The War of the Dragon Lady

by John Wilcox

  Tensions mounted among the defenders and the non-combatants. At least the men mounting the walls and barricades had something to take their mind off the heat and the flies, for the Chinese attacks were becoming more determined, proving that the Empress had finally decided to gamble on wiping out the foreign devils so stubbornly holding out in her city.

  Fonthill and his marines were called out when a mine was exploded under what was left of the French Legation and the Chinese poured through the wreckage, almost overwhelming the Frenchmen who had for so long defended their line there. The fighting was fierce there for a time – Jenkins firing, stabbing and clubbing like a wild thing, despite his bandaged arm – until the defenders gradually consolidated their bridgehead and the attackers retreated, setting fire to the ruins of the Legation as they went.

  The situation was worse, however, to the east of the British compound, in the Wang Fu, where the Japanese had the responsibility of defending this rambling park, dotted with small palaces and pagodas. If it had been lost, the Chinese would have poured through the centre of the Quarter, cutting off the British Legation from the others. The original defensive line there, established by Fonthill and Captain Strouts, had had to be abandoned, and the Japanese – who were turning out, Simon judged, to be the best of the defending troops – established a series of defensive positions from which they doggedly retreated in turn, fighting over every inch of the ground. Here, the ‘Carving-Knife Brigade’ were proving their worth, fighting with their primitive weapons as fiercely as their smaller, professional comrades. Even so, after days of attack and counter-attack, three-quarters of the Fu was in enemy hands.

  At this point, ammunition for the little Italian one-pounder – small in size but valuable, for it was the only real piece of ordnance possessed by the legation soldiers – was down to fourteen rounds. And then two pieces of great good fortune occurred to give relief to the hard-pressed defenders.

  The first occurred when Fonthill and Jenkins were scavenging within an old foundry within the lines, searching for overlooked ammunition. There, lying in a corner, was a rusty but still serviceable-looking barrel of an old gun, a relic, by the look of it, of an Anglo-French expedition of 1860.

  ‘Will it still fire?’ asked Jenkins.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Fonthill. ‘I’m no gunner. But we will damned sure find out.’

  A French artilleryman was consulted and, after inspecting the muzzle, he pronounced it still clearly rifled, with the firing mechanism still in place. The rust was chipped off and the barrel was mounted on a wooden base and a set of wheels originally intended for the Italian gun. Miraculously, some old nine-pound Russian ammunition was found which actually fitted.

  ‘We have artillery,’ Simon proudly announced to Sir Claude.

  What’s more, it worked, either when loaded with the nine-pound shells or filled with grapeshot formed of old nails and bits of iron and fired over open sights at the advancing hordes, particularly in the open spaces of the Fu. The diplomats called their gun ‘The International’. To the marines, she was ‘Betsy’.

  The second piece of good fortune came out of the blue, from the unlikely source of the Imperial Palace.

  At four o’clock on a day when every yard of the perimeter defences was under heavy attack, horns and bugles were suddenly heard from the direction of the palace, to be answered by similar sounds from all around the Chinese lines. Instantly, the firing from the attackers died away, leaving an eerie silence. A sentry on the roof of the British Legation stables reported that a large board carrying Chinese characters was being hoisted on the North Bridge. Translators with field glasses read out the message:

  ‘In accordance with the Imperial commands to protect the ministers, firing will cease immediately. A despatch will be delivered at the Imperial Canal bridge.’

  Watch was kept on the bridge, but no messenger arrived. Nevertheless, the ceasefire held and the cicadas could be heard chattering again in the Legation Quarter.

  ‘What does it mean?’ Alice asked of her husband, as she stood outside the sickbay, her sleeves rolled to the elbow and a bloodstained apron tied around her waist.

  ‘God knows.’ Then Simon’s eyes lit up. ‘It just could be that the relief column is nearly here at last. It would be typical of the Dragon Lady to bend the knee only when she had to and to pretend that she had the welfare of the diplomats at heart all the time. The crafty old … It’s the only reason I can think of.’

  Alice smiled. ‘I wonder if he might know the reason.’ She nodded her head to indicate someone behind Fonthill.

  Simon whirled round. Walking by on the other side of the path, moving quietly as though anxious not to attract attention, was Gerald Griffith. He had long ago shaved off his incipient beard, leaving only his moustache, which now hung down on either side of his mouth, in mandarin style. He had allowed his hair to grow and had it gathered together at the nape of his neck and twisted in the beginning of a pigtail. He wore the loose trousers, sandals and buttoned-to-the-neck tunic of an indigenous peasant. He looked, in fact, completely Chinese.

  Fonthill’s previous attempts to question him on his movements during the day had met with monosyllabic replies. He went out, he said, ‘to talk with friends’. While Chang had long ago attached himself to Fonthill’s marines, turning out when required, still armed with Simon’s revolver, Gerald seemed to take no part in the defence of the Quarter. His mother, however, would hear no criticism of him. ‘He is a good boy,’ she said. ‘Just a little withdrawn, that’s all, and does not wish to be a soldier.’

  Now Fonthill walked across and caught up with the young man. ‘Ah, Gerald,’ he said, slipping into step. ‘Been for a walk?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It seems we have a ceasefire.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Why should I know?’

