In spite of the way they have been treated up to the 1st Of July, the French and Austrians still sullenly cling to the ruins of the French barricades.  But on the 1st the Chinese, elated at their success in capturing the eastern half of the French Legation, pushed their barricades nearer and nearer, and only one hundred yards behind their advanced lines they brought two guns into action, firing segment and shrapnel alternately.  Under this devastating bombardment, almost a bout portant, as the French say, the last line of French trenches and their main-gate blockhouse became untenable.  Pieces of shell tore through everything; men were wounded more and more quickly, and in the most sheltered part a French volunteer, Wagner, had his entire face blown off him, dying a horrible death.  The French commander, disheartened by the treatment he had received from the commander-in-chief, and convinced that all his men would be blown to pieces if they remained where they were, ordered his bugler to sound the retire.  The clarion’s notes rose shrilly above this storm of fire, and dragging their dead with them, the Franco-American survivors retreated into the fortified line behind them—­the Peking hotel.  Here they manned the windows and barricades of the intrepid Swiss’ hostelry, which had already been heavily damaged by the Chinese guns.  A determination was arrived at not to be driven out of this hotel until the last man had been killed; it was necessary at all costs to prevent the enemy from breaking in so far.  More volunteers were brought to reinforce this line, and the sinking spirits of the French were restored; for within half an hour of their retreat the bugler had sounded the advance again, and with a rush the abandoned positions were reoccupied and the Chinese driven back.  Then the guns stopped their cannonade, and a breathing space was given which was sufficient to repair some of the damage done.

While these stirring events had been following each other in quick succession down on level ground, the grim Tartar Wall has been at once our salvation and destroyer of men.  The Germans have been having a terrible time, and although they have borne themselves with soldiery composure, they have been at last driven clean down with heart-breaking losses.  The guns, which the Chinese had been firing from the great Ha-ta Gate half a mile off, were advanced during the night of the 30th June to within a hundred yards of the imperfect German defences, and on the 1st of July four marines were killed and six wounded out of a post of fifteen men with nerve-shaking rapidity.  The Chinese soldiers, then swarming forward under the Tartar Wall itself, threatened the little blockhouse at the base, which kept up connection with the Club and the German Legation line of barricades, and soon there was no help for it, the eastern Tartar Wall posts had to be abandoned.  With the German retirement the Americans abandoned their positions facing west and rushed down