Part 2
Yesterday I was ready to start with Mrs. Brent, when a letter came for Mrs. Squiers from Sir Robert Hart, saying he thought the train would eventually “get through” to Tien-tsin, but that his secret service agents had informed him that there were rioters and Boxers at several stations prepared to stone the passenger coaches, and he urged me not to attempt the trip. He wrote: “Things must get better soon or very much worse.”
Captain Myers and his men were up all night guarding the compound. This United States Legation is such a wretched little irregular place to defend—it could so easily be fired.
The atmosphere of the compound is distinctly exciting. The quintessence of American interests are discussed right here in the open air, under a few scattered big trees, by people walking about gesticulating or standing on scorching hot flagstones, which pave part of this enclosure, arguing with one another as to how soon the _coup d’état_ will take place, but all agreeing on one point—that a cable should be sent immediately to the State Department in Washington before telegraphic communication is lost; that nothing but a tremendous armed force can free the Americans in Peking from a surely approaching massacre; that many of the higher Chinese officials would try to protect us to the end. But the fact remains, if the Boxers and rioters continue to increase in numbers each day as they have been doing for the past week, it will be the mob we will have to deal with, and not the Tsung-li Yamen.
In nearly every instance the persons who voice these sentiments are men who have lived in China for years, who know the country, the language, and the people. They know that the strength of the Chinese lies in clever cunning and mob violence, that they cannot be trusted under any circumstances.
These men all agree that China was never before in such a condition. Mr. Pethick, familiar with every phase of tortuous Chinese government, forty years a resident in China, and an intimate friend of half the political leaders, knowing their weaknesses and wickednesses by heart, urges the Minister to state to Washington the situation as it is, but all to no avail.
The white dazzling star of optimism is blinding him to facts, and with the British Minister to stand with him in his position, he says that the Boxer movement is only a few fanatics, and the mobs and incendiaries are but slight demonstrations of the yearly spring riots!
Dr. Coltman, a clever American physician of Peking, and a correspondent for the _Chicago Record_, is sending to his paper some strong cables about affairs here, but the United States are so saturated with yellow journalism that probably his wires will not be believed. When we complain to the Yamen about the trains running no longer from Peking to Tien-tsin, as many ladies and children wish to leave, they smile and say “they regret the present state of affairs, but that in a few days all will be in working order again.” Mr. Pethick thinks they are not allowing the trains to leave Tien-tsin because they don’t want any more foreign troops to come to Peking.
_June 10._
A telegram arrived to-day from Tien-tsin, saying the second contingent that they have been so madly telegraphing for these past few days had practically seized a train and left at 10.10, that most of the track is supposed to be all right, but they expect to have difficulty with an occasional broken bridge. Captain M^cCalla is again in command of our marines, and the combined forces of this relief party number 1,600. We expect the train to arrive to-night, and, owing to the gates being closed at sundown, they will have to spend the night outside. To-morrow at daybreak they will be met with twenty carts for their ammunition and luggage.
_June 11._
This morning Mr. Squiers, and Mr. Cheshire, and Captain Myers, with ten marines, waited at the station for the troops from daybreak until eleven o’clock, but there was no sign of them. The escort then returned to the Legation. The telegraph was broken last night. We have no more communication with the outside world; our world is this dangerous Peking.
_June 12._
Such intense excitement! This afternoon the Japanese Chancellor of Legation went down to the railway-station in the official Legation cart to see if there were any sign of the troops. Returning by the principal gate, he was seized by Imperial troops, disembowelled, and cut to pieces.
Mr. Squiers had sent about the same hour his _maffu_ (groom) down to the station with a pony for Captain M^cCalla in case the troops had come. This man was also returning, after having waited there some hours, when they—the Imperial Chinese soldiers—saw that he was some foreigner’s servant, and tried to seize him, but he lashed both horses—the one he was on and the one he was leading—and just escaped. On reaching the Legation, he was so terrified he told Mr. Squiers he would have to leave his service immediately and try to save his life by running away to Tien-tsin.
Twenty of our marines have been sent with an officer to guard the big Methodist mission near the Ha Ta Men Gate, which is still holding out.
Rumours are the only subject of conversation now. To have them refuted or confirmed, a Russian bribed a reliable Chinese to go fifty miles down the track and to report where the troops are. He could find no sign of them. How very extraordinary! Where are these 1,600 men that left Tien-tsin two days ago? He also reported that the track was broken in several places.
To-day the house belonging to the British Minister in the hills, very near our temple, was looted and burnt by the Boxers. Most fortunately, Miss Armstrong brought the children back yesterday.
