, and quite defying search. The eunuch has a
mighty fortune at stake, and all natives believe that he will betray
himself. Half the pawnshops and banks of Peking belong to him, and he
will not sacrifice his thirty million taels until he is convinced that
his head is at stake. The Summer Palace lies but a dozen miles beyond
Peking's embattled walls, and from the top, straining your eyes to the
west, you can vaguely see the Empress's plaisaunce. A journey in and
out is nothing by cart, and this favoured eunuch has the best mules in
the Empire--black jennets fifteen hands high--and is using them night
and day. And so everyone is asking again and again whether the
Empress has arranged with Prince Tuan, since that is the burning
question; and did this eunuch of eunuchs have his fateful confidential
interview with the secret Boxer leaders, which was to decide finally
on extermination.

The families of other palace eunuchs say yes, and the wife of one
eunuch, living near the South Cathedral, is quite positive, my
servants inform me. Wife of a eunuch, did I say? You will think me
mad, but it is nevertheless true, for Chinese eunuchs have wives. Why
have they wives, you will ask, since they are only half men, and
cannot perform the duties of the male? Well, I can only answer as did
my teacher once when I asked him years ago. "Eunuchs are still men,"
he said, smiling doubtfully, "insomuch as they like homes of their own
beyond the Palace walls and desire children to play with. Since their
wives can bear no children they buy children from poor people, and
these duly become their own. Thus when the eunuch dies he has children
to worship at his grave." In this land of mystery even eunuchs can
correctly become ancestors. Yet this is a trivial detail which I
should not speak of.

So the eunuch's wife living near the South Cathedral, who gossips with
her Black Catholic neighbours, and whose gossip gives me news many
times a day, avers most positively that the chief eunuch has been in
town--that the whole matter has been decided--and that every foreigner
will die. And very late in the evening my Manchu servant rushed in on
me with his eyes sparkling strangely, and his voice so hoarse with
excitement that he did not speak, but shout. "Master," he cried, "I
have seen myself this time; three long carts full of swords and spears
have passed in from the outer city through the Ha-ta Gate. The city
guards stopped and questioned the drivers--then let them go. They had
a pass from the Governor of Peking, and the people all say it is now
coming." Now do you wonder about our clocks and our watches, and our
time? Nothing can ever be normal again until this terrible question is
solved.




VI

THE LICKING FLAMES APPROACH


9th June 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is getting desperate, of that there is now no shadow of doubt. The
Tientsin trains that have been lately running more and more slowly and
irregularly, as if they, too, were waiting on the pleasure of the
coming storm, are going to run no more, and the odds are heavily
against to-day's train ever reaching its destination. It is true these
trains have long ceased running as far as we are personally concerned,
for the weariness of living forty-two hours during twenty-four dulls
one's perception of everything excepting one's immediate surroundings.
And even one's surroundings are somehow shrinking until they will soon
be but the four walls of a courtyard. But about the trains--why are
they stopping? Because the licking flames are approaching so near that
they will soon overwhelm all who are concerned with the running of
trains unless they disappear very nimbly. One of the Chinese railway
managers, an educated man in the Western sense who can quote
Shakespeare, has been all over Legation Street yesterday and to-day,
pointing out the hopelessness of the general position and almost
openly urging the Legations to call on Europe to take steps. General
Nieh, an intelligent general, with foreign-drilled troops, has indeed
been fitfully ordered by Imperial Edict to "protect the railway," and
to keep communication open, but this order has already come to
nothing, and the position is worse than it was before. His troops,
merely desirous of testing their brand-new Mausers, and as calmly
cruel as only Easterns can be, did open a heavy fire a day or two ago
on some Boxer marauders who had strayed into a station on the
Tientsin-Peking line, and proposed to crucify the native
station-master and beat all others, who were indirectly eating the
foreign devils' rice by working on the railway, into lumps of jelly.
General Nieh's men let their rifles crash off, not because their
sympathies were against the Boxers, but probably because every living
man armed with a rifle loves to fire at another living man when he can
do so without harm to himself. This is my brutal explanation. But in
any case these soldiers have now been marched off in semi-disgrace to
their camp at Lutai, a few miles to the north of Tientsin, and told
never to do such rash and indiscreet things again. That means the end
of any attempts to control. For the Boxer partisans in Peking allege
that the soldiers actually hit and killed a good many men, which is
quite without precedent, and is upsetting all plans. On such occasions
it is always understood that you fire a little in the air, warwhoop a
good deal, and then come back quietly to camp with captured flags and
banners as undeniable evidences of your victory. This has been the old
method of making domestic war in China--the only one.

But all this is many miles from the sacred capital. The cry is still
that we of Peking are safe, and that even if this is to be a true
rebellion we cannot be hurt. The cry, however, is not so lusty as it
was even three or four days ago, and, indeed, has only become an
official cry--that is, one you are permitted to contradict privately
when you meet your dear colleagues in the street and wonder aloud
what is really going to happen. In the despatches Peking is still
quite safe, although unwholesome. Yet our own private political
situations, of which we were so proud and talked so vauntingly, have
all now disappeared, miserable things, and are quite lost and
forgotten. No one cares to talk about them. People merely say that all
business is temporarily suspended; that we must wait and merely mark
time.

But we discovered something worth knowing at the last moment to-day
which is, without any doubt, true. The Empress Dowager returned to-day
from the Summer Palace, and is now actually in the Forbidden City. We
are at a loss to know exactly as yet what this means, and whether it
is an augury of good or of bad. The Winter Palace is so near us; it is
just to the west of us. The fact that the redoubtable Tung Fu-hsiang
rode behind his Imperial mistress with his banner-bearers flaunting
their colours and his trumpets blaring as loudly as possible is,
however, not very reassuring. It seemed like defiance and treachery.

But at first, in spite of the Empress's entry, there were not many
rumours accompanying her; in the late afternoon they came so thick and
fast that no one had time to write them down. But of rumours we have
had more than our bellyful. Let me tell some of the facts.

First and foremost. The racecourse grand-stand where less than a month
ago we were all watching the struggles for victory between our various
short-legged ponies, has gone up in flames and puff--just like
that--the social battle-ground is no more. The Boxers, for everybody
who does anything nowadays is a Boxer, tried to grill our official
caretakers on the red-hot bricks, but the neighbouring village came to
the rescue and shouted the marauders out of the place. That is the
nearest danger which has been heard of. Immediately after this some
Legation students, riding out on the sands under the Tartar Wall, were
openly attacked by spear-armed men, and only escaped by galloping
furiously and firing the revolvers which everyone now carries. Most
important of all, however, to us is that aged Sir R---- H---- is
hauling down his colours, and has been rapidly calling in all his
scattered staff who live near the premises of the Tsung-li
Yamen--China's Foreign Office. Here we are, the Legations of all
Europe, with five hundred sailors and marines cleaning their rifles
and marking out distances in the capital of a so-called friendly
Power; with our _pro forma_ despatches still being despatched while
our real messages are frightened; attempting to weather a storm which
the Chinese Government is powerless to arrest. The very passers-by are
becoming sheep-eyed and are looking at us askance.

Passers-by, did I say? But do not imagine from this that there are
many of these, for the Chinese have been for days avoiding the
Legation quarter as if it were plague-stricken, and sounds that were
so roaring a few weeks ago are now daily becoming more and more
scarce. A blight is settling on us, for we are accursed by the whole
population of North China, and who knows what will be the fate of
those seen lurking near the foreigner?

And now when we wander even in our own streets--that is, those
abutting immediately on our compounds of the Legation area--a new
nickname salutes our ears. No longer are we mere _yang kuei-tzu_,
foreign devils; we have risen to the proud estate of _ta mao-tzu_, or
long-haired ones of the first class. _Mao-tzu_ is a term of some
contemptuous strength, since _mao_ is the hair of animals, and our
barbarian heads are not even shaved. The _ta_--great or first
class--is also significant, because behind our own detested class
press two others deserving of almost equal contempt at the hands of
all believers in divine Boxerism. These are _ehr-mao-tzu_ and _san
mao-tzu_, second and third class coarse-haired ones. All good converts
belong to the second class, and death awaits them, our servants say;
while as to the third category, all having any sort of connection,
direct or indirect with the foreigner and his works are lumped
indiscriminately together in this one, and should be equally detested.
The small talk of the tea-shops now even says that officials having a
few sticks of European furniture in their houses are _san mao-tzu_. It
is very significant, too, this open talk in the tea-shops, because in
official Peking, the very centre of the enormous, loose-jointed
Empire, political gossip is severely disliked and the four characters,
"_mo t'an kuo shih_" (eschew political discussions), are skied in
every public room. People in the old days of last month heeded this
four-character warning, for a bambooing at the nearest police-station,
_ting erh_, was always a possibility. Now everyone can do as he
likes.

It is, therefore, becoming patent to the most blind that this is going
to be something startling, something eclipsing any other anti-foreign
movement ever heard of, because never before have the users of foreign
imports and the mere friends of foreigners been labelled in a class
just below that of the foreigners themselves. And then as it became
dark to-day, a fresh wave of excitement broke over the city and
produced almost a panic. The main body of Tung Fu-hsiang's savage
Kansu braves--that is, his whole army--re-entered the capital and
rapidly encamped on the open places in front of the Temples of Heaven
and Agriculture in the outer ring of Peking. This settled it, I am
glad to say. At last all the Legations shivered, and urgent telegrams
were sent to the British admiral for reinforcements to be rushed up at
all costs.

But too late--too late; the Manchu servants who have friends among the
guards at the Palace gates have said this all the evening. For the
Chinese Colossus, lumbering and lazy, sluggish and ill-equipped, has
raised himself on his elbow, and with sheep-like and calculating eyes
is looking down on us--a pigmy-like collection of foreigners and their
guards--and soon will risk a kick--perhaps even will trample us
quickly to pieces. How bitterly everyone is regretting our false
confidence, and how our chiefs are being cursed!




VII

THE CITY OF PEKING AND ALL ITS GLORIES


11th June, 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

You do not know this Capital of Capitals, perhaps--that is, you do not
know it as you should if the scenes which may presently move across
the stage, now in shouting crowds of sword-armed men, now in pitiable
incidents of small account, are to be properly understood, and their
dramatic setting, stirring blood-thrilling, incongruous as they must
be and can only be. I feel that something will come--I even know it. I
have been talking vaguely about this and about that; have begun
preparing colours, as it were, in the usual careless fashion without
explanations or digressions--until you possibly wonder what it is all
about. For you have not yet seen the barbaric frame which will hedge
in the whole--the barbaric frame in all truth, since it is gradually
closing in on us on every side until, like some mediaeval torture-room,
we may have the very life crushed out of us by a cruel pressure. But
enough of fine phrases; while there is time let me write something.

Peking is at least two thousand years old. Several hundred years
before Christ, they say a Chinese kingdom made the present site the
capital, and began building the outer walls; but the Chinese, the
gentler Chinese who had all military spirit crushed out of them five
thousand years before by having to tramp from Mesopotamia to where
they now are in the eighteen provinces, these Chinese, I say, never
had in Peking anything but a temporary trysting-place. For Peking
stands for a sort of blatant barbarianism, mounted on sturdy ponies,
pouring in from the far North; and the history of Peking can only be
said to begin when Mongol-Tartars, who have always been freebooters
and robbers, forced their way in and imposed their militarism on a
nation of shopkeepers and collectors of taxes.

Even before the Christian era, the Chinese chronicles tell of the
pressure of these fierce barbarians from the North being so much felt
and their raids so constant, that Chi Huang-ti, the ruler of the
powerful Chinese feudatory state which laid the foundations of the
present Empire of China, began to build the Great Wall of China and to
fortify old Peking as the only means of stopping these living waves.
The Great Wall took ages to build, for the Northern barbarians always
kept cunningly slipping round the uncompleted ends, and the Mings, the
last purely Chinese sovereigns to reign in Peking, actually added
three hundred miles to this colossal structure in the year 1547, or
nearly two thousand years after the first bricks had been cemented.
That shows you what people they were, and what the contest was.

For hundreds of years the war with the semi-nomadic hordes of the
North continued. Sometimes isolated bands of Tartars broke through the
Chinese defence and enslaved the people, but never for very long;
instinctively by the use of every stratagem the cleverer Chinese
compassed their destruction. While Attila and his Huns were ravaging
Europe in the fifth century, other _Hwingnoo_, or Huns, veritable
scourges of God, forced their way into China. In this fashion, while
China itself was passing through a dozen different forms of
government, and had a dozen capitals--sometimes owning allegiance to a
single Emperor such as those of the T'ang dynasty who added Canton and
the Cantonese to the Empire, sometimes split into petty kingdoms such
as the "Ten States"--this curious frontier war continued and was
handed down from father to son. Chinese industrialism and socialism,
content to accept whatever form of government Chinese strong men
succeeded in imposing, instinctively kept up an iron resistance to
these Northern invaders. Such was the fear inspired, that a proverb
coined thousands of years ago is still current. "Do not fear the cock
from the South, but the wolf from the North," it says. Everybody is
always quoting this saying. I have heard it twice to-day.

It was not until the tenth century that the Tartars finally broke
through and established themselves definitively on Chinese soil. The
Khitans, a Manchu-Tartar people, springing from Central Manchuria,
then captured Peking and made it their capital. The Khitans were a
cheerful people, with a peculiar sense of humour and a still greater
conviction of the inferiority of women. To show their contempt for
them, it is still recorded that they used to slit the back of their
wives and drink their blood to give them strength. For two and a half
centuries the Khitans, under the style of the Liao or Iron dynasty,
maintained their position by the use of the sword, and then succumbing
to the sapping influence of Chinese civilisation, they in turn were
unable to resist a second Manchu-Mongol horde, the Kins. The Kins,
under the style of the Silver dynasty, reigned in Northern China for a
term of years, but there was nothing of a permanent character in their
rule, since they were uncouth barbarians who soon drank themselves to
death and destruction.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century Genghis Khan, the great
Mongol, born in the bleak Hsing-an Mountains, gathered together all
the restless bands of Mongolia, and sweeping down on Peking drove out
the Kins and established the purely Mongol dynasty of the Yuan. Up
till then Peking had consisted of what is to-day the Chinese city, or
the older outer city. Kublai Khan, Genghis's grandson, fixed his
residence definitively in Peking in 1264, and began building the
_Ta-tu_, or Great Residence--the Tartar city of to-day. The Chinese
city is oblong; the Tartar city is squat and square and overlaps and
dominates the northern walls of the older city. Kublai Khan, by
building the Tartar city on the northern edge of the Chinese city and
fortifying it with immense strength, may be said to have fitted the
spear-head on to the Chinese shaft, and to have given the key-note to
the policy which exists to this day--the policy of the North of China
dominating the South of China.

In time the Yuan dynasty of Mongols passed away--their strength sapped
by confinement to walled cities because their power was only on the
tented field. Ser Marco Polo, that audacious traveller, never tires of
telling of the magnificence of the Mongol Khans and their resplendent
courts. It requires no Marco Polo to assure us that the thirteenth
century of the Far East was immeasurably in advance of the thirteenth
century of Europe. The vast and magnificent works which remain to this
day, weather-beaten though they be; the fierce reds, the wonderful
greens, the boldness and size of everything, speak to us of an age
which knew of mighty conquests of all Asia by invincible Mongol
horsemen....

