June 18, 1900 – Boxer Rebellion: Empress Dowager Cixi of China orders her people to resist foreigners
Foreign spheres of influence in China in the early 1900sThe Boxer RebellionIn the late 19th century, a secret society called the ““Righteous andHarmonious Fists” (Yihequan) was formed in the drought-ravaged hinterlandregions of Shandongand Zhili provinces. The sect formed inthe villages, had no central leadership, operated in groups of tens to severalhundreds of mostly young peasants, and held the belief that China’s problemswere a direct consequence of the presence of foreigners, who had brought intothe country their alien culture and religion (i.e. Christianity).
Sect members practiced martial arts and gymnastics, andperformed mass religious rituals, where they invoked Taoist and Buddhistspirits to take possession of their bodies. They also believed that these rituals would confer on them invincibilityto weapons strikes, including bullets. As the sect was anti-foreign and anti-Christian, it soon gained theattention of foreign Christian missionaries, who called the group and itsfollowers “Boxers” in reference to the group’s name and because it practicedmartial arts.
The Qing government, long wary of secret societies which historically had seditious motives, made efforts to suppress the Boxers. Because of government repression, the Boxers renamed their organization the “Righteous and Harmonious Militia (Yihetuan)”, using the word “militia” to de-emphasize their origin as a secret society and give the movement a form of legitimacy. Even then, the Qing government continued to view the Boxers with suspicion.
By May 1900, thousands of Boxers were occupying areas aroundBeijing,including the vital Beijing-Tianjin railway line. They attacked villages, killed localofficials, and destroyed government infrastructures. The violence alarmed the foreign diplomaticcommunity in Beijing. The foreign diplomats, their staff, andfamilies in Beijinghad their offices and residences located at the Legation Quarter, located southof the city. The Legation Quarterconsisted of diplomatic missions from eleven countries: Britain, France,Russia, United States, Germany,Austria-Hungary, Japan, Italy,Belgium, Netherlands, and Spain.
In May 1900, the foreign diplomats asked the Qing governmentthat foreign troops be allowed to be posted at the Legation Quarter, which wasdenied. Instead, the Chinese governmentsent Chinese policemen to guard the legations. But the foreign envoys persisted in their request, and on May 30, 1900,the Chinese Foreign Ministry (Zongli Yamen) allowed a small number of foreigntroops to be sent to Beijing.
The next day (May 31), some 450 foreign sailors and Marineswere landed from ships from eight countries and sent by train from Taku to Beijing. But as the situation in Beijingcontinued to deteriorate, the foreign diplomats felt that more foreign troopswere needed in Beijing. On June 6, 1900, and again on June 8, theysent requests to the Zongli Yamen, with both being turned down. A separate request by the German Minister,Clemens von Ketteler, to allow German troops to take control of the Beijing railway stationalso was turned down. On June 10, 1900,the Chinese government barred the foreign legations from using the telegraphline that linked to Tianjin. In one of the last transmissions from theLegation Quarter, British Minister Claude MacDonald asked British Vice-AdmiralEdward Seymour in Tianjin to send more troops,with the message, “Situation extremely grave; unless arrangements are made forimmediate advance to Beijing,it will be too late.” And with thesubsequent severing of the telegraph line between Beijingand Kiachta (in Russia) onJune 17, 1900, for nearly two months thereafter, the Legation Quarter in Beijing would be cut offfrom the outside world.
On June 11, 1900, the Japanese diplomat, Sugiyama Akira, waskilled by Chinese troops in a Beijingstreet. Then on June 12 or 13, twoBoxers entered the Legation Quarter and were confronted by Ketteler, the GermanMinister, who drove one away and captured the other; the latter soon was killedunder unclear circumstances. Later thatday, thousands of Boxers stormed into Beijing and went on a rampage, killingChinese Christians, burning churches, destroying houses, and lootingproperties. In the next few days,skirmishes broke out between foreign legation troops, and Boxers with thesupport of anti-foreigner government units. On June 15, 1900, British and German soldiers dispersed Boxers whoattacked a church, and rescued the trapped Christians inside; two days later(June 17), an armed clash broke out between German–British–Austro-Hungarianunits and Boxer–anti-foreigner government troops.
The Belgian legation was evacuated, as were those of Austria-Hungary, the Netherlands,and Italy,when they came under Boxer attack. Bythis time, the Christian missions scattered across Beijing were evacuated, with their clergy andthousands of Chinese Christians taking shelter at the Legation Quarter. Soon, the Legation Quarter was fortified,with soldiers and civilians building barricades, trenches, bunkers, andshelters in preparation for a Boxer attack. Ultimately, in the Legation Quarter were some 400 soldiers, 470civilians (including 149 women and 79 children), and 2,800 Chinese Christians,all of whom would be besieged in the fighting that followed. At the Northern Cathedral (Beitang) locatedsome three miles from the Legation Quarter, some 40 French and Italiansoldiers, 30 foreign Catholic clergy, and 3,200 Chinese Christians also tookrefuge, turning the area into a defensive fortification which also would comeunder siege during the conflict.
