CAUSES WHICH LED TO THE PRESERVATION OF THE FOREIGN LEGATIONS IN PEKING. Meanwhile nothing was done by the Chinese Government to check the rising tide of disaffection beyond the issue of a few half-hearted edicts, which were received by the people with open derision." Thus it was with a sickening feeling of disappointment that we heard on Sunday, May 27, that the Ministers had granted the Chinese Government a week in which to quell the Boxer move No question is more frequently asked of those who have just left Peking than this: "How did you manage to hold out?" and to no question is it more difficult to find an answer. It is well known that theoretically we had no adequate means of resistance to the Chinese attack, and that after the relief of Tientsin the military authorities in that place considered our position so hopeless that they gravely discussed the advisability of putting off any advancement; and when next day the report upon the capital until the beginning' of September. It is not, however, so well known how great was the danger in which we stood before the actual siege began. For the defence of the Legations was only made. possible by the presence in Peking of the foreign guards, and there was a time at which it seemed probable that the guards would be shut out and the foreign community left to face the coming assault alone. The guards actually entered Peking at nightfall on May 31. At that time I was in charge of the Anglican Mission in the west city, and kept a careful diary of events as they occurred and of the feeling in the city as it was represented to me by native servants and Christians. །་ For the past fortnight we had viewed with increasing anxiety the steady growth of Boxer influence in the city and the persistent rumors of danger which were bruited about the streets. Day by day the Christians came to me with the warning, "This danger will not blow over;" and their actions gave weight to their words, for they all with one accord began to pack up their goods, pawn their valuables, and prepare for themselves places of retreat in case of a sudden emergency. came in that Fêngt'ai station had been burnt, and the engineers driven away, we received the news with positive thankfulness. I remember well the delight of a young American with whom I discussed that event the next morning. "We are saved," he said. "The ་ ་ ་ Ministers do nothing whilst only native Christians are murdered; now the Boxers have touched the line, and they will be forced to move." He was quite right. It was the burning of Fêngt'ai station which saved the situation and, as I believe, preserved us all from having our throats' cut. For the foreign ministers' at once took a strong attitude, ordered up the guards, and informed the Chinese Government that they would come peaceably if possible; by force if peaceable entrance was denied them. The consequence was that after two days' shuffling and shillyshallying the necessary permission was reluctantly given. But there was every motive to urge the Chinese to refuse permission, or, after permission given, to allow the Boxers to rise, or the Imperial soldiers to mutiny and attack the guards. The country was up. After the burning of Fêngt'ai no one could any longer venture to believe that the movement would stop at the destruction of Christian chapels and the massacre of native Christians; the Government was manifestly either on the side of the insurgents or at least half-hearted in opposition. The Court was bitterly affronted by the determination of the foreign ministers to force guards upon the city, and the common rumor that six of the Privy Council were resolved upon resistance at all hazards was probably not far from the truth; the city itself was full of Boxers only waiting their hour to burn and plunder. The Imperial troops were widely disaffected; many were openly in favor of supporting the Boxers, none were ready to restrain them from any anti-foreign violence. Tung fuh siang; with his Kan su braves occupied the Chinese city, and was ready for any opportunity of wreaking vengeance on the foreigner; the number of soldiers which the ministers proposed to call up was so small as to ensure defeat in the event of any attack, whilst the threatened march up, viewed in the light of the disaster which afterwards befell Admiral Seymour's column was obviously impossible. If, then, the Chinese had either refused to allow the guards to come up, unharmed, seeing that they were all bitterly anti-foreign and well aware that nothing would give their chief greater pleasure than an attack upon the foreigners. It seemed more than possible either that the Yungting mên would be shut against the guards, if only for the night, or that in the wide open space between the Yungting mên and, the Bridge of Heaven, where there was no cover, the Kan su brayes might fall upon them. In either case the failure of the guards to get through might have been the signal for the Boxers and city roughs to rise and attack the unprotected foreign houses. A glance at a plan of Peking will show that from the west to the east city there are but two roads-one under the south, wall between the Ch'ien mên and the front gate of the Imperial city, the other round by the north wall of the Imperial city. In the event, then, of a sudden outbreak, foreigners living in the southwest would be hopelessly cut off from the foreign quarter in the southeast. To pass the Chien mên, always a crowded thoroughfare, and in disturbed times like these naturally closely guarded, would be impossible; to go a long journey round by the north would take ful when the streets are thronged, probably three, and at every step the foreigner would be liable to discovery. Consequently, on May 31 I felt anxious about the event, for the speech of the city was dangerous, and I sent people out into the Chinese city to bring me instant word of any trouble. or had declared themselves, as they didly two hours, in times of excitement, twenty days later, in favor of attack, the defeat of the