China, in her ignorant self-confidence, and goaded to desperation by foreign aggressions, was defying the world. Not only was she killing missionaries, together with their converts, wherever found, and putting to shameful death such of her own people, from highest mandarin to lowest coolie, as dared lift a hand to save them or speak a word in their behalf, but by imperial order Chinese troops were preparing to attack foreign ministers in their own legations. Thus China deliberately was about to commit the gravest of international crimes. For some time the foreign ministers, foreseeing the dangers of the apparently uncontrollable Boxer uprising, had been calling upon their respective governments for protection. In response an ever-increasing fleet of war-ships was gathered off the mouth of the Pei-ho, which was as near as they could approach to Pekin. From those ships which first arrived a mixed force of marines, four hundred in all, and representing eight nations, was sent to the capital to act as legation guards, and the train that brought them was the last to reach Pekin for many weeks.
These marines arrived on the first day of June, and forty-five of them immediately were detailed to protect the great northern cathedral, while twenty more were sent to the compound of the American Methodist Mission. A week later the Empress Dowager returned to Pekin from her summer palace in the Western Hills. From that moment the situation grew so rapidly worse that the ministers again telegraphed the foreign fleet to send at once a strong force for their further protection.
In response to this urgent request Captain McCalla, the senior American naval officer with the fleet, declared that he should start for Pekin the next day. The British admiral, Seymour, promptly proposed to join him, and other commanding officers entered so heartily into the project that on the following morning, when the expedition started by rail from Tongku, the nearest landing-point, it comprised 2066 troops. Of these 112 were Americans, 915 British, 450 Germans, 312 Russians, 158 French, 54 Japanese, 40 Italians, and 25 Austrians.
This force, made up of sailors and marines, well provided with light artillery and rapid-fire guns, set forth in high spirits, expecting to reach Pekin that very night, or, at any rate, within twenty-four hours. Nine days later saw them still twenty miles from their destination, short of ammunition and food, encumbered with two hundred wounded men, cut off from their base of supplies by the destruction of the railway behind them, as well as in front, unable to communicate either with Pekin or the outside world on account of the telegraph-line having absolutely disappeared, while couriers with despatches were caught and killed as fast as sent out.
From the beginning they had been harassed by hordes of Boxers, and now they were confronted by five thousand imperial troops, including a strong body of cavalry, armed with modern rifles and well supplied with artillery. Under the circumstances a farther advance was impossible, and a retreat was ordered. At the end of another week the unfortunate expedition reached Tien-Tsin exhausted, demoralized, and sadly depleted in numbers, but having learned the bitter lesson that no small force of foreigners, no matter how brave and well-armed, could traverse the interior of China against the wishes of the Chinese.
During the absence of this expedition the fleet of war-ships lying off the Taku bar, at the mouth of the Pei-ho, had been strengthened by numerous additions. The Taku forts had been captured after six hours of fighting, and an army of ten thousand troops had advanced to the relief of the foreign portion of Tien-Tsin, which was being besieged by Boxers from the walled city of Tien-Tsin proper. Now the allied foreign troops turned their attention to this stronghold and set about its capture; but it held out for three weeks, and did not fall into their hands until the 14th of July.
But let us return to the middle of June and the city of Pekin, where a handful of foreigners, cut off from all communication with the outside world, were anxiously but confidently awaiting the coming of the McCalla-Seymour relief expedition. All sorts of rumors were afloat concerning its progress and position, and one of these so persistently asserted that it would reach the city by the very evening on which Rob and Jo entered Pekin that many persons ascended the city wall near the American legation, and remained there for hours, straining their eyes for a sight of the expected troops. But they did not come; and as the sun, transformed to a blood-red ball by the smoke from many conflagrations, disappeared in the lowering west, the disappointed ones returned to their homes doubly weighted with anxiety.
After dinner that evening two guests sat with the United States minister and his wife, earnestly discussing the situation. They were an American tourist and his daughter, who, not realizing the danger of their position, had lingered one day too long in Pekin, and then, owing to the sudden destruction of the railway, found it impossible to leave. The subject of their present conversation was a note from the Tsung Li Yamen (Chinese State Department) received by the minister a few hours earlier. It declared the situation in Pekin to have reached such a stage that the authorities could not undertake to protect the ministers longer than twenty-four hours from the date of the note, which also urged their departure, under Chinese escort, for Tien-Tsin.
"Are you going to accept that proposition?" asked the tourist.
"Frankly, I don't know," replied the minister. "Certainly we cannot leave within the time limit specified. It won't do for us to abandon the missionaries, and they declare they will not desert their converts, whom we, of course, could not take with us."