Nor was this all, for Chinese officials are never natives of the cities they govern, but are sent to them from other provinces. Moreover, they usually remain in one place only a few years. The people fear and obey them as long as they are officials, but often care little what becomes of them afterwards. They had not befriended them during their trial and they did not attend their execution. The Generals therefore felt that some punishment must be inflicted upon the city. A Chinese city is proud of the stately and ponderous towers which ornament the gates and corners of its massive wall and protect the inhabitants from foes, human and demoniac. All of these, but two comparatively small ones, were blown up by order of the foreign generals. The temples which the Boxers had used for their meetings, including the one in which the American Board and China Inland missionaries had been imprisoned, were also destroyed, while the splendid official temple of the city, dedicated to its patron deity, was utterly wrecked by dynamite.
Not till March 23d could memorial services be held. Then a party of missionaries and friends came down from Peking. The surviving Christians assembled. The new city officials erected a temporary pavilion on the site of the Presbyterian compound, writing over the entrance arch: ``They held the truth unto death.'' Within, potted flowers and decorated banners adorned the tables and walls. The scene was solemnly impressive. Mr. Lowrie, Dr. Wherry and Mr. Killie and others made appropriate addresses to an audience in which there were, besides themselves, fifteen missionaries representing four denominations, German and French army officers, Chinese officials and Chinese Christians. A German military band furnished appropriate music and two Roman Catholic priests of the city sent flowers and kind letters. The following day a similar service was held on the site of the American Board compound.
We sadly visited all these places. It was about the hour of the attack that we approached the Presbyterian compound. Of the once pleasant homes and mission buildings, not even ruins were left. A few hundred yards away, the site could not have been distinguished from the rest of the open fields if my companions had not pointed out marks mournfully intelligible to them but hardy recognizable by a stranger. The very foundations had been dug up by Chinese hunting for silver, and every scrap of material had been carried away. Even the trees and bushes had been removed by the roots and used for firewood. In front of the site of the Simcox house are a few unmarked mounds. All but one contain the fragments of the bodies of the Chinese helpers and Christians, and that one, the largest, holds the few pieces of bones which were all that could be found in the ruins of the house in which the missionaries perished. A few more may yet be found. We ourselves discovered five small pieces which Dr. Charles Lewis afterwards identified as human bones. But their charred and broken condition showed how completely the merciful fire had done its work of keeping the sacred remains from the hands of those who would have shamefully misused them. The American Board and China Inland Mission compounds were also in ruins, a chaos of desolation. But as the martyred missionaries and native Christians were beheaded and not burned, their bodies have been recovered and interred in a long row of twenty-three graves.
The negotiations of foreign Powers with the Chinese regarding the payment of indemnity were, as might be expected, protracted and full of difficulties. Some of the Powers favoured extreme demands which, if acceded to, would have ruined the Empire or resulted in its immediate partition, even if they did not cause a new and more bitter outbreak of hostilities. Other Powers, notably the United States, favoured moderate terms, holding that China should not be asked to pay sums that were clearly beyond her ability. After almost interminable disputes, the total sum to be paid by China was, by the final protocol signed September 7, 1901, fixed at 450,000,000 taels to be paid in thirty-nine annual installments with interest at four per cent. on the deferred payments and to be distributed as follows:
Country taels
Germany 90,070,515
Austria-Hungary 4,003,920
Belgium 8,484,345
Spain 135,315
United States 32,939,055[63]
France 70,878,240
Portugal 92,250
Great Britain 50,712,795
Italy 26,617,005
Japan 34,793,100
Netherlands 782,100
Russia 230,371,120
International (Sweden and Norway, $62,820) 212,490 —————— 450,000,000
[63] The equivalent of $24,168,357.
The treaty was not calculated to make the Chinese think more kindly of their conquerors. Besides the payment of the heavy indemnity, the Powers exacted apologies to Germany for the murder of its minister and to Japan for the assassination of the chancellor of its legation, the erection of monuments in foreign cemeteries and the making of new commercial treaties. The Chinese were cut to the quick by being told, among other things, that they must not import firearms for two years; that no official examinations would be held for five years in the cities where foreigners had been attacked; that an important part of the imperial capital would be added to the already spacious grounds of the foreign legations and that the whole would be fortified and garrisoned by foreign guards; that the Taku forts which defended the entrance to Peking would be razed and the railway from the sea to the capital occupied by foreign troops; that members of anti-foreign societies were to be executed; that magistrates even though they were viceroys were to be summarily dismissed and disgraced if they did not prevent anti-foreign outbreaks and sternly punish their ring- leaders; that court ceremonies in relation to foreign ministers must be conformed to Western ideas; that the Tsung-li Yamen (Foreign Office) must be abolished and a new ministry of foreign affairs erected, the Wai-wu Pu, which must be regarded as the highest of the departments instead of the lowest. China's cup of humiliation was indeed full.
PART IV
The Missionary Force and the Chinese
Church