Legations would have been rendered impossible; and the civilians in Peking at their mercy. This, then, was the condition of affairs when, on May 31, we heard that, instead of the 1,000 men whom we had before expected, only 330 were on the road, and that they had not started until 4.15 P.M., and consequently could not possibly get into the city before dusk. At 5 P.M. Tung fuh siang's braves to the number of 6,000 were still encamped between the Ch'ien mên 'and the Yungting men, and it was almost beyond reason to believe that they would suffer so small a number of men to march quietly through their midst About 7 P.M. my nearest neighbor, Dr Gilbert Reid, came in looking very troubled. He said that he had just returned from the east city where he had found the Legation Street crowded and the Ch'ien men literally packed with people. The guards were not then in, and the common speech and attitude were threatening. He said that he had already prepared a place of refuge for his wife and child in the house of a Chinese friend, and he urged me to make every preparation so as to be ready for any emergency. Happily, I had before sent away the majority of our mission to the British Legation, and had only one foreigner, a deaconess, with me. By Dr. Reid's advice I warned the native Christians. in the event of any outbreak to leave their houses, mingle with the crowd and gradually slip away to some place of hiding. For ourselves we provided Chinese carts to wait at the back of the compound, proposing to drive about the quieter streets of the city all night, and in the morning seek the best way of escape either by the east or by the west to Tientsin. The carts were ready, the deaconess was disguised as an old Manchu woman, and we waited the result, Happily at eight one of our men ran in with the rumor that the troops had arrived, and half an hour later my boys came to report that they had seen them enter the city. About five Tung fuh siang's braves had all been led outside the city to the south park, and at eight the foreign guards marched in. The present danger was past. With many others I was full of hopes that the presence of even so small a body of troops would overawe the populace, and that peace would be restored; but I was bitterly mistaken. Things within the city and without rapidly went from bad to worse. On June 4 the railway was finally torn up; on June 7 the telegraphie line to Tientsin was cut. Gradually the Boxers closed in upon us; all foreigners gathered together into the lines of defence. Then the Boxers began to burn all the unprotected foreign buildings, and skirmishes between the guards and the enemy were of daily occurrence. Finally, on June 19, the Tsung-li-Yamen sent us its ultimatum, and the siege began in earnest. The only difference made by the arrival of the guards was that the defence of the Legations was rendered possible. Without the marines we should have been undefended; without the native Christians we should have been helpless against the peculiar form of attack which the Chinese now made upon us. We should have had no coolies, no messengers, no servants. The war was a war of barricades. When the relief force arrived they found our position surrounded with a perfect network of them built mainly of brick and earth. Night and day, during the whole of the siege we were engaged upon this work, restoring, often by night, the defences which the Chinese cannon had destroyed in the day. The northern position in Prince Su's palace was defended by a long trench from three to five feet deep cut into the artificial hills of the pleasure-garden, and banked up high on the enemy's side. This trench connected the Japanese position on the east, which covered the rear of the French and Japanese Legations, with the Italian and British positions on the west, which held the wall on the east bank of the Imperial river and covered the whole east front of the British Legation so that men could pass from the Japanese to the British position in perfect security. In the Legation itself the eastern wall and part of the western was more than doubled in thickness and protected by a trench ten feet deep to prevent mining. On the north, the part of the Hanlin held by the British was guarded by a series of strong barricades, the outermost fitted with gun platforms, and the rest, one behind the other, coVering every possible point of attack in case the enemy won their way through the first position. Later in the siege the strong position in the Mongol Market taken by Von Strauch was similarly strengthened. Besides this, the American position on the Tartar wall was defended by a series of strong and high barricades built of great bricks, and the approach up the ramp defiladed to prevent sharpshooters picking off men as they changed watch. These works were of such magnitude, and involved such labor in construction that they would have been absolutely impossible for the small foreign force, which was fully employed in keeping watch on stations thus provided for them. They were all built by native Christians working under the supervision, and generally with the manual aid, of missionaries. Besides this, in the British Legation alone there were gathered together 473 foreigners without counting the marines. For so great a number it was necessary to have a large body of servants to make life bearable. This work also was performed by the Christian refugees. They acted as cooks, coolies, house-boys, washermen, scavengers; they even supplied us with a cobbler and a watch mender. They did anything and everything that was necessary. Without them we should have been in the direst straits. The ordinary staff of Legation servants would have been utterly inadequate to support the pressure of so great a multitude, and the ordinary staff of servants was no longer there. Between June 11 and June 15 a large proportion of the servants deserted their masters on one pretext or another, and fled away to look after their own families. The great inrush of foreigners did not take