In the Jaws of the Dragon

The miracle of Peking, 1900, when the world fought for the Chinese church

         General Dong Fuxiang knelt before the Dowager Empress Cixi, his thick beard damp with sweat despite the cool incense-sweet air of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. The walls, adorned with imperial dragons and silk tapestries, loomed like silent judges.

         Cixi sat unmoving on her throne, dressed in violet and vermilion silks, the emblems of the season, larkspur and water lilies, embroidered in near-mystical detail across her robe. She was old Qing to the bone: refined, calculating, and as ruthless as any emperor. The aging Empress was still the true heart of the dynasty, even if the world outside the Forbidden City had begun to unravel.

         Dong, the proud, hawkish Han General of Muslims from Gansu, had seen more war than most men survived. His Wuwei Corps were not like the rest of the Qing military. Hardened cavalrymen from China’s northwest, many of them Hui Muslims, unlike Dong himself, who was Han Chinese to the core. They fought not out of obligation but out of fierce loyalty to the throne and tradition. In the late 19th century, it was Dong’s cavalry that had bloodied the Muslim revolutionaries of the Dungan. Now, in his eyes, a new rebellion festered, but one disguised in European suits and Christian robes.

         “Your Majesty,” he said, bowing deeply, “the Boxers press their righteous fury upon the foreign devils. My Wuwei riders stand with them. The missionaries fall, their churches burn, and the Legation Quarter is under siege.”

         Cixi’s voice came soft and regal. “How did this begin?”

         Dong’s brow tightened. “My brother Li Lai Chung rides with the Boxers. For years they have warned of foreign corruption. When the Kaiser seized Jiaozhou, we did nothing. Then Baron von Ketteler ordered the death of a Boxer boy and the flame took hold. Now they rise in the tens of thousands. Just days ago, the Baron tried to force his way here. He was struck down in the streets of our capital.”

         A smile played across Cixi’s lips, delicate as a knife's edge.

         “This is not the Taiping madness,” she mused, “no delusional ‘Brother of Christ’ tearing at the mandate of Heaven and leading tens of millions into the prison of the earth. These Boxers are patriots. The foreign devils have brought opium, carved our country into concessions. The Japanese humiliated us in war. The time to resist is now. My son’s empire is dying by a thousand treaties.”

         Dong seized the moment. “The countryside rises. The missionaries have fled. The German Krupp guns could breach the Legation walls in a day. Let us unleash General Ronglu’s artillery and finish this.”

         But Cixi’s eyes grew colder.

         “I did not order the death of the diplomats,” she warned. “To kill them is not civilized.”

         Dong’s tone sharpened. “Their blood is demanded. We must show the world that China is no colony, not some African jungle to be partitioned.”

         The Empress leaned forward, her voice as soft as silk and twice as sharp.

         “Be careful, Generalissimo. Your tail grows too heavy to wag. The dragon does not dance for the barking of dogs.”

         General Ronglu, Commander of the Imperial Army and Cixi’s trusted ally, was not a man easily swayed by the passions of the crowd. Unlike Dong, he had embraced Western tactics, reorganized units into modern brigades, and adopted European military discipline. His soldiers wore khaki tunics and drilled with Mauser rifles, a contrast to the Boxers' red sashes and mystical charms. Moreover, he had a strong appreciation of the capability of the Western forces. He knew that his men were not ready to face a combined invasion by the imperial powers.

         To Ronglu, the Boxers were not patriots but peasant fanatics, wielding rusty blades and delusions. Their chants of “Support the Qing, destroy the foreigner!” were dangerous not for their ideology, but for their incompetence. He predicted they would be crushed by the Eight-Nation Alliance and that China would suffer another humiliation.

         Though he commanded tens of thousands and had at his disposal German-built Krupp artillery, Ronglu held back.

         Why?

         Because he understood the stakes. A full assault on the Legations — especially one involving European diplomats would trigger total war. He feared not only defeat, but the complete destruction of the Qing dynasty.

         His restraint, frustrating to Dong and the Boxers, was in fact a quiet act of preservation. By not leveling the compound, he bought time. It was perhaps the only reason the Legation defenders survived.

         Colonel Claude MacDonald, Scottish-born and veteran of various British colonial wars, had seen chaos before. But never like this. The commander of the British Legation, he bore the weight of more than 900 Europeans and 2,800 Chinese Christian converts on his shoulders.

