The Last Empress - Anchee Min [131]
Now the foreign press, too, went on the attack. The world had be gun calling the siege "the Peking Massacre." The papers howled, "The Dowager Empress wanted the barbarians dead. All of them." So-called anonymous sources had me "directing the murderers" myself.
"We have been out of touch with the world's reactions since the telegraph wires came down. The repairs are taking too long," I-kuang complained.
Understanding that the accusations would provide ample excuse to declare war on China, I became extremely nervous. I kept looking at Yung Lu, who sat across from I-kuang.
"How is Emperor Guang-hsu?" I-kuang asked. "He's been absent from the audiences."
"Guang-hsu hasn't been feeling well," I replied.
"Are his wives with him?"
I found the question odd, but decided to answer anyway. "Empress Lan and the concubines visit His Majesty daily, although my son prefers to be alone."
I-kuang gave me a quizzical look.
"Is there something wrong?" I asked.
"No, but the foreigners have been inquiring after the throne's health. Apparently my answers are no longer satisfactory to them. They suspect that His Majesty has been tortured and left to die." I-kuang paused, then added, "The rumor has appeared in papers around the world."
"Go and see with your own eyes!" I became enraged. "Pay His Majesty a visit at Ying-t'ai!"
"The foreign journalists have requested face-to-face interviews..."
"We will not allow foreign journalists inside the Forbidden City," Yung Lu put in. "They will pick the bones out of an egg no matter what we do."
"It's getting personal," I-kuang said, handing me a copy of the London Daily Mail.
"The legations stood together as the sun rose fully," one "eyewitness" told a reporter. "The little remaining band, all Europeans, met death stubbornly, and finally, overcome by overwhelming odds, every one of the Europeans remaining was put to the sword in the most atrocious manner."
Later, the London Times would publish a special report on a memorial service held at St. Paul's Cathedral for the British legation's "victims." Pages of death notices would be printed. Sir Claude MacDonald —the husband of Lady MacDonald—Sir Robert Hart and the Times's own devoted correspondent George Morrison all lived to read their own obituaries.
On June 23, General Tung's troops surrounded the three-acre compound of the British legation. His Moslem force tried to break through the north wall, where stood China's elite Hanlin Academy. When all other efforts failed, Tung ordered his soldiers to toss lighted firebrands into the academy, intending to smoke the foreigners out. A strong wind whipped up the flames, which consumed the oldest library in the world.
Yung Lu watched the Boxers hurl themselves futilely against the legation barricades. No one was aware that Yung Lu, at the age of sixty-five, had fallen ill. He had been hiding his condition from me, and I was too preoccupied to notice. I treated him as if he were made of iron. I did not know that he had only three more years to live.
Convinced that a massacre at the legations would bring retribution from the Western powers, Yung Lu refused General Tung's demand for more powerful weapons. Yung Lu controlled the only battery of heavy artillery.
I wondered how Western journalists and their "eyewitnesses" could miss the fact that since the siege began, fewer assaults were made from those sectors held by Yung Lu's troops. It was a known fact that not long before, China had purchased advanced weapons through its diplomatic connections—Robert Hart among others. If those weapons had been used against the legations, their so-called defense, which involved around a hundred men, would have been reduced to rubble within hours.
On behalf of the Emperor of China, I-kuang held a conference to declare a cease-fire. To the