The War of the Dragon Lady (7 page)

‘Thank you for your work last night, Fonthill,’ he said. ‘I knew you would be useful. I have to report to you that we are now completely cut off. Our last telegraph link, running north to Russian territory, has been severed. I have no idea what has happened to the relief contingent from Tientsin, so we are very much on our own now, I fear.’

Fonthill nodded. ‘I see. This gives added urgency to what I have to say, sir.’

‘And what is that, pray?’

‘So far there has been no direct attack on the Legation Quarter. But if there is, it would be very difficult to defend the whole of the perimeter with the few troops we have at our command.’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘We should destroy those houses that come up close on the other
side of our wall and which would give cover to any attackers. This would give us a field of fire. From what I can see – and I do not know all of the geography of the place – there are parts of the perimeter that are virtually indefensible anyway, so we should abandon them, so shortening our line, so to speak. We should build a second, tighter, line of defence inside that we could man more adequately – digging trenches, erecting barricades and so on – and we should begin patrolling the streets outside our walls, bringing in those who are being threatened.’

The minister frowned. ‘Good Lord, Fonthill. We cannot just bring in people willy-nilly. We are overcrowded as it is. Where would we put them all? And it could be dangerous. We could be importing spies and malcontents within our midst.’

‘It’s a risk but we can’t leave people out there to be murdered. The Boxers outnumber us. So far, they do not appear to have guns. But, from what I hear of the Manchu court, they will soon get them and things will then be very different. There is also the matter of the Imperial Army. If they side with the rebels – and there have been indications of this, the assassination of the Japanese minister, for instance – if they turn on us, then we shall be in a pretty pickle.’

MacDonald mused for a moment. ‘Very well. My responsibilities are heavy and I must be aware of them. I agree that we must improve our defences. The problem, of course, is getting all of the nationalities represented here to move in unison, for we are a rather uneasy coalition, you know, and it is difficult to find agreement. However, I retain some influence and I will see what I can do. I value your advice, my dear fellow.’ He gave a melancholy smile. ‘After all,
in my army days, before I joined the diplomat service, I was only a subaltern. You were a captain.’ He fluttered a mock salute. ‘So – very good, sir.’

In fact, events moved quickly. Within the next few days, some two thousand Chinese Catholics found their way into the legations and the Methodists followed suit, evacuating their own compound near the Ha Ta Men. As Sir Claude had predicted, the overcrowding became acute, but one great benefit accrued. These Chinese proved to be a willing and hard-working labour force. Within the next few days, houses near the walls were burnt to the ground; barricades were erected at strategic points; trenches were dug; and shell-proof shelters were erected – all under the supervision of Fonthill and Captain Strouts, of the Royal Marines, the British Legation’s guard commander.

The Peking Hotel, although it remained open, was considered by Simon to be too close to the eastern defences, so his party – Mrs Griffith, her two sons, Alice, Jenkins and himself – were given shelter inside the walls of the British Legation.

After the original sorties of the Boxers, a strange quiet had descended upon the beleaguered Legation Quarter. Rumours and counter-rumours flew. The Empress issued an edict blaming the death of the Japanese chancellor and the burnings upon ‘brigands and seditious characters’. Troops of the Imperial army continued to remain passive and her ministers continued to send flowery messages to the heads of the legations assuring them of their safety and deprecating the need for foreign troops to be sent from the coast.

Then events took a dramatic turn. Each of the heads of legations
received an ultimatum from the Chinese Foreign Office. It reported that the Foreign Powers had demanded the surrender of the Taku Forts at the head of the River Pei Ho, the sea gateway to Tientsin. If the demand was not met, the powers would occupy the forts by force. As a result, said the ultimatum, emotions were running high among the people of Peking and the Imperial Government could no longer be responsible for the safety of the ministers and their families in the Legation Quarter and they should leave the legations for Tientsin within twenty-four hours. Imperial troops would be provided as an escort.

