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.