obtaining an enormously valuable strategic point in the rich
province of Shangtung aroused the cupidity of rival nations,
and they threw off all pretense to decency in their scramble for
further territories. Russian statesmen had long ago seen that
the Pacific Ocean was to be the arena of world events of colossal
significance to the race. We have noted in a former chapter
how she had already extended her territory till she touched
the Pacific Ocean on the far north and how, partly that she
might develop it, but primarily that she might have a highway
through it to the great ocean which lies beyond, she had begun
the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the late Czar,
Alexander III, guaranteeing out of his own private funds
350,000,000 rubles towards the necessary expense. The most
southern port of Russia on the Pacific Ocean was Vladivostok,
which was therefore made the terminus of the line and rapidly
and strongly fortified. But Russia was not content with a
harbour which is closed by ice six months in the year. She
therefore began to press her way southward through Manchuria.
In November, 1894, Japan had wrested from China the peninsula
terminating in Port Arthur, and the treaty of Shimonoseki,
at the close of the war, had given Japan the Liao-tung peninsula,
opened four Manchurian ports to foreign trade, and conceded
to Japan valuable commercial rights in Manchuria,
rights which gave the Japanese virtual ascendancy. Ostensibly
in the interests of China, but really of her own ambition,
Russia gravely said that it would never do to permit Japan to
remain in Manchuria, virtuously declaring that ``the integrity
of China must be preserved at all costs.'' She persuaded
France and Germany to join her in notifying the Japanese
Government that ``it would not be permitted to retain permanent
possession of any portion of the mainland of Asia.''
Japan, feeling at that time unprepared to fight three European
powers, was forced to relinquish the prize of victory. The
solicitude of Russia for the integrity of helpless China was
quite touching, but it did not prevent her from making one
encroachment after another upon the coveted territory until
March 8, 1898, to the rage and chagrin of Japan, she peremptorily
demanded for herself and March 27th of the same year
obtained Port Arthur including Ta-lien-wan and 800 square
miles of adjoining territory. She speciously declared that
``her occupation of Port Arthur was merely temporary and
only to secure a harbour for wintering the Russian fleet.'' But
grim significance was given to her action by the prompt appearance
at Port Arthur of 20,000 Russian soldiers and 90,000
coolies who were set to work developing a great modern fortification
almost under the eyes of the Chinese capital.
As it was expedient, however, to have a commercial city on
the peninsula as well as a fortification, as the harbour of Port
Arthur was not large enough for both naval and commercial
purposes, and as the Russians did not wish anyway to make
their fortified base accessible to the rest of the world, they decided
to build a city forty-five miles north of Port Arthur and
call it Dalny, which quite appropriately means ``far away.''
Most cities grow, but this was too slow a method for the
purpose of the Slav, and therefore, a metropolis was forthwith
made to order as a result of an edict issued by the Czar,
July 30, 1899.
The harbour of Dalny is an exceptionally fine one with over
thirty feet of water at low tide so that the largest vessels can
lie alongside the docks and transfer their cargoes directly to
trains for Europe. Great piers were constructed; enormous
warehouses and elevators erected; gas, electric light, water and
street-car plants installed; wide and well-sewered streets laid
out; and a thoroughly modern and handsome city planned in
four sections, the first of which was administrative, the second
mercantile, the third residence, and the fourth Chinese. The
Russians were sparing neither labour nor expense in the construction
of this ambitious city which, by January, 1904, already
had a population of over 50,000, and represented a reported
expenditure of about $150,000,000. April 9, 1902,
Russia solemnly promised to evacuate Manchuria October 8,
1903. But when that day came, she remained, as every one
knew that she would, under the unblushing pretext that Manchuria
was not yet sufficiently pacified to justify her withdrawal
from a region where her interests were so great. As
Manchuria was at the time as quiet as some of Russia's
European provinces, the reason alleged reminds one of the
Arab's reply to a man who wished to borrow his rope--``I
need it myself to tie up some sand with.'' ``But,'' expostulated
the would-be borrower, ``that is a poor excuse for you
cannot tie up sand with a rope.'' ``I know that,'' was the
calm rejoinder, ``but any excuse will serve when I don't want
to do a thing.'' So to the concern of China, the envy of
Europe and the wrath of Japan, Manchuria practically became
a Russian province until Japan, unable to restrain her exasperation
longer and feeling that Russia's plans were a menace to
her own safety, had developed her army and navy and begun
the war which not only arrested the advance of the Slav but
expelled him from most of the territory he had seized.
Not to be outdone by Germany and Russia, other nations
made haste to seize what they could find. April 2, 1898,
England secured the lease of Lin-kung, with all the islands
and a strip ten miles wide on the mainland, thus giving the
British a strong post at Wei-hai Wei. April 22d, France peremptorily
demanded, and May 2d obtained, the bay of Kwangchou-wan,
while Japan found her share in a concession for
Foochow, Woosung, Fan-ning, Yo-chou and Chung-wan-tao.
By 1899, in all China's 3,000 miles of coast line, there was not
a harbour in which she could mobilize her own ships without
the consent of the hated foreigner.
A clever Chinese artist in Hongkong grimly drew a cartoon
of the situation of his country as he and his countrymen
saw it. The Russian Bear, coming down from the north,
his feet planted in Manchuria and northern Korea, sees
the British Bulldog seated in southern China, while ``The
Sun Elf'' ( Japan), sitting upon its Island Kingdom,
proclaims that ``John Bull and I will watch the Bear.''
The German Sausage around Kiau-chou makes no sign of life,
but the French Frog, jumping about in Tonquin and Annam
and branded ``Fashoda and Colonial Expansion,'' tries to
stretch a friendly hand to the Bear over the Bulldog's head.
Then, to offset this proffered assistance to the Bear, the Chinese
artist, with characteristic cunning, brings in the New World
power. He places the American Eagle over the Philippines,
its beak extended towards the Bulldog, and writes upon it the
phrase, ``Blood is thicker than water.''[57]
[57] Reproduced in the Newark, N. J., Evening News, January 9, 1904
As far as Americans have any sympathy at all with European
schemes for conquest in China, they naturally look with more
favour on England and Germany than on France and Russia.
The reason is apparent. England establishes honest and
beneficent government wherever she goes and makes its advantages
freely accessible to the citizens of other nations, so
that an American is not only as safe but as unrestricted in all
his legitimate activities as he would be in his own land.
Germany, too, while not so hospitable as England, is nevertheless
a Teutonic, Protestant power under whose ascendancy in
Shantung our missionaries find ample freedom. But France
and Russia are more narrowly and jealously national in their
aims. Their possessions are openly regarded as assets to be
managed for their own interests rather than for those of the na-
tives or of the world. The colonial attitude of the former towards
all Protestant missionary work is dictated by the Roman
Catholic Church and is therefore hostile to Protestants, while
the Russian Greek Church tolerates no other form of religion
that it can repress. A recent traveller reports that Russia has
put every possible obstruction in the way of reopening the mission
stations that were abandoned during the Boxer outbreak.