The Mongols were succeeded by the Mings--a purely Chinese house; but
the Mings, in some terror of the rough North, since for over four
centuries Tartars or Manchu-Mongols had been the overlords of China,
discreetly established their capital on the Yangtsze and called it
Nanking, or the Southern capital. It was only the third Emperor of the
Mings who dared to remove the court to Peking. His choice was ill made
for his dynasty, since a century and a half had hardly passed before
fresh hordes--the modern Manchus--began to gather strength in the
mountains and valleys to the northeast of Moukden. Fighting
stubbornly, Nurhachu, the founder of this new enterprise, steadily
broke through Chinese resistance in the Liaotung, then a Chinese
province colonised from Chihli, and slowly but surely reached out
towards Peking, the goal which beckons to everyone. The Great Wall,
built eighteen hundred years before as a protection against other
barbarians of the same stock, stopped Nurhachu a hundred times, and
although he captured Moukden and made it a Manchu capital, he died
worn out by half a century of warfare. His son, Tai Tsung, or Tien
Tsung, nothing daunted, took up the struggle, and finding it
impossible to break through the fortifications of the East, near
Shan-hai-kwan, adopted Genghis Khan's route--the passes leading in
from the great grassy plains of Mongolia many hundreds of miles to the
West. Allying himself by marriage with Mongols, the Manchu monarch
began a series of grand raids through their territory in the direction
of Peking. Once he actually reached Peking and sat down in front of
its mighty walls to besiege it. But he found his strength unequal to
the task, and once more was forced to retire. Then this second Manchu
prince died, and was succeeded by a tiny grandson of five. The regent
appointed by the Manchu nobles owed his final success to the fact that
he was called in by the Chinese generals commanding the coveted
Shan-hai-kwan gates to rescue Peking from the hands of Chinese
insurgents, who had everywhere arisen; and in 1644, after seventy
years of warfare, the Manchus seated themselves on the Dragon Throne,
in defiance of the wishes of the people, but backed up by a vast
concourse of Manchus and Mongols, and half the fierce blades of
Eastern Asia.

The history of all these centuries of warfare is eloquently written on
all the buildings, the fortifications, the monuments, the palaces and
temples of Peking which surround us. Peking is the Delhi of China, and
the grave of warlike barbarians. Four separate times have Tartars
broken in and founded dynasties, and four separate times have Chinese
culture and civilisation sapped rugged strength, and made the rulers
the _de facto_ servants of the ceremonious inhabitants. In the Tartar
city there are Yellow Lama temples, with hundreds of bare-pated lama
priests, the results of Buddhist Concordats guaranteeing Thibetan
semi-independence in return for a tacit acknowledgment of Chinese
suzerainty. Near the Palace walls is a Mongolian Superintendency,
where the Mongol hordes still grazing their herds and their flocks on
the grassy plains of high Asia, as they have done for countless
centuries, are divided up into Banners, or military divisions, showing
the enormous strength in irregular cavalry they possessed two hundred
and fifty years ago. Round the Forbidden City are the Six Boards and
the Nine Ministries, the outward signs of those bonds of etiquette
and procedure which bind the Manchu Throne to the eighteen provinces.
The walls of the Tartar city heave up fifty feet in the air, and are
forty feet thick. The circumference of the outer ring of
fortifications is over twenty miles. Each gate is surmounted by a
square three-storied tower or pagoda, vast and imposing. Round the
city and through the city run century-old canals and moats with
water-gates shutting down with cruel iron prongs. In the Chinese city
the two Temples of Heaven and Agriculture raise their altars to the
skies, invoking the help of the deities for this decaying but proud
Chinese Empire. Think of the millions of dead hands that fashioned
such enormous strength and old-time magnificence! On the corner of the
Tartar Wall is the old Jesuit Observatory with beautiful
dragon-adorned instruments of bronze given by a Louis of France. There
are temples with yellow-gowned or grey-gowned priests in their
hundreds founded in the times of Kublai Khan. There are Mohammedan
mosques, with Chinese muezzins in blue turbans on feast days; Manchu
palaces with vermillion-red pillars and archways and green and gold
ceilings. There are unending lines of camels plodding slowly in from
the Western deserts laden with all manner of merchandise; there are
curious palanquins slung between two mules and escorted by sword-armed
men that have journeyed all the way from Shansi and Kansu, which are a
thousand miles away; a Mongol market with bare-pated and long-coated
Mongols hawking venison and other products of their chase; comely
Soochow harlots with reeking native scents rising from their hair;
water-carriers and barbers from sturdy Shantung; cooks from epicurean
Canton; bankers from Shansi--the whole Empire of China sending its
best to its old-world barbaric capital, which has now no strength.

And right in the centre of it all is the Forbidden City, enclosing
with its high pink walls the palaces which are full of warm-blooded
Manchu concubines, sleek eunuchs who speak in wheedling tones, and is
always hot with intrigue. At the gates of the Palace lounge bow and
jingal-armed Imperial guards. Inside is the Son of Heaven himself, the
Emperor imprisoned in his own Palace by the Empress Mother, who is as
masterful as any man who ever lived....

I beg you, do you begin to see something of Peking and to understand
the eleven miserable little Legations, each with its own particular
ideas and intrigues, but crouching all together under the Tarter Wall
and tremblingly awaiting with mock assurance the bursting of this
storm? If you are so good as to see this you will realise the
wonderful stage effects, the fierce Mediaevalism in senile decay, the
superb distances, the red dust from the Gobi that has choked up all
the drains and tarnished all the magnificence until it is no more
magnificence at all--this dust which is such a herald of the coming
storm--the new guns and pistols of Herr Krupp and the camels of the
deserts and all the other things all mixed up together....

Oh, I see that we are absurd and can only be made more ridiculous by
coming events. Of course the Boxers coming in openly through the gates
cannot be true, and yet--shades of Genghis Khan and all his Tartars,
what is that? When I had got as far as this from all sides came a
tremendous blaring of barbaric trumpets--those long brass trumpets
that can make one's blood curdle horribly, a blaring which has now
upset everything I was about to write and also my inkpot. I rushed
out to inquire; it was only a portion of the Manchu Peking Field Force
marching home, but the sounds have unsettled us all again, and in the
tumult of one's emotions one does not know what to believe and what to
fear. Everything seems a little impossible and absurd, especially what
I am now writing from hour to hour.




VIII

SOME INCIDENTS AND THE ONE MAN


12th June, 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

Even the British Legation--"the stoical, sceptical, ill-informed
British Legation," as S---- of the American Legation calls it--is
wringing its hands with annoyance, and were it Italian, and therefore
dramatically articulate, its curses and _maladette_ would ascend to
the very heavens in a menacing cloud like our Peking dust. For on
England we have all been waiting because of an ancient prestige; and
England, everyone says, is mainly responsible for our present plight.
Everybody is lowering at England and the British Legation along
Legation Street, because S---- was not sent for two weeks ago, and the
language of the minor missions, who could not possibly expect to
receive protecting guards unless they swam all the way from Europe, is
sulphurous. They ask with much reason why we do not lead events
instead of being lead by them; why are we so foolish, so confident.
What has happened to justify all this, you will ask? Well, permit me
to speak.

The day before yesterday several Englishmen rode down to the Machiapu
railway station, which is just outside the Chinese city, and is our
Peking station, to welcome, as they thought, Admiral S---- and his
reinforcements, so despairingly telegraphed for by the British
Legation just fourteen days later than should have been done. Their
passage to the station was unmarked by incidents, excepting that they
noted with apprehension the thickly clustering tents of Kansu soldiery
in the open spaces fronting the vast Temples of Heaven and
Agriculture. Once the station was reached a weary wait began, with
nothing to relieve the tedium, for the vast crowds which usually
surround the "fire-cart stopping-place," to translate the vernacular,
all had disappeared, and in place of the former noisiness there was
nothing but silence.

At last, somewhat downcast, our Englishmen were forced to return
without a word of news, passing into the Chinese city when it was
almost dusk. Alas! the Kansu soldiery, after the manner of all
Celestials, were taking the air in the twilight; and no sooner did
they spy the hated foreigner than hoots and curses rose louder and
louder. The horsemen quickened their pace, stones flew, and had it not
been for the presence of mind of one man they would have been torn to
pieces. They left the great main street of the outer city in a
tremendous uproar and seemed glad to be back among friends.

Yesterday, the 11th, it seemed absolutely certain S---- would arrive,
since he must have left Tientsin on the 10th, and it is only ninety
miles by rail. The Legations wished to despatch a messenger, but the
Kansu soldiery on those open spaces were not attractive, and nobody
was very anxious to brave them. Who was to go? No sooner was it
mentioned in the Japanese Legation than, of course, a Japanese was
found ready to go; in fact, several Japanese almost came to blows on
the subject. Sugiyama, the _chancelier_, somehow managed to prove that
he had the best right, and go he did, but never to return.

It was dark before his carter turned up in Legation Street, covered
with dust and bespattered with blood, while I happened to be there. It
was an ugly story he unfolded, and it is hardly good to tell it. On
the open spaces facing the supplicating altars of Heaven and
Agriculture this little Japanese, Sugiyama, met his death in a horrid
way. The Kansu soldiery were waiting for more cursed foreigners to
appear, and this time they had their arms with them and were
determined to have blood. So they killed the Japanese brutally while
he shielded himself with his small hands. They hacked off all his
limbs, barbarians that they are, decapitated him, then mutilated his
body. It now lies half-buried where it was smitten down. The carter
who drove him was eloquent as only Orientals can be when tragedy
flings their customary reserve aside: "May my tongue be torn out if I
scatter falsehoods," he said again and again, using the customary
phrase, as he showed how it all happened. And late into the night he
was still reciting his story to fresh crowds of listeners, who gaped
with terror and astonishment. Squatting in a great Peking courtyard on
his hams and calling on the unseen powers to tear out his tongue if he
lied, he was a figure of some moment, this Peking carter, for those
that thought; for everybody realises that we are now caught and cannot
be driven out....

This was the 11th. On the 12th, the day was still more startling, for
somehow the shadow which has been lurking so near us seems to have
been thrown more forward and become more intense. The hero of the
affair is the one really brave man among our chiefs, of course--the
Baron von K----, the Kaiser's Minister to the Court of Peking.

The Baron is no stranger in Peking, although he has been here but a
twelvemonth in his new capacity as Minister. Fifteen years ago his
handsome face charmed more than one fair lady in the old pre-political
situation days, when there was plenty of time for picnics and
love-making. Then he was only an irresponsible attache; now he is here
as a very full-blooded plenipotentiary, with the burden of a special
German political mission in China, bequeathed him by his pompous and
mannerless predecessor, Baron von H----, to support. But a man is the
present German Minister if there was ever one, and it was in the newly
macadamised Legation Street that the incident I am about to relate
occurred.

Walking out in the morning, the German Minister saw one of the
ordinary hooded Peking carts trotting carelessly along, with the mule
all ears, because the carter was urging him along with many digs near
the tail. But it was not the cart, nor the carter, nor yet the mule,
which attracted His Excellency's immediate attention, but the
passenger seated on the customary place of the off-shaft. For a moment
Baron von K---- could not believe his eyes. It was nothing less than a
full-fledged Boxer with his hair tied up in red cloth, red ribbons
round his wrists and ankles, and a flaming red girdle tightening his
loose white tunic; and, to cap all, the man was audaciously and calmly
sharpening a big carver knife on his boots! It was sublime insolence,
riding down Legation Street like this in the full glare of day, with a
knife and regalia proclaiming the dawn of Boxerism in the Capital of
Capitals, and withal, was a very ugly sign. What did K---- do--go home
and invite some one to write a despatch for him to his government
deprecating the growth of the Boxer movement, and the impossibility
of carrying out conciliatory instructions, as some of his colleagues,
including my own chief, would have done? Not a bit of it! He tilted
full at the man with his walking stick, and before he could escape had
beaten a regular roll of kettledrums on his hide. Then the Boxer,
after a short struggle, abandoned his knife, and ran with some
fleetness of foot into a neighbouring lane. The gallant German
Minister raised the hue and cry, and then discovered yet another Boxer
inside the cart, whom he duly secured by falling on top of him; and
this last one was handed over to his own Legation Guards. The fugitive
was followed into Prince Su's grounds, which run right through the
Legation area, and there cornered in a house. The mysterious Dr. M----
then suddenly appeared on the scenes and insisted upon searching the
Manchu Prince's entire grounds and most private apartments. But time
was wasted in _pourparlers_, and in spite of a minute inspection,
which extended even to the concubine apartments, the Boxer vanished in
some mysterious way like a breath, and is even now untraced. This
shows us conclusively that there are accomplices right in our midst.

No sooner had this incident occurred and been bandied round with
sundry exaggerations, than the life of the Legations and the
nondescripts who have been coming in from the country became more
abnormal than ever. For in spite of our extraordinary position, even
up to to-day we were attempting to work--that is, writing three lines
of a despatch, and then rushing madly out to hear the latest news. Now
not so much as one word is written, and our eleven Legations are
openly terribly perturbed in body and mind and conscious of their
intense impotence, although we have all the so-called resources of
diplomacy still at our command, and we are officially still on the
friendliest terms with the Chinese Government.

This morning, the 12th, there was another commotion--this time in
Customs Street, as it is called. Three more Boxers, armed with swords
and followed by a crowd of loafers, fearful but curious, ran rapidly
past the Post Office, which faces the Customs Inspectorate, and got
into a small temple a few hundred feet away, where they began their
incantations. It was decided to attack them only with riding-whips, so
as to avoid drawing first blood. But when a party of us arrived, we
could not get into their retreat, as they had barricaded themselves
in. So marines and sailors were requisitioned with axes; after a lot
of exhausting work it was discovered that the birds had flown. This
was another proof that there is treachery among friendly natives, for
without help these Boxers could never have escaped.

And now imagine our excitement and general perturbation. Since the 8th
or 9th, I really forget which date, we have been acting on a more or
less preconcerted plan--that is, as far as our defences are concerned,
as we have been quite cut off from the outer world. The commanders of
the British, American, German, French, Italian, Russian, Austrian and
Japanese detachments have met and conferred--each carefully instructed
by his own Minister just how far he is to acquiesce in his colleagues'
proposals, which is, roughly speaking, not at all. We can have no
effective council of war thus, because there is no commander-in-chief,
and everybody is a claimant to the post. There is first an Austrian
captain of a man-of-war lying off the Taku bar, who was merely up in
Peking on a pleasure trip when he was caught by the storm, but this
has not hindered him taking over command of the Austrian sailors from
the lieutenant who brought them up; and everybody knows that a captain
in the navy ranks with a colonel in the army. There are no military
men in Peking excepting three captains of British marines, one
Japanese lieutenant-colonel and his aide-de-camp, and some unimportant
military attaches, who are very junior. So on paper the command should
lie between two men--the Austrian naval captain and the Japanese
lieutenant-colonel. But, then, the Japanese have instructions to
follow the British lead, and the senior British marine captain has
orders to follow, his own ideas, and his own ideas do not fancy the
unattached Austrian captain of a man-of-war. So the concerted plan of
defence has only been evolved very suddenly, a plan which has resolved
itself naturally into each detachment-commander holding his own
Legation as long as he could, and being vaguely linked to his
neighbour by picquets of two or three men. But about this you will
understand more later on. The point I wish you now to realise is that
the counsels of the allied countries of Europe in the persons of their
Legation Guards' commanders are as effective as those of very juvenile
kindergartens. Everybody is intensely jealous of everybody else and
determined not to give way on the question of the supreme command. Of
course, if the storm comes suddenly, without any warning, we are
doomed, because you cannot hold an area a mile square with a lot of
men who are fighting among themselves, and who have fallen too quickly
into our miserably petty Peking scheme of things.




IX

THE COMING OF THE BOXERS


14th June, 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

I had risen yesterday some what late in the day with the oddness and
uncomfortableness--I do not mean discomfort--which comes from too much
boots, too much disturbance of one's ordinary routine, too much
listening to people airing their opinions and recounting rumours, and,
last of all, very wearied by the uncustomary task of transporting a
terrible battery of hand artillery (for we are at last all heavily
armed); and consequent of these varied things, I, like everybody else,
was a good deal out of temper and rather sick of it all. I began to
ask myself this question: Were we really playing an immense comedy, or
was there a great and terrible peril menacing us? I could never get
beyond asking the question. I could not think sanely long enough for
the answer.

