23 Fighting to a Bitter End

(1900)

AFTER Cixi declared war, the Boxers were given legal status and organised under the command of princes who were sympathetic to them. In the capital they numbered a quarter of a million, with Prince Duan in overall charge. They were formed into some 1,400 leagues, each with roughly 200 members. More than 100,000 of them defended the road to Beijing alongside the regular army, against an international force of more than 20,000. The regular army had received Western training and was armed with modern weapons. In their Western-style uniforms, its officers and men had been called ‘Secondary Hairies' by the Boxers, who were now their comrades. Sarah Conger, wife of the American minister, recorded: ‘The Boxers and soldiers combined made a strong army … The foreigners who have known the Chinese longest and best say that they have never before seen anything like it in their character … The battles at Tientsin [Tianjin] were terrific. The Chinese showed courage beyond the imagination of those who know them best. They were determined, fought bravely, and put the foreign armies to a bitter test.' The Rev. Arthur H. Smith wrote: ‘There is no doubt that the Chinese armies … fought with a desperation for which nothing in the war with Japan afforded any parallel.'

Cixi announced her gratitude to the Boxers and rewarded them with silver from the court. She opened warehouses where old weapons from the now-updated regular army were stored, and had them distributed among the Boxers. Armed with these, which were rather primitive, and with their own even more primitive knives and spears, the Boxers threw themselves against modern technology with fanatical abandon. One of their adversaries wrote: ‘Slowly they came on, shouting, with their swords and pikes flashing in the sun, merely to be mowed down, whole ranks at a time by rifle and machine-gun fire.' Boxer leaders who believed in their own supernatural prowess died first. One British soldier described a scene: ‘a well-dressed Boxer leader came impressively down alone towards the bridge of boats in front of the Russian infantry … He waved his sash and went through his ceremony, but of course he was a corpse in a few seconds.'

Seeing their leaders' magic overcome, some Boxers reckoned that foreigners must have mysterious powers and sought to block them by fouling, which was an ancient strategy. They laid out night-stools and binding cloth from women's feet – the two items that were considered the smelliest – on the battlements of the city walls, hoping vainly that the foreigners would be repelled by their stink. Cixi too was reduced to wild irrationality. She dictated two edicts asking a Buddhist monk who was said to be able to perform miracles through prayer to go to the front and help ward off gunboats. As Allied soldiers continued to pour in, it became plain that no magic, reek or divine intervention would work against them.

As they became crucial to the war effort, the Boxers ran wild. They did what they did most naturally: looting and pillaging cities and towns that were at their mercy. The losses in just one affluent street in Tianjin were estimated at tens of millions of taels, before the city fell to the invaders. Mobs ransacked people's homes, including those of some grandees. In Beijing, the mansion of the Imperial Princess, daughter of the late Prince Gong whom Cixi had adopted as her own, was plundered.

Not even the Forbidden City was immune. There, middle-aged princes took to wearing Boxer clothes – a short top and a red sash around the waist – as they strode around aggressively, ‘jumping and yelling, behaving totally differently from their normal selves, as though they were crazy or drunk', Cixi later reminisced. One of them ‘even quarrelled with me! Nearly overturning the imperial altar!' Even members of the Praetorian Guards (of which one branch was commanded by Prince Duan) joined the Boxers. Word went round that the Boxers intended to enter the Forbidden City and kill pro-Western grandees like Prince Ching and Junglu. One day, a request was put to Cixi that the servants in the Forbidden City should be sent out to be examined, to see if they were ‘Secondary Hairies'. Cixi asked how this might be done, and received the answer that, after reciting certain incantations, the Boxers were able to see a cross on the forehead of anyone who had been baptised. Terrified eunuchs and maids begged Cixi to shield them, but she was forced to tell them to go and be examined – for fear that the Boxers might use this as an excuse to raid the Forbidden City. In the event, the Boxers did not make any accusations: they seemed sufficiently gratified by the fact that the empress dowager herself had had to oblige them. Cixi felt like a ‘paper tiger'. As she explained to the Viceroys who opposed her handling of events, ‘Suddenly in a matter of months there were more than a hundred thousand Boxers in the capital, from ordinary people to soldiers to princes and grandees … The capital would be plunged into unthinkable peril if I tried to use the army to crush them. I have to go along with them, to be treated as their leader, and manage to control them and salvage the situation somehow …'

Indeed, Cixi's control was less forceful than usual. Right under her nose, tens of thousands of Boxers, together with the Muslim army, were laying siege to the Legation Quarter. When the war started, they began to attack the Quarter. Cixi knew that it would be suicidal to harm more diplomats, and handed out no arms to the Boxers there. The fiercely anti-Western Muslim army was placed in just one section of the Quarter, and the rest faced the pro-Western Junglu. Junglu's assaults were full of sound and fury, but signified very little. Sarah Conger, within the legations, wrote about the attacks: ‘The blowing of their horns, their yells, and the firing of their guns, are the most frightful noises I ever heard.' And yet, ‘The Chinese often fire high, for which we give thanks.'