She has already put Manchuria under the Greek archimandrite
of Peking, and has sought to limit all Christian teaching to the
members of the Orthodox Greek Church. It is significant that
Russia is strenuously opposing, under a variety of pretexts, the
``open door'' which Secretary Hay obtained from China in
Manchuria, while there is ground for suspecting that Russian
influence in Constantinople is preventing, or at least delaying
as long as possible, that legal recognition of American rights
in Turkey which the Sultan has already granted to several
other nations. As for Russian ascendancy in Manchuria,
everybody knows that it is inimical to the interests of other
countries and that there will be little freedom of trade if Russia
can prevent it.
XVI
GROWING IRRITATION OF THE CHINESE--THE
REFORM PARTY
THE effect of the operation of these commercial and
political forces upon a conservative and exclusive
people was of course to exasperate to a high degree.
A proud people were wounded in their most sensitive place by
the ruthless and arrogant way in which foreigners broke down
their cherished wall of separation from the rest of the world and
trampled upon their highly-prized customs and institutions.
It must be admitted that the history of the dealings of the
Christian powers with China is not altogether pleasant reading.
The provocation was indeed great, but the retaliation was
heavy. And all the time foreign nations refused to grant to the
Chinese the privileges which they forced them to grant to others.
We sometimes imagine that the Golden Rule is peculiar to
Christianity. It is indeed in its highest form, but its spirit
was recognized by Confucius five centuries before Christ. His
expression of it was negative, but it gave the Chinese some
idea of the principle. They were not, therefore, pleasantly impressed
when they found the alleged Christian nations violating
that principle. Even Christian America has not been an exception.
We have Chinese exclusion laws, but we will not
allow China to exclude Americans. We sail our gunboats up
her rivers, but we would not allow China to sail gunboats into
ours. If a Chinese commits a crime in America, he is amenable
to American law as interpreted by an American court. But if
an American commits a crime in China, he can be tried only
by his consul; not a Chinese court in the Empire has jurisdiction
over him, and the people naturally infer from this that
we have no confidence in their sense of justice or in their
administration of it.
This law of extra-territoriality is one of the chief sources of
irritation against foreigners, for it not only implies contempt,
but it makes foreigners a privileged class. Said Minister Wen
Hsiang in 1868:--``Take away your extra-territorial clause,
and merchant and missionary may settle anywhere and everywhere.
But retain it, and we must do our best to confine you
and our trouble to the treaty ports.'' But unfortunately this
is a cause of resentment that Western nations cannot prudently
remove in the near future. While we can understand the resentment
of the Chinese magistrates as they see their methods
discredited by the foreigner, it would not do to subject Europeans
and Americans to Chinese legal procedure. The language
of Mr. Wade, the British Minister, to Minister Wen
Hsiang in June, 1, is still applicable:--
``Experience has shown that, in many cases, the latter (law of China)
will condemn a prisoner to death, where the law of England would be
satisfied by a penalty far less severe, if indeed, it were possible to punish
the man at all. It is to be deplored that misunderstandings should arise
from a difference in our codes; but I see no remedy for this until China
shall see fit to revise the process of investigation now common in her
courts. So long as evidence is wrung from witnesses by torture, it is
scarcely possible for the authorities of a foreign power to associate
themselves with those of China in the trial of a criminal case; and unless the
authorities of both nationalities are present, there will always be a suspicion
of unfairness on one side or the other. This difficulty surmounted,
there would be none in the way of providing a code of laws to affect
mixed cases; none, certainly, on the part of England; none, in my belief,
either, on the part of any other Power.''[58]
[58] Correspondence Respecting the Circular of the Chinese Government
of February 9, 1871, Relating to Missionaries. Presented to both
Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty, 1872.
Meantime, as the Hon. Frederick F. Low, United States
Minister at Peking, wrote to the State Department at Wash-
ington, March 20, 1871:--``The dictates of humanity will
not permit the renunciation of the right for all foreigners that
they shall be governed and punished by their own laws.''
But the Chinese do not see the question in that light. Their
methods of legal procedure are sanctioned in their eyes by immemorial
custom and they fail to understand why forms that,
in their judgment, are good enough for Chinese are not also good
enough for despised foreigners. When we take into consideration
the further fact that the typical white man, the world
over, acts as if he were a lord of creation, and treats Asiatics
with more or less condescension as if they were his inferiors, we
can understand the very natural resentment of the Chinese,
who have just as much pride of race as we have, and who indeed
consider themselves the most highly civilized people in
the world. The fact that foreign nations are able to thrash
them does not convince them that those nations are superior,
any more than a gentleman's physical defeat by a pugilist would
satisfy him that the pugilist is a better man. It is not without
significance that the white man is generally designated in China
as ``the foreign devil.''
The natural resentment of the Chinese in such circumstances
was intensified by the conduct of the foreign soldiery. Army
life is not a school of virtue anywhere, particularly in Asia where
a comparatively defenseless people open wide opportunities for
evil practices and where Asiatic methods of opposition infuriate
men. In almost every place where the soldiers of
Europe landed, they pillaged and burned and raped and
slaughtered like incarnate fiends. Chefoo to-day is an illustration
of the effect. It is a city where foreigners have resided
for forty years, where there are consuls of all nations and
extensive business relations with other ports, where foreign
steamers regularly touch and where war-ships frequently lie.
There were five formidable cruisers there during my visit.
Surely the Chinese of Chefoo should understand the situation.
But during the troubles of 1860, French troops were quartered
there and their conduct was so atrociously brutal and lustful
that Chefoo has ever since been bitterly anti-foreign. The
Presbyterian missionaries have repeatedly tried to do Christian
work in the old walled city, but have never succeeded in gaining
a foothold, and all their local missionary work is confined
to the numerous population which has come from other parts of
the province and settled around Chefoo proper. Nothing but
battleships in the harbour kept that old city from attacking
foreigners during the Boxer outbreak. Even to-day the cry
``kill, kill'' is sometimes raised as a foreigner walks through
the streets, and inflammatory placards are often posted on the
walls.
With the record of foreign aggressions in China before us,
can we wonder that the Chinese became restive? The New
York Sun truly says: ``It was while Chinese territory was
thus virtually being given away that the people became uneasy
and riots were started; the people felt that their land had been
despoiled.'' The Hon. Chester Holcombe truly remarks:--
``Those who desire to know more particularly what the Chinese
think about it, how they regard the proposed dismemberment of the
Empire and the extinction of their national life, are referred to the
Boxer movement as furnishing a practical exposition of their views. It
contained the concentrated wrath and hate of sixty years' slow growth.
And it had the hearty sympathy of many, many millions of Chinese, who
took no active part in it. For, beyond a doubt, it represented to them a
patriotic effort to save their country from foreign aggression and ultimate
destruction.... The European Powers have only themselves to
thank for the bitter hatred of the Chinese and the crash in which it
culminated. Governmental policies outrageous and beyond excuse,
scandalous diplomacy, and unprovoked attacks upon the rights and
possessions of China, have been at the root of all the trouble.''[59]
[59] Article in The Outlook, February 13, 1904,
And shall we pretend innocent surprise that the irritation of
the Chinese rapidly grew? Suppose that after the murder of
the Chinese in Rock Springs, Wyoming, a Chinese fleet
had been able to seize New York and Boston Harbours, and
suppose our Government had been weak enough to acquiesce.
