Sir Robert Hart

by Juliet Bredon

CHAPTER IX

THE PROLOGUE TO THE SIEGE—BARRICADES AND SCALING LADDERS—THE SIEGE PROPER—A MESSAGE FROM THE YAMÊN AND AN IMPORTANT TELEGRAM—RELIEF AT LAST—NEW QUARTERS—NEGOTIATIONS—THE CONGRESS OF PEKING—AN IMPERIAL AUDIENCE

Some three weeks before the beginning of the Siege proper Peking was in a state of great unrest—how great no one, not even the I.G., could accurately judge. But as each day brought new alarms and constant reports of Boxer misdoings all over the city were confirmed by terrified eye-witnesses, it was thought wise to make some practical preparations for defence. The Legations were luckily provided with guards, whose officers, acting in concert, agreed to hold a square that included the whole quarter and the Customs property as well. Unfortunately the few troops made a pitifully thin line when they were spread over the area to be defended, and the Customs Staff, at the I.G.'s suggestion, organized themselves into a Volunteer corps, kept regular watches day and night, and prepared to assist generally in case of emergency.

Indeed they did even more; with his permission they set to and fortified the Inspectorate compounds, turning his garden into a trampled wilderness. Barricades were built across what was known as Inspectorate Street while the I.G. stood by and refreshed the thirsty workers with beer from his cellar; the big gate was loopholed, the walls strengthened, and clumsy look-out platforms, reminiscent of the Siege of Troy, constructed. From these I can guess he must have watched—and with what feelings!—the progress of the dreadful fires starting over the city; must have seen, down the long straight street, native Christians burning like torches, and must have heard the fiendish shouts of "Kill!" "Kill and burn!" issuing from a thousand hoarse throats.

The situation was terrifying enough in all conscience—yet nothing to what it was to be later when the handful of white men, encumbered with women, children and converts, were to stand against Imperial troops in addition to these savage hordes of Boxers, whose infinite daring, due to a belief in their own invulnerability, was somewhat mitigated by their inferior weapons.

[Illustration: LADY HART.]

From first to last the I.G., though no longer young, showed admirable coolness and courage in the face of the crisis. He sent frequent despatches, full of excellent and sane advice, to the Yamên. Alas! they went unheeded. So did the telegram he got through to Li Hung Chang on June 12th. This was his final effort to save a desperate situation, and the message ran: "You have killed missionaries; that is bad enough. But if you harm the Legations you will violate the most sacred international obligations and create an impossible situation."

It did no good, unluckily; things had gone so far by this time that they must go still farther with inevitable motion, and whatever Li himself thought of the insane idea of attempting to exterminate foreigners, he could do nothing to stem the tide of mistaken Boxer patriotism.

On the 13th the telegraph wires were cut; and on the 19th an ultimatum arrived from the Yamên giving the foreigners twenty-four hours to leave Peking, and offering to convoy them with Chinese troops as far as Tientsin. The Ministers held meeting after meeting; they were somewhat shaken, but, still trustful, determined to accept the Chinese Government's offer of an escort as far as the sea. Against this proposal, however, the non-diplomatic community threw the whole weight of its disapproval, fortunately—as things turned out—overbearing it, since the Chinese Government, with the best will in the world, was not at that moment in a position to assure the safety of any one. The very best proof of this, if further proof were needed, was the murder of Baron von Ketteler, the German Minister, on the morning of June 20th.

The shock of that news filled the community with horror and consternation. The suddenness of the tragedy, the treachery of it, were appalling. Plainly no protection could be hoped for, and the same afternoon all non-combatants were ordered into the British Legation, as that was the largest compound in Peking, and the one most suitable for a last stand should the worst come to the worst. The I.G., of course, went with the rest. If it cost him anything to calmly walk out of the house he had occupied for years, leaving all behind him—he took a last look around the rooms, I remember, as though to impress their picture on his mind—he gave no sign, just as he showed none of the natural alarm which, with his responsibility for a large staff with wives and children, he must have felt.

