The War of the Dragon Lady

by John Wilcox

  ‘Of course, sir. Honoured to do so.’

  ‘Good man. Now. Another glass?’

  ‘No thank you, sir. I must get back to see how my wife is faring.’

  ‘Of course. Give her my regards.’

  The next day, however, Sir Claude’s system had its first test and failed it. After an uneasy night during which the Boxers had kept up an incessant, if inaccurate, fire upon the defenders – either the Chinese army had joined them or issued them with firearms – Captain von Thomann, the commander of the military forces within the Quarter, received a report that the American Legation, an important bastion in the southern defences, had been abandoned. Without attempting to confirm the report, he ordered all the defenders on the eastern side of the compound to leave their posts and fall back on the British Legation. Immediately, the Americans, still manning their posts on the Tartar Wall, joined in the retreat and took the Russians in the adjoining sector with them.

  All became chaos within the British Legation, where Sir Claude, realising that great stretches of the defences were unattended, immediately ordered the men to return to their posts. They did so with alacrity and, for some strange reason, the Chinese did not take advantage of the situation, contenting themselves merely with burning down the Italian Legation and occupying one abandoned barricade.

  ‘They’re as bloody useless as we are,’ observed Jenkins with a sniff.

  There was one beneficial outcome, however. The inexperienced and fallible von Thomann was immediately relieved of his command and Sir Claude MacDonald, once a second lieutenant in the Highland Light Infantry, took direct command of the defending force.

  It soon became clear that, whatever the pretences of the Empress, the Chinese army was now fully engaged in the attack on the Quarter, for two days after the ending of the ultimatum and the beginning of the siege, two nine-pounder Krupp artillery pieces began firing on the American and Russian legations from the burnt-out tower over the Chien Men Gate to the south-west of the Quarter.

  This was a serious development, for the fire was accurately directed – clearly the work of skilled artillerymen – and if it continued and if other guns were brought into play it could bring down the makeshift barricades erected around the perimeter and the defences could be overrun. With only the little Italian cannon available there was no way the defenders could reduce the fire of the Krupp pieces.

  The defences could be strengthened against shellfire, however. Under the direction of Lady MacDonald, assisted by Alice and Mrs Griffith, the grand ladies of the legations – all of whom were now sheltering within the British Legation – were set to making sandbags. There was no hessian available but every fabric that could be found was pressed into service. The result was that the barricades and hastily erected bombproof shelters were buttressed by bags made of fine silks, best curtains and lustrous satins, all in bright and erstwhile fashionable colours, so giving a surreal appearance to these patchwork defences.

  For some reason, the shellfire slackened and fell away completely, but then it was replaced by fierce activity to the north of the British Legation. Here stood a mainly wooden, very old building called the Hanlin Yuan, a place venerated by the Chinese, for it was in essence a library, housing some of the great manuscripts from the past, a veritable treasure house of learning. Although this virtually abutted onto the buildings of the British Legation, the defenders made no attempt to destroy it. The Chinese respect for tradition and for learning, it was felt, would prevent any attempt to use it to burn out the British.

  Not so.

  Fonthill was the first to see a trickle of flame rise from the roof of the Yuan, where its eaves overhung and virtually touched those of the Legation. The wind was blowing from the north, sending sparks and smoke swirling above the Legation’s roof. Simon blew his whistle, so summoning his marines, always on standby, and turned to Alice, with whom he had been sipping coffee.

  ‘Rally the ladies, children and as many of the Chinese coolies as you can,’ he cried. ‘Organise buckets, chamber pots – anything that can carry water – and form a chain from the well to the wall. Tell Sir Claude, but tell him that I said we shouldn’t take soldiers from the defences. That’s what the Chinese will want us to do. Quickly now!’

  She nodded and ran back inside. The marines, with Jenkins, had now fallen in outside the front pavilion and Fonthill led them at a run to where the flames were now leaping from the old wooden roof of the Yuan. As they neared the conflagration, they realised that Boxers and some of the Muslim infantry were firing through the smoke from nearby upper windows, so making it dangerous for firefighters to approach.

