The World's Navies in the Boxer Rebellion (China 1900)
9781465679352
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
I do not propose to do more than touch lightly on the causes which led up to the great Boxer outbreak in June 1900 A.D., but some misapprehension may be removed, and the reader of this volume may be led to more easily understand the state of affairs which obtained immediately before hostilities broke out, if a short explanation be given. One hears many different opinions as to the reason of the Boxer outbreak, which every one will admit was the most important “casus belli” between the European Powers and China, and which eventually plunged the north of China into a sanguinary war which was waged on both sides with great fierceness. The missionaries, the Dynasty, and the universal hatred of the “foreign debbel” have all come under notice as the possible causes of the trouble, but there is no room to doubt that the last is the real one, and in fact the only one at all supportable. Everything seems to point to the fact that the Empress had long since desired to see the back of the troublesome foreigner, and although she sent her troops for the apparent reason of putting down the Boxers, there can be no doubt that she saw in the new movement a splendid opportunity for “ousting” all Europeans, thereby gaining a new place in the affections of her people, and a new lease of life for the Manchu Dynasty. If this supposition be correct, she played her hand with marvellous cunning. Imperial troops were sent against the rebellious(?) people, and in the middle of the fight that ensued, half of them would change sides, while the other half would amuse themselves by firing heavily into the mob with blank cartridges. One General indeed did attack and defeat the Boxers, but he was sent for to Pekin, and was lucky to only lose his rank. A very common question is “who were the Boxers?” and the answer is almost invariably, “Oh, some society or other which was formed for the expulsion of foreigners.” This may be all right as far as it goes, but they were more than that. At the beginning of June they were about 90 per cent of the male population in the affected provinces, between the ages of fourteen and sixty. They were fanatics of an extraordinary type, and declared that by virtue of certain drills, which they assiduously practised, they were immune from harm at the hands of their enemies. In this belief they were in no wise shaken by their first defeats, for they said that those who fell had not been sufficiently attentive to their ritual, and they exhorted each other to further efforts, lest a like fate should overtake others. It is only half right to say that they were formed for the expulsion of foreigners, for the movement was quite semi-religious, and their doctrine violently anti-Christian in the first place,—ergo, anti-foreign in the second. There is no doubt that considerable numbers of Chinese may be among the long roll of martyrs which China gave for the Christian faith, a short eighteen months ago; and doubtless their only half-human captors would serve up something quite devilishly exquisite by way of torture to those native converts who fell into their hands.