The booming cannon send their shells right at us; they sometimes burst over our heads, sometimes they go beyond, but not a fragment touches us. When the enemy, after many attempts, gets the range to harm us, and a few shells would injure our buildings, then the hands of these Chinese seem to be stayed. Not once have they continued firing to the entire destruction of one of these buildings or walls. How could this be true if God did not protect us? His loving arm is round about us.

The truth was that Cixi had specifically given the cannon to Junglu, who then had the targeting gauge raised by many centimetres. Later Cixi would say: ‘If I had really wanted to destroy the legations, they could not possibly still exist.'¹

After the siege had ground on for a month, Cixi became worried that those inside might die from a lack of fresh food and told Junglu to have fruit and vegetables delivered to the legations.

The siege lasted fifty-five days, from 20 June to 14 August, when the Allied force captured Beijing. Of the Westerners in the Legation Quarter, sixty-eight were killed and 159 wounded; the number of Chinese Christians killed or wounded was not counted. The Boxers, who charged with practically bare hands, suffered thousands of casualties – far more than the foreign enemies who were seemingly in their clutches.

Also under siege was the Catholic cathedral in Beijing, the Beitang, where nearly 4,000 foreign and Chinese Christians had taken refuge. Here Cixi ordered Prince Duan, the leader of the siege, ‘not to use guns or other firearms'. Thus, when the Boxers launched attacks with their primitive weapons, against a solid edifice defended with superior arms, they fell in droves. As stocks of food in the cathedral dwindled, raiding parties would sporadically race out to seek new provisions. When Cixi learned of this, she at first gave a verbal order for ‘the troops to put them down'; but she changed her mind and her edict read: ‘If Christian converts fly out, do not harm them, but send troops to protect them.' As it happened, many Christians chose death by starvation inside the cathedral, rather than fall into the hands of the Boxers. This accounted for the majority of the 400 deaths among the besieged.

Cixi's ambivalent policies towards the Boxers sent many of them to certain death, while ensuring the survival of most foreigners trapped in China, often among murderous crowds.

In some other parts of China there were cases of missionaries and converts being murdered by officials. The worst atrocities took place in Shanxi province. Its governor, Yuxian, had been moved there from Shandong province because Cixi regarded him as too pro-Boxer – and there were no Boxers in Shanxi. Relations between the missions, the Shanxi authorities and the population at large had been amicable. But Yuxian brought his hatred for the West with him. Using mainly soldiers, he massacred 178 missionaries and thousands of Chinese converts, often in gruesome ways. One priest, Mgr Hamer, was taken ‘for three days through the streets of To To, everybody being at liberty to torture him. All his hair was pulled out, and his fingers, nose, and ears cut off. After this they wrapped him in stuff soaked in oil, and, hanging him head downwards, set fire to his feet. His heart was eaten by two Beggars.'

Belatedly, Cixi put a stop to Yuxian's atrocities. She also vetoed a nationwide massacre, proposed by some grandees, including the father of her late daughter-in-law, Chongqi – the man who had almost certainly told his daughter to starve herself to death after her husband died, and who himself would soon commit suicide (as would the rest of his family) when Beijing fell into foreign hands. He and a few others petitioned Cixi for ‘a decree to tell the whole country that every ordinary person is permitted to slay foreigners wherever he set eyes on them'. In this way, they advised:

people will feel they can avenge their grievances which they have long bottled-up … For decades they have been poisoned by foreigners [with opium], bullied by Christian converts and repressed by officials, big and small, who made biased judgements against them – and they had nowhere to turn … Once the decree is known, people will feel so overjoyed and grateful to the throne that they will all rise up in arms to fight the invaders … The land of China will finally be purged of aliens and our people will be free from grief…

Cixi kept the petition to herself, and issued no such decree.