These letters threw the ministers into a state of confusion – and indignation. Firstly, they had no idea that hostilities had broken out at the coast and they blamed their compatriots there for compromising their position at the capital. Secondly, and predictably, they could not agree on whether or not to surrender to the ultimatum. Equally predictably, they decided to play for time. A letter was sent, agreeing to depart but pleading for more time and asking for details of the protection to be provided and of the transport being made available.

Sir Claude, however, confided to Fonthill that, whatever the reply, he had no intention of ‘moving an inch’. Nevertheless, the ministers and staffs of some legations began their packing, although in fear of what might happen once they had left the walls of the Quarter.

‘It would be madness to leave,’ confided Simon to Alice. ‘Once out there on the plain we would all be attacked and butchered by the Chinese troops, just like the Japanese chancellor. We must stay with Sir Claude and, if necessary, concentrate our forces on defending the British Legation.’

‘Wherever you are,’ replied Alice calmly, ‘I will be.’

The denouement of the situation, however, arrived in a quite different way. The ministers fulminated for hours around their large table in the Spanish Legation awaiting a reply but none came. Finally, the bellicose German minister, Baron von Ketteler, declared that he would wait no longer, but journey to the palace himself and demand an answer ‘if I have to sit there all night’.

He set off with his Chinese secretary to the Foreign Office, both travelling in sedan chairs with canopies of red and green proclaiming their status and with two liveried servants riding on ponies as outriders. Half an hour later, his dragoman, who had been shot through both legs, dragged himself into the American Methodist mission near the Ha Ta Men Gate and declared that the minister had been shot in his chair by a Manchu solider ‘in full uniform with a mandarin’s hat and button and blue feather’. A patrol of fifteen German sailors went out to try and retrieve the minister’s body but were driven back. The word spread throughout the legations. There was no more talk of accepting the offer of evacuation.

Instead, and with belated speed, the legations prepared to defend themselves at last.

It was agreed that the British Legation, by far the largest and, by its position, not commanded by the Great Tartar Wall but with a good field of fire, should be a kind of central redoubt. It would be a place where, if the worst came to the worst, all the defenders of the legations could fall back for a last stand. However, it was decided that it should also offer shelter to non-combatants.

As a result, the whole of the foreign community of Peking, together with ponies and mules, a small flock of sheep and one cow, gathered within the compound. An area of some three acres, which normally
housed sixty people, was now occupied by nine hundred.

The separate buildings of the Legation had been hurriedly allocated to the different nationalities. The missionaries who had fled their missions in the Chinese City were crowded together in the Legation’s chapel. The elegant front pavilions were stacked with all kinds of luggage, the most notable being provisions and wine; the stable-house was allocated to Norwegians; the rear pavilion was divided into small rooms for miscellaneous use, and in one of the tiniest Mrs Griffith and Alice made their new home, with Gerald, Chang, Simon and Jenkins housed together next door.

All was activity in the other legations, too. As a squadron of Chinese cavalry, in their black turbans, galloped down Custom Street past the isolated Austrian Legation, guards of all the threatened nationalities were busy strengthening makeshift barricades, laying out primitive firefighting equipment and, near the American and German legations, manning the outposts that had been erected on the Tartar Wall.

At four o’clock – the hour at which the formal Chinese ultimatum was due to expire – Fonthill and Jenkins stood on the front lawn of the British Legation, once marked out for clock golf, while Simon consulted his watch. At exactly the hour, firing broke out from the outlying Austrian Legation, which, despite Fonthill’s advice, had not been evacuated.

‘Well,’ frowned Simon, ‘I’m afraid we are now well and truly under siege. Will we be able to hold out, I wonder?’

Jenkins sucked in his moustache. ‘We’ll just ’ave to, bach sir. I wouldn’t want to think about the alternative if them yeller bastards break through.’