A Russian secretary, Mr. Kroupensky, has figures at the end of his fingers about the number of troops Russia can land in Tien-tsin from Port Arthur in a few days’ time, etc., and if things get much worse, the Russians say it is more than probable their people will march on to Peking by themselves to our rescue. Can we suppose they are trying to prepare us for a Russian _coup d’état_?
Dr. A. W. P. Martin, a famous savant in Chinese classics and other ancient languages, Director of the Imperial University in Peking, has temporarily become the refugee guest of Mr. Squiers, his own house being too unsafe for him to remain in. Mr. Pethick is also a guest in this hospitable house. The British Legation is already crammed with missionaries and refugees, who in their own quarters feared for their lives, and were obliged to leave their missions near Peking, and concentrate at some place capable of defence.
A message that has to be sent to the Tsung-li Yamen always gains more strength by being sent from each Legation the same day. To-day the Japanese were requested to join the others with this usual procedure, but they answered simply: “Impossible. The Chinese have murdered our Third Secretary of Legation, and Japan can have no more communication with China—except war.”
_June 13._
All last night the sky was bright from the many fires in the Tartar city—work done by the Boxers and soldiers. The Roman Catholic Church, the “Tungchou,” was burnt to the ground, and all through the night the Christian Chinese who lived near it were massacred. Other less important missions have also been destroyed. Yesterday the people in the Austrian Legation rescued a Chinese Christian woman who was being burned to death very near their Legation wall.
Baron von Ketteler, the German Minister, considered some Boxer who walked down Legation Street was impertinent to him, and chased him up the street as far as the Russian Bank, where he finally captured him. He was beating him over the head with his walking-stick even before the fellow stopped, and the crowd that collected was enormous. Captain Myers, Captain Strouts of the English, and Baron von Rahden, of the Russian guard, seized this opportunity to make a kind of rush down and up Legation Street, placing the Maxim-gun ready to use if necessary, and in this way completely cleared it of Chinese from the Dutch Legation down to the Italian. They had wanted to take this step for some time, deeming it has now become necessary to take real measures for our defence. They were glad of this excuse.
_June 16._
In the afternoon yesterday we were horrified at the number of big fires that broke out in so many different parts of the Tartar city, and when we saw that the Ch’ien Men Gate was blazing, and all the houses around in the same condition, we felt we were in great danger. If this got a hold, it would burn up the Legation district of Peking very quickly. There are two parts of the city—the northern Manchu city, containing the Imperial palaces and garrison, also the foreign Legations; and the southern or Chinese city, containing the trading population, theatres, and markets. Both parts are joined in the form of the letter =T=, the leg or largest part being the Manchu city on the north, with walls 60 feet high, 40 feet wide at the top, loop-holed parapets 3 feet high at the side, and square bastions 100 yards apart on the outside face. At wide intervals along the inside face are pairs of inclined roads, 8 feet wide, for mounting the wall. The total length of this rectangular wall on the four sides of the Manchu city is about twelve miles. Joined to this great wall on the south is the much lower and weaker wall of the Chinese or southern city. All nationalities sent men, even these traitorous Pekingese, to aid us in extinguishing the fire. The Imperial fire-brigade arrived with great pomp, and could have furnished charming costumes for some “extravaganza” in their get-up. They had no idea how to put a fire out, but fortunately they had some hose, which, when used in the telling places, proved most efficacious.
Our men fought this terrible fire side by side with the Chinese, and this goes to show how a common danger levels most things, even active hostilities. The Cossacks worked exceptionally well. This fire had been started by the rioters and thieves in the rich bazaar district of the city, under cover of which they hoped to get much rich booty. The wind being high, the flames gained great headway, and the tremendous Ch’ien Men Gate was soon ablaze. By eight o’clock the fire was somewhat controlled; but it burned all night, and when seen from the Great Wall it looked like a huge torch.
_June 17._
Just one week ago to-day we got the telegram that the combined forces of England, the United States, France, Japan, etc., now at Taku, numbering 1,600 men and over, had practically seized a train at Tien-tsin, and, with workmen on board to mend the track where it had been derailed, had left at 10 a.m. to go to the relief of the Legations in Peking. Night and day, ever since that telegram came, we have been looking for them. The day after we received the news that they had started the Chinese cut the telegraph-wires, and so for one week we have been absolutely cut off from all communication.
No messenger has been able to get through the city gates, as they are carefully watched by the Chinese authorities, except—and I am proud of this—except that one old man whom Mr. Squiers had been good to (he used to be an old gardener of theirs) got through to Captain M^cCalla, who is with Admiral Seymour, and is in command of 100 men—Americans. The gardener had been able to deliver to him notes from Mr. Squiers, giving him most important information about ways and means to get into Peking in case they meet with opposition, and to bring back an answer, as well as other notes from commanders of other nationalities, to their respective Legations in Peking. From these letters we rather imagine that this “Tower of Babel” relief party does not agree as well as it might, but then, whoever expected a “Tower of Babel” to speak and work in unison? Certainly never before the miracle!