Would the American people have made any protest?
Would the lives of Chinese have been safe on our streets? And
was it an entirely base impulse that led the men of China violently
to oppose the forcible seizure of their country by aliens?
The Empress Dowager declared in her now famous edict:--
``The various Powers cast upon us looks of tiger-like voracity, hustling
each other in their endeavours to be first to seize upon our innermost
territories. They think that China, having neither money nor troops, would
never venture to go to war with them. They fail to understand, however,
that there are certain things which this Empire can never consent to, and
that, if hard pressed, we have no alternative but to rely upon the justice
of our cause, the knowledge of which in our breasts strengthens our resolves
and steels us to present a united front against our aggressors.''
That would probably be called patriotic if it had emanated
from the ruler of any other people.
When with Russia in Manchuria, Germany in Shantung,
England in the valleys of the Yang-tze and the Pearl, France
in Tonquin and Japan in Formosa, the whole Empire appeared
to be in imminent danger of absorption, the United States again
showed itself the friend of China by trying to stem the tide.
Our great Secretary of State, John Hay, sent to the European
capitals that famous note of September, 1899, which none of
them wanted to answer but which none of them dared to refuse,
inviting them to join the United States in assuring the
apprehensive Chinese that the Governments of Europe and
America had no designs upon China's territorial integrity, but
simply desired an ``open door'' for commerce, and that any
claims by one nation of ``sphere of influence'' would ``in no
way interfere with any treaty port or any vested interest''
within that sphere, but that all nations should continue to enjoy
equality of treatment. In response, the Russian Government,
December 30, 1899, through Count Mouravieff, suavely declared:--
``The Imperial Government has already demonstrated its firm intention
to follow the policy of the `open door.' . . . As to the ports now
opened or hereafter to be opened to foreign commerce by the Chinese
Government, . . . the Imperial Government has no intention whatever
of claiming any privileges for its own subjects to the exclusion of
other foreigners.''
The other Powers also assented. But it was all in vain.
Matters had already gone too far, and, beside, the Chinese
knew well enough that the Powers were not to be trusted beyond
the limits of self-interest.
Some of the Chinese, it is true, had the intelligence to see
that changes were inevitable, and the result was the development
of a Reform Party among the Chinese themselves. It
was not large, but it included some influential men, though,
unfortunately, their zeal was not always tempered by discretion.
The war with Japan powerfully aided them. True, many of
the Chinese do not yet know that there was such a war, for
news travels slowly in a land whose railway and telegraph lines,
newspapers and post-offices are yet few, and whose average
inhabitant has never been twenty miles from the village in which
he was born. But some who did know realized that Japan had
won by the aid of Western methods. An eagerness to acquire
those methods resulted. Missionaries were besieged by Chinese
who wished to learn English. Modern books were given a
wide circulation. Several of the influential advisers of the
Emperor became students of Occidental science and political
economy. In five years, 1893-1898, the book sales of one
society--that for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge
Among the Chinese--leaped from $817 to $18,457, while
every mission press was run to its utmost capacity to supply the
new demands.
A powerful exponent of the new ideas appeared in the great
Viceroy, Chang Chih-tung. He wrote a book, entitled
``China's Only Hope,'' exposing the causes of China's weakness
and advocating radical reforms. The book was printed
by the Tsung-li Yamen, and by royal command copies were
sent to the high officials of the Empire. Big yellow posters advertised
it from the walls of leading cities, and in a short time
a million copies were sold. It is hardly an exaggeration to say
that ``this book made more history in a shorter time than any
other modern piece of literature, that it astonished a kingdom,
convulsed an Empire and brought on a war.''
The Reform Party urged the young Emperor to use the imperial
power for the advancement of his people. He yielded to
the pressure and became an eager and diligent student of the
Western learning and methods. In the opening months of the
year 1898, he bought no less than 129 foreign books, including
a Bible and several scientific works, besides maps, globes, and
wind and current charts. Nor did he stop with this, but with
the ardour of a new convert issued the now famous reform
edicts, which, if they could have been carried into effect, would
have revolutionized China and started her on the high road to
national greatness. These memorable decrees have been summarized
as follows:
1. Establishing a university at Peking.
2. Sending imperial clansmen to study European and American Governments.
3. Encouraging art, science and modern agriculture
4. Expressing the willingness of the Emperor to hear the objections
of the conservatives to progress and reform.
5. Abolishing the literary essay as a prominent part of the Government
examinations
6. Censuring those who attempted to delay the establishment of the
Peking Imperial University.
7. Directing that the construction of the Lu Han railway be carried
on with more vigour.
8. Advising the adoption of Western arms and drill for all the Tartar
troops.
9. Ordering the establishment of agricultural schools in the provinces
to teach improved methods of agriculture.
10. Ordering the introduction of patent and copyright laws.
11. Ordering the Board of War and the Foreign Office to report on
the reform of the military examinations.
12. Offering special rewards to inventors and authors.
13. Ordering officials to encourage trade and assist merchants.
14. Ordering the foundation of school boards in every city in the
Empire.
15. Establishing a Bureau of Mines and Railroads.
16. Encouraging journalists to write on all political subjects.
17. Establishing naval academies and training ships.
18. Summoning the ministers and provincial authorities to assist the
Emperor in his work of reform.
19. Directing that schools be founded in connection with all the Chinese
legations in foreign countries for the benefit of the children of Chinese
in those countries.
20. Establishing commercial bureaus in Shanghai for the encouragement
of trade.
21. Abolishing six useless Boards in Peking.
22. Granting the right to memorialize the Throne by sealed memorials.
23. Dismissing two presidents and four vice-presidents of the Board
of Rites for disobeying the Emperor's orders that memorials should be
presented to him unopened.
24. Abolishing the governorships of Hupeh, Kwang-tung and Yun-nan
as a useless expense to the country.
25. Establishing schools for instruction in the preparation of tea and
silk.
20, Abolishing the slow courier posts in favour of the Imperial
Customs' Post.
27 Approving a system of budgets as in Western countries.
But, alas, it is disastrous to try to ``hustle the East.'' The
Chinese are phlegmatic and will endure much, but this was a
little too much. Myriads of scholars and officials, who saw
their hopes and positions jeopardized by the new tests, protested
with all the virulence of the silversmiths of Ephesus, and
all the conservatism of China rallied to their support.
Meantime, the Yellow River, aptly named ``China's Sorrow,''
again overflowed its banks, devastating a region 100
miles long and varying from twenty-five to fifty miles wide.
Three hundred villages were swept away and 1,000,000 people
made homeless. Famine and pestilence speedily followed, so
that the whole catastrophe assumed appalling proportions.
Even American communities are apt to become reckless and
riotous in time of calamity, and in China this tendency of human
nature was intensified by a superstition which led the people
to believe that the disaster was due to the baleful influence
of the foreigners, or that it was a punishment for their failure
to resist them, while in the farther north a drought led to
equally superstitious fury against ``the foreign devils.''
