The Last Empress - Anchee Min [125]
In Shantung, the new governor, Yuan Shih-kai, took matters into his own hands. He ignored my admonition that "the people must be persuaded to disperse, not crushed by brute force," and he hounded the Boxers out of his province.
"These Boxers," Yuan wrote afterward in his telegram to the throne, "are gathering people to roam the streets. They cannot be said to be defending themselves and their families. They are setting fire to houses, kidnapping people and resisting government troops; they are freely engaging in criminal activities; they are plundering and killing the common people. They cannot be said to be merely anti-Christian."
Because of the political disruptions, governments in villages along the Yellow River neglected the ever-present problem of flood control. In the summer of 1899 a disaster of great magnitude took place. Thousands of square miles in the north of China were inundated, crops were destroyed, and famine followed. Next came a period of drought, resulting in a million farming families becoming homeless. The recruitment of Boxers soared. "Until all the foreigners have been exterminated, the rain will never visit us," the frustrated poor believed.
Under pressure from the Ironhats, the court began to lean toward supporting the Boxers. After being driven out of Shantung by Yuan Shih-kai, the Boxers traveled north, crossing Chihli province and then on to Peking itself. Joined along the way by thousands of peasants who believed they were invulnerable, the Boxers became an unstoppable force in Chinese society. "Protect the Manchu Dynasty and destroy the foreigners!" men shouted as they encircled the foreign legations.
Yung Lu and I were helplessly undecided about whether or not to suppress the Boxers. The rest of the court, however, had made up their minds to join them.
Yung Lu told me that he had no faith in the Boxers' true ability to win battles against foreign invaders. Yet I couldn't get him to challenge the court. I asked him to submit a memorandum, and I would explain to the court why the Boxers must be stopped. He agreed.
When I received Yung Lu's draft, I thought about how strange our relationship had become. He was my most loyal and trusted official, and I depended on him constantly. We had come a long way from the days when we were young and poised on the brink of passion. I could, and did, relive those moments at my most private times. Now we had grown old, and the roles that brought us together were both comfortable and absolute. The feelings were still there, but they had mellowed and become deeper and lived side by side with the fact that now, in the midst of China's turmoil, our lives and survival depended on each other.
The day I read Yung Lu's draft to the audience, Princes Ts'eng and Ch'un accused me of losing momentum in the war against the barbarians. With the Boxers already massed in Peking's legation district, the princes had come to obtain the throne's permission to move in for the kill.
I started by saying that it was indeed gratifying for the throne to see our people display courage, to witness their enthusiasm for settling old scores against the foreigners. Then I asked the youths to bear in mind the consequences of their actions and to temper their fury before reality was swept away.
I told them what Yung Lu had told me: "As a fighting force the Boxers are absolutely useless, but their claims to supernatural arts and magic might help to demoralize the enemy. It would be quite wrong, not to say fatal, however, for us to attach any real belief to their ridiculous claims, or to regard them as of any real use in action."
My speech had the desired effect. Several of the conservatives ended up voting to cancel any immediate action against the legations. Nevertheless, the