The ending of the formal ultimatum brought a sense of reality to the besieged foreigners and their dependents within the Legation Quarter. It was as though the defensive precautions already taken under the direction of Fonthill and Captain Strouts had been a game, the withdrawal to a secondary line away from the outer walls merely a harmless diversion to relieve the boredom of waiting for the relief column to arrive. Now, it became clear to Simon on a quick tour with Jenkins that the instructions that had been given for the erection of the fallback defences had been carried out quite inadequately. The barricades mainly consisted of overturned carts, with gaps between them, and the trenches were little more than shallow scoops in the earth. A concerted attack on the Quarter would surely have resulted in these flimsy defences being overrun.

Luckily, that attack did not come. The lull gave the defenders time
to retreat from the indefensible positions outside the fallback line. After that immediate flurry of firing on the Austrian Legation, no attack was pressed home and Simon’s call to leave the Legation was heeded at last and the defenders were able to scurry back to within the reserve line. Similarly, the other outlying legations – the Dutch, the Belgian, the Italian and the French – were also abandoned, as was the Peking Club and the large offices of the influential trading house, Jardine Matheson. Immediately, most of these buildings were torched by the Chinese and firing broke out, sometimes heavily, around the hastily manned new perimeter of the defences. Nevertheless, the Chinese seemed reluctant to press home any direct attacks.

‘This is ridiculous,’ confessed Fonthill to Jenkins at the end of the first day of the siege. The pair had spent the hours helping to direct the reinforcing of the flimsy defences: the piling of rubble upon and in between the upturned carts, the loopholing of these walls, the deepening of the trenches in the open land on the exposed sides of the line, and the making of sandbags from pillowcases and cushions. ‘The trouble is,’ continued Simon, wiping his brow, ‘there doesn’t seem to be anyone in overall charge. It’s like the Tower of Babel, with everyone shouting in different languages. It’s no way to conduct a defence. I have to see Sir Claude.’

‘Be careful,’ said Jenkins, ‘don’t get too close to ’im because if ’e turns round too quick, like, ’e’ll ’ave your eye out with the end of them moustaches. Shall I come, too?’

‘No. Get back and see if the ladies are all right.’

There was little sign of chaos, however, in the small, dimly lit office of the British minister. He sat at his desk writing quietly, his severe tunic unbuttoned at the neck and a small glass of port at his elbow.

‘Ah, Fonthill,’ he said, standing and extending his hand. ‘Good Lord, you look a bit dusty. Take a glass of this Taylor’s ’79. I can commend it.’

‘No thank you, sir.’

‘I insist. You look hot and bothered. Now sit down and tell me what is on your mind.’ He fetched another glass from an upended suitcase and filled it. ‘Here.’

Fonthill took it and perched on the only other chair in the room. Then he unburdened himself of his doubts: the lack of leadership, chain of command and coordination; the still-inadequate state of the defences and the paucity of firepower. Then he took a sip of the Taylor’s. MacDonald was right. It was delicious.

The minister listened without interruption, then twisted the wax more firmly into his moustache ends, as though to marshal his thoughts.

‘First point,’ he said. ‘Leadership. You are quite right, there has been little of it, because our Spanish doyen has lacked the … ah … sense of purpose, shall we say, to provide it. This has now been recognised. I’ve just come back from a meeting of the corps diplomatique and I have been elected to take over the direction of the defence.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘Not exactly a general, don’t you know, but, as I told you, I did serve in the British army years ago and actually fought in a couple of campaigns in Africa. Nothing like your experience, my dear fellow, but in the land of the blind and all that, you know …’

‘Good. I’m delighted to hear it, sir.’

‘Secondly,’ he waved a languid hand to his desk, ‘I am just in the middle of setting up a system of committees to delegate authority. I have already appointed a fortifications committee, under a feller called
Gamewell. A missionary, of course, but he used to be an engineer and I’ve got faith in him. These missionaries are the most resourceful people. We have appointed as military commander, Captain von Thomann, the captain of the Austrian cruiser
Zenta
, who is here on holiday, poor chap,’ he gave a wan and rather apologetic smile. ‘We’re diplomats, you see, and we have to appoint on seniority. Thomann is the senior officer here, so it had to be him. But he will report to me.

