Soon enough these small French batteries of light guns came into action, and sent a stream of little shells into the Palace enclosures a couple of thousand yards away. The majority pitched on the gaudy roofs of Imperial pavilions far inside the Palace grounds, bursting into pretty little fleecy clouds, and starting small smouldering fires that suddenly died down before they had done much damage. But a number fell short, and swept enclosures where I knew American soldiery had already penetrated. I drew my breath, but said nothing....
The view from here was perfect. The sun had risen and was shining brightly. Directly below lay the ruined Legations, with their rude fortifications and thousands of surrounding native houses levelled flat to the ground; but beyond, for many miles, stretched the vast city of Peking, dead silent, excepting for these now accustomed sounds of war, and half hidden by myriads of trees, which did not allow one to see clearly what was taking place. The Palace, with its immense walls, its yellow roofs, and its vast open places, lay mysteriously quiet, too, while this punishment was meted out on it. You could not understand what was going on. To the very far north a heavy cloud, which had already attracted my attention, now rose blacker and blacker, until it spread like a pall on the bright sky. Cossacks or Japanese, who by this time had swept over the entire ground, must have met with resistance; they were burning and sacking, and a huge conflagration had been started.
For a quarter of an hour and more I watched in an idle, tired curiosity, which I could not explain, those little French shells bursting far away and falling short, and presently, as I expected, the inevitable happened. A young American officer rode up and began shouting angrily up to the Wall. I knew exactly what he meant, but everybody was so interested that he remained unnoticed. And so, presently, more furious than ever, he dismounted and rushed up red with rage. He Was so angry that he was funny. He wanted to know if the commander of these d—— pop-guns knew what he was firing at, and whether he could not see the United States army in full occupation of the bombarded points. He swore and he cursed and he gesticulated, until finally cease fire was sounded and the guns were ordered down. All the Frenchmen were furious, and I saw P——, the Minster, go down in company with the gaunt-looking Spanish doyen, vowing vengeance and declaiming loudly that if they were stopped everybody must be stopped too. There must be no favouring; that they would not have. I understood, then, why the mountain guns had come so quickly into action; they were gaining time for that exhausted colonial infantry to get round to some convenient spot and begin a separate attack. It was each one for himself.
Somehow I understood now that it was a useless time for ceremony, and that one must act just as one wished. So, finding some ponies tethered to a post below, without a word I mounted one and rode rapidly back to the Palace. For an instant, as I passed the great Ch'ien Men Gate, I could see Indian troops filing out in their hundreds, and forcing a path through the press of incoming transport and guns. Evidently the British commanders considered that the thing was over; that it was no use going on. Already they had had enough of our Peking methods....
I must have ridden nearly a mile straight through the vast enclosures of the Palace, past lines and lines of American infantry lying on the ground, with the reserve artillery trains halted under cover of high walls, before I saw ahead of me a set of gates which were still unbroken. General firing had quite ceased now, and excepting for an occasional shot coming from some distant corner, there was no sound. The bulk of the American infantry had not even been advanced as far as I had come. A skirmishing line, evidently formed only a short time before my arrival, was still lying on the ground; but the men were laughing and smoking, and the officers had withdrawn out of the heat of the sun into a side building, where they were examining a map. The scaling-ladders were left behind. I was soon told that orders had come direct from headquarters to stop the attack absolutely, and not to advance an inch further on any consideration. The inner courts of the Palace and the residences of the Emperor and the Empress Dowager could not be approached until concerted action had been taken up by all the Allies. I laughed—it was the hydra-headed diplomacy of Peking raising its head defiantly less than eighteen hours after the first soldiers had rushed in....
The massive set of gates in front of me were those just without a most beautiful marble courtyard. That I knew from the rude Chinese maps of the Forbidden City which are everywhere sold; if this boundary were passed the Imperial Palaces, with all their treasures, would be reached. I thought, with my mouth watering a little, although I had no actual desire for riches, of General Montauban, created Comte de Palikao, because in the 1860 expedition, when the famous Summer Palace was so ruthlessly sacked, he had taken all the most splendid black pearls he could find and had carried them back to the Empress Eugénie as a little offering. If one could only get past this boundary and the protocol had not stepped in!
Moved a little by such thoughts, I advanced on the central gate, and peered through a chink near which an infantryman was standing alert, rifle in hand. There were the marble courtyards, the beautiful yellow decorated roofs. I could see them clearly, and then ... a rifle from the other side was discharged almost in my ear; a bullet hissed past a few inches from my head, too; and I had a flitting vision of a Chinese soldier in the sky-blue tunic of the Palace Guards darting back on the other side. There must still be numbers of soldiery waiting sullenly beyond for the expected advance; they would only fall back in rapid flight as our men rushed in, just as they had been doing from the beginning. I discharged my own revolver rather aimlessly through the chink in the hope that something would happen, but all became quiet again. Everything was finished here.
But although the advance down this grand approach to the inner halls and Palaces had been stayed, nothing had been said about piercing through the great outer enclosures to the right and left; and, catching my pony, I rode round a corner where a broad avenue led to another set of entrances. Perhaps here would be something. All along I found a sprinkling of American infantrymen, in their sweaty and dust-covered khaki suits, lying down and fanning themselves with anything that came handy, and sending rude jests at one another. Old-fashioned Chinese jingals, gaudy Banners, and even Manchu long-bows, were scattered on the ground in enormous confusion. The Palace Guards belonging to the old Manchu levies had evidently been surprised here by the advance of the main body of American troops through the Dynastic Gate, and had fled panic-stricken, abandoning their antiquated arms and accoutrements as they ran. The soldiery who had been doing all the fighting and firing must have been the more modern field forces engaged in the last attacks on the Legations, or those driven in on Peking by the rout on the Tientsin road. Still, there was nothing worth seeing, and the miniature Tartar towers crowning the angles of the great pink walls looked down in contempt, as if conscious that no enemy could hurt them. I must push along.
I trotted quickly, exchanging chaff with the Americans, who called out to me with curious oaths that they had had no breakfast, and wanted to know why in h—— this fun was being stopped, and that they were being left there. Alas! I could give them no news. I only swore back in the same playful way. At the end of an immense wall I came on the last of this soldiery—a corporal's guard, squatting round a small wicket-gate and looking very tired. They told me that they were still being shot at from somewhere on the inside; and even as I paused and looked a curious pot-pourri of missiles grounded angrily against the gate-top. There were modern bullets, old iron shot, and two arrows—a strange assortment. Somehow those quivering arrows, shot from over the immense pink walls, and attempting to vent their old-fashioned wrath on the insolent invaders who had penetrated where never before an enemy's foot had trod, made us all stare and remain amazed. It seemed so curious and impossible—so out of date. Then one of the Americans ran into a guard-house, bringing out with him a huge Manchu bow, which he had secreted there as his plunder. He plucked with difficulty the arrows out of the woodwork in which they had been plunged, and with an immense twanging of catgut sent them high into the air, until they were suddenly lost to our sight in the far beyond. An answer was not long in coming. In less than half a minute a crackle of firearms broke harshly on the air, and a fresh covey of bullets whistled high overhead. The enemy was plainly still on the alert inside the last enclosures, where no one might penetrate. What a pity it had been stopped....