The Russians, English, and Americans finally succeeded in their attack on the south-eastern Wall, and entered the Chinese city almost simultaneously, marching along the southern Wall of the Imperial City towards the Water Gate, the Ch’ien Men Gate, and the Ha Ta Men Gate. The commanders received a cipher despatch from Sir Claude Macdonald advising them to enter the Imperial City by the Water Gate, as we held that portion of the Wall, and would be able to assist them in entering at that place.
At about half-past three I was debating with my maid whether I should or should not go over to the American Legation and take the cheerful bath which I had been indulging in each day lately. Owing to the half-armistice existing, the early afternoon hours were fairly safe ones in which to move about the lines, and I was about to start with bathing paraphernalia and the little maid, when my inner consciousness was struck by something unusual happening out in the compound. I tingled all over, for my instinct had told me the troops had come.
Running to the old tennis-court, the only open space, I found everybody flying in the same direction. There were about two hundred Sikhs. They had entered Peking by the Water Gate, or what one should really call a drain, which allows the now dried-up water in the canal egress under the Tartar Wall. It is by this that our messengers have gone out and come in, and it is the route Mr. Squiers urged in his letter on both McCalla and Chaffee as being the only way by which troops could penetrate right into the heart of our lines without having to take any big gate of the Tartar city. These Sikhs came in this way, and they were the first to warm our hearts with the knowledge that this horrible siege is over.
It was queer to see these great, fine-looking Indians, in khaki uniforms and huge picturesque red turbans, strutting around the compound, and as they entered right into our midst they all whooped a good English whoop. A little blond Englishwoman was so overcome at the relief really being here that she seized the first one she could get to and threw her arms around him and embraced him. The Sikh was dumbfounded at a mem-sahib apparently so far forgetting all caste. It seemed odd that the word “relief” should have been personified in these Eastern and heathen-looking Sikhs, but it was all the more in keeping with this extraordinary siege in Peking that they should be the first on the scene to rescue us.
At this wonderful moment the Chevalier de Melotte, Mrs. Squiers, and myself, without a word spoken, flew with common consent to the point in our lines down Legation Street where we knew we could see the entering columns. Cannons were booming in all directions, caused by the Powers trying to enter by the different gates, shells exploding and sniping everywhere. We took our stand at the bridge crossing the canal, from where we saw large quantities of soldiers, sometimes even cavalry, come through the Water Gate. We had scarcely caught from this rather exposed point a bird’s-eye view of it all, when a squad of Sikhs passed us with an officer of high rank, who turned out to be General Gaselee, riding in the midst of them. He jumped off his horse on seeing us, and showing on every inch of him the wear and tear of an eighty-mile midsummer relief march, he took our hands, and with tears in his eyes said, “Thank God, men, here are two women alive,” and he most reverently kissed Mrs. Squiers on the forehead.
Photo, Elliott & Fry
GENERAL SIR ALFRED GASELEE
It was so good to see him and meet him in this way. As soon as the despatch had arrived saying that General Gaselee was to be in command of the British forces, a smart-looking photograph of him that someone had cut from a magazine had been pinned on the Bell Tower, and it was so smart-looking, and his appearance so correct, that one of necessity lost interest in his personality; and now to see him thus—the military martinet all lost in this big-hearted, kindly man, who was almost crying because we were alive! A short time before meeting us, on his line of march, he saw poor Père Dosio’s head stuck on the end of a pole, where the Chinese had placed it, and General Gaselee feared that this head might be but the beginning of a series of Europeans similarly treated. We had considered the Italian priest so quiet and docile that he was not restrained at all, and yesterday he quietly wandered out into the Chinese lines, and undoubtedly he was killed before they knew his mind was gone, although at this stage the Chinese, I expect, were all too ferocious to have spared him even had they known of his dementia.
Coming to the “front” this way had to be paid for in a mild way, and a ricochetting bullet grazed my ankle, and one tipped the top of my ear. Chevalier de Melotte, our escort, had his cap shot off; but the battle lust had got into our blood, and it seemed that all this storm of bullets and dropping shells was but a new and exciting kind of hailstorm, and that to keep moving from one point to another was the one necessary thing to do.
The red-turbaned Sikhs and General Gaselee had come and gone, and now came long lines of yellow, khaki-uniformed Americans of the 9th Infantry, belonging to us, and General Chaffee, well set-up marines under Colonel Waller—they came on and on, stumbling through the hot August sunlight, line after line, without end, and we were nonplussed when they told us they were but a small detachment of the United States troops; and the tremendous storming of the Ch’ien Men Gate that was deafening us was being done by the Americans, who were having no easy time of it, as the Chinese were firing right down on them from their protected height.