The day passed slowly, and very late in the afternoon, when some of us
had completed a tour of the Legations, and looked at their various
picquets, I finished up at the Austrian Legation and the Customs
Street. Men were everywhere sitting about, idly watching the dusty and
deserted streets, half hoping that something was going to happen
shortly, when suddenly there was a shout and a fierce running of feet.
Something had happened.

We all jumped up as if we had been shot, for we had been sitting very
democratically on the sidewalk, and round the corner, running with
the speed of the scared, came a youthful English postal carrier. That
was all at first.

But behind him were Chinese, and ponies and carts ridden or driven
with recklessness that was amazing. The English youth had started
gasping exclamations as he ran in, and tried to fetch his breath, when
from the back of the Austrian Legation came a rapid roll of musketry.
Austrian marines, who were spread-eagled along the roofs of their
Legation residences, and on the top of the high surrounding wall, had
evidently caught sight of the edge of an advancing storm, and were
firing fiercely. We seized our rifles--everybody has been armed
_cap-a-pie_ for days--and in a disorderly crowd we ran down to the end
of the great wall surrounding the Austrian compounds to view the broad
street which runs towards the city gates. The firing ceased as
suddenly as it had begun, and in its place arose a perfect storm of
distant roaring and shouting. Soon we could see flames shooting up not
more than half a mile from where we stood; but the intervening houses
and trees, the din and the excitement, coupled with the stern order of
an Austrian officer, shouted from the top of an outhouse, not to move
as their machine-gun was coming into action over our heads, made it
impossible for us to understand or move forward. What was it?

Presently somebody trotted up from behind us on a pony, and, waiting
his opportunity, rode into the open, and with considerable skill
seized a fleeing Chinaman by the neck. This prisoner was dragged in
more dead than alive with fear, and he told us that all he knew was
that as he had passed into the Tartar city through the Ha-ta Gate a
quarter of an hour before, myriads of Boxers--those were his
words--armed with swords and spears, and with their red sashes and
insignia openly worn, had rushed into the Tartar city from the Chinese
city, slashing and stabbing at everyone indiscriminately. The
foreigners' guns had caught them, he said, and dusted them badly, and
they were now running towards the north, setting fire to chapels and
churches, and any evidences of the European they could find. He knew
nothing more. We let our prisoner go, and no sooner had he disappeared
than fresh waves of fugitives appeared sobbing and weeping with
excitement. The Boxers, deflected from the Legation quarter, were
spreading rapidly down the Ha-ta Great Street which runs due north,
and everybody was fleeing west past our quarter. Never have I seen
such fast galloping and driving in the Peking streets; never would I
have believed that small-footed women, of whom there are a goodly
number even in the large-footed Manchu city, could get so nimbly over
the ground. Everybody was panic-stricken and distraught, and we could
do nothing but look on. They went on running, running, running. Then
the waves of men, women and animals disappeared as suddenly as they
had come, and the roads became once again silent and deserted. Far
away the din of the Boxers could still be heard, and flames shooting
up to the skies now marked their track; but of the dreaded men
themselves we had not seen a single one.

We had now time to breathe, and to run round making inquiries. We
found the Italian picquet at the Ha-ta end of Legation Street nearly
mad with excitement; the men were crimson and shouting at one another.
But there was nothing new to learn. Bands of Boxers had passed the
Italian line only eighty or a hundred yards off, and a number of dark
spots on the ground testified to some slaughter by small-bore Mausers.
They had been given a taste of our guns, that was all; and, fearing
the worst, every able-bodied man in the Legations fell in at the
prearranged posts and waited for fresh developments.

At eight o'clock, while we were hurriedly eating some food, word was
passed that fires to the north and east were recommencing with renewed
vigour. The Boxers, having passed two miles of neutral territory, had
reached the belt of abandoned foreign houses and grounds belonging to
the foreign Customs, to missionaries, and to some other people.
Pillaging and burning and unopposed, they were spreading everywhere.
Flames were now leaping up from a dozen different quarters, ever
higher and higher. The night was inky black, and these points of fire,
gathering strength as their progress was unchecked, soon met and
formed a vast line of flame half a mile long. There is nothing which
can make such a splendid but fearful spectacle as fire at night. The
wind, which had been blowing gently from the north, veered to the
east, as if the god's wished us to realise our plight; and on the
breeze leading towards the Legations, some sound of the vast tumult
and excitement was wafted to us. The whole city seemed now to be alive
with hoarse noises, which spoke of the force of disorder unloosed.
Orders for every man to stand by and for reinforcements to be massed
near the Austrian quarter were issued, and impatient, yet impotent, we
waited the upshot of it all. Chinese officialdom gave no sign; not a
single word did or could the Chinese Government dare to send us. We
were abandoned to our own resources, as was inevitable.

Suddenly a tremor passed over all who were watching the brilliant
scene. The flames, which till then had been confined to a broad belt
at least three thousand yards from our eastern picquets, began leaping
up a mile nearer. The Boxers, having destroyed all the foreign houses
in the Tsung-li Yamen quarter, were advancing up rapidly on the Tung
T'ang--the Roman Catholic Eastern Cathedral, which was but fifteen
minutes' walk from our lines. We knew that hundreds of native
Christians lived around the cathedral, and that as soon as their lives
were threatened they would at once seek refuge in their church, and we
knew, also, what that would mean.

The roar increased in vigour, and then hundreds of torches, dancing
like will-o'-the-wisps in front of our straining eyes, appeared far
down the Wang-ta, or so-called Customs Street, which separates Sir
R---- H----'s Inspectorate from the Austrian Legation. They were less
than a thousand yards away. The Boxers, casting discretion to the
winds, appeared to be once more advancing on the Legations. But then
came a shout from the Austrian Legation, some hoarse cries in guttural
German, and the big gates of the Legation were thrown open near us.
The night was inky black, and you could see nothing. A confused
banging of feet followed, then some more orders, and with a rattling
of gun-wheels a machine-gun was run out and planted in the very centre
of the street.

"At two thousand yards," sang out the naval lieutenant unexpectedly
and jarringly as we stood watching, "slow fire."

I was surprised at such decision. _Tang, tang, tang, tang, tang_, spat
the machine-gun in the black night, now rasping out bullets at the
rate of three hundred a minute, as the gunner under the excitement of
the hour and his surroundings forgot his instructions, now steadying
to a slow second fire. This was something like a counter-excitement;
we were beginning to speak at last. We were delighted. It was not so
much the gun reports which thrilled us as the resonant echoes which,
crackling like very dry fagots in a fierce fire as the bullets sped
down the long, straight street, made us realise their destroying
power. Have you ever heard a high-velocity machine-gun firing down
deserted and gloomy thorough-fares? It crackles all over your body in
electrical shocks as powerful as those of a galvanic battery; it
stimulates the brain as nothing else can do; it is extraordinary.

The will-o'-the-wisp torches had stopped dancing forward now, but
still they remained there, quite inexplicable in their fixity. We
imagined that our five minutes' bombardment must have carried death
and destruction to everyone and everything. And yet what did this
mean? The flames, which had been licking round near the cathedral,
suddenly burst up in a great pillar of fire. That was the answer; the
cathedral was at last alight. At this we all gave a howl of rage, for
we knew what that meant. The picquets had been mysteriously reinforced
by Frenchmen, Englishmen, and men of half a dozen other nationalities,
all chattering together in all the languages of Europe. "_Que faire,
que faire_," somebody kept bawling. "Get your damned gun out of the
way," shouted other angry voices, "and let us charge the beggars." But
Captain T----, the Austrian commander, was already conferring with a
dear colleague whom he had discovered in the dark. Even in this storm
of excitement the protocol could not be forgotten. Marines, sailors,
and Legation juniors groaned; was this opportunity to be missed? At
last they arranged it; it should be a charge of volunteers.

"Volunteers to the front," shouted somebody. Everybody sprang forward
like one man. A French squad was already fixing bayonets noisily and
excusing their rattle and cursing on account of the dark; the
Austrians had deployed and were already advancing. _"Pas de charge,"_
called a French middy. Somebody started tootling a bugle, and
helter-skelter we were off down the street, with fixed bayonets and
loaded magazines, a veritable massacre for ourselves in the dark....

The charge blew itself out in less than four hundred yards, and we
pulled up panting, swearing and laughing. Somebody had stuck some one
else through the seat of the trousers, and the some one else was
making a horrid noise about this trivial detail. Some rifles had also
gone off by themselves, how, why and at whom no one would explain. A
very fine night counter-attack we were, and the rear was the safest
place. Yet that run did us good. It was like a good drink of strong
wine.

But we had now reached the first torches and understood why they
remained stationary. The Boxers, met by the Austrian machine-gun, had
stuck them in long lines along the edge of the raised driving road,
and had then sneaked back quietly in the dark. Every minute we
expected to have our progress checked by the dead bodies of those we
had slain, but not a corpse could you see. The Austrian commander was
now once again holding a council of war, and this time he urged a
prompt retreat. We had certainly lost touch with our own lines, and
for all we knew we might suddenly be greeted with a volley from our
own people coming out to reinforce us. Our commanders wobbled this
way and that for a few minutes, but then, goaded by the general
desire, we pushed forward again, with a common movement, without
orders this time. We moved more slowly, firing heavily at every shadow
along the sides of the road. Here it seemed more black than ever, for
the spluttering torches, which cast a dim light on the raised road
itself, left the neighbouring houses in an impenetrable gloom. Whole
battalions of Boxers could have lurked there unmarked by us; perhaps
they were only waiting until they could safely cut us off. It was very
uncanny.

In front of us the flames of the burning Roman Catholic Cathedral rose
higher and higher, and the shouts and roars, becoming ever fiercer and
fiercer, could be plainly heard. Just then a Frenchman stumbled with a
muttered oath, and, bending down, jumped back with a cry of alarm. At
his feet lay a native woman trussed tightly with ropes, with her body
already half-charred and reeking with kerosene, but still alive and
moaning faintly. The Boxers, inhuman brutes, had caught her, set fire
to her, and then flung her on the road to light their way. She was the
first victim of their rage we had as yet come across. That made us
feel like savages. We were now not more than three hundred yards from
the cathedral, and in the light of the flames, which were now burning
more brightly than ever, we could see hundreds of figures dancing
about busily. We had just halted to prepare for a final charge when
something moved in front of us. "Halt," we all cried, marking our
different nationalities by our different intonations of the word. A
sobbing Chinese voice called back to us: "_Wo pu shih; wo pu shih_,"
which merely means, "I am not," leaving us to infer that he was
referring to the Boxers; and then without waiting for an answer the
night wanderer, whoever he might be, scampered away hurriedly. The
immediate result was that we opened a terrible fusillade in the
direction he had fled, our men firing at least a hundred shots. Many
mocking voices then called back to us from the shadows. There was
laughter, too. It was obviously hopeless trying to do anything in this
dark; so when a bugler trotted up from our lines with stern orders
from the French commandant for his men to retire, we all stumbled back
more than willingly We had gone out of our depth.

Meanwhile the flames spread farther and farther, until half the Tartar
city seemed on fire. All Peking awoke, and from every part confused
noises and a vast barking of dogs was borne down on us. What course
should we take, if the attack was suddenly carried all round our area?

The French Minister was by this time officially informed that native
Catholics were being butchered wholesale; that there were plenty of
men who were willing to go and rescue them, but that no one seemed to
have any orders, and that everyone was swearing at the general
incompetence. Absolute confusion reigned within our lines; the
picquets broke away from their posts; the different nationalities
fraternised under the excitement of the hour and lost themselves; and
it would have been child's play to have rushed the whole Legation
area. We felt that clearly enough.

It was not until well past midnight, and after several heated
discussions, that a relief party was finally organised; but when they
got to the cathedral there was hardly anything to see, for the
butchery was nearly over and the ruin completed. Several hundred
native Roman Catholics had disappeared, only a few Boxers were seen
and shot and a few converts rescued.

How well I remember the scene when this second expedition returned,
excited and garrulous as only Frenchmen can be. The French Minister
led them in. He explained to us that the Boxers had already absolutely
demolished everything--that it was no use risking one's self so far
from one's own lines any more--that it was a terrible business, but
_que faire_.... The French Minister did not hurry away, but stood
there talking endlessly. It was at once dramatic and absurd. Sir R----
H----, in company with many others, stood listening, however, with an
awestruck expression on his face. He carried a somewhat formidable
armament--at least two large Colt revolvers strapped on to his thin
body, and possibly a third stowed away in his hip pocket. From
midnight to the small hours there was a constant stream of our most
distinguished personages coming and looking down this street and
wondering what would happen next. It was not a very valiant spectacle.

In this curious fashion the memorable night of the 12th passed away,
with sometimes one picquet firing, sometimes another, and with
everybody waiting wearily for the morning. We had almost lost interest
by that time.

At half-past four the pink light began chasing away the gloom; the
shadows lightened, and day at last broke. At six o'clock native
refugees from the foreign houses that had been burned came slinking
silently in with white faces and trembling hands, all quite broken
down by terrible experiences. One gate-keeper, whose case was
tragically unique, had lost everything and everybody belonging to
him, and was weeping in a curious Chinese way, without tears and
without much contortion of features, but persistently, without any
break or intermission, in a somewhat terrifying fashion. His wife, six
children, his father and mother, and a number of relations had all
been burned alive--thirteen in all. They had been driven into the
flames with spears. Moaning like a sick dog, and making us all feel
cowardly because we had not attempted a rescue, the man sought refuge
in an outhouse. Sir R---- H---- was still standing at his post,
looking terribly old and hardly less distressed than the wretched
fugitives pouring in. His old offices and residences, where forty
years before he had painfully begun a life-long work, were all stamped
out of existence, and the iron had entered into his soul. A number of
the officers commanding detachments, and people belonging to various
Legations, attempted to glean details as to the strength of the Boxer
detachments from these survivors, but nobody could give any
information worth having. I noticed that no Ministers came; they were
all in bed!

At eight o'clock, still afoot, we heard that there was a deuce of a
row going on at the Ha-ta Gate, because it was still locked and the
key was gone. It now transpired that a party of volunteers, led by the
Swiss hotel-keeper of the place and his wife, had marched down to the
gate after the Boxers had rushed in, had locked it, and taken the key
home to bed, so that no one else could pay us their attentions from
this quarter. This is the simplest and the most sensible thing which
has been yet done, and it shows how we will have to take the law into
our own hands if we are to survive.

In this fashion the Boxers were ushered in on us. Most of us kept
awake until ten or eleven in the morning for fear that by sleeping we
might miss some incidents. But even the Boxers had apparently become
tired, for there was not a sign of a disturbance after midnight. In
spite of the quiet, however, the streets remain absolutely deserted,
and we have no means of knowing what is going to happen next.




X

BARRICADES AND RELIEFS


16th June, 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

We have entered quite naturally in these unnatural times on a new
phase of existence. It is the time of barricades and punitive
expeditions; of the Legations tardily bestirring themselves in their
own defence, and realising that they must try and forget their private
politics if they are even to live, not to say one day to resume their
various rivalries and animosities. Imperceptibly we are being impelled
to take action; we must do something.