         His coat was smoke-streaked, his revolver worn, his face sleepless. He’d turned the British Legation into a fortress: sandbags, trenches, and walls of furniture and earth. What began as a diplomatic outpost was now a battlefield.

         At his side stood his deputy, Herbert G. Squiers, the American diplomat who had taken command roles far beyond protocol. And then there was Major Shiba Gorō, a samurai descendant and representative of the Meiji military mission. Short, stoic, and wounded in the thigh, Shiba inspired fierce respect. With just 24 Japanese soldiers, he guarded the Fu Mansion, home to thousands of Chinese Christians, often ignored by Protestant missions prioritizing their own flocks.

         “The Catholics in the Fu suffer the worst,” Shiba said quietly. “We share our rice. My men are all wounded, but we fight.”

         Squiers gave the briefing. “The Austrians and Italians have collapsed into our sector. The Tartar Wall is critical; Myers and my Americans hold it. We’ve built a makeshift cannon. They call it ‘Betsy.’ It’s patched together from every nation’s scrap metal, so maybe a better name for it would be The International.”

         MacDonald nodded. “Food?”

         “We have enough horse meat for some months. Rice is rationed. The canal water is foul, must be boiled. But morale holds. They still sing hymns at night.”

         Over 160,000 Qing soldiers surrounded them. Yet there was no mass assault.

         “Why don’t they finish us?” Squiers asked.

         MacDonald exhaled. “Because someone in the Imperial Court still has a brain.”

         Captain John T. Myers crouched low in the dark, the rain soaking his uniform. Just a few feet away, the enemy's new barricade on the Tartar Wall threatened to give them clean fire into the heart of the Legations. If they didn’t act now, they’d lose everything.

         At 2:00 a.m., Myers led his international force of 56 men: 26 British, 15 Russians, 15 U.S. Marines, in a daring charge through the dark.

         The Qing sentries were caught off guard. In under an hour, Myers' men had pushed the enemy back over 100 yards, clearing the key part of the wall that would have given the enemy a clear field of fire over the legation. Myers himself was wounded, but the mission succeeded.

         As dawn broke, cheers rose across the Legations. The Chinese Christians sang hymns. The missionaries cried with joy.

         Hope, at last, had a foothold.

         For 55 days, the defenders held out. Disease festered. Ammunition dwindled. Still, they endured.

         Then, in August 1900, columns of the Eight-Nation Alliance broke through the outer gates of Peking.

         The Boxers fled, many butchered in reprisal. The Legations stood, barely.

         Colonel Claude MacDonald stood on the rubble of his command post, the Union Jack fluttering limply behind him. His men were gaunt, blistered, and half-starved, but they were alive.

         The miracle of Peking was not simply a tale of survival. It was a story of restraint, of Ronglu’s refusal to unleash his artillery, of Shiba’s impossible stand, of the heroic action of Captain Myers, of MacDonald’s unbending will.

         The Dowager Empress, disguised as a Buddhist nun, fled Peking with General Dong as her escort. Her vision of a China reborn in fire had failed.

         And with it, the Qing dynasty began its final descent.

         The Chinese church and foreign legations had endured. But the old China would not.

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NOTES: The collapse of the Qing dynasty came as a result of its inability to adapt to the new realities of a world dominated by Western technology, imperial ambition, the new capitalism, and British naval dominance. The First and Second Opium Wars opened up a way to foreign incursions and land concessions. The Taiping Revolution was initiated by Hong Xiuquan, who, having failed the Chinese Civil Service exams four times, adopted his own version of Christianity, which included him being the brother of Jesus. The rebellion devastated the country, leaving between 30 and 100 million dead and did little to promote the true faith in the country. Defeat by Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War and then the circumstances of the Boxer rebellion and the Eight-Nation Alliance that occupied Peking in response finished the old China once and for all. War reparations imposed on China would cripple not only the Qing dynasty but also its successor - the Republic of China. This punitive package, like the mistake of the Versailles reparations against Germany after WW1, would weaken the Republic's ability to resist both Japanese invasion and the rise of the Communists and their successful revolution. But arguably the whole story of the final collapse of the Qing began with the miracle of Peking.