The Boxer mayhem under Cixi appalled and alienated all her old kindred spirits, especially Earl Li and Viceroy Zhang Zhidong. They wrote to rebuke her: ‘If you continue to indulge yourself in this wilful manner and are only concerned to vent your anger, you will ruin our country. Into what deeper abyss will you plunge it before you are satisfied?' They pointed out that she was doing the Boxers no favours: ‘Such huge numbers of them have been killed, and their corpses litter the fields … One can't help pitying them for their stupidity.' Besides, north China was by now reduced to ‘a land of desolation' by the drought as well as by the Boxers: it was about time she paid some attention to the lives of her people.

The Viceroys across the country cabled each other daily, plainly agreeing that they would ‘definitely not obey' her decrees. For the first time in her rule, most of the regional magnates, crucial to the vast empire, had apparently lost faith in Cixi. She had never been so friendless. When she launched her palace coup at the age of twenty-five; when she arbitrarily picked a three-year-old to place on the throne; when she ruled for decades without a mandate; and even when she made a prisoner of the emperor – at all those times they had always backed her. Now she was alone.

Isolation did not frighten her. A determined Cixi charged on single-handedly, gambling that she might find a way to deal with foreign invasions. But she had no wish to drag in the whole empire, and positively encouraged the Viceroys to stay out of her gamble. She told them that they must preserve their own territory and act in a ‘totally realistic' way. It was with Cixi's implicit consent that the most important Viceroys, led by Earl Li and Viceroy Zhang, signed a pact of ‘neutrality' with the powers, which ensured peace in most of China, especially the south, restricting fighting to the area between the Dagu Forts and Beijing. Most provinces were spared Boxer-style violence.

As the Allies pressed closer to Beijing, Cixi was forced to sue for peace. She asked Earl Li, still in Canton, to come to the capital to be her negotiator, offering him as an inducement the job he wanted: to be Viceroy of Zhili. Having previously been eager to go the earl was now reluctant. He knew that surrender was the only option, but that the empress dowager was not ready to accept it and was hoping for better terms. Indeed, she was preparing to fight on even when the powers reached the walls of Beijing, moving in ammunition and troops for its defence. The earl went north only as far as Shanghai, where he paused, claiming to be sick. Meanwhile, Viceroy Zhang collected a long list of signatures, including six of the nine Viceroys of the empire, plus a number of governors and generals, asking Cixi to allow the earl to negotiate with the powers in Shanghai. Rarely had a petition been signed by so many powerful regional figures.

Cixi was convinced that without her direct supervision the outcome of the negotiation would not be acceptable, and she vetoed the proposal. Then she fired a warning shot at the petitioners, aiming particularly at Viceroy Zhang, their ringleader. On 28 July, she ordered the execution of two men who were closely connected to him. One of them, Yuan Chang, a senior official in the Foreign Office, was known as the Viceroy's eyes and ears in Beijing. (The Viceroy had a sizeable information-gathering network in the capital, which Cixi was willing to condone.) The other man, Xu Jingcheng, had been China's minister to Berlin at the time when Germany was preparing to grab Qingdao. Documents from German archives have now revealed that he advised the German government, ‘hinting – extremely secretly of course' – that the ‘threat of military force' was the only way to get Beijing to hand over territory, and that Germany should ‘simply go and occupy a harbour that suits it'. The Kaiser acted on his advice and abandoned the original plan for a less aggressive approach. The Kaiser told the German Chancellor, Prince Hohenlohe, that ‘it is really shameful that we need a Chinese Minister to tell us stupid Germans how to act in China in our own interest'. Minister Jingcheng may well have been tormented by his conscience, for on the execution ground he appeared to welcome death: ‘tidying up his hat and robe carefully, and then going down on his knees facing the north [direction of the throne], he put his forehead on the ground and expressed gratitude to the throne. There was not a look of grievance or complaint on his face.'

It seems that Cixi had got wind of Minister Jingcheng's treachery. The imperial decree announcing the executions charged the men with ‘harbouring private agenda when dealing with foreigners'. Being vague about a charge that involved a foreign power was Cixi's style.