We woke up late on the 14th to the fact that loopholed barricades had
been everywhere begun on our streets, as effective bars to the inrush
of savage torch-bearing desperadoes, each Legation doing its own work;
and that the Chinese Government, with its likes and dislikes, would
have to be seriously and cynically disregarded if we wished to
preserve the breath of life. So barricades have been going up on all
sides, excepting near the British Legation, where the same
indifference and sloth, which have so greatly contributed to this
_impasse_, still remain undisturbed. Near the Austrian, French,
American, Italian and Russian Legations barricade-builders are at
work, capturing stray Peking carts, turning them over and filling them
full of bricks. So quickly has the work been pushed on, that in some
places there are already loopholed walls three feet thick stretching
across our streets, and so cleverly constructed that carts can still
pass in and out without great difficulty. We are still on speaking
terms with the Chinese Government, but who knows what the morrow may
bring?

But although you may have gathered some idea of the general aspect of
Peking from what I have written, it is more than probable that you
have no clear conception of the Legation quarter and what this
barricading means. It seems certain that we will have to fight some
one in time, so I will try and explain.

Legation Street, or the _Chiao Min hsiang_, to give it the native
appellation, runs parallel to the Tartar Wall. Beginning at the west
end of the street--that is, the end nearest the Imperial City and the
great Ch'ien Men Gate--the Legations run as follows: Dutch, American,
Russian, German, Spanish, Japanese, French, Italian. Of the eleven
Legations, therefore, eight are in the one street, some on one side,
some on the other; some adjoining one another, with their enormous
compounds actually meeting, others standing more or less alone with
nests of Chinese houses in between. Apart from the eight Legations,
there are a number of other buildings belonging to Europeans in this
street, such as banks, the club, the hotel, and a few stores and
nondescript houses. Taking the remaining three Legations, the Belgian
is hopelessly far away beyond the Ha-ta Gate line; the Austrian is two
hundred yards down a side street on which is also the Customs
Inspectorate; and, finally, the British is at the back of the other
Legations--that is, to the north of the south Tartar Wall. The extent
of this Legation and its sheltered position make it a sort of natural
sanctuary for all non-combatants, since it is masked on two sides by
the other Legations, and is only really exposed on two sides, the
north and the west. Already many missionaries and nondescripts have
been coming in and claiming protection, and in the natural course of
events it must become the central base of any defence. Everyone sees
and acknowledges that.

At the two ends of Legation Street, the western Russo-American end and
the eastern Italian end, heavy barricades have already gone up. The
Dutch Legation, lying beyond the Russian and American Legations at
this west end of the street, being without any guards and protectors,
will, therefore, have to be abandoned immediately there is a rush from
the Ch'ien Men Gate. The Belgian Legation is naturally untenable, and
will also have to be sacrificed. The Austrian Legation is likewise a
little too far away; but for the time being a triple line of
barricades have gone up, having been constructed along the road
between this Legation and the Customs inspectorate. To-day, the 16th,
carts are no more to be seen on these streets; foot traffic is
likewise almost at an end. There is a tacit understanding that
everybody must act on the defensive.

Also every Chinaman passing our barricades is forced to provide
himself with a pass, which shows clearly his reason for wandering
abroad in times like this. There has already been trouble on this
score, for our system has had no proper trial....

Since the 14th and that dreadful first Boxer night, we have begun to
take affairs a good deal into our own hands, and have attempted to
strike blows at this growing movement, which remains so unexplained,
whenever an occasion warranted it--that is, those of us who have any
spirit. Thus, on the afternoon of the 14th, Baron von K---- took a
party of his marines on top of the Tartar Wall, pointed out to them a
party of Boxer recruits openly drilling below on the sandy stretch,
and gave orders to fire without a moment's hesitation. So the German
rifles cracked off, and the sands were spotted with about twenty dead
and dying. This action of the German Minister's at once created an
immense controversy. The timid Ministers unhesitatingly condemned the
action; all those who understand that you must prick an ulcer with a
lancet instead of pegging at it with despatch-pens, as nearly all our
chiefs have been doing, approved and began to follow the example set.
This is the only way to act when the time for action comes in the
East, and the net result is that we have been unendingly busy. There
have been expeditions, raids, and native Christians pouring in and
demanding sanctuary within our lines. One story is worth telling, as
showing how we are being forced to act.

Word came to us suddenly that the Boxers had caught a lot of native
Christians, and had taken them to a temple where they were engaged in
torturing them with a refinement of cruelty. One of our leaders
collected a few marines and some volunteers, marched out and
surrounded the temple and captured everybody red-handed. The Boxers
were given short shrift--those that had their insignia on; but in the
sorting-out process it was impossible to tell everybody right at first
sight. Christians and Boxers were all of them gory with the blood
which had flown from the torturing and brutalities that had been going
on; so the Christians were told to line up against the wall of the
temple to facilitate the summary execution in progress. Then a big
fellow rushed out of a corner, yelling, "I have received the faith."
Our leader looked at the man with a critical eye, and then said to him
in his quietest tones, "Stand up against the wall." The Boxer stood up
and a revolver belched the top of his head off. With that quickness of
eye for which he is distinguished, our leader had seen a few red
threads hanging below the fellow's tunic. The man, as he fell with a
cry, disclosed his sash underneath. He was a Boxer chief. At least
thirty men were killed here.

But it was at the Western Roman Catholic Cathedral that the most
exciting times up till now have been had, for there, as at the other
cathedral, the Boxers have been at work. The first relief expedition
went out during the night--that is, last night. Headed by some one
from the French Legation, the expedition managed to bring in all the
priests and nuns attached to the cathedral mission. Old Father
d'A----, a charming Italian priest, was the most important man
rescued. After having been forty years here, he surveys the present
scenes of devastation and pillage with the remark, "_En Chine il n'y a
ni Chretiens ni civilisation. Ce ne sont la que des phrases_." That is
what he said.

This morning a second relief corps, containing the most miscellaneous
elements, tramped away stolidly in the direction of the still smoking
cathedral ruins in the hopes of saving some more unfortunates, and our
expectations were soon realised. After a walk of a mile and a half, we
rounded a corner with the sound of much wailing on all sides, and ran
suddenly full tilt into at least two or three dozen Boxers, who have
been allowed to do exactly as they like for days. There was a fierce
scuffle, for we were down on them in a wild rush before they could get
away, and they showed some fight. I marked down one man and drove an
old sword at his chest. The fellow howled frightfully, and just as I
was going to despatch him, a French sailor saved me the trouble by
stretching him out with a resounding thump on the head from his Lebel
rifle. The Boxer curled over like a sick worm and expired. There was
not much time, however, to take stock of such minor incidents as the
slaying of individual men, even when one was the principal actor, for
everywhere men were running frantically in and out of houses, shouting
and screaming, and the confusion was such that no one knew what to do.
The Boxers had been calmly butchering all people who seemed to them to
be Christians--had been engaged in this work for many hours--and all
were now mixed up in such a confused crowd that it was impossible to
distinguish friends and foes. As they caught sight of us, many of the
marauders tore off their red sashes and fell howling to the ground, in
the hope that they would be passed by. Dozens of narrow lanes round
the ruined cathedral, which was still smoking, were full of Christian
families hiding in the most impossible places, and everywhere Boxers
and banditti, sometimes in groups, sometimes singly, still chased them
and cut them down. Numbers had already been massacred, and several
lanes looked like veritable shambles. The stench of human blood in the
hot June air was almost intolerable, and the sights more than we could
bear. Men, women and children lay indiscriminately heaped together,
some hacked to pieces, others with their throats cut from ear to ear,
some still moving, others quite motionless.

Gradually we collected an ever-growing mob of terror stricken people
who had escaped this massacre. Some of the girls seemed quite
paralysed with fear; others were apparently temporarily bereft and
kept on shrieking with a persistency that was maddening. A young
French sailor who did not look more than seventeen, and was splashed
all over with blood from having fallen in one of the worst places,
kept striking them two and three at a time, and cursing them in fluent
Breton, in the hope of bringing them to reason. "_Eh bien, mes belles!
Vous ne finissez pas_," he ended despairingly, and rushed off again to
see whether he could find any more.

The blood was rising to our men's heads badly by now, and I saw
several who could stand it no longer stabbing at the few dead Boxers
we had secured. We had none of us imagined we were coming to such
scenes as these; for nobody would have believed that such brutal
things were possible. When we judged we had finished rescuing every
one alive, a man in the most pitiable condition ran out from behind
the smouldering cathedral carrying a newly severed human head in
either hand. He seemed but little abashed when he saw us, but came
forward rapidly enough towards us, glancing the while over his
shoulder. Several sailors were rushing at him with their bayonets,
ready to spit him, when he fell on his knees, and, tearing open his
tunic, disclosed to our astonished eyes a bronze crucifix with a
silver Christ hung on it. "_Je suis catholique_," he cried to us
repeatedly and rapidly in fair French, and the sailors stayed their
cold steel until we had extracted an explication. Then it transpired
that he had used this horrible device to escape the notice of some
Boxers who were still at work in a street on the other side of the
cathedral. We ran round promptly on hearing this, and caught sight of
a few fellows stripped to the waist, and gory with blood as I have
never seen men before. Instead of fleeing, they met our charge with
resolution, and one tall fellow put me in considerable danger of my
life with a long spear, finally escaping before we could shoot him
down.

On this side the ruins of the cathedral were covered with corpses
burned black from the heat of the flames and exposure to the sun. One
woman, by some freak of nature, had her arms poised above her head as
she sat dead, shrivelled almost beyond human recognition. It was
probable that the Boxers had pitched many of their victims alive into
the flames and driven them back with their swords and spears whenever
they attempted to escape....

At last we got away with everybody who was still alive, as far as we
could judge. Tramping back slowly and painfully, the rescued looked
the most pitiable concourse I have ever seen. Somehow it was exactly
like that eloquent picture in "Michael Serogoff," showing the crowds
of Siberian prisoners being driven away by Feofar Khan's Tartars after
the capture of Omsk. Among our people there were the same old
granddames, wrinkled and white haired, supporting themselves with
crooked sticks and hobbling painfully on their mutilated feet; the
same mothers with their children sucking their breasts; the same
little boys and little girls laden with a few miserable rags; the same
able-bodied men carrying the food they had saved. The older people
gazed straight in front of them with the stolid despair of the
fatalist East, and did not utter a word. A woman who had given birth
to a child the very night before was being carried on a single plank
slung on ropes, with a green-white pallor of death on her features. I
have never taken part in such a remarkable procession as this.

Thus bloodstained and very weary we finally reached our Legation
quarter, and once again the energy and resolution of Dr. M----
expressed themselves. The grounds of the Su wang-fu, belonging to the
Manchu prince Su, where the first Boxer we had openly seen had sought
refuge a few days previously, were commandeered by him, and by evening
nearly a thousand Catholic refugees were crowded into its precincts.
All day people were labouring to bring in rice and food for their
people, and camp-fires were soon built at which they could cook their
meals. Several of the _chefs de mission_ were again much alarmed at
this action of ours in openly rescuing Chinese simply because they
were doubtful co-religionists. They say that this action will make us
pay dearly with our own lives; that the Legations will be attacked;
that we cannot possibly defend ourselves against the numbers which
will be brought to bear against us; that we are fools. Perhaps we are,
but still there is some comfort in discovering that this nest of
diplomacy still contains a few men.

Meanwhile there is not a word of news from S----, and there are
indications that our despatches to the Chinese Government, which are
being sent from every Legation more and more urgently, are hardly
read. The situation is becoming more and more impossible, and our
servants say it is useless bringing in any news, as there is such
confusion in the Palace that nobody knows anything reliable.




XI

SOME MEN AND THINGS


16th June, 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

No developments have taken place during the past few hours. So far
very few men have been conspicuous; and as it is these few who have
brought about the only developments, and outlined our position, and
that they are to-day all terribly tired, we have absolute monotony. I
have not heard what the German Minister has been doing, but it is
rumoured that he is engaged in trying to re-establish communication
with Tientsin and the sea by bribing the Tsung-li Yamen smaller
officials to take down packets of his despatches by pony-express. It
seems doubtful whether this will succeed. For all communication has
absolutely ceased now, and the Customs postal carriers say that it is
impossible to get through by any stratagem, as all the roads are
swarming with Boxers and banditti. The Chinese Government, in its few
despatches to some of the Legations, is clearly temporising and trying
to save itself. There is no means of knowing what is going on inside
the Palace, or of understanding what the Empress Dowager has decided.
Everybody says it is all topsy-turvydom now in the capital, and that
the most extraordinary reports are coming in from the provinces. Our
Chinese despatch writers, our Manchu servants, and the few natives who
come through our barricaded streets, all say the same thing--that it
is too soon to speak, but that the dangers are enormous. Meanwhile the
more timid of these people attached to the Legation area are sending
word that they are sick and cannot come any more. It is a polite way
of saying that they are afraid. I do not blame them, since anything
now is possible. You cannot surely ask men to sacrifice themselves
when they are only bound to you by the hire system. Such is the
external and general situation.

Within our own quarter things are much the same, developing naturally
along the line of least resistance.

Now that Prince Su's palace grounds have been openly converted into a
Roman Catholic sanctuary, hundreds of converts are pouring in on us
from everywhere, laden with their pots and pans, their beds, and their
bundles of rice; indeed, carrying every imaginable thing. The great
Northern Cathedral and Monseigneur F---- are in no danger, for the
time being at least, since the cathedral and its extensive grounds are
surrounded by powerful walls and the bishop has now got his fifty
guards and possibly a couple of thousand young native Catholics, who
can probably be armed and fight. So although it seems as if the whole
Roman Catholic population of Peking is pouring in on us, we are in
reality only getting a few hundred miserables who had no time to fly
to their chief priest when the storm caught them; we have to prepare
for the worst, as everything is developing very slowly.

Even in this matter of Chinese refugees the attitude of our foolish
Legations is rather inexplicable. Actually up to within a few days ago
some of the Ministers were still resolutely refusing to entertain the
idea that native Christians--men who have been estranged from their
own countrymen and marked as pariahs because they have listened to the
white man's gospel--could be brought within the Legation area. In
consequence of this hardly any Chinese Protestants have as yet come
in. Of course circumstance, the force of example, and a timidity in
the face of the growing irritation, have at length broken down this
weak-kneed attitude, but people have not yet finished discussing it.
For instance, there is a remarkable story about the well-known S----,
who wrote that celebrated book, "Chinese Characteristics." He turned
up at the British Legation late one evening, long before the Boxers
entered the Tartar city, and brought positive proof that unless S----
was hurried in we would all be murdered by a conspiracy headed by the
most powerful men. S---- was kept waiting for an hour, and then told
that no time could be spared to see him as everybody was busy writing
despatches! This is indeed our whole situation expressed in a trivial
incident; all the plenipotentiaries are trying to save their positions
and their careers by violent despatch-writing at the eleventh hour.
They know perfectly well that it is they alone who are responsible for
the present _impasse_, and that even if they come out alive they are
all hopelessly compromised. Young O---- told me that in their Legation
they were actually antedating their despatches so as to be on the safe
side! This shows how absolutely inexcusable has been the whole policy
for three entire weeks.

We do not know what is going on around us; we do not know of what the
Peking Court is thinking; we do not know by whom S---- has been
stopped. We know nothing now excepting that we are gradually but
surely getting so dirty that our tempers cannot but be vile. One
never realises how great a part soap and water play in one's scheme of
things until times like these. With upturned Peking carts blocking the
ingresses to our quarter; with everything disgruntled and out of
order; with native Christians crowding in on us, sensible heathen
servants bolting as hard as they can, ice running short, we, the
eleven Legations of Peking, await with some fear and trepidation and
an ever-increasing discomfort our various fates under the shadow of
the gloomy Tartar Wall. What is to be the next thing? I could possibly
imagine and write something about this were I not so tired.




