The Last Empress: The She-Dragon of China (33 page)

The sad fact was that Sugiyama’s journey had been in vain from the beginning–the troop trains were nowhere near Beijing. While the Japanese minister lay dying, the foreign soldiers of the relief column were themselves fighting for their own lives, beating off an attack by the Boxers at Lang-fang, just half-way to Beijing, that left at least fifty of the Chinese combatants dead. A railway advance is always vulnerable. The Chinese destroyed the tracks and simply pulled up more as each damaged section was repaired. The Seymour expedition, surrounded by increasing numbers of Boxers and facing a hostile populace, could think only of its own survival.

The Beijing legations were left isolated and, for the moment, abandoned to an uncertain fate.

The news that the foreigners were attempting to send an ‘army’ to the heart of the Middle Kingdom only served to fan the flames of Yehonala’s ever-present xenophobia. On 11th and 12th June, officials from the Tsungli Yamen had called on Sir Claude McDonald in an attempt to dissuade him from his request for military assistance, but the British Minister was adamant, the troops must come. The following day a decree was issued with the Empress Dowager’s blessing which, in its bellicose intransigence mirrored the edict promulgated the year before against the Italian attempt to seize a Chinese concession. Yuan Shih-kai was ordered to send his troops to Beijing for the capital’s defence. And that same day a large force of Boxers was allowed to enter within the walls of the capital. Yehonala and the court were preparing for war.

The Boxers, of course, were already at war with the foreigner. Almost as soon as they entered the capital, the burning of churches and murdering of Chinese converts (the ‘secondary hairy ones’) began in the west of the city. Morrison of
The Times
described ‘Awful cries...all through the night. The roar of the murdered. Rapine and massacre’. As Bishop Favier had reported, the extermination of the ‘primary foreign devils’ was planned for later. The next day, the 14th, the army of the ‘Righteous Harmonious Fists’ penetrated into the Tartar or Manchu City, where the legations were located. They entered by the Hata Men Gate, and immediately burned the church that stood nearby, searching out Christian converts and putting all they found to the sword or throwing them alive into the flames.

One group of Westerners found a Chinese woman, bound hand and foot, who had been soaked in petrol and set aflame to act as a human torch on a darkened pathway. For
The Times
correspondent, it was more than he could stand:

At two in the afternoon Dr. Morrison, who has a nobler heart than many of the selfish refugees, on hearing that many of the Christian converts were still at the mercy of the Boxers near Nan-tang Church, applied to Sir Claude McDonald for guards to rescue them. Twenty British were given him, and were joined by a force of Germans and Americans. Morrison guided them to the spot, and it will ever be a bright spot in the record of the Doctor’s life that he was the means of saving from atrocious tortures and death over a hundred helpless Chinese.
¹

The Chinese survivors were housed in ‘The Fu’, a high-walled palace of Prince Su, a Manchu noble, which lay just to the east of the British legation, with a street and small canal between. As the day wore on, more and more converts found their way to the comparative safety of The Fu ‘laden with their pots and pans, their beds and their bundles of rice’. Eventually there were over two thousand Chinese sheltering in the legation’s compounds. For these desperate souls, the future looked bleak indeed; their only hope of succour lay with the legations; but the foreigners might yet negotiate safe passage out of the capital, and then, unless the Empress Dowager changed her mind and decided to suppress the Boxers, the converts could look for no quarter from the Righteous Harmonious Fists.

At that exact moment, Yehonala was still undecided in her policy towards the Boxers. On 16th June she called a full Imperial Council–all the Manchu nobles and the high officials of the boards and ministries were in attendance–to discuss the issue. An initial suggestion that the Boxers be chased from the capital was swamped by pro-Boxer protests, led by Prince Tuan, the head of the reactionary party. The Emperor, Kuang Hsu, whose opinion was not actively sought by anyone, was for conciliating the Powers, but his brief statements were ignored by everyone.

