The following incident may serve to show the state of uncertainty in which we lived during the interregnum preceding the return of the Court.
While waiting for an opportunity to get my "train (the university) on the track," I spent the summer of 1901 at Pearl Grotto, my usual retreat, on the top of a hill over a thousand feet high, overlooking the capital. "The Boxers are coming!" cried my writer and servants one evening about twilight. "Haste—hide in the rocks—they will soon be on us!" "I shall not hide," I replied; and seizing my rifle I rested it on a wall which commanded the approach. They soon became visible at the distance of a hundred yards, waving flambeaux, and yelling like a troop of devils. Happily I reserved my fire for closer range; for leaving the path at that point they betook themselves to the top of another hill where they waved their torches and shouted like madmen. We were safe for the night; and in the morning I reported the occurrence to Mr. O'Conor, the British chargé d'affaires, who was at a large temple at the foot of the hills. "They were not Boxers," he remarked, "but a party we sent out to look for a lost student."
POSTSCRIPT
It is the fashion to speak slightingly of the Boxer troubles, and to blink the fact that the movement which led to the second capture of Peking and the flight of the Court was a serious war. The southern viceroys had undertaken to maintain order in the south. Operations were therefore localised somewhat, as they were in the Russo-Japanese War. It is even said that the combined forces were under the impression that they were coming to the rescue of a helpless government which was doing all in its power to protect foreigners. Whether this was the effect of diplomatic dust thrown in their eyes or not, it was a fiction.
How bitterly the Empress Dowager was bent on exterminating the foreigner, may be inferred from her decree ordering the massacre of foreigners and their adherents—a savage edict which the southern satraps refused to obey. A similar inference may be drawn from the summary execution of four ministers of state for remonstrating against throwing in the fortunes of the empire with the Boxer party. China should be made to do penance on her knees for those shocking displays of barbarism. At Taiyuan-fu, forty-five missionaries were murdered by the governor, and sixteen at Paoting-fu. Such atrocities are only possible among a half-civilised people.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR
Russia's Schemes for Conquest—Conflicting Interests in Korea—Hostilities Begin—The First Battles—The Blockade—Dispersion of the Russian Fleet—Battle of Liao-yang—Fall of Port Arthur—Battle of Mukden—The Armada—Battle of Tsushima—The Peace of Portsmouth—The Effect on China
To the Chinese the retrospect of these five wars left little room for those pompous pretensions which appeared to be their vital breath.
Beaten by Western powers and by the new power of the East, their capital taken a second time after forty years' opportunity to fortify it, and their fugitive court recalled a second time to reign on sufferance or during good behaviour, what had they left to boast of except the antiquity of their country and the number of their people? Dazed and paralysed, most of them gave way to a sullen resignation that differed little from despair.