XII

HELL HOUNDS


Night, 17th June 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is past twelve o'clock at night, but in spite of the late hour and
my fatigue--I have been dead tired for a week now--I am writing this
with the greatest ease, my pen gliding, as it were, over a surface of
ice-like slippiness, although my fingers are all blistered from manual
work. Why, you will ask? Well, simply because my imagination is afire,
and taking complete control of such minor things as the nerves and
muscles of my right arm, my eyes and my general person, it speeds me
along with astonishing celerity. Let your imagination be aflame and
you can do anything....

It began last night. No sooner had the gates which pierce the Tartar
Wall been closed by the Imperial guards, who still remain openly
faithful to their duties, than there arose such a shouting and roaring
as I have never heard before and never thought possible. It was the
Boxers. The first time the Boxers had rushed in on us, it was through
the Ha-ta Gate to the east of the Legations. Last night, after having
for three days toured the Tartar city pillaging, looting, burning and
slaying, with their progress quite unchecked except for those few
hundred rifle shots of our own, the major part of the Boxer
fraternity, to whom had joined themselves all the many rapscallions of
Peking, found themselves in the Chinese or outer city after dark, and
consequently debarred from coming near their legitimate prey. (The
gates are still always closed as before.) Somebody must have told them
that they could do as they liked with Christians and Europeans; for,
mad with rage, they began shouting and roaring in chorus two single
words, "_Sha-shao,"_ kill and burn, in an ever-increasing crescendo. I
have heard a very big mass of Russian soldiery give a roar of welcome
to the Czar some years ago, a roar which rose in a very extraordinary
manner to the empyrean; but never have I heard such a blood-curdling
volume of sound, such a vast bellowing as began then and there, and
went on persistently, hour after hour, without ever a break, in a
maddening sort of way which filled one with evil thoughts. Sometimes
for a few moments the sound sank imperceptibly lower and lower and
seemed making ready to stop. Then reinforced by fresh thousands of
throats, doubtless wetted by copious drafts of _samshu_, it grew again
suddenly, rising stronger and stronger, hoarser and hoarser, more
insane and more possessed, until the tympanums of our ears were so
tortured that they seemed fit to burst. Could walls and gates have
fallen by mere will and throat power, ours of Peking would have
clattered down Jericho-like. Our womenfolk were frozen with
horror--the very sailors and marines muttered that this was not to be
war, but an Inferno of Dante with fresh horrors. You could feel
instinctively that if these men got in they would tear us from the
scabbards of our limbs. It was pitch dark, too, and in the gloom the
towers and battlements of the Tartar Wall loomed up so menacingly that
they, too, seemed ready to fall in and crush us.

For possibly three or four hours this insane demonstration proceeded
apace. The Manchu guards listened gloomily and curiously from the
inside of the gates, but made no attempt to open them, but they
equally refused sullenly to parley with a strong body of sailors and
volunteers we sent with instructions to shoot any one attempting to
unlock the barriers. Yet it was evident that the guards had received
special instructions, and that the gates would not be handed over to
the mob.

A few minutes before midnight the sounds became more sullen, and
beneath the general uproar another note, one of those in distress,
began, as it were, like an undercurrent to this pandemonium. The cause
we had not long to seek, for presently flames began to shoot up, a
sight we were by now well accustomed to, though not in this purely
trading quarter of the city. The fire, started with savage disregard
in the very centre of the most densely populated street of the Chinese
city, spread with terrible rapidity. Soon both sides of Ch'ien Men
great street, just on the other side of the Tartar Wall, were
enveloped in raging flames, and a lurid light, growing ever brighter
and brighter, turned the dark night into an unnatural day.

Between the incendiaries and ourselves the great Tartar Wall stood
firm, but though this ancient defence against other barbarians was an
effective protection for us, it could not long remain immune itself.
The _lou_, or square pagoda-like tower facing the Chinese city side,
caught some of the thousands and tens of thousands of sparks flying
skywards, and it was not long before the vast pile was burning as
fiercely as the rest. The great rafters of Burmese teak, brought by
Mongol Khans six centuries before to Peking, were as dry as tinder
with the dryness of ages; and thus almost before we had noted that
the bottom of the tower was well alight the flames were shooting
through the roof and out through the hundreds of little square windows
which in olden days were lined by archers. Higher and higher the
flames leaped, until the top of the longest tongues of fire, pouring
out through a funnel of brick, was hundreds of feet above the ground
level. Only Vereschagin could have done justice to this holocaust; I
have never seen anything so barbarically splendid.

Meanwhile below this in the Chinese city all had become quiet, except
for the increasing and growing roar of the all-devouring flames. The
Boxers, as if appalled by their own handiwork and the mournful sight
of the capital in flames, had retreated into their haunts and had left
the unfortunate townfolk to battle with this disaster as they could.
From the top of the wall, which I hastily climbed as soon as I
obtained permission to leave my post, thousands and tens of thousands
of figures could be seen moving hurriedly about laden with
merchandise, which they were attempting to save. Busy as ants, these
wonderful Chinese traders were rescuing as much of their invested
capital from the very embrace of the flames as they could at a moment
when the Boxer patriots, menacing and killing them with sword and
spears as _san mao-tzu,_ or third-class barbarians who sold the cursed
foreigners' stuffs and products, had hardly disappeared.

Yet it seemed vain, indeed, to talk of salvage with half the city in
flames, for other fires now began mysteriously in other places, which
"lighted" the horizon. "_Tout Pekin brule_," muttered a French sailor
to me as I passed back to my post, and his careless remark made me
think that this was the Commune and Sansculottism intermixed--the
ends of two centuries tumbled together--because we foreigners had
upset the equilibrium of the Far East with our importunities and our
covetousness of the Yellow Man's possessions....

And what of S----, what of the Peking Government--what is everybody in
the outside world doing--the distant world of which we have so
suddenly lost all trace, while we are passing through such times? We
do not know; we have no idea; we have almost forgotten to think about
it. S---- was heard of twice some days ago from Langfang, a station
only forty miles from Peking, but why he does not advance, why there
is this intolerable delay, we do not know. The Peking Government is
still decreeing and counter-decreeing night and day according to the
Government Gazettes. The Ministers of our eleven Legations are meeting
one another almost hourly, and are eternally discussing, but are doing
nothing else. We have blocked our roads with barricades and provided
our servants and dependents with passes written in English, French,
German, Italian, Russian and Chinese--so that everyone can
understand. We are now sick of such a multitude of languages and wish
all the world spoken Volapuk.

Thus with our rescued native Christians, our few butchered Boxers, our
score and more of fires lighting the whole of the horizon, here in the
middle of the night of the 16th of June we are no further forward in
our political situation than we were two and a half weeks ago, when
our Legation Guards arrived, and we esteemed ourselves so secure. Two
and a half weeks ago! It seems at least two and a half months; but
that is merely the direct fault of having to live nearly twice the
proper number of hours in twenty-four.




XIII

A FEW CRUMBS


18th June, 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

It has just transpired that Hsu Tung, an infamous Manchu high
official, who has been the Emperor's tutor, and whose house is
actually on Legation Street some fifty yards inside the lines of the
Italian Legation, has been allowed to pass out of our barricaded
quarter, going quite openly in his blue and red official chair. This
is a terrible mistake which we may pay for dearly.

Hsu Tung is a scoundrel who is at least thorough in his convictions as
far as we are concerned. It is he who has long been boasting--and all
Peking has been repeating his boast--that in the near future he is
going to line his sedan chair with the hides of foreign devils and
fill his harem with their women; and it is he, above all other men,
who should have been seized by us, held as hostage, and shot out of
hand the very moment the Chinese Government gives its open official
sanction to this insane Boxer policy. Had we acted in this way and
taken charge of a number of other high officials who live just around
us, we might have shown the trembling government that a day of
retribution is certain to come. And yet listen what happened. Either
on the 15th or 16th Hsu Tung sent the majordomo of his household
cringing to the French Legation for a _passepartout_. He had already
tried once to escape by way of the Italian barricades, but had been
sternly ordered back, and his house placed under watch. Somehow,
through the foolishness of an interpreter of the French Legation, he
got his safe-conduct pass, and started out bold as brass in the
morning, seated in his official chair and accompanied by his official
outriders. He passed a first French barricade and reached an outer
second barrier manned by volunteers, who challenged him roughly and
then refused to let him pass.

The outriders then tried to ride our men down, and it needed a
rifle-shot to bring them to their senses. Fortunately nobody was hurt,
and presently the youthful volunteers had Hsu Tung himself out of the
chair, and kept him seated on the ground while they debated whether
they should respect the French pass or strap the great man up and send
him to their own quarters as a prisoner of war.

In the end, however, one of the secretaries came up and inquired what
it all meant, and then, of course, weak counsels prevailed, and Hsu
Tung was allowed to sneak off unmolested down a side lane.

This incident is typical as showing the stamp of men who have
commanding voices in our beleagued quarter.

God help us if any considerable force is sent against us, for we can
never help ourselves. Every proper-minded young man is a natural
soldier methinks, even in Anno Domini 1900, but every elderly person
in the same year of grace is quite valueless--that is what we have
already discovered.

And yet even to-day all the senior people in our Legation area--those
who are our guides and mentors--though they be secretly much alarmed,
are comforting themselves with a great deal of garrulous talk because
a letter has arrived from Tientsin--in fact, several letters have
arrived. This is the first reliable news we have had for many days,
and everybody seems now to imagine that we are safe. The chief item in
these fateful missives seems to be that the Roman Catholic Cathedral
at Tientsin has also been burned; that this was accompanied by
massacres of native converts; and that the riverine port is swarming
with Boxers. And there is no news of S----, no news of anything good.
What has become of him we cannot imagine. Yet Ministers, secretaries,
and elderly nondescripts are somewhat relieved, and go about nervously
smiling in a very ridiculous way. No one can quite make out why they
are relieved, excepting perhaps, that they are delighted to find that
the visible world still exists elsewhere, and goes on revolving on its
own axis in spite of our dilemma. Why should the obvious be so often
discovered?

Our poor Legation Guards and their commanding officers, with whom we
were so pleased a fortnight ago, are quite as crushed as everyone
else now--perhaps even more. You see the rank and file are merely a
crowd of uneducated sailors, who have not yet made head or tail of
what all this Peking _bouleversement_ means. They were suddenly
entrained and rushed up to Peking many days ago; they arrived in the
dark; they were crammed into their respective Legations as quickly as
possible; they have done a little patrol and picquet work on the
streets, and have stood expectantly behind barricades which they were
told to erect; but otherwise they are as completely at sea again as if
they were back to their ships.... In all the clouds of dust and smoke
around them, how can they understand? It is true I have rather a
grudge against some persons of the Legation defenders as yet unknown,
and think of them perhaps a little angrily, for, like all soldiery,
they loot. They have already taken my field-glasses, an excellent
revolver, and several other things during the confusion of the nights.
Of course this is the fortune of war, as all old campaigners will tell
you, but a more decent interval should have been allowed to elapse
before beginning the inevitable stripping process....

As for the detachment officers, some of them are very good fellows and
some of them are not; but already they have each of them instinctively
adopted the old attitude of the Legations towards one another. They
are mutually suspicious. The detachment officers are also considerably
tired and in very bad tempers, for the night has been turned into day
with a regularity which cannot leave anybody very happy. Then dirt is
accumulating, too, sad truth; and in the East you cannot feel dirty in
the summer and be happy. That is quite impossible....

Thus we are all in a very grunting frame of mind. The British Legation
appears to be at length hopelessly crowded with perspiring
missionaries of all denominations and creeds, who have suddenly come
in from beyond the barricades. Life must be quite impossible there.
The novelty of this experience has been worn off, and I for one would
welcome any change, either for better or worse. So long as it is only
a change....




XIV

THE ULTIMATUM


19th June, 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

How foolish we can be! Only last night I was bewailing the dulness and
the dirt of it all, and the general absurdity and discomfort, and now
without one qualm I confess I would willingly exchange yesterday's
uncertainty for to-day's certainty--that we are all going to be made
into mincemeat. But I do not even feel serious or desperate now; it
has got beyond that.

I do not know at what hour the ultimatum came to-day; it may have been
eleven in the morning or one in the afternoon; but one thing I do know
is, that here, at four in the afternoon, the great majority of one
thousand Europeans are shaking, absolutely distraught. It is evident
therefrom that there is something impressive and demoralising to most
people in the idea of finality, and that on the threshold of the
twentieth century, courage, since it is seldom dealt in, is hardly a
great living force. It makes one realise, too, that with all their
faults, the aristocrats of France, who, a hundred years ago, were
condemned to the shameful death of the guillotine and went in their
tumbrils through streets filled with cursing crowds of sansculottes,
with scorn and contempt written on their features, were rather
exceptional people. Things have changed since then, and the so-called
Americanisation of the world has not conduced to gallantry. Fortunate
are we that there is no white man's audience to watch us impassively,
and to witness the effects of this bombshell of an ultimatum which has
come to-day. There is nothing so humiliating as abject fear. Curiously
enough, the women bear it much better than the elder men, who are
openly distraught; and when I say women, I mean all the women, both
those belonging to the Legations and the dozens of missionary women
who have crowded in. Nearly everyone of them is better than the
elderly men; at least, they try and say nothing so as not to add to
the terrible confusion....

But the ultimatum--what is it, and against whom is it so summarily
directed? Briefly the ultimatum is a neat-looking document written on
striped Chinese despatch-paper, and comes from the Tsung-li Yamen, or
office charged with the overseeing of "the outside nations'
affairs"--which are the affairs of Europe. After very briefly
referring to a demand made by the allied admirals for a surrender of
the Taku forts off the muddy bar of the Tientsin River--about which we
know nothing--it goes on to say that as China can no longer protect
the Legations, the Legations will have to protect themselves by
leaving Peking within twenty-four hours, dating from to-day at four
o'clock. That is all. Not another word. Yet in other words this
document means this: that the demand of the admirals must have been
refused; that they would not have made it unless something disastrous
had happened to S---- and to Tientsin; that acts of war have already
been committed, and that it will be no longer a Boxer affair, but a
government affair. This makes our position desperate enough in all
truth. There is to be war.... The ultimatum was conveyed to the
eleven Legations and the Inspectorate-General of Foreign Customs in
twelve neat red envelopes by trembling _t'ing ch'ai_ of the Chinese
Government, and in spite of some attempt at first to hide its contents
was soon known by everyone. The twelve copies, indeed, were exactly
alike, twelve bombshells, which, bursting in twelve different parts of
our barricaded quarter, finally united their fumes until we were all
fairly suffocated. For we have either got to flee now or be butchered.
Mechanically all eyes were turned at once to the chiefs of the eleven
missions to China, who have brought things to such a pass, and
everybody demanded frantically that something should be done. People
lost control themselves and behaved insanely. It was not long before
the whole diplomatic body met--in a terrible gloom--at the Legation of
the Spanish Minister, who is the _doyen_ of the Corps, and soon a
tremendous discussion was raging. There were mutual recriminations,
and proposal after proposal was taken up and rejected as being too
dangerous. Nobody had for a moment dreamed that such a menace would
come so swiftly. Expectant crowds soon gathered round the gates of the
Spanish Legation, and attempted to find out what was being decided,
but the only thing I could learn was that brave Von K---- proposed at
once that the Ministers should go in a body to the Yamen and force the
Chinese Government to agree to an armistice. This was vetoed by all,
of course, and one gentleman openly wept at the idea. In the end, at
seven o'clock, when it was nearly dark, a joint Note was prepared,
saying that the Ministers could only accept the demand made on them
and prepare to leave Peking at once, but that twenty-four hours was
too short a notice in which to pack their trunks, and that, besides,
they must have some guarantees as to the ninety miles road to
Tientsin, which were so swarming with bandits that communication had
been completely interrupted. That is to say, the Ministers were
prepared to accept....