  Fonthill called Jenkins. ‘See those snipers,’ he pointed. ‘Take six of the marines onto the roof of the Legation and clear them out of those windows.’

  ‘Very good, bach sir. What are you going to do?’

  ‘We have got to break through and try and prevent the fire from reaching the Legation.’

  When improving the defences, Simon and Strouts had taken the precaution of burrowing a hole through their own wall, leading through to the nearest of the Yuan cloisters but leaving a thin pile of rubble as a temporary closure. With his marines, Fonthill began tearing at this barrier, throwing the bricks behind them. They had soon broken through and Simon directed two marines to stand as guards in the cloister. He heard a rattle of musketry from the roof of the Legation, showing that Jenkins and his men were doing their work, and he scrambled back to meet his wife, her face blackened by smoke, leading a line of boys, coolies and some of the Legation ladies all beginning to pass water along the line in an eclectic variety of receptacles.

  Alice handed him a brimming chamber pot.

  ‘Get back,’ he shouted. ‘Let the coolies take this end. It’s dangerous.’

  ‘Take the damned thing,’ she shouted back. ‘I’m not standing here all day ruining my hair in this smoke. Come along. Here’s another one.’

  Fonthill frowned in annoyance but quickly ordered his marines to extend the line through the gap and into the cloister. There they began throwing the water onto the flames creeping towards them along the shingles of the cloister’s low roof. For almost an hour they toiled, the line stretching some two hundred yards from well to the hole in the wall, the colourful dresses of the ladies interspersed with the dun-coloured tunics of the coolies and the shirts and shorts of the boys. Jenkins and his sharpshooters had done their work to protect the line and they slung their buckets and pots in comparative safety, but all of their efforts would have been in vain against the encroaching flames had not the wind changed. Suddenly, miraculously, it veered from the north to the east, blowing flames, sparks and smoke back towards the Hanlin Yuan itself. With a roar the old building went up in a pyre of flames.

  Fonthill brought back his marines and they walled up the hole again. Then he directed them to douse the western walls of the Legation buildings with water.

  At last, what was left of the Yuan collapsed in a shower of sparks. Simon became aware that Sir Claude was at his shoulder, his buttons sparkling somehow and his moustache still spiked amidst the smoke. ‘Well done, Fonthill,’ he said. ‘Good work. The Legation could have gone up in smoke and then we would all have been finished.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, sir.’ Simon nodded towards where the women, boys and coolies in the line were all slumped to the ground in exhaustion. ‘Thank them. And the wind.’ He looked behind him. ‘At least we’ve got a good field of fire in this direction now.’

  ‘Yes.’ The minister’s face was drawn. ‘I got your message, of course, and you were right. As soon as the blaze started, firing started all around the perimeter. The American and Russian barricades on the Tartar Wall were attacked directly. So this was more than just an attempt to burn us out, it was a diversion to attract men away from our line.’

  ‘Any breakthroughs?’

  ‘No. We held fast all the way around. But it is quite clear that the Dragon Lady is throwing her army into the battle now. Things are hotting up in mo
re ways than one. Where, oh where, is that damned relief column?’

  Fonthill wiped a hand over his blackened face and then held it out to Alice, who now approached him. ‘Have no messages got through, sir?’

  ‘Not a damned thing … oh, forgive me, Mrs Fonthill.’ The minister took her hand and bowed over it, with highland courtesy. ‘Splendid work you did there, me dear. Way beyond the call of duty.’

  Alice frowned. ‘It was not that, Sir Claude. In these conditions the call comes to us all.’ Her frown changed to an ironic smile. ‘So we “feeble women” all play our part. We are all in this together.’

  ‘Quite so, dear lady. Quite so.’

  Alice shot a quick glance to Simon and then said, ‘May I ask you a question, Sir Claude?’

  ‘Of course, my dear.’

  ‘You will know that I have a nephew here, Gerald Griffith, the son of Mrs Griffith?’

  ‘Yes. I believe I have met him.’

  ‘Have you, by any chance, commissioned him to slip outside the Quarter since the siege began, to, perhaps, gather information for you?’

  ‘Good gracious no. That would be putting him in some particular danger, I would have thought.’

