Directory_and_Chronicle_1903 — Page 609

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CHINA

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dynastic risings were anticipated. Thaumaturgy and hocos-pocus were next skil- fully grafted on to the movement. The initiated were said to be impervious to bul- lets; they could walk on sunbeams, arrest rivers, stop or create fires by their mere gesture, &c., &c. This feature of the new propaganda caught on. The Chinese are still in that state of mental development in which a miracle is not only possible but welcome. Clever rogues among the Boxers gratified the multitude with some of the commonplaces of legerdemain, and the new religion began to run like wildfire. Were not the very gods on the side of the patriots? In March, April and May whole cities and districts in Chih-li went over to the new doctrine, and preachers could not be found in sufficient number to initiate the candidates. Rich men found it expedient to affect con- version and to support the movement; otherwise they were blackmailed into poverty. All the Roman Catholic and Protestant Missionaries clearly now saw the bearings of the coming storm, and cautioned their Ministers; but, with the usual grudging attention to unofficial reports, little attention was paid to the warnings until it was practically too late to coerce the Manchu Government into action by the only possible means-force. Too late the Fleets assembled at Taku. By this time the sedition was far beyond official control, and moreover what did a Manehu who had never seen the sea care for a Naval demonstration? Their notion of a battleship is that of an exaggerated sampan. The Boxers swept up like a cyclone from Shantung, and gathered their strength around Paotingfu, the provincial capital of Chih-li. They began with railway destruction ; making the business strictly compatible with the innate Chinese propensity for loot, and varying it with the murder of foreign Missionaries and railway engineers. In the neighbouring province of Shan-si the movement was taken under the direct auspices of U-hsien, the ex-governor of Shantung. This supreme villain asked some thirty-three Europeans, including many lalies and children, to his Yamen at Tai-yuan-fu for protec- tion, and there and then let the Boxers loose on them to hack them to pieces with swords. He further supplemented this outrage on hunianity by issuing most stringent orders throughout his province for the annihilation of all Christians, Europeans and Chinese alike. Next to the atrocity of Cawnpore in the Indian Mutiny, the story of the Shan- si massacre is the most appalling crime of the nineteenth century. The number of native Christians that have perished will never be known, as the Missions have lost their archives; pastors, members and premises have alike been exterminated. A similar policy was followed by the Acting Viceroy of Chih-li at Paotingfu, and by some of the officials in Northern Honan; where, though many heartrending crimes and murders were committed, the story was mitigated by the fact that there were numerous escapes, and that many officials and gentry jeopardized their own lives in attempts to save the fugitives. The Governors of Shantung and Shen-si especially distinguished themselves in their zeal for humanity. It was entirely due to their powerful protection of foreigners that the number of murders and outrages was restricted to its present figures-that is to less than two hundred and fifty European lives. Sober estimates have been made that over 10,000 natives perished; most of these were Christians or the kinsmen of Christians, but in vast numbers of cases greed and family and personal feuds prompte: the denouncing of pagans as Christians.

Reference is elsewhere made to the actions of the Boxers in detail (see notes under the articles "Peking,” “Tientsin” “Taku” and “Peitaiho”), so they need only be sum- marised here. The attacks on the Mission stations began in May; those on the Lu-han Railway at the end of May, and the beginning of June. The Boxers appeared in the Capital in force on June 13th, and in Tientsin three days before this date. Official collusion was from the first suspected by the terms in which the Imperial Edicts dealt with the movers of the sedition; later on this suspicion became certainty when the Imperial Officers who dealt with it vigorously were ignored or reproved for their zeal. The Boxers completely overawed the civil power when they appeared in the great cities and openly declared their intention to expel or extirpate the foreigners. At first attempts to carry out their programme took the form of incendiarism, e., to the destruction of Mission premises; the agents were entirely confined to themselves and the city canaille, the Imperial troops only joining in after the attack on and capture of the Taku forts on June 17th. The Tientsin Settlements were attacked on the night and morning of June 15th and 16th by the Boxers alone; on the afternoon of the 17th, the Settlements were severely shelled by the regular troops. Communi- cation was re-established with Taku on the 23rd, and the siege in part raised in the open. The Great Eastern Arsenal was taken on June 27th; while the first pitched battle preceded the seizure of the Western Arsenal on July 9th; the native City was carried by assault on the 14th, when the Viceroy Yu-Lu and General Nieh met their deaths-the former by suicide the latter by a shell. O