No sooner had this weak reply been despatched than a fresh wave of
consternation passed over the whole Legation quarter, for we now
number nearly a thousand white people in all, and we could never march
that distance to Tientsin unbroken. But beneath that wave of
consternation a fiercer note steadily rose--the note of revolt against
the decrees of eleven men. I cannot describe to you what an intensity
of passion was suddenly revealed. Muttering first, this revolt became
quite open and almost unanimous. All of us would have a fair fight
behind barricades and entrenchments, but no massacre of a long,
unending convoy. For picture to yourself what this convoy would be
crawling out of giant Peking in carts, on ponies and afoot, if it were
forced to go; we would be a thousand white people with a vast trail of
native Christians following us, and calling on us not to abandon them
and their children. Do you think we could run ahead, while a cowardly
massacre by Boxers and savage soldiery was hourly thinning out the
stragglers and defenceless people in the rear? Never!

Hardly anybody thought of eating all that long evening. Most of us
were trying to find out whether some sensible understanding could not
be arrived at; whether we could not prepare before it was too late.
But it was quite in vain to plan anything or attempt to think of
anything. Everything was so topsy-turvy, everybody so panic-stricken.

But as the night grew later and later, some people began busying
themselves packing boxes, still deluding themselves that they were
going to leave comfortably on the morrow as if nothing had happened.
Yet the world is really upside down as far as we are concerned, and it
is quite absolutely impossible that the situation should end so
normally as to find us quietly retreating down the Tientsin road.
Others kept sending out servants to discover at what price carts would
undertake to drive the whole way down to the sea, or at least to
Tientsin. Forty, fifty, and even one hundred taels were demanded for
three days' work; and then, although the carters said they would come
if the government sends proper escorts of soldiers as has been
promised, Heaven only knows if they will ever dare to move near our
stricken quarter. Still in some Legations they ordered fifty carts at
any price, with the most lavish promises of reward for those that
could manage to secure them. All the official servants soon came back
trembling, saying that they had found a few carts, but that it was _pu
yi t'ing_--not at all sure whether the carters would dare to move when
daylight came. For the whole city is already in a fresh uproar; people
are flying in every direction in the night. Stories come in of
officials who have been pulled out of their chairs and forced to
_K'et'ou_ to Boxers to show their respect to the new power. Prince
Tuan has been appointed President of the Tsung-li Yamen, high Manchus
have been placed in charge of the Boxer commands, and rice is being
issued to them from the Imperial granaries. There is no end to the
tales that now come in, since everybody has understood that there is
no need for concealment and that there is going to be some sort of
war. At two o'clock I even began to get news of what the Empress
Dowager had been doing, and how the Boxer partisans had become so
strong that it was absolutely impossible to hope for anything but the
worst.

Once when I got some details which I thought of importance, I tried to
find my chief in order to communicate it to him. But he was lost in
the middle of the night, conferring unofficially with some of his
colleagues; and I could but feel immensely amused when in his office I
saw that he had been scribbling some frenzied notes on the back of a
completed despatch, dealing with one of those petty little affairs
which were so important only the other day.

Ah, where are the dear little political situations of only a few weeks
ago; those safe little political situations which redounded so much to
the credit of those that made them and did not contain any of the
dread elements of our present very real and terrible one! Like
soldiers who have degenerated from the chasing of mere vagabonds of
mediocre importance, so have our Peking Ministers Plenipotentiary and
Envoys Extraordinary fallen from their proud estate to mere diplomatic
make-beliefs full of wind--wind-blown from much tilting at windmills,
with their Governments rescuing them Sancho Panza-like at the eleventh
hour....

But though for us there is still some hope, there is very little for
the wretched native Christians quartered in the palace grounds of
Prince Su, whom we have saved from the Boxers.

They soon heard the news, too, that the foreigner who has once saved
them is going--going away because he has been ordered to. All night
long there was an awful panic among these people which made one's
heart sick, for they understood better than us how quickly they would
be massacred once they left our care.

I shall never forget the night of the 19th of June, 1900, with all its
tragedy and tragi-comedy, though I live to be a hundred. It allowed me
to see something of real human nature in momentary flashes; of how
mean and full of fear we really are, how small and how easily
impressed. A hundred times I longed to have the time and the power to
set down exactly so that everyone might understand the incidents and
the sudden impulses which took place--all prompted by that master of
human beings--FEAR. That is why we worship heroes, or we pretend we
worship them, because it is the _culte_. For a moment these people who
have been set on pedestals were not afraid. Is it only the power not
to be afraid which makes one a hero?




XV

THE DEBACLE BEGINS


20th June, 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is notorious that in moments of tension, when the mind has been
stimulated to too great an activity by unhealthy excitement, you think
of the most curiously assorted things--in fact, of absurd things which
are quite out of place. I have been thinking the whole time of
something very stupid which is only fiction: That a Zulu, named
Umslopagas, rode and ran one hundred miles in a single night and then
refreshed himself sufficiently by a couple of hours' sleep to deliver
battle with such vigour at the head of a marble staircase, that he
saved the haggard hero. That is what I have been thinking of....

We of Peking are, unfortunately, not of the mettle of Zulus, and as
far as I am personally concerned, three hours' sleep is but the
appetite-giver for five hours more. And so on this fateful 20th June,
with the time limit of our ultimatum expiring at four o'clock, I got
up in no sort of valorous spirit, and with the feeling that tragedies
outside the theatre--at least those that spin themselves out for an
indefinite number of days--are quite impossible for us Moderns. But,
then, probably everybody has always thought the same thing--even those
who lived before the Renaissance.

At eight o'clock everyone was once more afoot, although most have
hardly had a wink of sleep. All over our Legation quarter, dusty and
dirty men, unwashed and unbathed, now squatted along the edge of the
streets, hanging their weary heads against their rifles, with their
faces very white from too much sentry-go and too little sleep. There
is little distinction between sailors and Legation people, for we are
all in the same dilemma. On this eventful 20th of June, instead of
being resolute and alert, everybody is merely tired and weakened by a
couple of weeks' watchfulness against Boxers during an unofficial
semi-siege, a state of affairs which has quite unfitted us for fresh
strains. Yet beyond our barricades of upturned carts and stolen
building-bricks all was quiet and peaceful, and hardly a thing moves.
It seemed as if we had been only dreaming.... Wandering down beyond
the eastern end of Legation Street, which gives you the most view of
the mysterious world around the great Ha-ta Street, which the Boxers
have conquered, indeed you find everything practically deserted, the
people having learned that it is best to stay indoors until this
crisis is solved in some manner. Occasionally a rag-picker, or some
humble person so little separated from the life hereafter that to push
a trifle closer does not spell much peril, can be seen hooking up rags
and whatnots from the piles of Peking offal. If you speak to him he
gives an unintelligent _pu chih tao_--"I do not know"--and moves
boorishly on. As my old Chinese writer said a week ago, Peking has
never been in such a state of topsy-turvydom since the robber who
unseated the Ming dynasty rushed in two and a half centuries ago....

Going on top of the great Tartar Wall and gazing down on the scene of
devastation and ruin beyond the Ch'ien Men Gate, one can hardly
believe one's eyes, for where there was once a mighty bustle one now
sees thousands of houses with nothing but their walls standing and
charred timbers strewing the grounds. The great burned tower which
blazed so wondrously a few nights ago is still half standing, its
mighty brickwork too powerful and too proud to succumb totally to the
flames' destroying energy. Gaunt and hollow-eyed, the old Tartar tower
surveys the scene somewhat contemptuously, as if saying that the pigmy
men of to-day are far removed from the paladins of old and their
works....

Quiet and perfectly silent it all looks--but below the tower, and,
indeed, on all sides as far as the eyes can see, some search shows
little ants of men are at work in the ruins--not moving much, but
bobbing up and down with unending energy and regularity. They are the
beggars of Peking in their hundreds and thousands salving what they
can from all this immense destruction by poking deep holes into the
ruins and pulling out all manner of things from under the mass of
bricks and rubbish. In the conserving hands of the Chinaman nothing is
ever irremediably destroyed....

Looking far to the east, even the Ha-ta Gate, where no harm has been
done, does not show much movement. The carts passing in and out are
very few and far between, and the dust which in ordinary times floats
above the din and roar of the gates in heavy clouds is to-day
seemingly absent. Even our Peking dust is awed by the approaching
storm and nestles close to Mother Earth, so that it may come to no
harm.

The more I looked the more observant I became. The sun lolling up in a
red ball, the birds, twittering and flying about while the heat of the
day is not severe, showed themselves in a new light; and thus the 20th
June is ushered in so complaisantly, when all the world of men appear
merely tired and watchful, that the contrast makes one wonder, and at
nine o'clock once more our Ministers Plenipotentiary and our _Charges
d'Affaires_ gather their eleven estimable persons together at the
Legation of the _doyen_. For yesterday's Ministerial reply agreeing to
the Manchu order to vacate the capital, if certain conditions were
fulfilled, had begged for an urgent answer by nine o'clock regarding
the little counter-demands for a time-extension, and a definite
arrangement concerning the Chinese troops who are to be the safe
conduct along the Tientsin road. Nine o'clock has come, but alas! with
it there is no neat Chinese despatch on striped paper which would so
relieve our Ministerial feelings. The Chinese Government remains
grimly silent, for the Chinese Government has spoken plainly once, and
never within the memory of man has it done so on two consecutive
occasions. So the eleven Ministers meet once more in anything but a
happy frame of mind--eleven sorely tried and wholly fearful persons,
except for two or three who vainly try to instill some courage into
the others. All idea of completing the packing commenced last night
has vanished; even that would demand action and resolution. A proposal
to visit the Tsung-li Yamen in a body is set aside with nervous
protestations once more. The meeting thereupon became very stormy, and
the French Minister was kind enough to report afterwards that the
British Minister became thereafter very red--_il est devenu
soudainement tres rouge_, for what reason is unknown. S----, who did
the minutes afterwards, said that the French Minister volunteered to
go with the others if they would proceed in a body, and became very
pale at the idea, that he confessed himself. Here we have, then, a
red Minister and a white Minister, and if we add those who were most
certainly blue and green, the national flags of the entire assembly
could be fitly made up. The French Minister, although simply a
_citoyen_ sent by the Republic to intrigue in times of peace, and aid
his Russian colleague to the best of his ability, is a man withal,
although quite unfitted _de carriere_ for wars and sieges. In the
French Legation he has been receiving such tearful instructions from
his wife during the past three weeks that it is a wonder he has any
backbone at all....

The meeting became stormier and stormier as it went on, S---- says,
until old C---- argued that the only way to decide was to put
everything to the vote. Every vote put was promptly lost, and after an
hour's haggling they had got no farther than at the beginning!

The dramatic moment came when Baron Von K---- got up and stated shortly
that as he had a previous appointment with the Tsung-li Yamen at
eleven o'clock, in spite of the ultimatum and a possible state of
war--in fact, in spite of everything--it was his intention to keep his
appointment, cost what it might. The others urged him not to go, for
they must have been feeling rather ashamed of themselves and their
overvalued lives. But K---- insisted he would go; he had said so once,
and did not intend to allow the Chinese Government to say he broke an
appointment through fear.

S----, who told me the whole story a few hours afterwards, said that
he added that as soon as his own personal business was finished, he
would attend to the general question of the Legations' departure from
Peking, if the diplomatic corps would give him authority. As time was
pressing they gave it to him promptly enough. I remember everything
that happened afterwards with a very extraordinary accuracy of detail,
because I had just walked past the Spanish Legation when the
Ministerial meeting broke up, and I had determined to follow any move
in person so as to know what our fate was to be.

The German Minister turned into his Legation, and after a time he
reappeared in his green and red official chair, with C----, the
dragonman, in a similar conveyance. There were only two Chinese
outriders with them, as Von K---- had refused to take any of his
guards. I remember Von K---- was smoking and leaning his arms on the
front bar of his sedan, for all the world as if he were going on a
picnic. The little _cortege_ soon turned a corner and was swallowed
up. I walked out some distance beyond our barricades with Baron R----,
of the Russian Legation, and we wondered how long he would take to
come back. We soon knew! How terrible that was! For not more than
fifteen minutes passed before, crashing their Manchu riding-sticks
terror-stricken on to their ponies' hides, the two outriders appeared
alone in a mad gallop and nearly rode us down. Through the barricades
they passed, yelling desperately. It was impossible to understand what
they were saying, but disaster was written in the air.

At this we started running after these two men, but when we reached
the corner of the French Legation the people there had already
understood, and said the German Minister had been shot down and was
stone-dead. Everybody was paralysed.

Meanwhile the outriders had reached the German Legation and had flung
themselves, disordered, from their sweating ponies. The men of the
Legation Guard were swarming round them and questioning them roughly
when I came up, but there was nothing further to be learned about Von
K----. A shot had passed through his chair and he had never moved
again, while other shots struck all round. C----, the dragonman,
dripping with blood, had run round a corner closely pursued by Chinese
riflemen. What happened to him they cannot say, for they, too, would
have been shot had they not fled. The tragedy was so simple, but so
crushing, that we all stood dazed. Our one man of character and
decision was dead--lost beyond recall!

A quarter of an hour after this half the German detachment was
marching rapidly down Customs Street, with fixed bayonets and an air
of desperation on their harsh Teutonic faces. They were determined to
try and at least save the body. I thought of going with them, too, but
a moment's thought told me there were other things which were now more
pressing. I went and gave some attention to the contents of
despatch-boxes which no one else had a right to see....

The detachment reached the scene of the murder led by a trembling
outrider. Drops of blood were found on the ground; the Peking dust was
scraped this way and that, as if it had only been made an accomplice
unwillingly and with a violent struggle too; but the sedan-chairs, the
bearers, the murderous soldiers, and every other trace had vanished
completely. To question people was impossible, since everyone was
keeping closely indoors and barred entrances everywhere met the eye.
The Peking streets have become so lonely and deserted that not even a
dog allows himself to be entrapped in the open. Later I heard that
C---- had escaped, although terribly wounded.

The detachment tramped back stolidly, and would not answer a word when
spoken to, for German despair is very gloomy. The remaining
Plenipotentiaries at last understood the nature of the game that was
being played, and realised that we were down to the naked and crude
facts of life and death. Their confounded vacillation has alone
brought us to this pass. They do realise it now, and they are made to
realise it more and more by the savage looks everyone has been giving
them....

The departure for Tientsin half-acquiesced in but fifteen short hours
ago is no longer thought of, for what the Ministers propose to do now
interests no one. After impotently attempting to deal with questions
for which they were in no wise fitted they have resigned themselves to
the inevitable, and have become mere pawns like the rest of us.
Fortunately the men who are men begin to work with frenzied energy,
rushing about collecting food and materials. S----, the first
Secretary of the American Legation, began it, and soon stood out with
some insistence. He guesses with no one contradicting him that rice is
useful, that flour is still more useful, and that every pound we can
find in the native shops should be taken. The obvious is often
somewhat obscure in times like these, and the men who act are very
laudable. There is no denying it that on this 20th the Americans
showed more energy than anybody else, and pushed everybody to sending
out their carts and bringing in tons upon tons of food. Every shop
containing grain was raided, payment being made in some cases and in
others postponed to a more propitious moment. The American
missionaries concentrated in a fortified missionary compound a couple
of miles from us, and the last people to remain outside were hastily
sent for, given twenty minutes in which to pack their things, and
marched in as quickly as possible by a guard of American marines.
There were seventy white men, women and children, and countless herds
of native schoolgirls and converts. Their reports were the last we
got. Vast crowds of silent people had watched them pass through the
eastern Tartar city to our Legation lines without comment or without
hostility. Gloomily the Peking crowd must have watched this strange
convoy curling its way to a safer place, the missionaries armed in a
droll fashion with Remingtons and revolvers, and some of the converts
carrying pikes and carving-knives in their hands, for the Peking crowd
and Peking itself has been, and is being, terrorised by the Boxers and
the Manchu extremists, and is not really allied to them--of that we
all are now convinced. But C----, who was so nearly massacred, came in
too with the American missionaries. He managed somehow, after he was
shot in a deadly place, to half-run and half-crawl until he was picked
up and carried into the American missionary compound. From what I
heard, he knows nothing more about the death of the German Minister.
It was only a few hours ago, and yet it already seems days!