Meanwhile in Taku, in response to British MinisterMacDonald’s plea for more troops to be sent to the Beijing foreign legations,on June 10, Vice-Admiral Seymour scrambled a 2,200-strong multinational forceof Navy and Marine units from Britain, Germany, Russia, France, the United States,Japan, Italy, and Austria-Hungary, which departed by train from Tianjin toBeijing. On the first day, Seymour’s force traveled to within 40 miles of Beijing without meeting opposition, despite the presenceof Chinese Imperial forces (which had received no orders to resist Seymour’s passage) alongthe way. Seymour’s force reached Langfang, where therail tracks had been destroyed by Boxers. Seymour’stroops dispersed the Boxers guarding the area, and work crews started repairwork on the rail tracks. Seymour sent out ascouting team further on, which returned saying that more sections of therailroad at An Ting had also been destroyed. Seymour then sent a train back to Tianjin to get moresupplies, but the train soon returned, its crew saying that the rail track atYangcun was now destroyed. Having tofight off a number of Boxer attacks, his provisions running low, realizing thefutility of continuing to Beijing, and nowfeeling trapped on both sides, Seymour called off the expedition and turned thetrains back, intending to return to Tianjin.
Elsewhere at this point, the Boxer crisis deteriorated evenfurther. On June 15, 1900, at the YellowSea where Alliance ships were on high alert, andwere awaiting further developments, allied naval commanders became alarmed whenQing forces began fortifying the Taku Forts at the mouth of the Peiho River,as well as setting mines on the river and torpedo tubes at the forts. For Alliancecommanders, these actions threatened to cut off allied communication and supplylines to Tianjin, threatening the foreignenclave at Tianjin and Legation Quarter at Beijing, as well as Seymour’sforce. The foreign alliance had had nocommunication with the Seymourforce for several days. Alliance commanders thenissued an ultimatum demanding that the Taku Forts be surrendered to them, whichthe Qing naval command rejected. Earlyon June 17, 1900, fighting broke out at the Taku Forts, with Allianceforces (except the U.S.command, which chose not to participate) launching a naval and ground assaultthat seized control of the forts.
War For theChinese government, the Allied attack on the Taku Forts constituted an act ofwar. The Qing then turned its positioninvariably on the side of the Boxers. Upto this point, the Qing court was unsure about its position regarding theBoxers, and Empress Dowager Cixi vacillated between the two opposing factionsin her court: the ultra-conservatives who were pro-Boxer, and the reformistswho were pro-foreigner. The dilemmafaced by the Qing government was that despite the Boxers’ professed loyalty tothe monarchy, they still could pose a threat to the monarchy, as all secretsocieties in the past had. But if indeedthe Boxers were loyal, the Qing court could use their hatred of foreigners torid Chinaof foreign influences. After the alliedaction on the Taku Forts, Empress Dowager Cixi took a firm stand in support ofthe Boxers, and ordered her armies to resist the foreigners.
On June 18, 1900, one day after the attack on the TakuForts, German soldiers at Langfang were attacked by the anti-foreign ChineseRear Army, more commonly known as “Gansu Braves”, which was composed of ChineseMuslims. This attack by Chinese regulartroops further convinced Seymour to call off hisadvance to Beijing (Seymour had launched his expedition on thebelief that he would face only Boxers). Then finding that more sections of therail tracks had been destroyed at Yangcun, Seymour’sforce abandoned the trains there and proceeded to move by foot toward Tianjin. At the Peiho River,they seized a number of Chinese river junks, which they used to carry theirwounded men, supplies, and heavy weapons. In the next several days, Seymour and his men faced numerous Boxerattacks, and also soon became low on food and ammunitions. On June 23, they fortuitously came upon theweakly defended Xigu fort located six miles from Tianjin, which they seized and then tookrefuge in. Subsequently, they wererescued on June 25, 1900 by an Alliance reliefforce sent from Tianjin.
Meanwhile in Beijing,the situation facing the foreigners and Chinese Christians in the LegationQuarter worsened. On June 19, 1900, theQing government ordered the foreigners to leave Beijing within 24 hours under the protectionof Chinese troops. Most of the foreignenvoys were ready to comply, but they requested an audience with the ZongliYamen for 9 AM the next day (June 20). When the proposed appointment passed with no reply from the Chinese, theGerman Minister Ketteler, who had opposed the Chinese ultimatum to leave Beijing, decided to go tothe Zongli Yamen to confront the Chinese officials. Ketteler ignored the warnings of the otherforeign envoys not to do so. On his waythere, Ketteler was shot and killed by a Chinese officer. The other foreign envoys then convened anddecided to defy the Qing ultimatum and remain at the Legation Quarter. They now distrusted the Qing government, andbelieved that their lives would be in danger if they left the Legation Quarter.
The next day, June 21, 1900, the Qing court issued a seriesof decrees which the foreign powers saw as a declaration of war againstthem. In particular, the foreign powerswere rankled by certain hostile statements in the Qing decrees, including thelines, “We should fight this war in a big way… In province adjacent to Pekingand Shandong,hundreds of thousands of Boxers have gathered on [their] free will, even…boyswould take up weapons to safeguard the homeland. …it is not difficult to putout the foreigners’ fierce fire, to showcase the might of our nation. The royalcourt will generously reward those who fight bravely on the front line, [and]will also reward those who donate money in preparation of the war. The royalcourt will immediately execute traitors who escape from the battlefield oranyone who collaborates with the enemy”
As a result, a state of war existed, as Qing and Boxer forces laid siege to the Legation Quarter. (Excerpts taken from Wars of the 20th Century: Volume 5 – Twenty Wars in Asia.)