  Fonthill intervened. ‘What are you getting at, Alice?’

  She turned a wrinkled and blackened brow towards him. ‘I didn’t like to tell you, Simon, but Gerald has been absenting himself from the Legation almost every day since well before the siege began. At first, I thought he was helping to stand guard at the perimeter walls, as is Chang, but my aunt tells me that is not so and that he has been slipping out of the Quarter for most of the days. She has no idea where he goes and I cannot help wondering what he is doing. Then it occurred to me that, given his fluency with the language and his contacts with the court here, he might be on some mission for Sir Claude. But clearly not.’

  The three exchanged glances. ‘Nothing suspicious at all, I would think,’ said MacDonald, ‘given his parentage.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Simon shook his head slowly. ‘I’m not sure. I think I had better have a word with that young man. Come on, Alice,’ he shook his wife’s hand in his, ‘you had better go and clean up. You look like a coal-black Mammy.’

  She laughed. ‘A literal case of the pot calling the kettle black. Good day, Sir Claude.’

  ‘Good day, Mrs Fonthill.’

  As they walked back, hand in hand, they passed a small man in a large white hat and elegantly suited. He was talking vehemently to one of MacDonald’s aides.

  ‘Who is that?’ enquired Simon.

  ‘That, my dear, is Monsieur Pichon, the French minister. He is universally loathed, because he is continually pessimistic, saying that we shall all be overwhelmed and beheaded. What’s more, he is a coward. All of the ministers have now withdrawn to the British Legation, but most of them spend much of their days with their guards on the perimeter.’ Her lip curled. ‘This one is always here, usually with the women, or he takes a walk pretending to visit what’s left of his legation, where his troops are. But he never arrives there.’

  ‘What a cad!’

  ‘Quite.’ She nodded towards the Frenchman. ‘Now, he’ll be complaining about something, mark my words.’

  Fonthill had no opportunity to talk with Gerald, for the young man did not return that night and the next day saw the fiercest fighting since the siege had begun. Early that morning Simon received an urgent message from Sir Claude: ‘Americans on the Tartar Wall are under strong attack. Please reinforce immediately.’

  His marines paraded at the double and, led by Simon and Jenkins, ran to the southernmost part of the Quarter, where the great Tartar Wall loomed over everything and everyone.

  The road that ran along the top of the wall was forty feet wide, providing enough room for four carriages to ride along it side by side. On the western end of their sector, the Americans had piled upturned carts, splintered bunks, rubble and sandbags to cut off the road from that end, and the Germans had erected a similar barricade some two hundred yards to the east. This had prevented the Chinese from occupying all of the wall, and so from firing down on everyone in the southern end of the Quarter, and also from commanding the southern bridge over the canal. But, as Simon had predicted, it was one of the weak points in the defences and it was vital that it should be held.

  Fonthill and his marines, the latter wearing their wide-brimmed straw hats so redolent of the seaside, arrived just as the Americans were involved in fierce hand-to-hand fighting on the barricade itself.

  ‘Fix bayonets,’ he yelled. ‘Climb the barricade and pitch in. Come on!’

  The barricade, however, although only breast-high, was not easy to climb, not least because some of the American dead and wounded had slid halfway down it on the defenders’ side. Slipping and sliding on the debris, Simon climbed to the top and ducked under a sword, swung horizontally by a tall Boxer. He thrust with his bayonet and caught the man in the breast, freeing his lunger and pushing the Boxer down the barricade by thrusting with his boot on his chest.

  He was conscious of Jenkins at his side deflecting a pike thrust with the butt of his rifle and spearing his man with his own bayonet. All along the top of the barricade, the marines and the remaining Americans were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a mixture of Chinese: a sprinkling of young Boxers with their red head-and-hip bands far outnumbered by troops of the Imperial army in blood-red and green uniforms and the less-bizarrely attired Muslims from the north in their dun-coloured overalls. Looking ahead, Simon saw further troops doubling along the Chinese part of the wall to reinforce the attackers.

  ‘Marines!’ he screamed. ‘Give them a volley. Fire!’