[Illustration: By the courtesy of "The Pall Mall Magazine"

SIR ROBERT HART IN HIS PRIVATE OFFICE.]

The history of the Siege proper, like the history of the Taiping Rebellion, has been written a hundred times. Praise and blame have been variously distributed; flaws picked in one another's behaviour by a dozen eye-witnesses, but it is not my purpose to attempt to arbitrate over details which each man naturally sees through his own glasses. Only so far as the I.G. was personally concerned with the events of those two unhappy months need they be touched upon here.

At first the wildest confusion prevailed in the Legation. Misunderstandings about where a final stand should be made, doubts whether it should be made in Peking at all, had delayed very necessary preparations. There was not shelter for all the refugees, and some literally camped under the big ting-erhs (open pavilions with roofs but no side walls), their hastily collected household goods lying around them. The Customs, however, fared better than that; they were given a small house, into which they packed themselves as best they could. The I.G., who refused to accept any special privileges, slept in a tiny back room and cheerfully ate the mule, which was hatefully coarse while it was fat and unutterably tough when it grew lean. Indeed, his marvellous adaptability to difficult conditions was soon the talk of that little company.

To a man accustomed during a long life to habits regulated by clockwork, the jar must have been especially sharp; yet before his neighbours had fairly begun to wonder how he would take it, he had made for himself a new routine of living, and he might have been observed each day doing the same things at the same hours—smoking his afternoon cigarette as he leaned against a favourite pillar, or walking to and fro along a particular path—thus setting an example of regularity in an irregular and stormy existence.

As every one expected, the Yamên soon attempted to communicate with him. This they did several times, throwing letters over the wall during the night. One enquired quite tenderly after the besieged; another asked him to send a message to London saying all was well with the Legations; a third calmly requested his advice about a ticklish matter of Customs business. This latter he answered in detail—just as if he had been in his own office—and then threw the reply over the wall again. It is interesting to know, by the way, that the "writer" who assisted him with these letters received £20 for his pains—the highest pay ever earned by a literary man in China at one sitting.

But the message which the I.G. afterwards laughingly said was the most important—as far as he personally was concerned—went out of the Legation instead of coming into it. Addressed to no Foreign Office and to no Commander-in-Chief, it contained neither diplomatic nor military secrets. It was a domestic message pure and simple—yet sent neither to relative nor intimate friend. His tailor was, in fact, the man who received it. "Send quickly," the wire read, "two autumn office suits and later two winter ditto with morning and evening dress, warm cape and four pairs of boots and slippers. I have lost everything but am well. We have still an anxious fortnight to weather.—HART, Peking, 5 August 1900."

What a startling effect this message from the grave must have had upon people in England, who, having pictured the I.G. boiled in oil, found him quietly ordering clothes for a future which was still uncertain! As it happened his forethought was providential, for the parcel of warm clothing arrived in Peking on the morning of October 26th, when the I.G. waked to find autumn changed to winter in a night, and the ground thickly powdered with snow.

The "anxious fortnight," he spoke of was, after all, safely weathered. On the night of August 13th, which happened to be fine and clear, the far-away guns of the relief force outside the city sounded so distinctly that all those in the Legation were aroused in a moment. The sleepers sprang to their feet; and the sentries answered the welcome voices of the pom-poms, careless of their own long-saved ammunition. Next day the relieving troops were in the city, and the besieged, in defiance of orders (the Chinese were still firing heavily), were out to meet them beyond the last barricade, and close by the historic water gate. No words could adequately picture the intense excitement of that meeting; emotion touched for a moment the most unemotional, and I may say, without exaggeration, that there was not a dry eye, blue or black, nor a voice which could give a cheer without a break in it.