The virile and resolute Empress-Dowager headed the reaction
against the headlong progressiveness of the young
Emperor. September 22, 1898, the world was startled by an
Imperial Decree which read in part as follows:--
``Her Imperial Majesty the Empress-Dowager, Tze Hsi, since the first
years of the reign of the late Emperor Tung Chih down to our present
reign, has twice ably filled the regency of the Empire, and never did her
Majesty fail in happily bringing to a successful issue even the most difficult
problems of government. In all things we have ever placed the
interests of our Empire before those of others, and, looking back at her
Majesty's successful handiwork, we are now led to beseech, for a third
time, for this assistance from her Imperial majesty, so that we may benefit
from her wise and kindly advice in all matters of State. Having now
obtained her Majesty's gracious consent, we truly consider this to be a great
boon both to ourselves as well as to the people of our Empire. Hence we
now command that from henceforth, commencing with this morning, the
affairs of state shall be transacted in the ordinary Throne Hall, and that
to-morrow (23rd) we shall, at the head of the Princes and Nobles and
Ministers of our Court, attend in full dress in the Ching-cheng Throne
Hall, to pay ceremonial obeisance to her Imperial Majesty the Empress-
Dowager. Let the Board of Rites draw up for our perusal the ceremonies
to be observed on the above occasion.''[60]
[60] Pott, ``The Outbreak in China,'' pp. 56, 57.
The youthful son of Toanwong was appointed heir to the
throne and the ambitious father immediately proceeded to use
his enhanced prestige to set the Empire in a blaze.
XVII
THE BOXER UPRISING
THE now famous Boxers were members of two of the
secret societies which have long flourished in China.
To the Chinese they are known as League of United
Patriots, Great Sword Society, Righteous Harmony Fists'
Association and kindred names. Originally, they were hostile
to the foreign Manchu dynasty. When Germany made the
murder of two Roman Catholic missionaries a pretext for pushing
her political ambitions, the Boxers naturally arrayed themselves
against them. As the champions of the national spirit
against the foreigners, the membership rapidly increased.
Supernatural power was claimed. Temples were converted into
meeting-places, and soon excited men were drilling in every
village.
The real ruler of China at this time, as all the world knows,
was the Empress Dowager, who has been characterized as
``the only man in China.'' At any rate, she is a woman of
extraordinary force of character. She was astute enough to
encourage the Boxers, and thus turn one of the most troublesome
foes of the Manchu throne against the common enemy,
the foreigner. Under her influence, the depredations of the
Boxers, which were at first confined to the Shantung Province,
spread with the swiftness of a prairie fire, until in the spring of
1900 the most important provinces of the Empire were ablaze
and the legations in Peking were closely besieged. In the
heat of the conflict and under the agonizing strain of anxiety
for imperilled loved ones, many hard things were said and
written about the officials who allied themselves with the
Boxers. But Sir Robert Hart, who personally knew them and
who suffered as much as any one from their fury, candidly
wrote after the siege: ``These men were eminent in their own
country for their learning and services, were animated by
patriotism, were enraged by foreign dictation, and had the
courage of their convictions. We must do them the justice of
allowing that they were actuated by high motives and love of
country,'' though he adds, ``that does not always or necessarily
mean political ability or highest wisdom.''
And so the irrepressible conflict broke out. It had to come,
a conflict between conservatism and progress, between race
prejudice and brotherhood, between superstition and Christianity,
the tremendous conflict of ages which every nation has
had to fight, and which in China was not different in kind,
but only on a more colossal scale because there it involved
half the human race at once. Of course it was impossible
for so vast a nation permanently to segregate itself. The river
of progress cannot be permanently stayed. It will gather force
behind an obstacle until it is able to sweep it away. The
Boxer uprising was the breaking up of this fossilized conservatism.
It was such a tumultuous upheaval as the crusades
caused in breaking up the stagnation of mediaeval Europe. As
France opposed the new ideas, which in England were quietly
accepted, only to have them surge over her in the frightful
flood of the revolution, so China entered with the violence always
inseparable from resistance the transition which Japan
welcomed with a more open mind.
Though missionaries were not the real cause of the Boxer
uprising, its horrors fell most heavily upon them. This was
partly because many of them were living at exposed points in
the interior while most other foreigners were assembled in the
treaty ports where they were better protected; partly because
the movement developed such hysterical frenzy that it attacked
with blind, unreasoning fury every available foreigner, and
partly because in most places the actual killing and pillaging
were not done by the people who best knew the missionaries
but by mobs from the slums, ruffians from other villages, or,
as in Paoting-fu and Shan-si, in obedience to the direct orders
of bigoted officials.
And so it came to pass that the innocent suffered more than
the guilty. Dr. A. H. Smith[61] concluded after careful inquiry
that ``the devastating Boxer cyclone cost the lives of 135 adult
Protestant missionaries and fifty-three children and of thirty-
five Roman Catholic Fathers and nine Sisters. The Protestants
were in connection with ten different missions, one being
unconnected. They were murdered in four provinces and in
Mongolia, and belonged to Great Britain, the United States and
Sweden. No such outbreak against Christianity has been
seen in modern times. The destruction of property was on
the same continental scale. Generally speaking, all mission
stations north of the Yellow River, with all their dwelling-houses,
chapels, hospitals, dispensaries, schools, and buildings of every
description were totally destroyed, though there were occasional
exceptions, of which the village where these pages are written
was one. The central and southern portions of the Empire
were only partially affected by the anti-foreign madness, not
because they were under different conditions, but mainly
through the strong repressive measures of four men, Liu Kun
Yi and Chang Chih-tung, Governors-General of the four great
provinces in the Yang-tse Valley; Yuan Shih Kai in Shantung,
and a Manchu, Tuan Fang, in Shen-si. The jurisdiction of
this quartette made an impassable barrier across which the
movement was unable to project itself in force, but much mischief
in an isolated way was wrought in nearly every part of
China not rigorously controlled.''
[61] ``Rex Christus,'' p. 210.
So many volumes have been written about the Boxer Uprising
that it is not necessary to double the size of this book in
order to recount the details. For the full narrative, the reader
is referred to the books mentioned below.[62] But I cannot for-
bear some description of the scenes of massacre that I personally
visited. I was unable to go to the remoter province of
Shan-si where so many devoted men and women laid down
their lives and where many who escaped death endured indescribable
hardships. But in the province of Shantung, where
the Boxer Uprising originated, I was witness to the ruin that
was wrought in many places, though the iron hand of the
great Governor, Yuan Shih Kai, prevented much bloodshed.
Then I turned to the northern province of Chih-li where official
hands, instead of restraining, actually guided and goaded the
maddened rioters.
[62] ``China in Convulsion,'' Arthur H. Smith; ``The Outbreak in China,''
F. L. Hawks Pott; ``The World Crisis in China, 1900,'' Allen S. Will;
``Siege Days,'' A. H. Mateer; ``The Siege of Peking,'' Wm. A. P.