place until the 20th, and the incomers brought with them scarcely any servants at all. It was interesting to hear men who had served in Africa or India discussing this peculiarity of Chinese servants. No Indian or African "boy," they said, would think for a moment of deserting his master in time of need-the greater the peril, the closer and more faithful would he show himself; while the flight of Chinese servants is one of the signs for which the foreigner learns to watch as the sure prelude of evil at the door. This is indeed an interesting question, and one which needs a master for its proper handling. It can hardly be explained by the assumption that the Chinese are incapable of gratitude or loyalty, for this is a long-exploded fallacy; neither is it to be explained by their peculiar doctrine concerning filial piety and the strong sense of family duty which certainly does bind them with peculiar strictness to their home. It can, I think, be explained only by the singular nature of the attack made upon foreigners. In China, to attack the foreigner means to attack every one connected with him, and the attack extends not merely to the individual servant in foreign employ but to his whole household. In China guilt lies not only at the door of the individual offenderit extends to every member of his family, and vengeance is sought not only upon the individual but upon his kinsfolk. Thus, in the present instance, the Chinese servants felt that unless they were at home to look after their own families and provide for them some place of refuge, their nearest and dearest would be at the mercy of an enemy who knew no pity. Under such circumstances, it is no wonder that they deserted, for every human feeling urged them to desert. But be that as it may, desert they did; and if it had not been for the presence of the Christians the Legations would have been in evil plight. It is a curious and interesting thing, when we remember the large part that these people played in the salvation of the foreigners in Peking, to consider the way in which, they were collected together. There were in all within the defended lines nearly 4,000 Christians. Not one of these was brought in by the counsel of the ministers, and the larger half came without even the counsel of their pastors. When we first began to think that retreat to the Legations would be necessary, the 'orders given to us were that no Christians could be re ceived, and this order was repeated again and again to the Protestant missionaries who defended their Christians in the Hsiao shun Hu t'ung. But on June 15, mainly by the exertions of Dr. Morrison, the Times correspondent, and Mr. Huberty James, one of the professors in the Imperial University, a party of soldiers was sent out to the west city to rescue the Roman Catholics who, as we heard, were being massacred by the Boxers near the south cathedral. This party brought in during the day a large number of Christians, one convoy containing nearly 300. These were settled in Prince Su's palace; and in the course of the next twenty-four hours others came in gradually in small parties, till the number amounted to about 2,000. Some were wounded more or less severely, some were sick, all were destitute; and they were tended and fed by Dr. Morrison and his helpers until the siege began in real earnest and their presence became not only a necessity, but a cause for thankfulness. They thus did us a double service: they provided us with coolies and they forced upon us the occupation of Prince Su's palace, which, after the burning of the Austrian Legation and the customs buildings, became one of the keys of the strategic position. The rest, who numbered about 1,700, had been gathered into the great compound in the Hsiao shun Hu t'ung which belonged to the American Methodists. Into that place all the American missionaries had collected, and there they had erected fortifications of the most elaborate and ingenious construction, intending to hold it with the aid of a small guard of American marines against the Box ers. But when on June 20 the condition of affairs changed, and it became a war not against Boxers only but against the Imperial troops, the lines of defence were closed in and the American guard withdrawn. They had thus no choice but to leave their own compound and join the rest of the allies within the lines. The missionaries came into the British Legation, and the native Christians were settled in Su's palace. These American missionaries and their converts did us the most signal service. The organization of the community was largely due to Mr. Tewksbury; the arduous task of fortifying the Legation was laid upon Mr. Gamewell. Coming from their own strongly fortified position, they were surprised to find the Legation without defences of any sort. But Mr. Gamewell at once put himself at the service of the military commanders, and proceeded to construct the fortifications of which we were afterwards so proud. Worn out as he was with the incessant labor which he had endured in the Hsiao shun Hu t'ung compound, he began again and labored throughout the entire siege with an untiring zeal. Sick or well, he was everywhere, personally watching over every part of his work with a marvellous activity which really earned for him the clever nickname with which Dr. Arthur Smith' dubbed him, of "Limited Omnipresence." The manual labor was done by the missionaries under him, supported by gangs of Christians. These men knew that they were working to defend their own lives as well as ours, and they worked night and day. Some few of them showed the most conspicuous courage under fire; nearly all of them labored hard and cheerfully when led; a few shirked. But it must always be remembered that amongst these coolies were many men who had been employed as teachers, preachers, doctors, assistants, and in other positions of trust, and were consequently unused to manual labor of any kind, still less to the incessant hard 1 The well-known author of Chinese Characteristics. |