Soon after the I.G. had the dangerous pleasure of reading his own obituary notices, and then, very much alive again, he set to work once more. Not for him was a change of air and scene possible. As he whimsically remarked to some one who urged him to take a rest after the discomforts and trials of the Siege, "I have had my holiday already. Eight weeks of doing nothing,—what more could a man expect?"

The Yamên Secretaries were seeking him out three days after the last shot was fired—while he still remained in the Legation—eagerly enquiring what he thought of the possibility of beginning negotiations with the Powers. How could order be brought out of chaos?

[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART AND A GROUP OF CUSTOMS PEOPLE.]

As a famous Chinese, Ku Hung Ming, author of the "Papers from a Viceroy's Yamên," afterwards said, "All great men are optimists, and Sir Robert Hart was the greatest optimist we had in 1900." His hopefulness encouraged the officials so much that the heads of the Yamên soon sent word they also wished to consult him: this business, if there was any hope of its success, was too big to be entrusted to deputies. Accordingly he began a search for new offices, since the Legation was no place to receive such men and his own house had been burned down.

Alas for the mournful desolation that met his eyes when he made a melancholy pilgrimage, as it were, to his old quarters! Nothing was left of the house but a few charred walls. Broken tiles lay scattered here and there, and he picked up the head of a pretty little Saxe shepherdess, of all things the most fragile and improbable to survive such a storm. The rest of his belongings had disappeared utterly—all the treasures of a lifetime had been burned or looted—priceless letters from Chinese Gordon and from Gladstone, the wonderful rainbow-silk scrolls for his Chinese patent of nobility, the photographs of all the famous men with whom he had been associated in the past—everything.

He was glad enough to get two rooms behind Kierulff's shop for temporary living quarters. What matter if his hall door was littered with packing-cases, or if his sitting-room windows fronted upon waste ground where a herd of mules scampered? He soon learned to pick his way among the former; the latter, with characteristic caution, always respected his panes, and anyway it was not the time for finicking over trifles.

For an office he hired a tiny little temple nestling under the walls of the Tartar City. It was but a small pied-à-terre, yet all he required, for the Customs Archives had been burnt, and the Deputy Inspector General, Sir Robert Bredon, with the Inspectorate Staff, left immediately for Shanghai to begin the difficult task of picking up the threads of Customs work there.

Meanwhile the Tajêns (heads of boards) wrote to the I.G. asking for a safe convoy through the foreign lines, and he sent one of his own men to bring them down, since, though poor enough in other things, they were so rich in fears. Five came this first time, but one acted as spokesman to voice the grief of all over what had occurred, and to exonerate the Emperor and the Empress-Dowager of blame. No doubt the two sovereigns were innocent of responsibility for what had happened—no one would believe it at the time, however—and were captured, as these ministers said, by "officials of another way of thinking, and made to appear as if approving what they disapproved and ordering what they really forbade."

Their position is not too difficult to understand when one remembers that, Oriental fashion, they were shut up in their palaces, where no breath of impartial advice could possibly reach them, and that they heard only what courtiers with their own fish to fry permitted them to hear.

The real culprits then, according to all accounts, were the officials who deliberately misled the Court. It was characteristic of the I.G., always too big for resentment, that he could find some excuse for them and, though the length of his service entitled him to more consideration than most of those who cried out bitterly for "vengeance," could write in his book ("These From the Land of Sinim"), "In the heat of the conflict, and under the agonizing strain of anxiety for imperilled loved ones, many hard things have been said and written about the officials who allied themselves with the Boxers. But these men were eminent in their own country for their learning and services, were animated by patriotism, were enraged by foreign dictation, and had the courage of their convictions. We must do them the justice of allowing that they were actuated by high motives and love of country—not that these necessarily mean political ability or highest wisdom," The truth is—and he realized it thoroughly—that the real deep feeling of the Chinese people has always been to be left alone in peace to pursue the even tenor of their way.