Martin; ``The Providence of God in the Siege of Peking,'' C. H. Fenn;
``The Tragedy of Paoting-fu,'' Isaac C. Ketler; ``The China Martyrs of
1900,'' Robert C. Forsythe; ``China,'' James H. Wilson, ``China's Book
of Martyrs,'' Luella Miner; ``Two Heroes of Cathay,'' Luella Miner;
``Through Fire and Sword in Shan-si,'' E. H. Edwards; ``Chinese
Heroes,'' I. T. Headland; ``Martyred Missionaries of the C. I. M.,''
Broomhall; ``The Crisis in China,'' G. B. Smith and others.
After a delightful voyage of eighteen hours from Chefoo
over a smooth sea, we anchored outside the bar, nine miles
from shore, the tide not permitting our steamer to cross with
its heavy load. A tug took us off and entering the Pei-ho
River, we passed the famous Taku forts to the railway wharf at
Tong-ku. It was significant to find foreign flags flying over the
Taku forts and also over the mud-walled villages near by.
Scores of merchant steamers, transports and war vessels were
lying off Taku as well as hundreds of junks. The river was
full of smaller craft among which were several Japanese and
American gunboats. The railroad station presented a motley
appearance. A regiment of Japanese had just arrived and
while we were waiting, three train-loads of British Sikhs and
several cars of Austrian marines and British ``Tommy Atkins''
came in. The platform was thronged with officers and soldiers
of various nationalities, including a few Russians.
Nothing could be more dreary than the mud flats that the
traveller to the imperial city first sees. The greater part of the
way from Taku to Peking, the soil is poor and little cultivated.
But as we advanced, kao-liang fields were more frequent,
though the growth was far behind that in Shantung at the same
season. Small trees were numerous during the latter half of
the trip. The soil being too thin for good crops, the people
grow more fuel and fruit.
Evidences of the great catastrophe were seen long before
reaching the capital. Burned villages and battered buildings
lined the route. At Tien-tsin several of the foreign buildings
had shell holes. One corrugated iron building near the railway
station was pierced like a sieve and thousands of native
houses were in ruins. The city wall had been razed to the
ground and a highway made where it had stood--an unspeakable
humiliation to the proud commercial metropolis. The Japanese
soldiers teased the citizens by telling them that ``a city
without a wall is like a woman without clothes,'' and the
people keenly felt the shame implied in the taunt.
In Peking, the very fact that the railroad train on which we
travelled rushed noisily through a ragged chasm in the wall of
the Chinese city, and stopped at the entrance of the Temple of
Heaven, was suggestive of the consequences of war. The
city, as a whole, was not as badly injured as I had expected to
find it, but the ravages of war were evident enough. Wrecked
shops, crumbled houses, shot-torn walls were on every side,
while the most sacred places to a Chinese and a Manchu had
been profaned. At other times the Purple Forbidden City,
the Winter and Summer Palaces, the Temple of Heaven and
kindred imperial enclosures are inaccessible to the foreigner.
But a pass from the military authorities opened to us every door.
We walked freely through the extensive grounds and into all
the famous buildings--including the throne rooms which the
highest Chinese official can approach only upon his knees and
with his face abjectly on the stone pavement--and the private
apartments of the Emperor and the Empress Dowager. I was
impressed by the vastness of the Palace buildings and grounds,
the carvings of stone and wood, and the number of articles of
foreign manufacture. But thousands of Americans in moderate
circumstances have more spacious and comfortable bedrooms
than those of the Emperor and Empress Dowager of
China. All the living apartments looked cheerless. The
floors were of artificial stone or brick in squares of about
20 x 20 inches and of course everything was covered with dust.
The far-famed Temple of Heaven is the most artistic building
in China, a dream of beauty, colour and grace. For a generation
before the siege of Peking, no foreigner except General
Grant had entered that sacred enclosure, and the Chinese raised
a furore because Li Hung Chang admitted even the distinguished
American. As I freely walked about the place, photographed
the Temple and stood on the circular altar that is supposed to
be the centre of the earth and where the Emperor worships
alone at the winter solstice, British Sikhs lounged under the
trees, army mules munched the luxuriant grass and quartermasters'
wagons stood in long rows near the sacred spot
where a Chinese would prostrate himself in reverence and fear.
We rode past innumerable ruined buildings and through
motley throngs of Manchus, Chinese, German, French, Italian,
British and Japanese soldiers to the Presbyterian compound at
Duck Lane, which, though narrow, is not so unimportant a
street as its name implies. But where devoted missionaries
had so long lived and toiled, we saw only shapeless heaps of
broken bricks and a few tottering fragments of walls. At the
Second Street compound there was even greater ruin, if that
were possible. Silently we stood beside the great hole which
had once been the hospital cistern and from which the Japanese
soldiers, after the siege, had taken the bodies of a hundred
murdered Chinese. Not all had been Christians, for in that
carnival of blood, many who were merely suspected of being
friendly to foreigners were killed, while foes took advantage of
the tumult to pay off old scores of hate.
The first reports that had come to New York were that four-
fifths of the Chinese Christians and three-fourths of the boys and
girls in the boarding-schools had been killed or had died under
the awful hardships of that fatal summer. But as the months
passed, first one and then another and another were found.
Husbands searched for wives, parents for children, brothers
for sisters, until a considerable number of the missing ones had
been found, though the number of the lost was still great.
About two hundred of these surviving Christians and their
families were living together in native buildings adjoining the
residence in which we were entertained. Their history was
one of agony and bereavement. Including those who fell at
Paoting-fu, 191 of their fellow Christians had received the
crown of martyrdom, so that almost every survivor had lost
father or mother, brother or sister or friend. The Chinese are
supposed to be a phlegmatic people and not given to emotion.
But never have I met a congregation more swiftly responsive
than this one in Peking as I bore to them kindly messages from
many friends in other lands.
The Roman Catholic Cathedral was immortalized by Bishop
Favier's defense during the memorable siege. The mission
buildings occupy a spacious and strongly-walled compound in
the Manchu city. Hundreds of bullet and shell holes in the roofs
and walls were suggestive evidences of the fury of the Boxer
attack, while great pits marked the spots where mines had
been exploded.
I called on the famous Bishop. He was, for he has since
died, a burly, heavily-bearded Frenchman of about sixty-five
apparently. He received us most cordially and readily talked
of the siege. He said that of the eighty Europeans and 3,400
Christians with him in the siege, 2,700 were women and children.
Four hundred were buried, of whom forty were killed
by bullets, twenty-five by one explosion, eighty-one by another
and one by another. Of the rest, some died of disease but the
greater part of starvation. Twenty-one children were buried
at one time in one grave. Beside these 400 who were killed
or who died, many more were blown to pieces in explosions so
that nothing could be found to bury. Fifty-one children disappeared
in this way and not a fragment remained.
The first month of the siege, the food allowance was half a
pound a day. The first half of the second month, it was reduced
to four ounces, but for the second half only two ounces
could be served and the people had to eat roots, bark and the
leaves of trees and shrubs. Eighteen mules were eaten during
the siege. The Bishop said that in the diocese outside of
Peking, 6,000 Chinese Catholics, including three native priests,
were killed by the Boxers. Only four European priests were
killed, one in Peking and three outside. ``Not one foreign
priest left the diocese during the troubles,'' a statement that is
equally true of the Presbyterian missionaries and, so far as I
know, of those of other churches.
