The Boxers, however, completely spoiled all her plans by their eagerness to obtain loot. Being promised the spoil of the foreigners after the contemplated uprising in the eighth moon, they regarded the property of the Christians and their teachers as already mortgaged to them; and, fearful lest the government troops would acquire some of it, they commenced the campaign themselves before the appointed time. How the government at first made feeble efforts to restrain them, and afterward completely gave in and joined with them is now a matter of history.
The monumental idiocy of the idea that China could successfully defy the whole civilized world was only possible to such brains as those possessed by the densely ignorant Manchus who surrounded the Empress as her cabinet. Several of the tsung-li-yamen ministers, like Prince Ch’ing and Liao Shou Heng, weakly tried to reason them out of it, and were promptly given back seats.
Of the others remaining in the tsung-li-yamen after their retirement, none dared say anything against the movement for fear they also would be shelved. But as they were not strong enough to please the Empress in her final dealings with the foreigners, she, a few days before the commencement of the siege, appointed Prince Tuan as head of the yamen, in place of Prince Ch’ing, and at the same time appointed two fire-eating foreign-haters, Chi Shui and Na T’ung, to seats in that obstructive body. These men, with Tung Fu Hsiang and the cabinet, must be held responsible for the murders of Baron von Ketteler, F. Huberty James, David Oliphant, H. Warren, Ed Wagner, and the other civilians and guards killed during the siege, as well as for many missionaries in the province that have doubtless perished, but of whose fate we, being besieged, had no certain knowledge.
That the Powers, in the settlement of their crimes, will treat them as murderers, as they are, we can scarcely doubt, and we hope none of them in any way implicated will be allowed to escape capital punishment.
CHAPTER III
CABLES TO AMERICA DESCRIBING GROWTH OF BOXER MOVEMENT FROM JANUARY TO JUNE, 1900
CHUNG LI