Affair of Hate

THE SIEGE AT PEKING (273 pp.)--Peter Fleming--Harper ($4).

On the lawn of the British Legation in Peking on the afternoon of June 20, 1900, a sergeant reported to the officer commanding the Royal Light Infantry guarding the legation: "Sir, the firing has commenced." The Chinese empire had begun a last feeble fight against the yang kuei-tzu (foreign devils), who had turned China into one of history's great grab bags. In half a century, seven powers had taken eleven bases in China and split 13 of the 18 provinces into "spheres of influence," a gentlemanly phrase for the control of China's trade and government.

In The Siege at Peking, Peter Fleming, an able journalist (onetime London Times correspondent) turned military historian (Operation Sea Lion--TIME, July 22, 1957), does not dwell overlong on the corrupt, decaying empire of the Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi, who was only too glad to turn the wrath of the masses from herself. Instead, he concentrates on the rise and fall of the hordes of shrieking peasants who called themselves "Fists of Righteous Harmony" ("Boxers," said a missionary, giving the rebellion its name). Against them for eight weeks stood a handful of isolated foreigners, including some of the great names of future history.

Blood & Paper. Assisted covertly at first, then openly by imperial troops, the Boxers attacked along the yo-mile line from Peking to Tientsin. They blooded themselves with wholesale massacres of the missionaries in isolated places, and marched on the cities. In Tientsin a young U.S. mining engineer named Herbert Hoover built stout barricades of wool, silk, sacks of peanuts and whatever other merchandise lay at hand, and the foreigners withstood the assault. The real fight was at Peking, the Imperial City.

In the small (three-quarters of a square mile) compounds housing eleven legations, an international force of 400 from eight countries held off some 25,000 wild besiegers for 55 days. A single determined assault would have smothered the defenders. The foreigners, mostly British, Russians and Americans, had little ammunition; they did have food (mostly pony meat), champagne from the legation cellars, water, and the certain knowledge that defeat meant death by torture. The grim defense showed the Boxers to be paper tigers. Though the peasants screamed, "Sha, sha [Kill, kill]," they left most of the fighting to the Empress' 6,000-man force of Moslem cavalry. As the siege dragged on. the Boxers posted rewards for dead foreigners--50 taels ($35) for a male. 40 for a female, 30 for a child. Only three rewards were collected. Once, when a drunken Russian stumbled out of the compound and was shot, the competition to recover the body was so keen that eleven Chinese were picked off by snipers. Yet for a time it looked as if sheer weight of numbers might win out. and Author Fleming offers some interesting notes on the curious ways of people who expect to die--but hope to do so as ladies and gentlemen. In 110DEG heat, the Italian minister dressed for dinner each evening, and the wife of the U.S. minister disclosed that she expected to meet her Maker in her dressing gown "with a pink bow of ribbon at my throat . . ."

Balloons & Barricades. The first relief expedition that set out by rail from Tientsin bogged down when the Boxers burned the bridges. A second was mounted with agonizing slowness and comic-opera disorganization. The 20.ooo-man force was a command nightmare, as seven nations (Japan. Britain, Russia. France, Italy, Austria, the U.S.) raced for glory. Nevertheless, the melee helped train such young military men as U.S. Marine Lieut. Smedley Butler, and British Naval Officers David Beatty and John Jellicoe. successively commanders in chief of the British fleet in World War I.

On Aug. 14 the first rescuers penetrated into Peking. The Boxers melted away, and next day the main force followed. The siege cost the lives of 66 foreigners and six babies. The rest were saved largely by the incompetence of the Chinese besiegers and the bravery of 2,000 Chinese Christian converts, who dug ditches and erected barricades.

A Hero's Diary. Author Fleming gives high marks for fighting ability to the Japanese, low to the French, except for one heroic action at Peitang Cathedral two miles north of the besieged legations. There, a thin line of 43 French and Italian bluejackets commanded by French Naval Lieutenant Paul Henry. 23. saved 3,400 refugees from death for eight weeks. Henry, the one authentic hero of the entire rebellion, died in the fighting, but left behind a fighting man's epitaph. Fleming recites the simple facts of his day-to-day log: "July 9: cartridges fired, 54; remaining 7357. July 10: cartridges fired, 124; remaining, 7233." During one attack, Lieut. Henry's men fired 58 rounds --and counted 47 Chinese casualties.

The woman who started it all, the Empress Tzu Hsi. escaped by cutting her long, lacquered nails and fleeing Peking disguised as a peasant. But soon the allies wanted her back to administer the last years of the wretched empire. In 1901, she returned to Peking, bowed to applauding foreigners, and went back to the Forbidden City. She ruled China for seven more years until her death in 1908, an evil copy of Britain's Queen Victoria, whom she much admired.

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