Clouds lowered as we left Peking, July 6th, on the Peking and
Hankow Railway for Paoting-fu, that city of sacred and painful
interest to every American Christian. Soon rain began to
fall, and it steadily continued while we rode over the vast level
plain, through unending fields of kao-liang, interspersed with
plots of beans, peanuts, melons and cucumbers, and mud and
brick-walled villages whose squalid wretchedness was hidden
by the abundant foliage of the trees, which are the only beauty
of Chinese cities. At almost every railway station, roofless
buildings, crumbling walls and broken water tanks bore painful
witness to the rage of the Boxers. At Liang-hsiang-hsien the
first foreign property was destroyed, and all along the line
outrages were perpetrated on the inoffensive native Christians.
Nowhere else in China was the hatred of the foreigner more
violent, for here hereditary pride and bigoted conservatism,
unusually intense even for China, were reinforced by Boxer
chiefs from the neighbouring province of Shantung, and were
particularly irritated by the aggressiveness of Roman Catholic
priests and by the construction of the railroad. It is only 110
miles from Peking to Paoting-fu. But the schedule was slow
and the stops long, so that we were six hours in making the
journey. Arriving at the large, well-built brick station, we
bumped and splashed in a Chinese cart through narrow, muddy
streets to the residence of a wealthy Chinese family that had
deemed a hasty departure expedient when the French and
British forces entered the city, and whose house had been
assigned by the magistrate as temporary quarters for the Presbyterian
missionaries.
Protestant mission work at Paoting-fu was begun only about
thirty years ago by the American Board. The station was
never a large one, the total nominal force of missionaries up
to the Boxer outbreak being two ordained married men, Ewing
and Pitkin, one physician, Dr. Noble, and two single women,
the Misses Morrill and Gould. In the whole station field
including the out-stations, there were not more than 300 Christians
and those were south of a line drawn through the centre
of the city of Paoting-fu. There were two boarding-schools,
one for boys and one for girls, both small, and a general
hospital.
The China Inland Mission had no mission work at Paoting-fu,
but as the city is at the head of navigation of the Paoting-fu
River from Tien-tsin and was also at that time the terminus of
the Peking and Hankow Railway, the Mission made it a point
of trans-shipment and of formation of cart and shendza trains
for its extensive work in the Shan-si and Shen-si provinces, and
kept a forwarding agent there, Mr. Benjamin Bagnall.
The Presbyterian station was not opened till 1893, and the
force at the time of the outbreak consisted of three ordained
men, the Revs. J. Walter Lowrie, J. A. Miller, and F. E.
Simcox, two medical men, George Yardley Taylor and C. V. R.
Hodge, and one single woman, Dr. Maud A. Mackay. All
of the men except Lowrie and Taylor were married, and the
former had his mother, Mrs. Amelia P. Lowrie, with him.
With the exception of a dispensary and street chapel in rented
quarters in the city, the station plant was at the compound
where, on a level tract 660 feet in length by 210 feet in width,
there were four residences and a hospital and chapel combined,
with, of course, the usual smaller outbuildings. The only
educational work, beside one out-station day-school, was a small
boarding-school for girls recently started and occupying a little
building originally intended for a stable.
This was the situation up to the fateful month of June, 1900.
Rumours of impending trouble were numerous, but missionaries
in China become accustomed to threatening placards and
slanderous reports. Though it was evident that the opposition
was becoming more bitter, the missionaries did not feel that
they would be justified in abandoning their work. Several,
however, were temporarily absent for other reasons. Of the
Congregational missionaries, Dr. and Mrs. Noble and Mrs.
Pitkin were on furlough in America and Mr. and Mrs. Ewing
were spending a few weeks at the seaside resort, Pei-tai-ho,
so that Mr. Pitkin, Miss Morrill and Miss Gould were the only
ones left at the station. Of the Presbyterian missionaries
Mr. and Mrs. Miller were also at Pei-tai-ho, Mrs. Lowrie had
sailed for America the 26th of May, and Mr. Lowrie, who had
accompanied her to Shanghai, was at Tien-tsin on his way
back to Paoting-fu. The missionaries remaining at the station
were thus five,--Dr. Taylor, Mr. and Mrs. Simcox and their
three children, and Dr. and Mrs. Hodge. The China Inland
forwarding agent, Mr. Bagnall, with his wife and little girl,
was in his house south of the city wall near the American Board
compound, and with him was the Rev. William Cooper, who
was on his way to Shanghai after a visit to the Shan-si Mission
and whose family was then at Chefoo.
It is impossible to ascertain all the details of the massacre.
None of the foreigners live to tell the painful story. No other
foreigners reached Paoting-fu until the arrival of the military
expedition in October, three and a half months later. The
Chinese who had participated in the massacre were then in
hiding. Spectators were afraid to talk lest they, too, might be
held guilty. Most of the Chinese Christians who had been
with the missionaries were killed, while others were so panic-
stricken that they could remember only the particular scenes
with which they were directly connected. Moreover, in those
three and a half months such battles and national commotions
had occurred, including the capture of Peking and the flight of
the Emperor, that the people of Paoting-fu had half forgotten
the murder of a few missionaries in June.
In these circumstances, full information will probably never
be obtained, though additional facts may yet turn up from
time to time. But from all that can be learned, and from the
piecing together of the scattered fragments of information carefully
collected by Mr. Lowrie, who accompanied the expedition,
it appears that Thursday, June 28th, several Chinese young men
who had been studying medicine under Dr. Taylor came to
him at the city dispensary, warned him of the impending
danger and urged him to leave. When he refused they besought
him to yield, and though several of them were not
Christians, so strong was their attachment to their teacher that
they shed tears.
Dr. Taylor placed the dispensary and its contents, together
with the adjacent street chapel, in charge of the district magistrate
and returned to the mission compound outside the city.
That very afternoon startling proof was given that foreboding
was not ill-founded, for the Rev. Meng Chi Hsien, the native
pastor of the Congregational Church, was seized while in the
city, his hands cut off, and the next morning he was beheaded.
The missionaries then decided to leave, drew their silver
from the local bank and hired carts. But an official assured
them that there would be no further trouble, and they concluded
to remain. It is doubtful whether they could have escaped
anyway, for the very next afternoon, Saturday, June 30th,
a mob left the west gate of the city, and marching northward
parallel to the railroad, turned eastward through a small village
near the mission compound, which has always been the resort
of bad characters, and attacked the mission between five and
six o'clock.
The first report that all the missionaries were together in the
house of Mr. Simcox is now believed to have been erroneous.
The Hodges were there, but Dr. Taylor was in his own room
in the second story of Mr. Lowrie's house. Seizing a magazine
rifle belonging to Mr. Lowrie, he showed it to the mob and
warned them not to come nearer. But the Boxers pressed furiously
on, in the superstitious belief that the foreigner's bullet
could not harm them. Then, being alone, and with the traditions
of a Quaker ancestry strong within him, he chose rather
to die himself than to inflict death upon the people he had
come to save. The Boxers set fire to the house, and the beloved
physician, throwing the rifle to the floor, disappeared amid
the flame and smoke. But the body was not consumed, for a
Chinese living in a neighbouring village said afterwards that
he saw it lying in the ruins of the house several days
later, and that he gave it decent burial in a field near by. But
there are hundreds of unmarked mounds in that region, and
when the foreign expedition arrived in October, he was unable
to indicate the particular one which he had made for Dr. Taylor's
remains. Mr. Lowrie made diligent search and opened a
number of graves, but found nothing that could be identified.
