In Shantung he was succeeded by Yuen Shikai, a statesmanlike official, who soon compelled the Boxers to seek another arena for their operations.  Instead of creeping back to their original hiding-place they crossed the boundary and directed their march toward Peking,—­on the way not merely laying waste the villages of native Christians, but tearing up the railway and killing foreigners indiscriminately.  They had made a convert of Prince Tuan, father of the heir apparent.  He it was who encouraged their advance, believing that he might make use of them to help his son to the throne.  Their numbers were swelled by multitudes who fancied that they would suffer irreparable personal loss through the introduction of railways and modern labor-saving machinery; and China can charge the losses of the last war to those misguided crowds.

Fortunately several companies of marines, amounting to four hundred and fifty men, arrived in Peking the day before the destruction of the track.  The legations were threatened, churches were burnt down, native Christians put to death, and fires set to numerous shops simply because they contained foreign goods.  Then it was that the foreign admirals captured the forts, in order to bring relief to our foreign community.  That step the Chinese Foreign Office pronounced an act of war, and ordered the legations and all other foreigners to quit the capital.  The ministers remonstrated, knowing that on the way we could not escape being butchered by Boxers.  On the 20th of June, the German Minister was killed on his way to the Foreign Office.  The legations and other foreigners at once took refuge in the British legation, previously agreed on as the best place to make a defence.  Professor James was killed while crossing a bridge near the legation.  That night we were fired on from all sides, and for eight weeks we were exposed to a daily fusillade from an enemy that counted more on reducing us by starvation than on carrying our defences by storm.

About midnight on August 13, we heard firing at the gates of the city, and knew that our deliverers were near.  The next day, scaling the walls or battering down the gates, they forced their way into the city and effected our rescue.  The day following, the Roman Catholic Cathedral was relieved,—­the defence of which forms the brightest page in the history of the siege, and in the afternoon we held a solemn service of thanksgiving.  The palaces were found vacant, the Empress Dowager having fled with her entire court.  She was the same Empress who had fled from the British and French forty years before.

She was not pursued, because Prince Ching came forward to meet the foreign ministers, and he and Li Hung Chang were appointed to arrange terms of peace.  Li was Viceroy at Canton.  Had he been in his old viceroyalty at Tientsin, this Boxer war could not have occurred.  That its fury was limited to the northern belt of provinces was owing to the wisdom of Chang[5] and Liu, the great satraps of Central China who engaged to keep their provinces in order, if not attacked by foreigners.