So enlightened a man as the great Minister Wen Hsiang—"one of the most intelligent and broad-minded Chinese I ever knew," as Sir Robert Hart sometimes said—frankly confessed this when speaking to the I.G. a few years after the inauguration of the Customs. "We would gladly pay you all the increased revenue you have brought us," were his exact words, "if you foreigners would go back to your own country and leave us in peace as we were before you came."

Of course neither the wishes of the Chinese nor the question of Imperial responsibility or non-responsibility mattered greatly in 1900. The nations of the world were not in a tolerant mood; they would, as he pointed out, care little for excuses and less for the Chinese anxiety about the Palace, "with its ancestral contents," or the Imperial Tombs. The only thing which might influence them was the consideration of the welfare of the Chinese people.

Plans for the future must turn upon this as upon an axle. Moreover, to effect anything some distinguished person of high position and importance must come forward, and the man whom the I.G. named when he was asked for his advice was Prince Ching. He was the one person with whom the Foreign Powers would be most likely to treat, as it was to his influence, rumour said, that the Legations owed the merciful truce during the Siege. Li Hung Chang, it is true, had also been given full powers to negotiate with the Nations, but they looked rather askance at him because of two telegrams he had sent. One stating that the Legations had reached Tientsin in safety was a most unfortunate falsehood and prejudiced the world against him, more's the pity, as he had hitherto been considered able and powerful abroad. The other was a foolish request that no foreign troops should pass Tungchow—a town on the Grand Canal about fifteen miles from the capital. It was quite right and proper that, being appointed, Li should share Prince Ching's labours and not allow everything, criticism included, to be thrown on the latter alone; but the more he was discredited, the more need for Prince Ching to return to Peking—and quickly.

[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART AND MISS KATE CARL

In the costume given her by the Empress-Dowager of China when Miss
Carl painted her portrait for the St. Louis Exhibition.]

At last the officials discovered where he was—he had fled with the Court but stopped en route—urged him to come back, and he came. I believe one of the first things he did was to send for the I.G., whom he greeted with great cordiality. "This is China's oldest friend," he said to the officials standing by, "and I rely on him to help us. Indeed I can remember, as if it was yesterday, when we worked together before on the Franco-Chinese negotiations in 1885."

The meeting was a memorable and decisive one. As the Chinese themselves knew, and as the I.G. agreed, there were but two ways of solving the difficulty before them. Either it must be fought out—and the fact that China's military strength could not arrest the steps of the foreign troops, and that a fort-night sufficed for them to march victoriously from the sea to Peking, was in itself sufficient to show that nothing could be hoped from the noble idea of "no surrender"—or at all costs some peaceful arrangement must be made.

A note was accordingly drawn up requesting the doyen of the Diplomatic Corps to fix a day to receive the Chinese Plenipotentiaries, who "were ready to begin negotiations and had prepared a proposal for discussion," which they enclosed. A bold stroke this, and rather a surprise to the diplomats, who marvelled that the Chinese—injuring parties as they were—should have the courage—let us call it so, for there was truly much admirable bravery in it—to take the first step.

The details of the subsequent negotiations would fill pages. How anxiously Li Hung Chang was waited for; how memorandum after memorandum was drawn up, altered, amended, discarded altogether; how the stricken city was gradually calmed, and traders induced to bring in supplies again; how the poor ladies, wives of four Emperors, who had been left behind in the palace almost starved to death when the international troops guarding the Forbidden City forbade all ingress and egress through the pink gates, until the I.G. saved them, in the nick of time, by applying to the Allied Generals, might be told at length.

But a busy age has little patience with details, however romantic—suffice it to say that negotiations continued by fits and starts. What really complicated them was the absence of the Court! The I.G. frankly wrote as much to the Grand Secretary, Wang Wên Shao, and in so doing he only voiced the general feeling that "at such a time of suffering it would be well for the Emperor to be with his people." Prince Ching willingly testified that. Though he had been back ten days he had not suffered any personal indignity, and hinted that, were the Emperor to return, he would, of course, meet with even greater consideration. But the Court was obstinate. While the Palace was in the hands of foreign troops they would not come—and so, for the time, the negotiators had to get on as best they could without their Imperial masters.