Viceroy Zhang understood that these executions were intended as warnings to him. He had indeed been plotting with foreign powers, especially Britain and Japan, which thought highly of him. He was famously a man of probity who preferred coarse cotton to fine furs and silks for his wardrobe, who invariably declined gifts and accumulated no personal wealth. When he died, there was not enough money in his family to pay for an appropriate funeral. His passions were nature and cats – of which he kept dozens and which he looked after himself. Westerners who dealt with him regarded him as being ‘exceedingly honest and devoted to the welfare of his people', ‘a true patriot'. He was one of the few officials the Japanese regarded as incorruptible and really respected. Former Prime Minister Itō said that the Viceroy was ‘the only man' who could handle the monumental task of China's reforms; and the British considered him the most desirable man with whom to do business. Disappointed with Cixi, and thinking that once she was driven out of Beijing her government would collapse – a view shared by many – the Viceroy contemplated supplanting her. His representative in Tokyo, whose official job was to oversee the students from his viceroyalty, said to his Japanese contact that ‘If the throne is forced to leave Beijing (probably to Xian) and the Qing empire is without a government', the Viceroy ‘will be ready to step forward and form a new government in Nanjing together with two or three other Viceroys'. The same message was given to the British. To prepare for this eventuality, the Viceroy asked the Japanese to supply him with officers and arms. Cixi may not have known the exact details of these machinations, but she had her spies – and powerful instincts.

Giving notice to the Viceroys not to deal covertly with foreign powers, Cixi fought her war to the end. After a strategic defeat that exposed Beijing, her commander at the front shot himself. In his place she appointed Governor Li Bingheng, the man who had stopped Cixi from squeezing the population for the restoration of the Old Summer Palace – only to be promoted – and who had then been sacked under pressure from the Germans, as he was determined to resist their occupation. Loathing the invaders with all his heart, he vowed to Cixi that he would fight to his last breath; but he found the war a lost cause. The army had been thoroughly routed, and the soldiers ‘simply fled without putting up any fight, blocking the roads in their tens of thousands. Wherever they passed, they plundered and torched the villages and towns,' Governor Bingheng reported to Cixi – before committing suicide.

On the day of his death, 11 August, all Cixi's hopes were finally extinguished: Beijing would be occupied by the powers in a matter of days. Three more high officials were executed, charged with being ‘traitors'. One of them was her then Lord Chamberlain, Lishan, with whom she had been very close. Cixi believed that there were ‘quite a few traitors' selling secrets to foreigners. Eunuchs remembered her muttering that ‘there must be spies in the palace, otherwise how is it that whatever decision we make here is instantly known outside?' Her suspicion of Lishan may well have originated in 1898, when he had gone to great lengths to prevent a raid that she had ordered on Sir Yinhuan's house – a raid that could have found evidence of Yinhuan's liaison with the Japanese. But the executions were more to do with the present moment: Cixi wanted to stop senior officials from collaborating with the victorious Allies who were about to enter Beijing.

Finally Cixi's mind turned to flight. She enquired about transport, and learned that 200 carriages and horses had been on standby, but that they had been snatched by retreating troops, and it was now impossible to buy or hire replacements as everyone was running away. The fact that Cixi did not have these 200 lifelines well guarded shows that fleeing had been very far from her thoughts. At the news of the loss of the transport, she sighed, ‘Then we'll stay.' And she stayed. It seems that she was prepared to die right there in the Forbidden City. But at the eleventh hour she changed her mind. On the early morning of 15 August, while the Allies were pounding at the gates of the Forbidden City itself, at the urging of a prince Cixi left in a mule-cart that he had brought from his house.

As there were only a few mule-carts available, most of the court had to be left behind. Cixi took with her Emperor Guangxu, Empress Longyu, the heir-apparent, a dozen or so princes and princesses and grandees, and the emperor's concubine, Jade. The other concubine, Pearl, who had been living under house arrest for the past two years, presented a problem for Cixi. With transport at a premium, Cixi did not want to make room for her, but neither did she want to leave Emperor Guangxu's favourite concubine and accomplice behind. She decided to use her prerogative, and ordered Pearl to commit suicide. Pearl declined to obey and, kneeling in front of Cixi, tearfully begged the empress dowager to spare her life. Cixi was in a hurry, and told the eunuchs to push her into a well. As no one stepped forward to do this, she shouted angrily for a young and strongly built eunuch, Cui, to carry out her order at once. Cui dragged Pearl to the edge of the well and threw her into it, as the girl screamed vainly for help.

¹ Katharine Carl remarked, after staying in the Legation Quarter: ‘When I saw the position of the Legation quarter and especially that of the British Legation, where all the foreigners finally congregated?…?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.'