When Yuan Ch’ang, of the Tsungli Yamen, the Chinese Foreign Ministry, declared that the Boxers were not patriots but rebels and that they still died from foreign bullets despite their magic formulas, Yehonala interrupted from her dominant position on the dais. ‘If we cannot rely on the supernatural formulas, can we not rely upon the heart of the people? China is weak: the only thing we can depend upon is the heart of the people. If we lose that, how can we maintain our country?’ Yehonala’s preference was clear, and as ever, she carried the day. In the end it was decided that two officials should be sent towards Tientsin to dissuade the foreign powers from attempting to advance on Beijing. That same day an edict commanded that ‘young and strong Boxers’ should be recruited into the army. It seems that Yehonala had taken on board some of the moderates’ views and that she was attempting to assimilate the potentially dangerous Boxer mob by drawing off the best of their number into the armed forces, where they could be subject to military discipline.

It was, on the face of it, a reasonable strategy. But by the next day everything had changed. Unexpectedly, a second Imperial Council was summoned, where Yehonala, black-faced and tight-lipped, announced that she had now received a four-point demand from the foreign governments. The Powers now required that the Emperor be given a special place of residence; that all revenues should be gathered by the foreign ministers; and that all military affairs be overseen by foreign representatives. Yehonala omitted the fourth and last demand. There was deathly quiet in the council chamber. These demands amounted to the destruction of the regime, at very least its total subservience to the Powers. At last Yehonala broke the silence, and all the old vehemence, the courage and fighting spirit were at once evident: ‘Now they have started the aggression,’ she declared, ‘and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death?’
²

What had added oxygen to Yehonala’s already incandescent xenophobia was the fourth demand, which she had kept secret from the Imperial Council. This had required her to step down as head of government and ‘to restore the rule to the Emperor’. The first three demands had been hateful enough, but to give up her power? She would rather die, and see the Middle Kingdom a barren wasteland, than acquiesce to the barbarian. Nothing better could have been devised to increase the Empress Dowager’s belligerence and will to fight than this. And with good reason, for the document was more than just a case of barbarian insensitivity and bad timing. The ‘Four Demands’ had been carefully drawn up, specifically designed to infuriate the Empress Dowager. The document was a fraud, a forgery concocted by Prince Tuan with the express purpose of enraging Yehonala and spurring her towards war with the foreigners.

It worked. Orders were issued to the provinces, commanding that troops be dispatched for the defence of Beijing. Three ministers were sent to the foreign legations to inform them that, should they wish to begin hostilities, they must leave Beijing. The ministers met with Sir Claude the following day and, as he mentioned nothing of the four demands during a long conversation, the Chinese officials became convinced the document Yehonala had brandished so angrily the day before was false. But the damage had already been done, and Sir Claude’s steadfast refusal to rescind the request for more troops, while understandable from the Westerners’ perspective, simply played into the hands of the reactionaries at court. At the same time, the allies at Tientsin and on the coast were forced by circumstances into actions which could only strengthen the case of the war-party.

Two days before, on 16th June, and long after the ill-fated Mr. Sugiyama and the rest of the
corps diplomatique
had vainly awaited their rescuers at Ma Chia Pu station, the Seymour relief column remained stuck half-way between Beijing and Tientsin, under heavy attack, taking many wounded and with ammunition running dangerously low. Realising the imminent danger that his force might be encircled and cut off, Seymour first decided to fall back on Tientsin, but after receiving reports that a strong force of Chinese and Boxers might lie between him and safety, he made instead for the Taku forts. In a brief ultimatum to the Chinese commander, he stated his intention of occupying the bastions ‘provisionally, by consent or by force’ before 2 a.m. on the following morning. The Chinese refused and commenced firing on the allied force, but they were outgunned by the rapid advance of two Western warships and capitulated the same day.