In the Simcox house, however, the two men were charged
with the defense of women and children, and to protect them if
possible from unspeakable outrage, when they realized that persuasion
was vain, they felt justified as a last desperate resort
in using force. The testimony of natives is to the effect
that at least two Boxers were killed in the attack, one of them
the Boxer chief, Chu Tu Tze, who that very day had received
the rank of the gilt button from the Provincial Judge as a recognition
of his anti-foreign zeal and an encouragement to continue
it. He was shot through the head while vociferously
urging the assault from the top of a large grave mound near
the compound wall.
The story that little Paul and Francis Simcox, frightened
by the heat and smoke, ran out of the house and were despatched
by the crowd and their bodies thrown into a well
now appears to be unfounded. All died together, Mr. and
Mrs. Simcox and their three children, and Dr. and Mrs.
Hodge; Mr. Simcox being last seen walking up and down
holding the hand of one of his children.
It is at least some comfort that they were spared the outrages
and mutilations inflicted on so many of the martyrs of
that awful summer, for unless some were struck by bullets,
death came by suffocation in burning houses--swiftly and
mercifully. No Boxer hand touched them, living or dead, but
within less than an hour from the beginning of the attack, the
end came, and the flames did their work so completely that,
save in the case of Dr. Taylor, nothing remained upon which
fiendish hate could wreak itself. Husbands and wives died as
they could have wished to die--together, and at the post of
duty.
The next morning the Boxers, jubilant over their success of
the night before, trooped out to the American Board compound
in the south suburb. The two ladies took refuge in the chapel,
while Mr. Pitkin remained outside to do what he could to keep
back the mob. But he was speedily shot and then decapitated.
His body, together with the bodies of several of the members
of the Meng family, was thrown into a hastily-dug pit just outside
the wall of the compound, but his head was borne in
triumph to the Provincial Judge, who was the prime mover in
the outbreak. He caused it to be fixed on the inside of the
city wall, not far from the southeast corner and nearly opposite
the temple in which the remaining missionaries were imprisoned.
There, the Chinese say, it remained for two or
three weeks, a ghastly evidence of the callous cruelty of a
people many of whom must have known Mr. Pitkin and the
good work done at the mission compound not far distant.
When sorrowing friends arrived in October, the head could
not be found, but it has since been recovered and buried with
the bodies of the other martyrs.
The fate of the young women, Miss Morrill and Miss Gould,
thus deprived of their only protector, was not long deferred.
After the fall of Mr. Pitkin, they were seized, stripped of all
their clothing except one upper and one lower garment, and
led by the howling crowd along a path leading diagonally from
the entrance of the compound to the road just east of it. Miss
Gould did not die of fright as she was taken from the chapel, as
was at first reported, but at the point where the path enters the
road, a few hundred yards from the chapel, she fainted. Her
ankles were then tied together, and another cord lashed her
wrists in front of her body. A pole was thrust between legs and
arms, and she was carried the rest of the way, while Miss Morrill
walked, characteristically giving to a beggar the little money at
her waist, talking to the people, and with extraordinary self-
possession endeavouring to convince her persecutors of their folly.
And so the procession of bloodthirsty men, exulting in the
possession of two defenseless women one of them unconscious,
wended its way northward to the river bank, westward to the
stone bridge, over it and to a temple within the city, not far
from the southeast corner of the wall.
Meantime, Mr. Cooper, Mr. and Mrs. Bagnall and their little
daughter had begun the day in Mr. Bagnall's house, which
was a short distance east of the American Board compound,
and on the same road. Seeing the flames of the hospital,
which was the first building fired by the Boxers, they fled eastward
along the road to a Chinese military camp, about a
quarter of a mile distant, whose commanding officer had been
on friendly terms with Mr. Bagnall. But in the hour of need
he arrested them, ruthlessly despoiled them of their valuables,
and sent them under a guard to the arch conspirator, the Provincial
Judge. It is pitiful to hear of the innocent child cling-
ing in terror to her mother's dress. But there was no pity in
the heart of the brutal judge, and the little party was sent to
the temple where the Misses Morrill and Gould were already
imprisoned.
All this was in the morning. A pretended trial was held,
and about four in the afternoon of the same day, all were
taken to a spot outside the southeast corner of the city wall,
and there, before the graves of two Boxers, they were beheaded
and their bodies thrown into a pit.
Months passed before any effort was made by the foreign
armies in Peking to reach Paoting-fu. Shortly after the occupation
of the capital, I wrote to the Secretary of State in Washington
reminding him again of the American citizens who at
last accounts were at Paoting-fu, and urging that the United
States commander in Peking be instructed to send an expedition
there, not to punish for I did not deem it my duty to discuss
that phase of the question, but to ascertain whether any
Americans were yet living and to make an investigation as to
what had happened.
Secretary Hay promptly cabled Minister Conger, who soon
wired back that all the Americans at Paoting-fu had been
killed. The United States forces took no part in the punitive
expeditions sent out by the European commanders, partly, no
doubt, because our Government preferred to act on the theory
that it would be wiser to give the Chinese Government an opportunity
to punish the guilty, and partly because the Administration
did not desire the United States to be identified with
the expeditions which were reputed to equal the Boxers in the
merciless barbarity of burning, pillaging, ravishing and
killing.
Still, it is not pleasing to reflect that though there was an
ample American force in Peking only 110 miles away, we
were indebted to a British general for the opportunity to acquire
any accurate information as to the fate of eleven Americans.
An expedition of inquiry, at least, might have been sent. But
as it was, it was not till October that three columns of Europeans
(still no Americans) left for Paoting-fu. One column was
French, under General Baillard. The second was British and
German under Generals Campbell and Von Ketteler, both of
these columns starting from Tien-tsin. The third column left
Peking and was composed of British and Italians led by General
Gaselee. The plan was for the three columns to unite as
they approached the city. But General Baillard made forced
marches and reached Paoting-fu October 15th, so that when
General Gaselee arrived on the 17th, he found, to his surprise
and chagrin, that the French had already taken bloodless possession
of the city. The British and German columns from
Tien-tsin did not arrive till the 20th and 21st. With them
came the Rev. J. Walter Lowrie, who had obtained permission
to accompany it as an interpreter for the British.
The allied Generals immediately made stern inquisitions into
the outrages that had been committed, which, of course, included
those upon Roman Catholics as well as upon Protestants.
Mr. Lowrie, as the only man who could speak Chinese,
and the only one, too, who personally knew the Chinese, at
once came into prominence. To the people, he appeared to
have the power of life and death. All examinations had to be
conducted through him. All accusations and evidence had to
be sifted by him. The guilty tried to shift the blame upon the
innocent, and enemies sought to pay off old scores of hatred
upon their foes by charging them with complicity in the massacres.
