Show notes
Last time we spoke about the darkest days of the siege of the foreign legation quarters in Beijing. The Hanlin Academy was burnt down taking with it irreplaceable books. The Fu Palace and French Legation were falling to pieces. Colonel Shiba and his men fought for weeks without changing their closes or sleeping more than 3-4 hours. Countless friends and colleagues were dead or wounded, funerals were becoming a daily event. Ammunition was running low, men were running low, medical supplies were running low, everything was running low. Suddenly some messages began to trickle in allegedly from Prince Qing. The Ministers were weary to trust them, but gradually pushed Prince Qing to show the Qing's good faith by establishing a truce. It seemed the darkest hours were just before the dawn as Prince Qing established a truce on July 17th, and now all wondered, what was next? #65 The Boxer Rebellion part 5: The Battle for Tientsin Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The July 17th truce came at a perfect time, the defenders were exhausted. Food had become so scarce, they had begun sending raiding parties to the Mongol Market, but for most the regular diet consisted of horse, pony, mule meat and rice. Random note, I am from Quebec and we eat horse meat here, typically for tartar, not all the time, but if you go to the grocery store 9/10 its there, apparently this is pretty weird for everyone else in North America, I dunno, a bit on the dry side as meat goes. One thing that was easy to come by was champagne and wine, there was a enormous supply of it in the legation buildings. As Lenox Simpson put it "had it not been for the Monopole, of which there are great stores in the hotel and the club—a thousand cases in all . . . I should have collapsed." There was a enormous concern for the Chinese Christians in the Fu Palace who were constantly attacked and very isolated. Lenox Simpson investigated them and wrote this "The feeding of our native Christians, an army of nearly two thousand, is still progressing, but babies are dying rapidly, and nothing further can be done. There is only just so much rice, and the men who are doing the heavy coolie work on the fortifications must be fed better than the rest, or else no food at all would be needed. . . . The native children, with hunger gnawing savagely at their stomachs, wander about stripping the trees of their leaves.They had terrible water-swollen stomachs and "pitiful sticks of legs. To the babies we give all the scraps of food we can gather up after our own rough food is eaten, and to see the little disappointed faces when there is nothing is sadder than to watch the wounded being carried in. . . . Thus enclosed in our brickbound lines, each of us is spinning out his fate. The Europeans still have as much food as they need; the Chinese are half starving." The CHristian Chinese laborers complained about working for the British legation telling supervisors "the work at the British legation is crushing and they don't feed you enough. And if you do not carry out their orders to the letter, they flog you. . . . Therefore, we don't want to go there." The Chinese CHristian laborers preferred working for the non-Christian Japanese and Colonel Shiba even raised a force of Christian Chinese volunteers as riflemen who he trained personally. There were also incidents of Chinese Christian girls being sexually assaulted, particularly by Russian guards whose barricades were close to their girls lodgings. A written notice was erected forbidding anyone to approach the girls lodgings prompting the Russian commander Baron von Rahen to quote "Take off his cap, and assuming a very polite air of doubt and perplexity, he inquired of the lady missionary committee which oversees the welfare of these girls: 'Pardon, mes dames,' he said purposely in French, 'cette affiche est-ce seulement pour les civils ou aussi pour les militaires?'"—"Excuse me, ladies, does this apply only to civilians or also to the military?" Sexual assault was not the only thing going on, apparently the British legation gardens saw people come together each night to make romance. Over in Taku forces were coming over to help lift the siege of Tientsin. Men of the US 9th infantry came over from the Philippines. Now that the situation looked more land based than naval, Vice Admiral Seymour was sent back to his squadron on July 11th, leaving Brigadier General Dorward in command of British forces, but there was no supreme allied commander. There were tremendous delays as each nations officers argued who should lead and finally it was agreed the Qing held part of Tientsin had to be taken before any talks of marching upon Beijing. A plan was formed to attack the Qing held part of the city beginning on July 13th. They were widely outnumbered, around 6900 to a Qing force of around 30,000, half of which were Boxers. There were 2500 Russians, 2000 Japanese, 900 Americans, 800 British and 600 French. They would be facing the formidable walls of Tientsin, which were 