Prince Ts'eng Junior was not shy about speaking his mind. He believed that his young son should become the next Emperor. I could see him appointing the boy himself. What couldn't a man do when he had tens of thousands of Boxers and Moslem troops at his disposal? Ts'eng entirely dropped his pretense of being loyal to me, for he now controlled the palaces' security guards and the Board of Punishment.
Whispering had been going on behind my curtains. Eunuchs made secret trips outside the Forbidden City. They had been gathering information on how to escape. The ladies in waiting and the servants were preparing for the worst: they kept red Boxer clothes under their beds.
Prince Ts'eng had demanded that I order Yung Lu to remove his troops so that he could 'move forward without worrying about being shot in the back.'
I warned Ts'eng that an attack on the foreign legations would mean the end of the dynasty, to which he replied, 'We will die if we fight and we will die if we don't. The foreign powers won't stop until the melon of China is sliced and eaten!'
I had ordered a telegram sent to Li Hung-chang, but during its transmission, the lines were cut. From then on, Peking was isolated from the outside world.
'I am sorry, Mother,' Guang-hsu said when I told him that we had lost control of Prince Ts'eng's Boxers and General Tung's Moslem troops.
Guang-hsu and I sat side by side in the empty audience hall. It was a bright morning in early summer. We stared at the teacups in front of us. I lost track of how many times the eunuchs had come to refill our cups with hot water. I had no idea what to expect of the situation. I only knew that it was getting worse. I felt like a convict in the lonely moments before her execution.
By ten o'clock Prince Ts'eng's message came. The Boxers had moved forward with their knives, bamboo spears, antique swords and muskets. The 'outer ring,' General Tung's twelve thousand 'Moslem Braves,' had entered the capital. They encountered an allied relief force and had been trying to take the 'middle ring' position.
According to Yung Lu, the 'inner ring' comprised Prince Ts'eng's 'Manchu Tigers,' a former Bannerman troop with tiger skins thrown over their shoulders and tigers' heads mounted on their shields.
'Prince Ts'eng's strategy is another Ironhat fantasy,' Yung Lu said. His army had been keeping an eye on General Tung's Moslem troops. Yung Lu's best Chinese commander, General Nieh, was sent to scatter the Boxers.
On June 11, Prince Ts'eng announced his first victory: the capture and killing of a Japanese embassy chancellor, Akira Sugiyama.
I received the news in the afternoon. Sugiyama had been on China's most-wanted list. He was responsible for Kang Yu-wei's and Liang Chi-chao's escape to Japan. Sugiyama had left his legation in Peking to greet the Allies' relief force at the railway station. Before he arrived he was set upon by General Tung's Moslem soldiers, who dragged him from his cart and hacked him to pieces.
The murder escalated the crisis. Although in the throne's name I issued an official apology to Japan and Sugiyama's family, the foreign newspapers believed that I had ordered the murder.
The London
With the help of Li Lien-ying I climbed to the top of the Hill of Prosperity. While looking down over a sea of rooftops, I heard gunshots from the direction of the foreign legations. The legations occupied an area between the wall of the Forbidden City and the wall of inner Peking, a neighborhood of small houses and streets, canals and gardens. I was told that the foreigners in the legations had been building barricades. The exposed outer perimeter and all gates, crossroads and bridges were sandbagged.
Meanwhile, Yung Lu withdrew his divisions from the coast and attempted to insert them between the Boxers and the legations. He let the Boxers know that he wasn't against them, but he issued an order that anyone who violated the legations would be summarily executed.
As Yung Lu withdrew his forces, he worried about the weakened coastal defenses, especially the Taku forts. 'I wish I knew how many foreign troops are headed this way,' he said to me later. 'I fear what they may do in the name of rescuing the diplomats.'
My eunuchs worried about my safety. Since the Boxers had entered Peking, Li Lien-ying had climbed the Hill of Prosperity every day. It was there that he witnessed both the eastern and the southern cathedrals go up in flames. My eunuchs also informed me that the Americans would fire a volley from their roof every fifteen minutes on the off chance of hitting anyone who might be coming down the road. Nearly a hundred Boxers had already been killed. According to the Western press, legation residents had been shooting at any Chinese who wore 'even a scrap of red.'
The Allies' ultimatum was delivered by the British fleet's Admiral Seymour through our governor of Chihli. It read that the Allies were to 'occupy provisionally, by consent or by force, the Taku forts by 2 a.m. on the 17 June.'
What the governor hid from me, out of fear of his removal, was that his defensive line had already collapsed. Only a few days before, he had falsely reported that the Boxers in his province had 'beaten the foreign warships back toward the sea.' By the time I read the ultimatum, two British warships were gliding silently toward the forts under cover of darkness. The Taku forts would be captured in a matter of days.
With Guang-hsu at my side I summoned an emergency audience. I drafted a decree in response to the ultimatum: 'The foreigners have called upon us to deliver up the Taku forts into their keeping, otherwise they will be taken by force. These threats are an example of the Western powers' aggressive disposition in all matters relating to intercourse with China. It is better to do our utmost and enter into the struggle than to seek self- preservation involving eternal disgrace. With tears we announce in our ancestral shrines the outbreak of war.'
Memories of the i860 Opium War filled me with grief while I read the draft for the court's approval. Painful images flooded back: of past exile, of the death of my husband, of the unfair treaties he was forced to sign, of the destruction of my home Yuan Ming Yuan.
Seeing that I was unable to go on, Guang-hsu took over. 'Ever since the foundation of the dynasty, foreigners coming to China have been kindly treated.' My son's voice was weak but clear. 'But for the past thirty years they have taken advantage of our forbearance to encroach on our territory, trample on the Chinese people and absorb the wealth of the empire. Every concession made only serves to increase their insolence. They oppress our peaceful subjects and insult the gods and sages, inciting fierce indignation among our people. Hence the burning of chapels and the slaughter of converts by the patriotic troops.'
The Emperor stopped. He turned to me and gave back the draft. His eyes filled with sorrow.
I continued. 'The throne has made every effort to avoid war. We have issued edicts enjoining protection of legations and pity toward converts. We declared Boxers and converts to be equally the children of the state. It is the Western powers who forced us into this war.'
The minister of foreign affairs, I-kuang, was sent to give the legations' residents twenty-four-hour notice to leave Peking, under the protection of Yung Lu's troops. The foreign affairs office in Tientsin and Sir Robert Hart's Chinese customs service were ordered to receive the residents and make arrangements to escort them to safety.
But the legations refused to abandon their rightful places in China. The
On June 20, a German minister, Baron von Ketteler, was murdered.
Klemens August von Ketteler was a man of strong views and had a flaming temper, according to those who knew him. Only a few days before his death, he beat a ten-year-old Chinese boy with his lead-weighted walking