All the non-combatants were now rushed into the British Legation, and
to the women and children join themselves dozens of men, whose place
should be in the fighting-line, but who have no idea of being there.
Lines of carts conveying stores, clothing, trunks and miscellaneous
belongings were soon pouring towards the British Legation, and long
before nightfall the spacious compounds were so crowded with
impedimenta and masses of human beings that one could hardly move
there. It was a memorable and an extraordinary sight.

The few Chinese shops that had been until now carrying on business in
our Legation quarter in spite of the semi-siege and the barricades in
a furtive way, were soon quietly putting up their shutters--not
entirely, but what they call three-quarters shut after the custom on
their New Year holidays, when they are not supposed to trade, but do
trade all the same. The shop-boys, slipping their arms into their long
coats and dusting off their trousers and shoes after the Peking manner
with their long sleeves, made one feel in a rather laughable sort of
way that finality had been reached! They had that curious half-laugh
on their faces which signifies an intense nervousness being politely
concealed. Up to three o'clock these complaisant shopmen were still
selling things at a purely nominal price, which was not entered in the
books, but quietly pocketed by them for their own benefit. Having
completed my own arrangements, I began idly watching their actions,
they were so curious. At three o'clock sharp the last shutters went
up, the last shopman pasted a diamond-shaped Fu, or Happiness, of red
paper over the wooden bars, and vanished silently and mysteriously. It
was for all the world once again exactly like the telegraph-operator
in "Michael Strogoff," when the Tartars smash in the front doors of
his office and seize the person of the hero, while the clerk coolly
takes up his hat and disappears through a back door. These Chinese had
done business in the very same way, until the very last moment--the
very last.

And not only are the few shopmen slipping away, but also numbers of
others within our lines who had been half-imprisoned during the past
week by our barricades and incessant patrolling. Men, women, and
children, each with a single blue-cloth bundle tied across their
backs containing a few belongings, slip away; gliding, as it were,
rapidly across the open spaces where a shot could reach them, and
scuttling down mysterious back alleys and holes in the walls, the
existence of which has been unknown to most of us. This time the rats
are leaving the sinking ship quietly and silently, for a quiet word
passed round had informed everyone of what is coming, and no one
wishes to be caught. This is the sort of silent play I love to watch.

Just before this, however, down beyond the Austrian Legation came a
flourish of hoarse-throated trumpets--those wonderful Chinese
trumpets. Blare, blare, in a half-chorus they first hang on a high
note; then suddenly tumbling an octave, they roar a bassoon-like
challenge in unison like a lot of enraged bulls. Nearer and nearer, as
if challenging us with these hoarse sounds, came a large body of
soldiery; we could distinctly see the bright cluster of banners round
the squadron commander. Pushing through the clouds of dust which
floated high above them, the horses and their riders appeared and
skirted the edge of our square. We noted the colour of their tunics
and the blackness of the turbans. Two horsemen who dismounted for some
reason, swung themselves rapidly into their saddles, carbine in hand,
and galloped madly to rejoin their comrades in a very significant way.
For a moment they half turned and waved their Mannlichers at us,
showing their breast-circle of characters. They were the soldiers of
savage Tung Fu-hsiang, and were going west--that is, into the Imperial
city. The manner in which they so coolly rode past fifty yards away
must have frightened some one, for when I passed here an hour later
the Austrian Legation and its street defences had been suddenly
abandoned by our men. We had surrendered, without striking a blow, a
quarter of our ground! I remember that I was only mildly interested at
this; everything was so _bouleverse_ and curious that a little more
could not matter. It was like in a dream. Tramping back, the Austrian
sailors crowded into the French Legation and all round their lines and
threw themselves down. One man was so drunk from lack of sleep that he
tumbled on the ground and could not be made to move again. Everybody
kicked him, but he was dead-finished and could be counted out. This
was beginning our warfare cheerfully.

On top of the Austrians a lot of volunteers came in at a double, very
angry, and cursing the Austrians for a retreat which was only
discovered by them by chance. Like so many units in war-time, these
volunteers had been forgotten along a line of positions which could
have been held for days. Nobody could give any explanation excepting
that Captain T----, the Austrian commander, said that he was not going
to sacrifice his men and risk being cut off, when there was nobody in
command over the whole area. T---- was very excited, and did not seem
to realise one thing of immense importance--that half our northeastern
defences have been surrendered without a shot being fired.

At the big French barricades facing north an angry altercation soon
began between the French and Austrian commanders. The French line of
barricades was but the third line of defence here, and only the
streets had been fortified, not the houses; but by the Austrian
retreat it had become the first, and the worn-out French sailors would
have hastily to do more weary fatigue-work carting more materials to
strengthen this contact point. I remember I began to get interested in
the discussion, when I found that there was an unfortified alley
leading right into the rear of this. It would be easy at night-time to
rush the whole line.

Meanwhile nobody knew what was going to happen. All the Ministers,
their wives and belongings, and the secretaries and nondescripts had
disappeared into the British Legation, and the sailors and the
volunteers became more and more bitter with rage. A number of young
Englishmen belonging to the Customs volunteers began telling the
French and Austrian sailors that we had been _trahis_, in order to
make them swear louder. I know that it was becoming funny, because it
was so absurd when ... bang-ping, bang-ping, came three or four
scattered shots from far down the street beyond the Austrian Legation.
It was just where Tung Fu-hsiang's men had passed. That stopped us
talking, and as I took a wad of waste out of the end of my rifle I
looked at my watch--3.49 exactly, or eleven minutes too soon. I ran
forward, pushing home the top cartridge on my clip, but I was too
late. "_A quatre-cents metres_," L----, the French commander, called,
and then a volley was loosed off down that long dusty street--our
first volley of the siege.

Our barricades were full of men here, and it was no use trying to push
in. I postponed my own shooting, for after a brisk fusillade here,
urgent summons came from other quarters, and I had to rush away....
The siege had begun in earnest. I record these things just as they
seemed to happen. We are so tired, my account cannot seem very
sensible. Yet it is the truth.




PART II--THE SIEGE

I

CHAOS


21st June, 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

I passed the night in half a dozen different places, assimilating all
there was to assimilate; gazing and noting the thousand things there
were to be seen and heard, and sleeping exactly three hours. Few
people would believe the extraordinary condition to which twelve hours
of chaos can reduce a large number of civilised people who have been
forced into an unnatural life. It is indeed extraordinary. Half the
Legations are abandoned, excepting for a few sailors; others are being
evacuated, and most people have even none of the necessities of life
with them. For instance, at eight o'clock I discovered that I had had
no breakfast, and on finding that it would be impossible for me to get
any for some hours, I forthwith became so ravenously hungry that I
determined I would steal some if necessary. What a position for a
budding diplomatist!

Fortunately I thought of the Hotel de Pekin before I had done anything
startling, and soon C----, the genial and energetic Swiss, who is the
master of this wonderful hostelry, had given me coffee. He told me
then to go into his private rooms, ransack the place and take what I
liked. I found I was not alone in his private apartments. Baron
R----, the Russian commandant, had just come in before me, and had
fallen asleep from sheer fatigue as he was in the act of eating
something. He looked so ridiculous lying in a chair with his mouth
wide open and his sword and revolver mixed up with the things he had
been eating, that I began laughing loudly, and, aroused by this sound,
two more men appeared suddenly--Marquis P----, the cousin of the
Italian _charge_, and K----, the Dutch Minister. What they were doing
there I did not inquire. The Dutch Minister was in a frightful rage at
everything and everybody, and began talking so loudly that R---- woke
up, and commenced eating again in the most natural way in the world,
without saying a single word. As soon as he had finished he went to
sleep again. He was plainly a man of some character; the whole
position was so ridiculous and yet he paid no attention.

I soon got tired of this, as plenty of other people now came in, all
calling for food, and I was really so weary from lack of sleep and
proper rest that I could not remember what they were talking about two
seconds after they had finished speaking. Most of the men were angry
at the "muddle," as they called it, and said it was hopeless going on
this way. One of the Austrian midshipmen told me that there had been
altogether very little firing, and not more than a few dozen Chinese
skirmishers engaged, but that the whole northern and eastern fronts of
our square were so imperfectly garrisoned that they could be rushed in
a few minutes. Everybody agreed with him, but nobody appeared to know
who was in supreme command, or who was responsible for a distribution
of our defending forces, which would total at least six hundred or
seven hundred men if every able-bodied man was forced into the
fighting-line. Fortunately the Chinese Government appears to be
hesitating again; we have been all driven into our square and can be
safely left there for the time being--that seems to be the point of
view.

I now became anxious about a trunk containing a few valuables, which I
had sent into the British Legation, and I determined to go in person
and see how things were looking there. What confusion! I soon learned
that it had been very gay at the British Legation during the night. At
four o'clock of the previous afternoon, when the first shots had
already been dropping in at the northern and eastern defences, not a
thing had been done in the way of barricading and sandbagging--that
everybody admitted. The flood of people coming in from the other
Legations, almost weeping and wailing, had driven them half insane. At
the Main Gate, a majestic structure of stone and brick, a few sandbags
had actually been got together, as if suggesting that later on
something might be done. But for the time being this Legation, where
all the women and children have rushed for safety, is quite
defenceless. Yet it has long been an understood thing that it was to
become the general base. It was not surprising, then, that at six in
the evening yesterday a tragedy had occurred within eyesight of
everybody at the Main Gate. A European, who afterwards turned out to
be Professor J----, of the Imperial University, an eccentric of
pronounced type, had attempted to cross the north bridge, which
connects the extreme north of Prince Su's palace walls with a road
passing just one hundred yards from the British Legation northern
wall, and perhaps three hundred yards from the Main Gate itself. It
was seen that the European was running, onlookers told me, and that
after him came a Chinese brave in full war-paint, with his rifle at
the trail. Instead of charging his men down the street to save this
wretched man, the British officer, Captain W----, ordered the Main
Gate to be closed, and everybody to go inside except himself and his
file of marines. He then commanded volley-firing, apparently at the
pink walls of the Imperial city, which form a background to the
bridge, although he might as well have ordered musical drill.
Meanwhile the unfortunate J---- was caught half way across the stone
bridge by some other Chinese snipers, who had been lying concealed
there all the time behind some piles of stones. He was hit several
times, though not killed, as several people swear they saw him
crawling down into the canal bed on his hands and knees. Volley-firing
continued at the Main Gate, and the aforesaid British officer cursed
himself into a fever of rage over his men. Even when J---- had finally
disappeared, no steps were taken to see what had become of him; he was
calmly reported lost. This was the opening of the ball at the British
Legation.

No sooner was it dark than M----, the chief, appeared on the scenes,
smoking a cigarette reminiscent of his Egyptian campaign, and clad in
orthodox evening dress. This completed everyone's anger, but the end
was not yet. At ten in the evening a scare developed among the women,
and it was decided to begin fortifying some of the more exposed
points. Everybody who could be found was turned on to this work, but
in the dark little progress could be made excepting in removing all
possibility of any one going to sleep.

But the sublimely ridiculous was reached in an out-of-the-way building
facing the canal, an incident displaying even more than anything else
the attitude of some of the _personnel_ of our missions to China.
Sleeping peacefully in his nice pyjamas under a mosquito net was found
a sleek official of the London Board of Works, who wanted to know what
was meant by waking him up in the middle of the night. Investigations
elsewhere found other members of this Legation asleep in their beds;
everybody said the young men were all right, but those above a certain
age...!

The night thus spent itself very uneasily. They were only learning
what should have been known days before.

When day broke in the British Legation things had seemed more
impossible than ever. Orders and counter-orders came from every side;
the place was choked with women, missionaries, puling children, and
whole hosts of lamb-faced converts, whose presence in such close
proximity was intolerable. Heaven only knew how the matter would end.
The night before people had been only too glad to rush frantically to
a place of safety; with daylight they remembered that they were
terribly uncomfortable--that this might have to go on for days or for
weeks. It is very hard to die uncomfortably. I thought then that
things would never be shaken into proper shape.

In this wise has our siege commenced; with all the men angry and
discontented; with no responsible head; with the one man among those
high-placed dead; with hundreds of converts crowding us at every
turn--in a word, with everything just the natural outcome of the
vacillation and ignorance displayed during the past weeks by those who
should have been the leaders. Fortunately, as I have already said, so
far there has been no fighting or no firing worth speaking of. Only
along the French and Italian barricades, facing east and north, a
dropping fire has continued since yesterday, and one Frenchman has
been shot through the head and one Austrian wounded. It is worth while
noting, now that I think of it, that the French, the Italians, the
Germans, and, of course, the Austrians, have accepted Captain T----,
the cruiser captain, as their commander-in-chief, and that the
Japanese have signified their willingness to do so, too, as soon as
the British and Americans do likewise. Thus already there are signs
that a pretty storm is brewing over this question of a responsible
commander; and, of course, so long as things remain as they are at
present, there can be no question of an adequate defence. Each
detachment is acting independently and swearing at all the others,
excepting the French and Austrians, for the good reason that as the
Austrians have taken refuge in the French lines they must remain
polite. Half the officers are also at loggerheads; volunteers have
been roaming about at will and sniping at anything they have happened
to see moving in the distance; ammunition is being wasted; there are
great gaps in our defences, which any resolute foe could rush in five
minutes were they so inclined; there is not a single accurate map of
the area we have to defend!

All this I discovered in the course of the morning, and by afternoon I
had nothing better to do than go over to the great Su wang-fu, or
Prince Su's palace grounds, now filled with Chinese refugees, both
Catholic and Protestant, and there watch the Japanese at work. The
Japanese Legation is squashed in between Prince Su's palace grounds
and buildings and the French Legation lines, and, consequently, to be
on the outer rim of our defences the little Japanese have been shifted
north and now hold the northeast side of our quadrilateral. Prince Su,
together with his various wives and concubines and their eunuchs, has
days ago fled inside the Imperial city, abandoning this palace with
its valuables to the tender mercies of the first comers; and thus the
Japanese sailor detachment, reinforced by a couple of dozen Japanese
and other volunteers, has made itself free with everything, and is
holding an immense line of high walls, requiring at least five hundred
men to be made tolerably safe. But they have an extraordinary little
fellow in command, Colonel S----, the military attache. He is awkward
and stiff-legged, as are most Japanese, but he is very much in
earnest, and already understands exactly what he can do and what he
cannot. After a search of many hours, I found here the first evidences
of system. This little man, working quietly, is reducing things to
order, and in the few hours which have gone by since the dreadful
occurrences of yesterday he has succeeded in attending to the thousand
small details which demanded his attention. He is organising his
dependents into a little self-contained camp; he is making the hordes
of converts come to his aid and strengthen his lines; in fact, he is
doing everything that he should do. Already I honour this little man;
soon I feel I shall be his slave.

But not only is there order within these Japanese lines; attempts are
being made to find out what is going on beyond--that is, to discover
what is being done in this deserted corner of the city, which is
abandoned to the European. Although all is quiet without, it is not
possible that everyone has fled, because some rifle-firing is going
on.... When I arrived the Japanese had already discovered that a
Chinese camp had been quietly established less than a quarter of a
mile away. Half an hour afterwards a breathless Japanese sailor
brought in a report that snipers had been seen stealthily approaching.
I was just in the nick of time, as Colonel S---- immediately decided on
a reconnaissance in force; any one who liked could go. Would I go?

