The Foreign Service Journal, September 2007

massacred, only 90 miles from Peking. Two days later, a London mission chapel within 40 miles of the capital was burned to the ground. But as the French Roman Catholic Vicar-Apostolic, Monseigneur Favier, wrote to Stephane Pichon, the French minister, on May 19, 1900: “The religious persecution is only a façade; the ultimate aim is the extermination of all Europeans. … The date of the attack has actually been fixed. Everybody knows it. It is the talk of the town.” The Vicar-Apostolic was regarded as extremely well- informed, yet when the diplomatic corps met again on May 20 to decide whether to send for guards from Tientsin, a nearby treaty port (autonomous foreign settlement), they decided not to do so. After the meeting, the British minister, Sir Claude MacDonald, wrote to the Foreign Office, “Little has come to my attention to confirm the gloomy anticipations of the French father.” In its obituary of Sir Claude, published while he was alive, but believed to have been killed by the Boxers, the London Times would declare: “How the British minister (and others) failed to see any signs of the coming storm, is a mystery which will probably now remain forever unresolved.” It was not until the diplomatic racecourse was burnt to the ground, and two British envoys had to shoot their way out of an ambush, that the Western legations in the capital began to take their situation seriously. Even then, they failed to recognize how dependent the Dowager Empress and the imperial institution were on the Boxers’ attacks on foreigners to divert public opinion away from their own failings. Still, let’s not be too hard on them. Nearly eight decades later, the U.S. embassy in Tehran was just as much at fault. Several months into our captivity, one of the leaders of the student militants, Hossein Sheikholislam, demanded of some of us: “Every schoolchild in South Tehran knew that we were going to take you over! Why didn’t you?” Just before our takeover, students were marching past the embassy, shouting “Death to America!” To improve their living conditions, they were taking over hotels without any interference from the central government. I remember asking the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce what the students would take over next. Of course, the students were testing for limits — and we were next. Yet we failed to realize that in the semi-anarchy of the Iranian Revolution, any group that seized the U.S. embassy would bring about the collapse of the weak provisional government that had succeeded the shah, and put itself into a very strong posi- tion. Moreover, taking over the embassy would galvanize a revolution for which enthusiasm was clearly waning. I remember in those last days repeating to two American bankers the official embassy line that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the religious leader, had everything under control. Knowing that wasn’t true, I felt sick to my stomach repeating this nonsense. (Years later, one of the bankers told me that they knew I was lying.) “Cold Is Our Colleague’s Brow” Back to China. By May 28, 1900, rail and telegraph lines in the capital were being cut, even as legation families, with small children, picnicked off in the hills. Three days later reinforcements from Tientsin, 337 officers and men, led by a detachment of U.S. Marines but including British, French, Italian, Japanese and Russians, marched into the Legation Quarter. Germans and Austrians soon followed. On June 3, 1900, two more British missionaries were murdered. Ten days later, a contemporary recorded: “A full-fledged Boxer was seen on Legation Street, with his hair tied up, red cloth, red ribbons around his wrists and ankles, and a flaming red girdle tightening his loose white ankles. He was ostentatiously sharpening a knife.” Even as attacks on Westerners mounted, the diplomatic corps decided not to accept an ultimatum from the Chinese Foreign Ministry that they evacuate to Tientsin. The chiefs of mission believed that even though it was dangerous to stay put, to make the journey meant certain destruction. So, as experienced diplomats, they temporized, asking for further details. When no reply from the Foreign Ministry was forthcoming, the German minister, Klemens Freiherr von Ketteler, set out to demand one. En route, he was ambush- ed and killed, provoking (in true Victorian style) a poem: Make haste! Make haste! Cold is our colleague’s brow; He whom we loved lies bleeding, butchered, low; While round our walls his murderers scream and yell, Drunk with the blood they shed when Ketteler fell. Meanwhile, missionaries and civilians of all kinds poured into the Legation Quarter seeking refuge. With the British legation as the center and command post, members of each of the eight missions were assigned to different locations (for example, the Norwegians ended up in the stables). Sir Claude, who had once served with the Highland Light Infantry, took over as commander in chief. He lacked, however, the authority to give direct orders to the various national contingents, and did so only through notes to their several ministers and chargés d’affaires. The small band of 20 officers and 389 enlisted men from eight Western nations prepared their defense, reinforced by 75 armed volunteers with past military experience, and 35 more who clearly lacked any. Each group had different kinds of rifles, and the supply of ammunition was short. There were four pieces of light artillery, and the Americans had a Colt heavy machine gun. Fortunately, the area had S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 57