20 feet high and 16 feet thick. Within the city and nearby forts were around 12,000 Qing soldiers well armed with artillery, machine guns and modern rifles. The French, Americans, British and Japanese were to advance upon the south gate in three columns while the Germans and Russians circled around to hit the east gate. The approach was a flat marshy plain, intersected by canals and lagoons, by no means ideal. Herbert Hoover knew the land quite well and volunteered to guide forces and had this to write of his experience "We came under sharp fire from the Chinese located on its old walls. We were out in the open plains with little cover except Chinese graves. I was completely scared, especially when some of the Marines next to me were hit. I was unarmed and I could scarcely make my feet move forward. I asked the officer I was with for a rifle and at once I experienced a curious psychological change for I was no longer scared, although I never fired a shot. I can recommend that men carry weapons when they go into battle—it is a great comfort." Hoover described how the attack was badly coordinated, riddled with miscommunication and ill tempered men. The main force was pinned down in front of the south gate taking fire from the city walls. The allied forces were huddled face down in mud with the American troops standing out like sorethumbs wearing their dark blue uniforms. The Qing wielding Winchesters, Mannlichers and Mausers were exacting terrible casualties upon them. Lt Harry Rotherham of the Royal Welch Fusiliers recalled "the whole of the city wall was lined with Chinese firing through loop-holes and they just fired all day as hard as they could. They also attacked our left flank and we were told off to keep them back, so we were under fire all day from the front and the left flank as well. I never want anything quite so warm again." Captain David Beatty noted the British forces took a entirely exposed position while the 9th US infantry were extremely exposed to Qing sharpshooters. Their commander, Colonel Emerson Liscum was fatally shot as he was trying to grab the regimental flags from a standard bearer who was falling. His dying words were "keep up the fire, men!" Beatty led a company of British to rush over to help the Americans and gradually they pulled back as it got dark. They had no news on how the Russians were doing with the east gate. It was to be the Japanese who turned failure into success. General Fukushima Yasumasa who had fought the Chinese during the first sino-Japanese war sent word to some of the other commanders that Qing forces would fight to the death if they were trapped, but if you left an escape route, like two gates open, they would retreat. At 3am the Japanese blew up the south gate, in a scene I can only describe as the one Uruk-hai in the film the Lord of the Rings the Two Towers. The Japanese had been trying to light fuses to explode bombs, but the Qing kept stopping them so one Japanese soldier ran with a short fuse to blow up the gate and was killed by the explosion. He would have made Saruman proud. As told to us by Herbert Hirschinger of the US Marines "The Japanese had been trying to accomplish it for some time, but the Chinks would cut the fuse. In the end a Japanese officer volunteered to light a short fuse. The gate was blown in . . . but the officer went up with the gate. This only goes to show the mettle of which the little fellows are made." After the breach was made, the Japanese stormed into the city followed by the second battalion, the Royal Welch Fusiliers and Beatty's men. A bit later that morning the Russians charged the esat gate on July 9th led by General Anatoly Stessel, General Nie Shicheng personally led a counterattack to try and stop them. An allied artillery shell exploded nearby him, showering him with shrapnel and fatally wounding him. As the Russians broke through the east gate prompting the Qing soldiers to withdraw from the city. French doctor Matignon was irritated to see that although the Japanese did the lionshare of work in the southern sector, the Union Jack was flying side by side with the Rising Sun over the south gate. In his words "trois ou quatre soldats anglais . . . flegmatiquement, fument leur pipe"—"three or four English soldiers . . . calmly smoking their pipes." Sounds like Merry and Pippin after Isengarde fell, what is with the LOTR references? Countless Boxers and Qing soldiers slipped away, leaving little fighting over the city. The civilians bore the brunt of what became an orgy of looting and murder. A Chinese eyewitness had this to say "People rushed about in all directions in dread of what was to come next. When someone shouted that the North gate was open and that it was possible to leave by it, the whole city converged on the North Gate. In an instant the press of the crowd was such that one couldn't move.... The foreigners and Christians . . . fired repeatedly on it [the crowd], each volley resulting in the deaths of several tens of people.... The greater the numbers