It would have accorded with Chinese custom if Mr.
Lowrie had availed himself to the utmost of his opportunity to
punish the antagonists of the missionaries, especially as his
dearest friends had been remorselessly murdered and all of his
personal property destroyed. It was not in human nature to
be lenient in such circumstances, and the Chinese fully expected
awful vengeance.
Great was their amazement when they saw the man whom
they had so grievously wronged acting not only with modera-
tion and strict justice, but in a kind and forgiving spirit.
Every scrap of testimony was carefully analyzed in order that
no innocent man might suffer. Instead of securing the execution
of hundreds of smaller officials and common people, as is
customary in China in such circumstances, Mr. Lowrie counselled
the Generals to try Ting Jung, who at the time of the
massacre was Provincial Judge but who had since been promoted
to the post of Provincial Treasurer and acting Viceroy;
Kwei Heng the commander of the Manchu garrison, and Weng
Chan Kwei the colonel in command of the Chinese Imperial
forces who had seized the escaping Bagnall party and sent them
back to their doom. The evidence plainly showed that these
high officials were the direct and responsible instigators of the
uprising, that they had ordered every movement, and that the
crowd of smaller officials, Boxers and common people had simply
obeyed their orders. The three dignitaries were found
guilty and condemned to death.
Was ever retributive justice more signally illustrated than in
the place in which they were imprisoned pending Count von
Waldersee's approval of the sentence? The military authorities
selected the place, not with reference to its former uses, of
which indeed they were ignorant, but simply because it was
convenient, empty and clean. But it was the Presbyterian
chapel and dispensary in which Mr. Lowrie had so often
preached the gospel of peace and good will and the martyred
Dr. Taylor had so often healed the sick in the name of Christ.
Not long afterwards, the three officials were led to a level,
open space, just east of a little clump of trees not far from the
southwest corner of the city wall, and as near as practicable to
the place where the missionaries had been beheaded, and there,
in the presence of all the foreign soldiers, they were themselves
beheaded.
Nor was this all, for Chinese officials are never natives of the
cities they govern, but are sent to them from other provinces.
Moreover, they usually remain in one place only a few years.
The people fear and obey them as long as they are officials, but
often care little what becomes of them afterwards. They had
not befriended them during their trial and they did not attend
their execution. The Generals therefore felt that some punishment
must be inflicted upon the city. A Chinese city is proud
of the stately and ponderous towers which ornament the gates
and corners of its massive wall and protect the inhabitants
from foes, human and demoniac. All of these, but two
comparatively small ones, were blown up by order of the
foreign generals. The temples which the Boxers had used for
their meetings, including the one in which the American
Board and China Inland missionaries had been imprisoned,
were also destroyed, while the splendid official temple of the city,
dedicated to its patron deity, was utterly wrecked by dynamite.
Not till March 23d could memorial services be held. Then
a party of missionaries and friends came down from Peking.
The surviving Christians assembled. The new city officials
erected a temporary pavilion on the site of the Presbyterian
compound, writing over the entrance arch: ``They held the
truth unto death.'' Within, potted flowers and decorated
banners adorned the tables and walls. The scene was solemnly
impressive. Mr. Lowrie, Dr. Wherry and Mr. Killie and
others made appropriate addresses to an audience in which
there were, besides themselves, fifteen missionaries representing
four denominations, German and French army officers, Chinese
officials and Chinese Christians. A German military band
furnished appropriate music and two Roman Catholic priests
of the city sent flowers and kind letters. The following day
a similar service was held on the site of the American Board
compound.
We sadly visited all these places. It was about the hour of
the attack that we approached the Presbyterian compound. Of
the once pleasant homes and mission buildings, not even ruins
were left. A few hundred yards away, the site could not
have been distinguished from the rest of the open fields if my
companions had not pointed out marks mournfully intelligible
to them but hardy recognizable by a stranger. The very
foundations had been dug up by Chinese hunting for silver, and
every scrap of material had been carried away. Even the
trees and bushes had been removed by the roots and used
for firewood. In front of the site of the Simcox house are a
few unmarked mounds. All but one contain the fragments of
the bodies of the Chinese helpers and Christians, and that one,
the largest, holds the few pieces of bones which were all that
could be found in the ruins of the house in which the missionaries
perished. A few more may yet be found. We ourselves
discovered five small pieces which Dr. Charles Lewis afterwards
identified as human bones. But their charred and
broken condition showed how completely the merciful fire had
done its work of keeping the sacred remains from the hands of
those who would have shamefully misused them. The
American Board and China Inland Mission compounds were
also in ruins, a chaos of desolation. But as the martyred
missionaries and native Christians were beheaded and not
burned, their bodies have been recovered and interred in a long
row of twenty-three graves.
The negotiations of foreign Powers with the Chinese regarding
the payment of indemnity were, as might be expected, protracted
and full of difficulties. Some of the Powers favoured
extreme demands which, if acceded to, would have ruined the
Empire or resulted in its immediate partition, even if they did
not cause a new and more bitter outbreak of hostilities. Other
Powers, notably the United States, favoured moderate terms,
holding that China should not be asked to pay sums that were
clearly beyond her ability. After almost interminable disputes,
the total sum to be paid by China was, by the final protocol
signed September 7, 1901, fixed at 450,000,000 taels to be
paid in thirty-nine annual installments with interest at four per
cent. on the deferred payments and to be distributed as follows:
Country taels
Germany 90,070,515
Austria-Hungary 4,003,920
Belgium 8,484,345
Spain 135,315
United States 32,939,055[63]
France 70,878,240
Portugal 92,250
Great Britain 50,712,795
Italy 26,617,005
Japan 34,793,100
Netherlands 782,100
Russia 230,371,120
International (Sweden and Norway, $62,820) 212,490
------------
450,000,000
[63] The equivalent of $24,168,357.
The treaty was not calculated to make the Chinese think
more kindly of their conquerors. Besides the payment of the
heavy indemnity, the Powers exacted apologies to Germany
for the murder of its minister and to Japan for the assassination
of the chancellor of its legation, the erection of monuments in
foreign cemeteries and the making of new commercial treaties.
The Chinese were cut to the quick by being told, among other
things, that they must not import firearms for two years;
that no official examinations would be held for five years in the
cities where foreigners had been attacked; that an important
part of the imperial capital would be added to the already
spacious grounds of the foreign legations and that the whole
would be fortified and garrisoned by foreign guards; that the
Taku forts which defended the entrance to Peking would be
razed and the railway from the sea to the capital occupied by
foreign troops; that members of anti-foreign societies were to be
executed; that magistrates even though they were viceroys
were to be summarily dismissed and disgraced if they did not
prevent anti-foreign outbreaks and sternly punish their ring-
leaders; that court ceremonies in relation to foreign ministers
must be conformed to Western ideas; that the Tsung-li Yamen
(Foreign Office) must be abolished and a new ministry of
foreign affairs erected, the Wai-wu Pu, which must be regarded
as the highest of the departments instead of the lowest.
China's cup of humiliation was indeed full.