China Mission: A Personal History from the Last Imperial Dynasty to the People's Republic

18. The Siege of Peking

18 The Siege of Peking There are things which could never be imagined, but there is nothing which may not happen. —chinese aphorism It is safe to say that where one real Boxer has been killed since the capture of Peking, 50 harmless coolies or laborers on the farm, including not a few women and children, have been slain. —gener al adna r. chafee, american commander of the china relief expedition, september 1900 On June 21, 1900, China declared a “War on the World.” Empress Dowager Cixi ordered an attack on the international legations in Peking. Two thousand foreign diplomats, representing eleven nations, along with 2,800 Chinese Christians and missionaries, were trapped in the walled-in Legation Quarter, surrounded and vastly outnumbered by 72,000 armed Imperial troops, Manchu Bannermen, Moslem Gansu Braves, and Boxers with orders from the empress to “Exterminate the Foreign Devils.” The strangely worded declaration was published in leading newspapers abroad and in the Peking Gazette: IN THE NAME OF THE EMPEROR . . . With tears have we announced in our ancestral shrines the outbreak of war. Better is it to do our utmost and enter on the struggle than to seek self-preservation involving eternal disgrace. All our officials, high and low, are of one mind. They have assembled, without official summons, several hundred thousands of patriotic soldiers (Boxers and Imperial troops) . . . Even children carry spears in the defense of their country. Exterminate the Foreign Devils! 156
home leave and return That same morning, an editorial pointing out the difference between the Chinese people and the Manchu government of China was published in the North China Daily News: The Manchu Empress Dowager is reaping the whirlwind with a vengeance . . . Instead of having one or two Powers to pacify, China is at war with all the Great Powers at once, and she is at war by the choice of the Empress Dowager and her gang . . . It is to be hoped that it will be possible to get the Emperor Guangxu out of house arrest and place him on the throne. Meantime it should be made perfectly clear that it is the Empress Dowager who has undertaken the present war, and that we [the British] are not fighting China, but the usurping [Manchu] Government of Peking. The War on the World was the culmination of the antiforeign movement that had been raging for decades in the countryside. But now it took on an international character. The Chinese diplomatic ministers to Great Britain [Luo Fenglu] and to France and the United States [Wu Dingfang] announced that at a meeting of the officials of the Grand Council in Peking , the Manchus were unanimous in favor of defying the world while the Chinese offered strenuous objections. They claimed that responsibility for the Siege of Peking, which was a violation of the laws of nations, lay on the Manchu clique. But there was enough guilt to go around. The sensational details riveted the attention of the world. The Siege of Peking became one of the most extraordinary tales in the annals of war, comparable to the Black Hole of Calcutta in 1756, when Europeans were imprisoned by the ruler of Bengal after he defeated the garrison of the British East India Company and captured the city. The New York Sun called the Siege of Peking “the most exciting episode ever known to civilization.” In early May 1900, three villages near Paotingfu were destroyed by Boxers, and scores of Chinese Catholic Christians were slaughtered. On May 10, an article appeared in the North China Daily News written by its “native correspondent,” who, at the risk of his life, published a warning to the foreigners of the coming attack: “I write in all seriousness to inform you that there is a great secret scheme to crush all foreigners in China. The Chief leaders of the movement are the Empress Dowager, and Li Bingheng. The forces to be used are all Manchu . . . 72,000 men are to form the nucleus of the Army of Avengers, whilst the Boxers the siege of peking
157 are to be counted upon as auxiliaries to the great fight that is more imminent than foreigners in Peking or elsewhere dream.” These predictions were ignored by everyone concerned—until they came true. Shortly after the article was published , the reporter disappeared. May 28: Nine Belgian railway engineers are killed at the railway station at Fengtai. The...