I rode off, bearing away some flags and swords, and, making due east, as last reached some broad avenues near the Eastern Gates of this Forbidden City.... Fresh masses of moving men now appeared. The main body of French infantry I had seen a couple of hours before were being marched in here, while smaller bodies were tramping off to the north, and sappers were blowing down walls to clear their way. As I ambled along, seeking a way out, a couple of officers galloped up to me, and, touching their helmets, begged me in the name of goodness to tell them what was being done. What were the general orders, they wanted to know. I explained to them that nobody knew anything; that as far as I could see, the Americans had stopped attacking for good; that the Indian troops were already marching out into the Chinese city; and that nothing more was to be done, as the other columns had been completely lost touch with.
"Toujours cette confusion, toujours pas d'ordres," the French officers angrily commented, and in a few words they told me rapidly how from the very start at Tientsin it had been like this, each column racing against the others, while they openly pretended to co-operate; with everyone jealous and discontented. Where were the Russians, the Italians, and the Germans? I answered that I had not the slightest idea, and that nobody knew, or appeared to care at all. I personally was going on; I had had enough of it....
To my surprise, as I turned to go, I found that the men of the Infanterie Coloniale, in their dirty-blue suits, had pushed up as close as possible to overhear what was being said, and now surrounded us. One private indeed boldly asked the officers whether they were going to be able to enter the Palace at once; and when he got an angry negative, he and his comrades took to such cursing and swearing, that it seemed incredible that this was a disciplined army. The men wanted to know why they had been dragged forward like animals in this burning heat and stifling dust, day after day, until they could walk no longer, if they were to have no reward—if there was to be nothing to take in this cursed country. In the hot air the sullen complaints of these sweating men rang out brutally. They wanted to loot; to break through all locked doors and work their wills on everything. Otherwise, why had they been brought? These men knew the history of 1860.
I turned in disgust, and went slowly back the way I had come, only to find all unchanged.... Everything had obviously been stopped by explicit orders; there was no doubt about that now; diplomacy, afraid to allow any one to enter the inner Palaces for fear of what would follow, and how much one Power might triumph over another, had called an absolute halt. But no one was taking any chances, or placing too much confidence in the assurances of the dear Allies. That was plain! For, even as I had almost finished trotting up to the Dynastic Gate, I came on a large body of Italian sailors, who had evidently just entered Peking, and who, marching with the quick step of the Bersaglieri, were being led by C——, the lank Secretary of Legation, right up to the last line of gates. They were in an enormous hurry, and looked about them with eager eyes. C—— and some others called out to me as I passed, and wanted to know whether it was true that the Americans and the French had already got in, and had sacked half the place, and whether fire had been set to the buildings. I answered with no compunction that it appeared to be so, and that the Russians and the Japanese had burst in also through the north, and had actually fired on the others coming from the south, thinking they were Manchu soldiery.... I told them that they were too late; that every point of importance had already been seized. That set them moving faster than ever. It was truly comical and ridiculous. Beyond this there were more troops of other nationalities that had just arrived, and were now looking about them in bewilderment. No wonder. With no orders and no maps, and surrounded by these immense ruins, and still more immense squares, they could not understand it at all. What confusion!
As I paused, debating what I should do, once again something else speedily attracted my attention. This time big groups of American soldiery, whom I had not observed before, were gathering like swarms of flies at the door of one of the Chinese guard-houses, which line the enclosing walls of the Palace. They were evidently much excited by some discovery. Wishing to learn what it was, I dismounted and pushed in. Grovelling on the ground lay an elderly Chinese, whose peculiar aspect and general demeanour made it clear what he was. He was a Palace eunuch, left here by some strange luck. The man was in a paroxysm of fear, and, pointing into the guard-house behind him, he was beseeching the soldiery with words and gestures not to treat him as those inside had been handled. Through the open door I could see a confused mass of dead bodies—men who had been bayonetted to death in the early morning—and from a rafter hung a miserable wretch, who had destroyed himself in his agony to escape the terror of cold steel. As the details became clear, the scene was hideous. Never, indeed, shall I forget that horrid little vignette of war—those dozens upon dozens of curious soldier faces framed in slouch hats only half understanding; the imploring eunuch on the ground, the huddled mass of slaughtered men swimming in their blood in the shadow behind; that thick smell of murder and sudden death rising and stinking in the hot air; and the last cruel note of that Chinese figure, with a shriek of agony and fear petrified on the features, swinging in long, loose clothes from the rafter above. In the bright sunlight and the sudden silence which had come over everything, there was a peculiar menace in all this which chilled one....
Perhaps the eunuch had divined from my different dress that he would be better understood by me than by these rough crowds of rank and file who crushed him in; for, as I gazed, he had thrown himself at my feet, with muttered words and a constant begging and imploring. I noticed then that the unfortunate man could not walk, could only drag himself like a beaten dog. The reason soon transpired: both his legs had been broken by some mad jump which he must have essayed in his agony to escape. I quieted the man's fears as best I could, and, tearing a sheet from a note-book, wrote a description of him, so that a field hospital would dress him. Then, anxious to learn something concrete with this vapour of haziness and confusion blinding us all, I began questioning him quickly about the Palace, the numbers of soldiery within, the strength of the inner enclosures, and the residences of the Emperor and the Empress Dowager. The man answered me willingly enough, but suddenly said it was all no use, that we were too late. The Emperor, the Empress Dowager, indeed, the whole Court, had disappeared—had fled, was gone....
Gone!
On my life, I could scarcely believe my ears. After all these weeks of confusion and plotting, had the Empress Dowager and her whole Court fled at the very last moment, and, by so doing, escaped all possibility of vengeance? Was it really so? One might have known that this loose-jointed relief expedition could accomplish nothing, would do everything wrong; and still we were acting as if everything was in our hands. Then, suddenly, I fined down my questions, and imperatively asked when the Court had fled; exactly at what hour and in what direction.
At first I could get no reliable answer, but, pushing my questions and assuming a threatening attitude, the shattered eunuch at length collapsed, and whiningly informed me that the flight had taken place at nine o'clock exactly the previous night, and had been carried out by way of the Northern Gates of the city. They had left five hours after the relief had come in! I calculated quickly. That meant twenty hours' start at four miles an hour—for they would travel frantically night and day—eighty miles! It was hopeless; they were safe through the first mountain-passes, and if they had soldiery with them, as was more than certain, these had most certainly been dropped at the formidable barriers which nature has interposed just forty miles beyond Peking. The mountain-passes would protect them. There could be no vengeance exacted; no retribution could overtake the real authors of this débâcle. Nothing. It was a strange end....
Disconsolately I turned and rode back into the Legation lines, feeling as if an immense misfortune had come. Here I met finally some Japanese cavalry and some Cossacks. After being actually in Peking twenty-four hours, they had at length formed junction with their Legations. The cavalrymen were trotting up and down, and trying to discover their own people. Neither did they understand it all.