‘As for resources, I have drawn up here what we have. Our total strength of trained fighting men is twenty officers and three hundred and eighty-nine men, split into eight nationalities. This is the breakdown. Here, take a look.’ He thrust a piece of paper towards Fonthill, who read:

‘Very much a mixed bag, I fear,’ said the minister, ‘but beggars can’t be choosers, what?’

Simon frowned. ‘Quite so, sir. What about civilians? Can’t we mobilise the fit men?’

‘Indeed. I have already made them fall in, so to speak. There are two categories. The first is composed of ex-soldiers and sailors who
between them have quite a bit of experience of war. There are
seventy-five
of these chaps, of whom thirty-two are Japanese. The second,’ his wry smile returned, ‘are rather colourful. There are fifty of ’em and they are mainly British students at the university. I call ’em “The Carving-Knife Brigade”, because they lash these … ah … culinary objects to whatever weapons they’ve got: old rifles, shotguns, one elephant gun and so on. But they’re rarin’ to go, although,’ his faint smile broadened into a grin, ‘their experience of battle is confined to one chap who once saw the trooping of the colour in St James’s Park, London. As Wellington said of his troops, “I don’t know what they will do to the enemy, but they frighten me to death.”’

Then the grin faded on the tall man’s face. ‘Trouble with this business of commanding the defence,’ he went on, ‘is that I have to observe the niceties of corps diplomatique communications. I don’t exactly give orders. I must send polite little notes to the other heads of legations, requesting certain courses of action – usually written in my best French.’

Fonthill took another sip of port and suppressed a smile. ‘What about ammunition – and do we have any artillery?’

‘Very little, I fear. We have four light pieces, the best of which appears to be an Italian one-pounder, for which we have … let me see …’ he replaced his spectacles and peered at another piece of paper ‘… one hundred and twenty shells. Hopefully it should be enough. Then the Americans have a Colt heavy machine gun with twenty-five thousand rounds, the Austrians have their Maxim and we have a five-barrelled Nordenfelt, which is almost as old as me and incapable of firing more than five rounds before jamming.’

‘What about other ammo? Didn’t the men who marched in from Tientsin bring reserves?’

‘Not enough, I fear. The Japanese brought only one hundred rounds for each man and the rest only three hundred. Trouble is, since every contingent uses a different type of rifle, we can’t create a common reserve of ammunition.’

MacDonald rose from his chair with the bottle of port and refilled Fonthill’s glass, then his own. ‘However,’ he went on, ‘there is
good
news. The most important thing is that I have nine more of these bottles left.’ He smiled at his joke. ‘We do have reasonable supplies of food and water. I have ascertained that we should be able to feed some three thousand people within the compounds for quite some time. There are four wells of sweet water within the British compound alone, and one shop has provided nearly two hundred tons of wheat, rice and maize and, because the spring race meeting has only just been held, we have more than one hundred and fifty ponies and a few mules in the stables to provide meat, with fodder to feed them for some weeks yet.’

He leant across the table. ‘I would have liked to have put you in charge of the defences, Fonthill,’ he said. ‘But I must observe the damned niceties. However, I would like you to be free to approach me at any time and bring to my attention matters that concern you. As, indeed, you have already done.’

‘Thank you, sir. I shall take advantage of that, when I see fit.’

‘Good. Now, I have prepared a map of the Quarter, with our new line of defences marked. Come here and show me where you think we are weakest.’

