The Last Empress - Anchee Min [126]
Requests for instructions on handling the situation continued to come in from all over the country. Yung Lu and Li Hung-chang devised a strategy. The throne would focus on discouraging the Boxers in southern China, where foreign nations had the most commercial enterprises and where we were vulnerable to intervention. The edict read, "The main goal is to prevent the throne's decree from becoming an excuse for the banding together of disorderly characters."
Once again the edict sounded ambiguous. It didn't condemn outright, but granted a degree of autonomy so that Li Hung-chang and other southern governors could carry on business as usual with foreign countries and suppress the Boxers, when necessary, with their provincial armies.
"The throne would like to remind the citizenry that the nation has been forced to pay compensation for the murders of foreigners. In the case of Shantung alone, on top of the governor's dismissal and the disbursement of six thousand taels of silver for bereaved families, Germany gained exclusive rights to our northeastern railways and coal mines and the license to build a naval station in Kiaochow. We lost both Kiaochow and Tsingtao; Germany gained them as leased concessions for ninety-nine years."
40
Guang-hsu did not raise his eyes from the clock he was fixing when I told him that ten thousand Boxers had taken control of the rail lines in the city of Chochou, fifty miles of Peking. "They attacked and burned down stations and bridges along with telegraph lines. The local authorities were repeatedly beaten for 'offering foreign devils the supply line.'"
"What else is new?" Guang-hsu muttered.
"Guang-hsu, the foreign legations have sent letters threatening military action if we don't suppress the Boxers, but if we do, the Boxers will topple the throne." I stopped, furious at Guang-hsu's apathy. For him, the world was enclosed in an old French porcelain mantel clock, clouds and cherubs painted on its surface.
Noticing my emotion, Guang-hsu looked up from the clock.
"For heaven's sake," I yelled, "say something!"
"Forgive me, Mother..."
"Please don't ask my forgiveness. Fight me or fight with me, Guang-hsu. Just do something!"
My son buried his face in his hands.
In early June 1900, the streets of Peking became the Boxers' parade ground. Crowds grew thick where "magic" was performed. The Boxers dashed forward and back, waving swords and spears. The weapons shone ominously in the sun.
East of the capital, near Tientsin, Yung Lu's forces tried to keep the Boxers from cutting the rail link between the foreign ships off Taku and the legations in the city. Yung Lu thwarted them, but his capture of the Boxers made him extremely unpopular. Prince Ts'eng Junior told his friends that he had put Yung Lu on his death list.
On June 8, Boxers set fire to the grandstand of the Peking racecourse, a popular gathering place for foreigners. Overnight the "China crisis" had caught the world's attention. George Morrison of the London Times wrote, "It is now inevitable that we should have to fight."
The next day Prince Ts'eng, with several Boxer leaders in tow, burst into the Summer Palace. Ts'eng's red turban was sweat-soaked and his skin was the color of a yam. I was told that he had been building up his muscles by pounding a sledgehammer under the hot sun. He smelled of liquor and his ferret eyes sparkled.
Before I had a chance to question him about the burning of the racetrack, Prince Ts'eng ordered all my eunuchs into the courtyard. He and a Boxer leader named Master Red Sword proceeded to examine their heads. He wanted to see whether any of them had a cross there. "This cross is not visible to an ordinary eye," he said to Li Lien-ying. "Only a certain few can identify a Christian this way."
Minutes later, Prince Ts'eng came to my chamber with Master Red Sword. Ts'eng told me that Master Red Sword had discovered that two of my eunuchs were Christians. He asked for permission to execute them.
I could