So it is due to Mr. Squiers’s personal management that we or any other nationality have heard anything from this party of 1,600 men, which undoubtedly must be but the beginning of large numbers of troops for what Lord Charles Beresford terms “the break-up of China.” Our Legation, thanks entirely to Mr. Squiers’s efforts, is the only one which has been in touch at all with the approaching column, and, by his minute instructions, when they get here they will be able to advance into the heart of our district—through the Water Gate—without having to take any of the city citadel gates. They say that in all crises, political or otherwise, some one man comes forward, takes the bull by the horns, so to speak, and does a man’s work. Mr. Squiers, as far as all the Americans here feel, is _the_ man in Peking.
The fighting, the weak and terrorized Government, the expected attack on the Legations, the horrible massacre of the Chinese Christians, the burning of all the missions, churches, and entire Christian communities, and last, but not least, the continued attempts—made, we think, principally by Boxers—to “burn the Legations out,” all go to make these days very extraordinary ones.
Last night there was a scene enacted in our Republican compound that would be a fitting climax to any Bowery play where Jake, the villain, is finally run down. A regulation Boxer—red sash and all—was caught by a Russian sentry in the act of trying to set fire to the outhouses of this Legation. He was assisted into the compound by the Cossack who discovered him, with no especial tenderness of manner, the Chinaman still clutching the picturesque and glowing torch with which the conflagration was to have been started. In three minutes coolies, soldiers, gorgeously dressed Legation servants, the European men in the compound, and we women, who were in the midst of our dinner, rushed out to see what it was (as we did fifty times a day, so far as that goes), to find this poor, writhing creature, who knew that he had nothing to expect but death in the next half-hour, as he had been caught red-handed. He was questioned, but to no purpose, and was then turned over to the Russians, as they had been responsible for his discovery; and, although we all knew that that nation dislikes prisoners, we were hardly prepared for the bullet that, in less than ten minutes, whistled clear as a bell on the night air, and told us there was one Boxer the less in Peking.
Captain Myers has turned out to be a most competent officer, and the British Captain Strouts and the Russian Captain von Rahden have worked together splendidly for the object of saving our three Legations from attack and fire. These Legations form a kind of triangle, our corner of which is the weakest owing to its bad shape. The British compound is excellent for defence, having strong, high walls, with stables or houses at the corners, one side having the canal running parallel to it, and the other having the Imperial carriage park.
When the time comes that the United States and Russian Legations can no longer hold out, the British Legation will be the stage for a terrible last act. So far, of course, things are not as bad as that, and fire is what we dread more than the disaffected Chinese soldiers or Boxers. Nevertheless, things got so critical the day before yesterday that food for a week for our entire Legation was sent over to the British compound, and each of us had sent over a dress suit-case with a change of linen, brushes, etc., so that in the event of our having to leave our Legation on the moment, we would not be absolutely comfortless and unprepared for a siege of several days until Seymour and M^cCalla could relieve us.
Yesterday things got so bad that our bugler played the “call to arms” four different times, which is the signal here for all women and children and all non-fighting men to appear at the big gate of the Legation, and within five minutes from that time Captain Myers will decide what must be done—whether the marines will escort us over to the Russian or the British Legation. After each of these alarms, however, it was decided not to send us quite yet. At the last alarm they kept us waiting, all huddled together like sheep, for an hour. And such an hour as it was—the constant reports of Mauser rifles, the absolute lack of knowing what was happening!
But at one moment I was obliged to forget the terror of it all and look at the humorous side. Mrs. Squiers was holding her youngest boy, a baby of four, in her arms, busy in quieting him. Her other boys, Bard and Herbert, were there, too, rather subdued, and last, but not least, our little cortège was completed by the arrival of the French and German governesses, each of them arguing violently in her respective mother-tongue. Mademoiselle is a large woman of ample proportions in wrong places, and she had her bosom filled with recommendation papers, which she fingered nervously—they were all she was saving in the way of valuables. Clara, the German governess, had forgotten what her valuables were, and looked quite distraught with fear. She had a French clock in each hand, and was telling me in broken English, German, and Chinese how afraid and terrified she was. I said to her, “Gehen Sie mit mir,” and she clutched my arm most painfully for the next half-hour.