The Viceroy of Chihli, Yu-lu, described the allied ultimatum in a memorial which was received at Beijing on the 19th June. Fearful of reporting bad news, he described the fighting but omitted the fact that the Taku forts had actually fallen. For Yehonala and the Imperial court, the news merely confirmed the allies’ intention to attack, and an official made the journey once more to the foreign legations to inform them of a break in diplomatic relations and to allow them 24 hours in which to vacate the capital, after which time their safety could not be guaranteed. Knowing nothing of the failure of the Seymour expedition, or of the hostilities at the Taku forts, the diplomats assembled to discuss the Chinese ultimatum and to decide if a retreat to Tientsin was necessary, or safe. The German Minister, Baron von Ketteler, a short-tempered aristocrat of the old school, was adamant that the Chinese could not be trusted and that the legation staff would be murdered en route to Tientsin. Many were inclined to agree, until both M. Pichon and the American Minister, Major Conger, spoke in favour of a withdrawal from the capital. George Morrison,
The Times
correspondent, was appalled that Minister Pichon, the ‘Protecteur des Missions Catholiques en Chine’ should recommend leaving Beijing when this retreat would inevitably result in ‘the immediate abandonment to massacre of thousands of native Christians who had trusted the foreigner and believed in his good faith’.

Nevertheless, self-interest prevailed and almost all of the foreigners voted to put their trust in the Chinese safe conduct, to fly with their own skins intact and to leave the Chinese converts to their fate. A message, signed by the Spanish Consul, Señor Cologan, was sent to the Tsungli Yamen just before midnight, asking for a meeting to discuss transport, security and provisioning of the foreign convoy to Tientsin. Morrison protested to the Spanish Minister that the Chinese would be ‘massacred to a man’, only to be told by Cologan, ‘That does not regard us.’
The Times
man was disgusted by the craven attitude of his fellow Europeans; throughout the crisis this Australian journalist stands head and shoulders above most of the ineffectual diplomatic staff whose actions at this critical time would reflect, for better or worse, upon their individual countries. Morrison again took the floor. ‘He looked the ministers square in the eyes and said: ‘if you men vote to leave Peking tomorrow, the deaths of every man, woman and child in this huge unprotected convoy will be on your heads, and your names will go down to history, and be known for ever as the wickedest, weakest and most pusillanimous cowards who have ever lived.’’ His plea fell on deaf ears. If the Chinese replied with an acceptable itinerary, the legation staff were set upon a rapid retreat from Beijing.

Everyone rose early the next day, and the hours ticked by slowly as they awaited the response from the Chinese to their midnight letter. Nine o’clock came without word from the Tsungli Yamen. At nine-thirty there was still no news. The hot-tempered von Ketteler was for visiting the Yamen to extract an answer from the mandarins, but most decided it was wiser to go on waiting, agreeing with Sir Claude McDonald that ‘it would be undignified to go to the Yamen and sit there waiting for the Princes’. Von Ketteler disagreed, hitting the table with his fist and declaring that he would go alone and sit there all night if he had to. He stalked out with his secretary, Herr Cordes, and soon they were being carried in their scarlet and green sedan chairs out of the legation in the direction of the Chinese ministry, leaving the rest of the ministers to kick their heels and damn the Chinese for their tardiness.

Just twenty minutes later one of von Ketteler’s Chinese grooms crashed through the door yelling, ‘Any man speakee have makee kill German Minister’. He was disbelieved, but the story proved to be horribly true.
³
A Chinese bannerman in full uniform had approached von Ketteler’s sedan chair and shot the minister repeatedly at short range. His secretary, Herr Cordes, had somehow managed to escape, despite being shot in both legs as he fled. Concern was also being expressed for Professor Hubert James, a kindly old man, the epitome of the absent-minded academic, who had gone out beyond the legation buildings to help Chinese converts, and had simply disappeared. It was to be a further three days before his horrific fate was finally known to the foreign community. By now, even the most optimistic among the foreigners admitted that the Chinese would certainly have massacred them all had they left for Tientsin. More than two months later, when the crisis had abated, this was confirmed by an unimpeachable source. Morrison recorded that the president of Civil Appointments, Hsy Fu, confided to one of the Europeans that ‘there was a plot to murder all the ministers that morning, and the murder of one minister only was a premature accident, deplorable from the Chinese point of view, for it prevented a general massacre’. That the killing of von Ketteler had been ordered from on high was confirmed by the murderer himself. Just before he was beheaded for the crime, the Manchu bannerman responsible bemoaned the fact that he had been promised a promotion and a reward of seventy taels for killing the barbarian, but had received just forty pieces of silver.