of people killed, the greater became the numbers of those fighting to escape. . . . Dead from bullets, dead from artillery shells, dead from swords, dead from trampling. It was horrible. . . . The corpses were piled several feet high. After three days of cleaning up, following the foreigners' entry into the city, the streets still were not clean." The photographer James Ricalton stormed into the city as well to record what he say. "a holocaust of human life, lines of homeless, weeping human beings—their homes in ashes, without food, friendless, and, in many cases, their kindred left charred in the ruins of homes. Doors were smashed; shops were entered and plundered; men and women were fleeing, carrying their precious heirlooms—their jewels, their silks, their embroidery, their money. These much-prized valuables were snatched from them, and they dared not protest." American Marine Harold Kinman recalled "the streets wet and slippery with blood" while a British sailor described "brains strewn over the streets and dead Chinese pinned to the walls by Japanese swords and bayonets". Many of the accounts place atrocities upon the Russians and Japanese. But soldiers from each nation took part in the orgy and there are many photographs for those with the stomachs to google them, On July 15th, in an attempt to stop the looting, the British put up pickets with orders to not allow anyone to get past except for the French whose authorities had not agreed to suppress looting, haha. So as a result many British just pretended to be French, apparently doing bad french singing impressions to get by and spoke terrible French phrases to another. Notably British civilians took part in this as they knew which houses and shops had the best goods. It was to be the bloodiest battle for the 8 nation alliance during the Boxer rebellion. 250 allied soldiers had died with 500 wounded. Of this the Japanese paid the most with 320 casualties, the Russians and Germans around 140, the Americans 25 dead, 98 wounded, the British 17 dead, 87 wounded and the French 13 dead with 50 wounded. There was no official calculation of the losses for the Boxers and Qing forces, but it was expected to be very heavy. I think for you long time listeners you can see a distinct difference now from our Opium Wars days to the turn of the 20th century. Warfare had changed considerably, casualties were much higher now, something that would be proved to a horrifying extent during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, or as many like to call it World War Zero. Tientsin was now being secured as a launching point for the future advance upon Beijing. Back over in Beijing, the foreign community found it surreal after the July 17th truce was announced. The sudden silence of guns was more disconcerting than comforting, some even found it difficult to sleep. The Qing war banners were brought down and white flags were hoisted all around in their place. Countless Qing soldiers began peering over walls and barricades to look at the legations. Likewise the defenders looked out into the desolate landscape around them, corpses were everywhere, dogs were picking at them. As everyone's confidence built up some Qing soldiers went over to the defenders positions and began fraternizing with the foreigners. Many began to talk to the foreigners, giving them news the Taku Forts and Tientsin had fallen to the allied nations and that General Dong Fuxiangs Kansu army and many Boxers were now performing offensives between Tientsin and Beijing. Many of the Qing troops who came forward explained they did not want to be part of the battle, but were being were being coerced into it. The foreigners were beginning to suspect the truce had been made because of the Qing losses at the Taku forts and Tientsin, perhaps a relief force was already on its way. Within the Qing court, the loss at Tientsin had proved the progressive and moderates right that joining the Boxers was a doomed cause. This was a view shared by most of the governors and viceroys in the southern and eastern provinces who were actively holding their troops back, not daring to attack foreigners. Going back to early June when edicts were being made declaring war, most viceroys and governors ignored it and refused to send troops. In fact, the foreign community had no idea, but their most valuable allies were amongst the Qing high command. The Manchu General Ronglu, whom Empress Dowager Cixi appointed as Imperial Commissioner in command of the Wuwei Corps consisting of the 5 most modern armies led by Nie Shicheng, Dong Fuxiang, Song Qing, Yuan Shikai and Ronglu himself was helping the foreigners! When the Boxer rebellion broke out, Prince Duan was pressuring Dong Fuxiang and his Kansu Army to seize the foreign legations. It was Ronglu who behind the scenes was sand bagging the entire situation. At first he tried to countermand orders to Dong Fuxiang, trying to stop him from attacking the foreign legations, but that g…
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