  Not all of his party were able to disengage to fire but enough were able to do so and some sixteen or seventeen of the Chinese, either on the barricade or at its base, fell. ‘Reload,’ shouted Simon. ‘Another volley. Are you ready? Fire! Reload. At the men running towards us – Fire!’

  At such short range the volleys were completely effective and all the men in the first and second ranks of the reinforcements fell. Their comrades hesitated and stood for a moment irresolutely.

  ‘Now’s the time, boys,’ shouted Fonthill. ‘Straight at ’em. Charge!’

  As one man, the marines, plus a few of the Americans, tumbled down the barricade, levelled their bayonets and ran towards where the Chinese stood. A volley from the attackers could have done incomparable damage in that small space but none came. Instead, the Chinese broke ranks, turned and ran along the road in full retreat.

  ‘Halt!’ ordered Simon. ‘Reload and give them one more volley to send them on their way. Right? Fire!’

  Once again the Martini-Henrys, mingled with the Americans’ Springfield rifles, spat fire and more of the running Chinese fell.

  Fonthill turned to look for the familiar figure of Jenkins, but the Welshman was not at his side. Whirling round, his heart in his mouth, he saw his comrade sitting on a pile of masonry at the foot of the barricade, holding his foot.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he called.

  ‘Twisted me bloody ankle on this bedstead thing, look you. You can’t fight a war like this, see, climbin’ all over stuff. It’s askin’ too much.’

  Grinning, Simon looked at his panting marines. ‘Any casualties?’ he called.

  A sweating sergeant nodded to the barricade. ‘Marine Robson got a sword thrust in the belly, sir. But I think that’s all. I ’ope we don’t ’ave to do much more charging in this ’eat, sir.’

  Fonthill shook his head. ‘Back to the barricade. But it looks as though we shall have to build it up a bit. I just hope the Chinese don’t direct artillery fire on it, that’s all.’ He turned to one of the gaitered Americans who had charged with them. ‘Have you been shelled?’

  ‘Noo.’ He spoke in the lazy tones of the Deep South. ‘Ah guess they was afraid of knocking down this old wall an’ all. Say, we all sure are thankful for your help heah. Might have let ’em in iffen you hadn’t shown up.’

  ‘Don�
��t mention it. Do you have an officer with you?’

  ‘Did have. But the cap’n got himself shot,’ he nodded his head, ‘back there. We sure took some casualties.’

  ‘Ah. I’m sorry to hear it. Call the Legation if you get into more trouble. We’re a sort of firefighting company. Come on now. Back to the barricades in case the Chinks recover their nerve.’

  But they did not, and after shoring up the barrier, giving first aid to the marine with the wound in his stomach, which turned out to be only superficial, and tying a tight bandage around Jenkins’s ankle, Fonthill took his men back to the British compound. There, where the Welshman’s ankle was treated – despite his protests – it was found that the slight arm wound he had sustained in the affray with the Boxers near the Griffiths’ village had turned sceptic. Jenkins had lived and fought for three weeks without complaining.

  ‘It’s the lack of beer, see,’ he explained. ‘It’s poisoned me system. I’ve gone so long without a pint that my body is complainin’. An’ so am I.’

  In fact, as the days progressed under the hot sun with steady firing, some sporadic shelling and occasional direct attacks on the perimeter, the defenders’ casualties increased. The little hospital that had been set up within the British Legation soon became overcrowded and the small medical staff were supplemented by the ladies of the Legation, led by Mrs Griffith, whose life as a missionary’s wife had given her some basic medical skills, and Alice, who herself had acquired knowledge of first aid from her campaigns with Simon.

  Pony meat and rice had become the staple diet for most in the Legation, washed down by copious draughts of champagne from the two stores within the Quarter, Imbeck’s and Kierulff’s. These also supplied seemingly limitless quantities of cigarettes, for now everyone smoked to combat the foul smells that rose from the bodies of the dead Chinese left outside the defences. It was no longer safe to venture beyond the perimeter to bury them – and there was nowhere to inter them, for that matter. Bathing was a thing of the past. And the sun continued to blaze down from a yellow sky.