With the Empress Dowager of China

Throne, was, from the time of the coup d’état, considered to be anti-foreign and responsible for all the attacks upon foreigners by ignorant Chinese that took place after that event. When, only two years after the coup d’état, the secret society of the Boxers began their sanguinary attacks upon the foreigners, Her Majesty was considered responsible for them, was looked upon as aiding and abetting the Boxers; and, by the foreigners at least, she was considered to be the high priestess if not the originator of the order. But the Boxer movement had no such high origin. It started among the people, the humble people, in the Northern provinces of China, far from the Capital, and had been in existence for a number of years before the attack upon the Legations in 1900.

The open contempt of many of the foreigners living in China, not only for the Chinese as a race, but for their most cherished customs and traditions; the fact that the Chinese converts of the foreign missionaries may break Chinese laws and still not be amenable to Chinese punishment; the constantly renewed demands of the foreign powers for territory, for the punishment of high Chinese officials and hundreds of other acts that no body of foreigners in any country but China would dare to try to force upon the people, finally aroused even this peaceable, long-suffering Nation.9 The worm turned. The secret society of the Boxers took “China for the Chinese” as its motto, and to “drive out the foreigner,” or, at least, curtail his rapidly growing power, became its object. This society gained in force and grew in volume until it reached the Capital. Here, from the obscure classes among which it had its origin, it spread to the upper stratum of society and had followers among the highest in the land. Certain Princes of the Imperial Family even joined the ranks⁠—among these latter the father of the next heir to the Throne, the Prince Tuan. These gave the movement an added force and made of it a patriotic effort.

Then from smoldering discontent, it burst into open acts of violence against the foreigners. The final spark which caused the outbreak in the Capital and the attack upon the Legations is said to have been the report, which gained immediate credence among the discontents, that the Foreign Ministers were going to interfere with the Government itself, and ask for a change in it; that they were to insist upon the Empress Dowager’s retiring from the management of State affairs. This interference, by the foreigners, with the sacred prerogatives of China, as a Nation; this attempt at the removal of the Person of one of its Sacred Rulers, aroused the people to a wild fury. Without waiting to find out the truth of this report, and thinking, in their blind ignorance, that by getting rid of the representatives of the Foreign Powers, they might then be left in peace, the mob first attacked and killed the German Minister, the Baron von Ketteler, as he was on his way to the Tsung Li Yamen, which the Wai-Wu-Pu now replaces. Then followed the general attack on the Legations.

The movement then became a veritable torrent, rushing madly along, dashing aside all opposition and overwhelming right and reason.

The Emperor and Empress Dowager, powerful and autocratic as they are, could not stem the current, and only by going with it could they ever hope to bring judgment and reason to the surface again. No ruler in the world can or ever has been able to stop an uprising of his people when the latter felt they had right on their side or had been downtrodden or oppressed. Their Celestial Majesties were obliged to wait until the popular fury had somewhat abated before they could even attempt it. No sane person could believe that the Empress Dowager, with her natural intelligence and after thirty years of government and knowledge of foreign methods, did not know that this attack on the foreign representatives by the Chinese people would bring on severe reprisals. But she was powerless to do more than she did at the time. Their Majesties could not go against the people in their maddened state of mind. They hoped by joining the Imperial forces to the wild insurgents that these seething masses might be brought to reason. The mob was given a semblance of right by a declaration of war on the part of the government after the forts of Taku were taken by the foreign warships (which was really the first act of war of this unfortunate episode).

When I saw the position of the Legation quarter and especially that of the British Legation, where all the foreigners finally congregated⁠—open to attack on every side, lying under the very walls of the Palace and the Imperial City⁠—I felt convinced that had there not been some restraining force within their own ranks, the Chinese could have wiped out the foreigners in less than a week. Bad firing on their part could only have averted, for a short space, the inevitable result to the Legations. Had there not been some power that was acting as a check upon the Chinese, no European would have been left to tell the tale; and this restraining force I feel confident came from the Emperor and the Empress Dowager themselves.

The Empress Dowager (with the Emperor) was at the Summer Palace, as usual, during the summer of 1900. Though urged by her ministers and the Princes to remain there, where she was out of danger or could easily escape at its approach, she insisted on returning to the Capital and went into the Winter Palace a week before the Allies reached the city. She hoped as a dernier resort that the presence of the Sacred Persons, Their Majesties, in the city might serve as a check upon the soldiers and people, now maddened by their own fury; for the Imperial troops, instead of checking the insurgents