Only for a time, however. Then what persuasion had been unable to accomplish was brought about by a natural calamity. Famine broke out in the province of Shênsi, and the Court suffered greatly in the devastated state of the country and the cramped and uncomfortable quarters of a Governor's yamên. Soon they were as desirous of returning to their capital as they had formerly been reluctant to do so. "Hurry up the negotiations at all costs" were the orders sent to the Plenipotentiaries, and hurry they did, so that by December a settlement was within sight, the two most difficult questions—those dealing with penalties and indemnities—being the last arranged.

The first named long caused embarrassment to the Chinese side and greatly worried everybody, for there seemed no possible way to compromise about it. The last ultimately resolved itself into the simple problem not whether China would or would not pay, but what she would pay with. Tariff Revision was suggested as one method, the taxation of native opium as another. Speaking of the latter, the I.G. one day remarked to Prince Ching, "I lost all my memoranda about it when the Inspectorate was burned down." "But you have your wonderful memory," the Prince replied, "and you must carry it through. I count upon you, remember."

On Christmas Eve (1900) a great meeting was held at the Spanish Legation—the Spanish Minister was doyen of the Diplomatic Corps at the time. All the Ministers then assembled to meet Prince Ching and Li and to hand over the final demands they had formulated. They were signed in French that same day, and the next telegraphed in Chinese word for word to the Court at Si-an.

Strange to say the I.G. was not present at the meeting, and therefore reaped none of the kudos for his hard work. It was not for lack of invitation, however. The Chinese certainly urged him to come. Li Hung Chang, for instance, spoke continually of what he had done, and not an official but was sincerely grateful and would gladly have pushed him forward. A vainer man, a lighter character, must have yielded to the temptation to satisfy his vanity, but he had the strength to refuse, saying, "Being a foreigner, my presence would only complicate matters."

The Court, however, did not allow his efforts to go unrewarded. They telegraphed another high if queer-sounding honour from Si-an. Thenceforth he was to be addressed as Kung-pao, or Guardian of the Heir-Apparent,—who, by the way, does not exist; not that in China this trifling fact makes his guardians any less important or honourable. The Empress-Dowager herself was well aware that the importance of these Peace Negotiations could not be overestimated. She knew that his promptness in urging the return of Prince Ching probably saved the dynasty—that had Count Waldersee arrived before any Chinese officials had taken action, it is impossible to say what might not have happened; and to further show her Imperial approbation she summoned him to a private audience on her return to Peking and said so.

[Illustration: PEKING PEACE PROTOCOL, 1901.

Left to right (seated) Secretary of Japanese Legation Baron
d'Anthouard, Secretary of French Legation Baron (now Count) Komura,
Japanese Minister M. Knotel, Minister for the Netherlands Marquis
Salvago-Raggi, Minister for Italy M de Giers, Minister for Russia M.
de Cologan, Minister for Spain Baron Czikann de Wahlborn. Minister for
Austria M. Joostens, Minister for Belgium Baron Momin, Minister for
Germany Sir Ernest Satow, Minister for Great Britain Mr. Rockhill,
Minister for the United States M. Beau, Minister for France.]

To him she showed her softest side, melted into kindness and consideration, complimented him in her velvet voice, and went so far as to say, when some question of the future came up, "We owe the possibility of a new beginning to the help you have given our faithful Ministers." Last of all she paid him a greater tribute still. When on enquiring where he lived, and being told by Prince Kung on his knees and in deeply apologetic tones, "Since the little accident in 1900, when Sir Robert's house was burned, he has been living behind Kierulff's shop," her eyes filled with tears, and with real regret in her voice she said, "How can we look you in the face?"