The Boxers were marketplace entertainers, they performed tricks and gave displays of acrobatics, they were believed to possess magical powers. It was said they were resistant to bullets while the more accomplished among them were known as the ‘righteous harmony fists’ hence their name Boxers. But there was always more to them that, they had a murderous intent. They meant to rid China of the ‘foreign devils.’ A particular target of their wrath were the white missionaries and their many thousands of Christian converts. Both were hunted down and killed in great numbers.
The roots of the Boxer Rebellion in China remain vague even today but from its beginnings in rural northern China by 1900 it had spread to its capital city Peking. By the spring, with little being done to impede the Boxers many Christians were fleeing to the International Legations for protection. Soon the Legations were under siege and the Empress Cxi, witnessing Boxer success ordered the Imperial Chinese Army to support them. The Legations and their combined garrison of 409 men held out for 55 days however, until the arrival of a much larger relief force forced the Boxers and the Empress to flee.
The American teacher Luella Miner was one of those besieged. Here she recounts the Boxers assaulting her compound and the arrival of the Relief Column:
June 15: About ten o'clock the most horrible noise began in the southern city, just on the opposite side of the city wall. It was a horde of Boxers going through their rites, burning incense, crying, "Kill the foreign devils! Kill the secondary foreign devils! (Christians). Kill! Kill! Kill!" They called other things, but I could only distinguish the "kill!" There may have been from twenty to fifty thousand voices, not all Boxers, swelling that mad tumult. After two or three hours the noise suddenly ceased. The Boxers in their indiscriminate pillaging had looted a Mohammedan bank. The Mohammedans gathered a band of three hundred, pursued them, and got back their money, after which the mob dispersed.
Our lines of defence have been extended to include all the streets bordering on this mission property - three or four streets and alleys being under martial law - and all passers-by are challenged. The same onditions prevail on Legation Street - stray Boxers are captured and passers-by are challenged. The missionaries and Chinese who have weapons all help in guard duty. There are barbed-wire barricades at the end of each street. . .
Now, in the compound and adjoining streets we have barricade within barricade of barbed wire or brick, all the walls and some of the small buildings having been torn up to get brick. This is said to be the best fortified place in the city now, thanks to the free labour of our numerous refugees, and if we had a Gatling or machine gun, we would feel quite safe.
Evening. - This forenoon ten Americans and twenty Russians went to the south cathedral, where the Boxers were looting, burning, and killing, killed seventy Boxers, captured ten, and took Catholic refugees to a place near the British Legation. In the afternoon twenty-five Germans and an equal number of French went to the same place, with much the same result, though not quite so many Boxers were killed, I think.
June 18: We have now spent ten full days in this place, and may be obliged to spend many more, for we can get no word from our foreign troops who left Tientsin a week ago yesterday. . .
We are more effectively cut off from the world than ever, for no couriers can now be found to carry mail to Tientsin for the Imperial post-office. . . We have been surprised that they have succeeded in keeping up the service so long. We hope that in two- or three-days communication will be open again. We hear that vast numbers of Boxers attacked the railroad station in Tientsin and were repulsed with great slaughter. It is rumoured that the relief army is now only ten or fifteen miles from us, but we cannot be sure.
Placards are being distributed everywhere in the city commanding that this place and Legation Street be destroyed today. . .
Over seventy of us American missionaries live, eat, and sleep in the little church at the British Legation, though a few of the ladies’ sleep in Lady Macdonald's ballroom, two or three in the billiard-room, and some of the men outdoors. In the church we all sleep on the floor or on the church seats. There are thirty-five in our Congregational crowd, about twenty Methodists, and sixteen Presbyterians. We eat by denominations, but there is only one tiny stove to cook over, so we cannot cook much. If we are besieged long, we shall have to go on short rations. In fact, we are now leaving most of the canned meats for the men, who are doing hard work outside, watching and fortifying.
July 18: About two o'clock this afternoon - four weeks to an hour from the time when we took refuge in this Legation - we received our first authentic message from the outside world. On June 30 a Methodist young man was sent by the Japanese Minister as a messenger to Tientsin, and he has just returned, bringing a letter from the Japanese Consul in Tientsin, stating that foreign troops numbering 33,300 will leave Tientsin about the 20th, day after tomorrow, for the relief of Peking.
August 14: At last, our ears have heard the sweet music for which we have been listening for two months - the cannonading of the relief army - so plainly that we know that intense desire and imagination are not deceiving us, as so many times before. Our deliverance is at hand. Last night was a fearful one. There were at least six distinct attacks, the first beginning about eight in the evening, and there was almost incessant firing between these attacks. Our implacable foes seemed determined to use to the utmost this last chance to wipe us out. Our garrison returned fire more than at any other time, for now they are not afraid of exhausting their ammunition.
It was a little after two in the afternoon, as I was sitting writing under the trees in the tennis-court, where I have spent so many hours during these past weeks, when an American marine from the city wall ran into the yard shouting, "The troops are inside the city - almost here!" There was a wild rush for the south end of the compound, and there, sheltered by the barricades, we stood and saw the first of the relief army straggling up the streets. And who do you think they were? Black-faced, high-turbaned troops, Rajput’s from India - great, fierce-looking fellows, but their faces were beaming with joy, and they hurrahed louder than we did. There were British officers with them, and one of them stooped in passing and kissed a pale-faced girlie who looked as if she needed to be rescued by a relief army. All that afternoon the troops came streaming in, Sikhs, Bengal Lancers; English soldiers, and, most welcome of all, our American boys."
Share this post: