The Empress and Mrs. Conger: The Uncommon Friendship of Two Women and Two Worlds by Grant Hayter-Menzies

Author:Grant Hayter-Menzies [Hayter-Menzies, Grant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, China, Asia, biography
ISBN: 9789888083008
Google: _syDsa8rGsYC
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Published: 2011-01-01T23:14:09.403952+00:00

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Starting on July 18 and for a few days after, a “truce” of sorts, broken by occasional sniper fire, settled over the legation. In the middle of this strange silence came more reason for the besieged to hope for rescue.

The Japanese minister, Baron Nishi, had spirited two messengers out of the legation to bring back whatever news they could from Tianjin. They now returned with the information that the Dagu Forts had fallen to the allied forces on July 14, and most importantly, that foreign troops were to start for Beijing on July 20, pending the arrival of additional men. This was sensational and it was also bittersweet to digest, because everyone had assumed Seymour was already on his way (their hopes of a July 4 arrival having already been dashed). What they did not know was that the “news” of their massacre, trumpeted by the world’s press without proof, had had the effect not of hastening the rescue but of delaying it.

That was the biggest problem of the many faced that summer in northern China: without a functioning telegraph, nobody had any information. The residents of the legations did not know what was happening in Tianjin or in the palace; the empress dowager did not know what was happening in the legations or in Tianjin; and the would-be rescuer, Admiral Seymour, did not know what was happening in the legation, the palace, or in the less than a hundred miles of ground between Tianjin and Beijing. The residents of the legations, having had one ray of hope that Seymour was on his way, clung to it long after there was any good reason to do so, while Cixi and the conservatives who controlled her could only assume that the troops rumored to be coming to rescue the residents of the legations also intended to occupy and partition China, as foreigners had shown every indication of wishing to do for the past fifty years. And as if he had had a page of Chinese characters put in front of him to decode, Seymour completely misread the spare, dusty Plain of Zhili. Some of his blunders were unavoidable, but others were the direct result of poor planning and the sort of nineteenth-century thinking that was to die its final death in World War I. Ultimately, the only thing everyone had in common was that they did not know anything and had to guess everything.

The trouble began with trains. On June 10, Seymour took five of them, loaded with 2,100 men and equipment to repair the rails reported to have been damaged by the Boxers. He and the other officers also took their dress uniforms. It is easy to picture the scenario they had in mind: a few hours on the train to Beijing, maybe some skirmishing with the amateur militia the Boxers were believed to be, rescue of the residents of the legations, and a celebration warranting gold buttons and feathers. It did not quite turn out that way.

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