We slipped out under command of the colonel himself and worked through
tortuous lanes down towards the abandoned Customs Inspectorate and the
Austrian Legation. We reached the rear of the Customs compounds
without a sound being heard or a living thing seen. All along hundreds
of yards of twisting alleyways the native houses stood empty and
silent, abandoned by their owners just as they are. Even the Peking
dog, a cur of great ferocity, who in peaceful times abounds everywhere
and is the terror of our riding-parties, had fled, as if driven away
by the fear of the coming storm. In the distance, as we stealthily
moved, we could hear an occasional rattle of musketry, probably
directed against the French Legation and the Italian barricade, where
it has been going on for twenty-four hours; but so isolated is one
street in Peking from the rest by the high walls of the numberless
compounds and the thick trees which intercept all sounds that we could
be certain of nothing. Perhaps the firing was not even the enemy at
work, whoever he may be; it might be our men....

But directly in front of us all was still, and just as we thought of
stealing on, a Japanese whispered "Hush," and pointed a warning
finger. We flattened ourselves against houses and scurried into open
doors. Suddenly it was getting exciting. Down another lane then came a
noisy sound of feet, incautiously pattering on the hard ground to the
accompaniment of some raucous talk. It is the very devil in this
network of lanes and blind alleys which twist round the Legations, and
no force could properly patrol them....

Without any warning two men came round the corner, peering everywhere
with sharp eyes and bobbing up and down. Simultaneously with the sob
of surprise they gave our rifles crashed off. And this time, owing to
the short range and the Japanese warning, we got them fair and square,
and both of them rolled over. But no, one fellow jumped to his feet
again, and before we could stop him was down another lane like a flash
of lighting. We promptly gave chase, yelling blue murder in an
incautious manner, which might have brought hundreds of the enemy on
our heels. But we did not care. Round a corner, as we followed the man
up, a high wall rose sheer, but nothing daunted, the fellow took a
tremendous leap, and by the aid of the lattice-work on a window,
climbed to a roof. Then bang, bang, bang, seven shots went at him
rapidly, one after another. In spite of the volley the man still
crawled upwards, but as he reached the top of the low house and passed
his legs over he gave a feeble moan and then.... _flopper-ti flop,
flopper-ti flop_, he crashed down the other side and ended with a dull
thud on the ground. On the other side there he was dead as a door-nail
and all covered with blood. It was our first proper work. But he was
not a soldier, he was a Boxer; and in place of the former incomplete
attire of red sashes and strings, this true patriot wore a long red
tunic edged with blue, and had his head tied up in the regulation
_bonnet rouge_ of the French Revolution. Round his waist he had also
girded on a blue cartridge-belt of cloth, with great thick Martini
bullets jammed into the thumb holes. This we thought very curious at
the time, as the Boxers were supposed to laugh at firearms. Elated by
this little affair, we pushed on, and came upon other men working
round our lines in small bands, and exchanged shots with them. All
were Boxers in this new uniform; but although we tried to entice them
on and corner them in houses, they were too cunning for us, and broke
back each time. In the end we had so stirred up this hornet's nest
that the scattered firing became more and more persistent, and stern
orders came for us to fall back.

We came in feeling elated, but Colonel S---- was looking serious, for
he had discovered that the extent of Prince Su's outer walls, which
have to be held in their entirety, is so much greater than was
expected, and every part can be so easily attacked from the outside,
that the task is desperate. There are less than fifty men in all for
these long Japanese lines, and if we take more from elsewhere it will
be merely creating fresh gaps.... Decidedly it is not enticing. The
whole line from the north right round to the south, where the
Japanese, French, Austrians, Italians and Germans are distributed,
ending on the Tartar Wall itself, is terribly weak. And as I began to
understand this, an hour after this afternoon adventure I became quite
gloomy at the outlook.

Everything, indeed, was upside down. Matters in the British Legation
were not improving, and the fighting air which exists elsewhere is not
to be found here. Men, women and children; ponies, mules and
packing-cases; sandbags and Ministers Plenipotentiary--are still all
engaged in attempting to sort themselves out and keep distinct from
one another. Already the British Legation has surrendered itself, not
to the enemy, but to committees. There are general committees, food
committees, fortifications committees, and what other committees I do
not know, except that American missionaries, who appear at least to
have more energy than any one else, are practically ruling them. This
is all very well in its way, but it is curious to see that dozens of
able bodied men, armed with rifles, are hiding away in corners so that
they shall not be drafted away to the outer defences. Everywhere a
contemptible spirit is being displayed, because a feeling prevails
that there are no responsible chiefs in whom absolute trust can be
placed. A pleasant mess in all truth. It is now everyone for himself
and nobody looking after the others....

Some of the people, however, have begun dividing themselves up, and
now are billeted, nationality by nationality, in separate quarters.
But many persons seem lost and distraught. H----, the great director
of Chinese affairs, was siting on an old mattress looking quite
paralysed; P----, his counterpart in the Russian bank, was striding
about excitedly and muttering to himself. The Belgian Legation has
disappeared entirely; whether they have run away or been lost in the
confusion I could not for the life of me tell. What a position, what a
condition! Already it is a great feat to be on speaking terms with a
dozen people, and if we could only instill some of the savageness we
all feel towards one another into our defence, it would become so
vigorous and unconquerable that not all the legions of the Boxer
Empire, massed in serried ranks, could break in on us. But this very
defence, which should be so determined, is the most half-hearted thing
imaginable. It has no real leader, and merely resolves itself into
the old policy of each Legation holding its own in an irregular
half-circle round the British Legation, which itself is a mass of
disorder. I feel certain that if we have a night attack at once the
Chinese will break in with the greatest ease, and then.... _Tant pis!_

The last thing I saw in the British Legation was M----, the great
correspondent, sitting on a great stack of his books, looking wearily
around him. His former energy and resolution have all departed, sapped
by the spectacle of extraordinary incompetence around him. Of what
good has all that rescuing of native Christians been--all that energy
in dragging them more dead than alive into our lines in the face of
Ministerial opposition, when we cannot even protect ourselves? But
just when I began this moralising, the hundred and fifty mules and
ponies that have been collected together all broke loose, frightened
by some stray shots, and went careering madly around us. It was pitch
dark and most gloomy before they had been all tied up again, and
although firing became heavier and heavier as Chinese snipers found
they could approach our outer lines in safety, I finally sought out a
spot for myself and fell asleep with my rifle on my chest--cursing
everybody. It is a sign of the times--my nerves are becoming
Ministerial!




II

THE RETREAT AND THE RETURN


23rd June, 1900.

       *       *       *       *       *

Yesterday the inevitable happened, and only Heaven and the foolishness
of the attacking forces, who are only playing with us, and do not seem
to have settled down to their work, saved us from complete
annihilation. Without a word of explanation, Captain T----, the
Austrian commander, suddenly ordered all the French, Italians and
Austrians to fall back on the British Legation, sending word meanwhile
to the Japanese and the Germans to follow his example. This meant that
the whole vast semicircle to the northeast and the southeast was being
thrown up. The result was that for ten minutes armed men of all
nationalities poured into the British Legation, until every
rifle-bearing effective was standing there, all jabbering in a mass,
and not knowing what it was all about. The Americans, who had
established themselves on the Tartar Wall as the main point in the
western defence, guessed they were not going to be left there cut off
from salvation by a failure to remember their existence; and presently
they, too, ran in, openly swearing at their officers. These American
marines have never quite liked this idea of being planted on the
Tartar Wall; for with that smartness for which their race is
distinguished, they see it is quite on the cards that they are
forgotten up there if a rush occurs while the others are sitting safe
in the main base. And the Americans are not going to be forgotten--we
soon found that out. They are the people of the future.

Depict to yourself, if you can, the blind fear of all the
Plenipotentiaries, of all the missionaries and their lamb-faced
converts, on seeing the gallant defenders of the outer lines rushing
in on them at a fast trot, and then falling into line and standing
very much at ease awaiting the next move. I may be brutal, but I
relished that scene a little; it was a lesson that was sadly needed.
It was the British Minister who remained the most calm; perhaps he
immediately understood that the game was now in his hands. But the
other Ministers, I wish you could have but seen them! They crowded
round his British Excellency in an adoring and trembling ring, and
without subterfuge offered him the supreme command; that was exactly
what we had been expecting. Underneath their manner you could easily
see they meant to say that they knew it was the British Legation in
which they had taken refuge; that they had had enough of all these
alarums and excursions; and that so long as they were left in peace
they did not care about the rest. What mean little people we are in
this world! The French, the Russian, the Italian and the Japanese
Ministers were the first to act thus, and as they represented a
majority of the detachments, the others who had Legation Guards had
pretty well to follow suit, whether they liked it or not, and some did
not like it, as I shall show hereafter. M---- had been hinting very
plainly that he had been in a kilted regiment, and that the British
Legation was the hub of the defence--the asylum for all; and so with a
satisfied smile, he was pleased to accept the proffered appointment.
Yet it was one only in name. For just as he was writing out his first
_ordre du jour_ the various Plenipotentiaries showed their
appreciation of the office they had conferred on him by ordering, each
one of them separately, their respective detachments to return to
their respective Legations so hurriedly abandoned. So the sailors and
the marines, and the fighting volunteers who bear them company,
bundled back to the outer lines and barricades again, finding all just
as it had been before, except that the Italian Legation was in flames
and the Italian barricades therefore useless. The snipers had found
that they could suddenly work in peace, and had thrown blazing
torches. Four Legations are now destroyed and abandoned, for the
Belgian, the Austrian and the Dutch have all gone up in flames at
different times during the last days. Seven Legations remain and ten
Ministers.

The defence is thus getting into reasonable limits and so long as our
attacks are confined to what they have been up till now, we may really
pull through. Incendiary fires round the outer lines, lighted by means
of torches stuck on long poles, a heavy rifle-fire poured into the
most exposed barricades by an unseen enemy, and very occasionally a
faint-hearted rush forward, which a fusillade on our part turns into a
rout--these have so far been the dangers with which we have had to
contend. But the very worst feature of the defence is that no one
trusts the neighbouring detachment sufficiently to believe that it
will stand firm under all circumstances and not abandon its ground;
consequently this fear that a sudden breakdown along some barricades
will allow of an inrush of Chinese troops and Boxers makes men fight
all the time with their eyes over their shoulders, which is the very
worst way of fighting I can possibly imagine. And another hardly less
important point is that the burden is not evenly apportioned, and that
the men know it. For instance, the British Legation, which is as yet
not in the slightest exposed, is full of able-bodied men doing
nothing--whereas on the outer lines of the other Legations many men
are so dead with sleep that they can hardly sit awake two hours. It
can easily be seen from the rude sketches I have made and re-made,
what I mean. I have been over every inch on my own legs; there can be
no mistake.

From the main sketch you will see that the holding of the Tartar Wall,
together with the American and Russian Legations, protects the British
Legation effectively from the south and partially, from the west; that
the Franco-German-Austrian lines, and the Su wang-fu, with the
Japanese, mask the east; and that of the other two sides on which the
British Legation walls and outbuildings really constitute the actual
defence line directly in touch with the enemy, the Imperial Carriage
Park, a vast grass-grown area with but half a dozen yellow-roofed
buildings in it, makes the western approaches very difficult to
attack, since they are easily swept by our rifle-fire; and that the
northern side is so filled with buildings belonging to the Chinese
Government (which it now seems cannot be destroyed), that I do not
apprehend attacks here. The only real dangers to the British Legation
in any case are these two corners to the north and the southwest....

Passing over to the Su wang-fu, you realise the extraordinary
difference between the danger points along the British Legation
northern and western barricades, and little Colonel S----'s command.
Here you are in direct touch with the enemy, for the snipers of
forty-eight hours ago have been strongly reinforced, doubtless
attracted by the possibility of loot.

[Illustration: Map of the siege.]

Soldiers and all sorts of banditti must have joined hands with the
Boxers, for it is clear that every hour is mysteriously adding more
and more men round our lines. You can hear the men talking, and you
can see bricks moving but fifty or sixty yards from where you are
squinting through a loophole as fresh barricades, that are gradually
surrounding us in a vise which may yet crush us to death, are silently
built. The forty or fifty Japanese, and the few volunteers who are
with them, have now been reinforced by all the Italians, who have been
given a big strip of outer wall and a fortified hillock in Prince Su's
ornamental garden--a hillock which commands a great stretch of
territory, as territory goes in our wall split area. For here in the
Su wang-fu the number of walls and buildings is terrible, and Heaven
only knows how seventy or eighty men can even make a pretence of
holding such positions. First there is the great outer wall eighteen
feet high and three feet thick. Then from this outer wall, other thick
walls run inwards at right angles, splitting up the place into little
squares, in which as likely as not there will be a group of houses
with great dragon-adorned roofs. Further towards the centre of the Fu
is Prince Su's own palace and his retainers' quarters; to the south of
this is an ornamental garden full of trees, a vast and mournful
enclosure, standing in which the crack of outpost rifles can only be
distantly heard. Moving across to the southern side--that is, the side
near the French Legation and the protected Legation Street--the
Christian refugees are found gathered here in huge droves. In one
building there are alone four hundred native schoolgirls, rows upon
rows of them that never seem to come to an end, sitting on the ground
in their sober blue coats and trousers, peacefully combing each
other's hair, or working on sandbags with the imperturbability of the
Easterner who is placid under death. Farther on, again, you come on
families, sometimes three generations huddling together on a six-foot
straw mat. A mother trying to feed a child from her half-dry breasts
tells you quietly that it is no use, since the meagre fare she is
already getting does not make sustenance enough for her, let alone her
child. Yet everything possible is being done to feed them. All the
able-bodied converts have long ago been drafted off for
barricade-building and loophole-making in the endless walls, and here
the curious Japanese passion for order and detail is shown on the
coats of the older men. The boss-shifts, each responsible for so many
men who have to accomplish a given amount of work in a specified time,
have big white labels with characters written squarely across them,
telling everyone clearly what they are. At a little table near by
writers, who have been carefully sorted out from this incongruous
gathering, are provided with brush and ink, and have been set to work
making up reports and lists of all the people. These are handed to a
Japanese Secretary of Legation, who has been evolved into an
engineer-in-chief and overseer of native labour, and thus at every
hour of the day the distribution of the barricaders is known. Amid
these crowds of native refugees, who number at least a couple of
thousand people, two or three Japanese occasionally wander to see that
all's well, and give the babies little things they have looted from
Prince Su's palace to play with. Content to be where they are and
assured that the European will not abandon them, these natives exhibit
in a strange manner that inexplicable thing--Faith. Poor people--they
little know! Is it always thus with faith?

So the Su wang-fu, which is but the northwestern part of our lines, is
now a city in itself, inhabited by the most unlikely people in the
world. Three days have sufficed to give it an entity of its own. The
nature of the defence and the fighting value of the Japanese as
compared to the Italians, are fitly illustrated by the distribution of
forces which little Colonel S---- has already made. The Italians hold
perhaps a hundred feet of the outer wall and one hillock of some
importance. The Japanese have at least a thousand feet of loopholed
and unloop-holed wall, and are quite ready to take another thousand if
some one would be kind enough to give it to them. In posts of three
and four men, distant sometimes hundreds of feet apart, the little
Japanese takes his two hours on and his four hours off night and day
without a murmur or without ever a break. Only at one place are there
more than three or four little men together. At the eastern end of the
Fu there is a big post grouped round the fortified Main Gate, where
there are actually eight or nine men under the command of a Japanese
naval lieutenant.

But the genius who h

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