As I have said, fifty men came to Peking from the _Newark_ on May 31, and twenty of them with an officer were sent to defend the big Methodist mission near the Ha Ta Men Gate, which, because of its area and large stone church, is capable of a very good defence, and where all of the American Protestant missionaries that are lucky enough to be in Peking have gone. Much to Captain Myers’ disgust—it is so hopeless to divide this small military force—the Minister insisted on sending this guard to them, instead of having them brought into our defended lines. Consequently, there is no officer to share the responsibility with him, or to give his men a sufficient number of hours off duty during the twenty-four. He himself gets about four hours sleep per diem, and that has to be taken in cat-naps and in a folding-chair. He is liable to have even that short period interrupted a dozen times by an over-anxious sergeant, who wakes him up to come and see this or hear that. He naturally feels the responsibility tremendously, and is on the _qui vive_ at every shot. His men are in about the same condition. This strain has been without relief for eight days and nights.
Of the thirty marines here, ten, Dr. Lippitt tells me, should be on the sick-list, and imagine how they feel with a compound full of women to defend against perhaps thousands of half-crazed fanatics who at any moment may break into the Legation. Their work is splendid, and at all times they are prepared for the worst, but the constant strain is unimaginable.
Captain M^cCalla wrote in his letter, which Mr. Squiers’s old messenger brought back to us, that he was in despair, as others in the relief party were not hustling enough. Our cry by night and day is, “When will the troops arrive?” Will they get here before or after some horrible massacre?
The men in the compound carry their rifles with them at all times, even when dining. Mr. Squiers a few days ago presented modern rifles with ammunition to all missionaries coming to the Legation. Taken collectively, these missionaries are a splendid lot of men, and are one and all most grateful to him for these arms, given them in this moment of awful danger to their converts, their families, and themselves. One night all left the table four times to run to the outposts, where shots and fighting were heard. In most cases, fortunately, they are not serious alarms—a few venturesome Boxers or Imperial soldiers running amuck in Peking after loot, who have decided to devil the foreigners. About three days ago we expected the troops any minute; now we are not so sanguine.
A detachment of men from the English Legation, our Legation, and the Russian Legation, started off under an English officer to rescue some of the thousands of Chinese Christians who are being burned and tortured by their enemies like rats in their holes. The tales that reached us through our servants, many of whom are Christian converts, and whose mothers, fathers, and wives are undergoing this continuous St. Bartholomew, made our men feel that we should try to do something for their rescue, even if we were not successful. Fortunately this party of men did not meet any large number of disciplined Chinese soldiers, finding them only in small groups. They killed a great many, and one could easily imagine how happy our men were to be able to kill these wretches in the very act of burning, looting, killing, or torturing. Sergeant Walker told me he had sent eight devils to glory; many of his shots he had seen take effect, and others he hoped had done as good work.
The “Nan-t’ang,” a Roman Catholic church, founded in 1600 by the early Jesuit missionaries, was burnt by these Boxers, and as most of their converts and families live around the church, one can well imagine the slaughter that took place before it was finally fired. This is only one instance of the many missions and churches where the same kind of thing has happened. The Roman Catholics alone claim to have ten thousand converts in Peking.
The Pei-t’ang is a large fortress cathedral, and capable of splendid defence. It is the oldest and richest Roman Catholic stronghold. In its dual rôle of church and military position, which in the old days used to go hand in hand, this community reminds one of the wonderful and still extant example of feudal power, the Mont St. Michel in Brittany, where cathedral and fortress dominate the higher part, and its villages cluster around the base. So here this Roman Catholic stronghold boasts the same arrangements, only with added hospitals and orphan quarters. It is a wonderful church to exist now, when the world is so old, and is supposed to be so peaceful. The French Minister has sent a guard with two officers to help Archbishop Favier, Superior of the Pei-t’ang.
In some instances hundreds of Christians thought it better to be roasted in their houses and burnt to death than to try and escape. Then, of course, the soldiers, Boxers, and thieves would loot the entire entourage of these burning communities, and, having once begun, they would not stop to inquire if the family were Buddhist or Christian. They were busy in this pleasant work when our posse of soldiers arrived on the scene of action, and the Chinese companies that had been detailed for this work were so disorganized by their lust of loot and cruelties that they were practically unable to attack us, and generally ran away, except in some rare instances, when they would rally and fight.
Mr. Pethick and Mr. Cheshire would raise their voices in Chinese and tell the terrified people to come with them and they would be saved. Sometimes it was necessary to go into the houses to assure the people of this help. On entering the houses they saw many horrible sights—women and children whose lives it was too late to save. There was one small square compound that the Boxers had burned, while in the inside there was an entire family of Chinese Christians. The four walls were on fire, and these people were tied hand and foot. Our men were unable to save them in any way, and hastened to other places where they would not be too late. Babies were seen being torn in two. The result of this morning’s work was the rescue of about one thousand Chinese Christians, who otherwise would certainly have been burned or killed within a few hours.