Fonthill rose and stood by the minister’s side and looked over his shoulder. MacDonald had marked the new perimeter that had been created by Simon and Captain Strouts. It showed a reduction
of the enclave strongly on the west and eastern boundaries, where new defences had been erected along winding streets where rows of Chinese houses had been demolished to give a good field of fire, and across open spaces, particularly to the west, looking across the Imperial Carriage Park and the old Mongol Market. To the north it used fairly substantial walls and to the north-east it enclosed an open space called the Wang Fu, a traditional park. The south was dominated by the huge Tartar City Wall, some forty feet wide. Here, faced by lack of resources, Fonthill and Strouts had been forced to erect barricades across the top of the wall to enclose just the length of it which looked down on the American Legation.

Simon jabbed his finger onto the map. ‘It is here, in the south, along the Tartar Wall,’ he said, ‘that we are weak. Those barricades must be held and, of course, they are exposed. The second point is here, to the north, where we are forced to stretch out to enclose the Wang Fu. We may have to retreat inwards here, if we are pressed hard.’

‘Hmm,’ said MacDonald. ‘What about the canal?’ This ran directly from north to south through the centre of the legations. The defences here looped southwards on each side of it from the north, with a small bridge over it, halfway down, defended. At its egress from the Quarter at the south, the canal ran under the Tartar Wall, at the very point where the barricaded ‘European section’ formed a bridge over it.

‘Should be safe enough,’ said Fonthill. ‘The sides of the canal are steep and can be defended easily enough and we should be able to fire down from the two bridges if the Chinese try to enter from either north or south.’

‘Good. I shall bear in mind what you have said.’

Fonthill moved away from the map. He was tired from his exertions during the day and the port, although welcome enough, was beginning to make his head throb. In addition, however, he was becoming a little impatient of the amateurish nature of the plans he was hearing for the defence of the Quarter. ‘Polite notes in French’ indeed! He ran his hand over his face, mixing white dust with perspiration, so that he looked clown-like.

‘Do you have a reserve, sir?’ he demanded.

‘Reserve? What do you mean?’

‘Well.’ Simon exhaled in an exasperated sigh. ‘There are clear weak points in the ring of defences. If one of these starts to crumble, you will need to speed reinforcements to it to prevent a breakthrough by the Chinese. How will you do this?’

Sir Claude’s eyes seemed to grow more bulbous as he stared at Fonthill in silence for a moment. ‘Each legation,’ he said eventually, ‘has the responsibility for protecting the area of the perimeter near to it. Given the circumstances you mention, I would ask the nearest commander to move troops along to defend the point of pressure.’

Fonthill nodded. ‘So weakening the area from which the troops have been sent. No. It won’t work. You need, Sir Claude, a small reserve of trusted troops that you can rush to the threatened points to avert the danger. Can you create such a reserve?’

The tall man put a hand to his chin. ‘I see your point. As you know, we are stretched very thinly as it is. But let me see …’ He thought for a moment. ‘Look. I think Strouts could spare twenty-five of his marines from here to form such a body. I shall instruct him accordingly … and,’ he gave a half-smile, ‘I shan’t have to write to
him in French. Now, look here, Fonthill. Would you stay here in the Legation with your experienced chap, what d’yer call him, 325, is it?’

‘352, sir.’

‘Ah yes. Not far out. Yes, stay here to command this reserve and take it wherever it is needed. Will you do that?’

‘Of course, sir. Honoured to do so.’

‘Good man. Now. Another glass?’

‘No thank you, sir. I must get back to see how my wife is faring.’

‘Of course. Give her my regards.’

The next day, however, Sir Claude’s system had its first test and failed it. After an uneasy night during which the Boxers had kept up an incessant, if inaccurate, fire upon the defenders – either the Chinese army had joined them or issued them with firearms – Captain von Thomann, the commander of the military forces within the Quarter, received a report that the American Legation, an important bastion in the southern defences, had been abandoned. Without attempting to confirm the report, he ordered all the defenders on the eastern side of the compound to leave their posts and fall back on the British Legation. Immediately, the Americans, still manning their posts on the Tartar Wall, joined in the retreat and took the Russians in the adjoining sector with them.