  Simon grasped his arm and brought him to a halt. ‘Because I believe that you slip through the defences regularly and talk to your friends in the Imperial Palace.’

  Gerald held up his head defiantly. ‘That is not against the law.’

  ‘It’s damned near it, my friend. We are at war, Gerald. Those people on the other side of the barricades and walls are Chinese, my lad, and they are trying to kill us. Your friends. They are the enemy, dammit. Don’t you ever consider that?’

  For a moment the young man paused. ‘I do not consider them to be so. They are doing what they consider to be right.’

  ‘And do you tell your friends of the disposition of our defences here?’

  ‘No. I do not know them, anyway.’

  For a moment, the two men stood in silence, glaring at each other in the hot sun. In the distance, a pony could be heard whinnying from the butchery and from within the hospital a wounded man cursed in pain. Simon sighed. ‘Let me ask you again. Do you know why the Empress has called a truce?’

  ‘No. I do not.’

  ‘Is it because the relief column is near?’

  For the first time Gerald became animated. He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Where did you get that idea? There’s no relief column. Tientsin is surrounded and under siege – just like here. If you and these stuffy ministers think you are going to be rescued, then you are all living in dreamland.’ He shook his arm free, gave a direct and lubricious grin to Alice, who had been listening to the conversation from outside the hospital, and walked on.

  Alice crossed the path and grasped her husband’s arm. ‘Oh, Simon. Do you think he’s right – that there’s no relief column, I mean?’

  Fonthill shook his head. ‘Of course not. The Old Dragon has called a halt because she’s sustained too many casualties. There must have been about two thousand of her soldiers who have been killed trying to break in here. She knows she’s gambled and lost.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘There’s no way that that cocky young devil can know more than MacDonald.’

  That night the defenders on guard dozed uneasily around the perimeter, the quiet
more unsettling than the continual firing had been. The next day, the shelling and the rifle fire from the Chinese resumed, with even more intensity than before.

  The brief truce – called and held for no apparent reason – was over. The siege settled in once more.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The brief interval, although refreshing while it lasted, had the overall effect of depressing the defenders of the Legation Quarter. It seemed as though the Empress, in her palace not so far away, was playing with them, as a cat plays with a mouse: letting it spring away for a moment and then clutching it back again in its claws. Certainly, the firing from the Chinese lines had been resumed with a fierceness that, if accuracy had been added to intensity, would have seriously reduced the defenders’ capacity to resist. It was the absence of serious shellfire, however, that caused the most puzzlement.

  ‘Why don’t they use those Krupp cannon more?’ Fonthill demanded rhetorically of Jenkins. ‘They each give us about six rounds a day, which causes more damage than that produced by all their other pop-shooters put together. Then they lay off. It seems strange.’

  Jenkins sniffed. ‘Short of ammunition, p’raps?’

  ‘Don’t think so. MacDonald tells me that before all this started he saw thousands of Krupp shells stacked in a warehouse in the Imperial City. If the Chinese wake up and really begin to bombard us, I don’t think we would be able to hold out much longer. The Quarter would be in ruins.’

  ‘Why can’t we make a sortie, like, and put the bloody things out of action?’

  ‘Because they are too far away, on a roof somewhere to the south. I doubt if we would be able to get to them.’ Fonthill mused for a moment. ‘It’s a thought, though. I’ll talk to Captain Strouts about it.’

  The captain in command of the British marine guard was sceptical at first, but he too began to warm to the idea. ‘I know where they are,’ he said, ‘they’re firing from the top of the Chien Men, that partly burnt-out pagoda tower on the other side of the Tartar Wall. It would be terribly risky but we might just be able to reach the place and destroy the bloody things.’

  ‘At night, I think,’ suggested Fonthill.

  ‘I agree. A smallish party, moving fast.’

  ‘I’ll put it to Sir Claude.’

  The minister was unimpressed. ‘You would take the marines, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But you know, Fonthill, they are among the most effective and best-trained of all the troops in the Quarter. If you lose them – not to mention yourself – we would be bereft. I really can’t allow it.’

  Simon sighed. ‘I don’t know why the Chinese haven’t used these guns at all so far. Once they realise what an advantage they have with them and start bombarding us consistently, they could reduce virtually the whole Quarter to a heap of rubble within, say, two days. They could destroy the barricades on the wall and beyond and we would be defenceless. The siege would be over. I really feel we should try to take them out before their advantage is realised.’

  ‘Hmm. Is Strouts with you on this?’

  ‘Completely.’

  ‘How will you get out?’

  ‘Through the sluice gates at the southern end of the canal.’

  ‘Will you need any … um … diversionary activity from us?’

  ‘No thank you, sir. A good idea, but we will get out through the sleepiest part of the night. Nothing is ever quiet through the night here but it all tails off a bit about three-thirty. That’s when we will go. Running like hell through the streets, in plimsolls, not army boots. Hit ’em before they know what’s happening.’

  There was silence for a time, while Sir Claude’s eyes seemed to grow more bulbous by the heartbeat. Then he stood and held out his hand. ‘Very well, my dear fellow. May God be with you.’

  Strouts and Fonthill trained their men for two days as best they could, within the confined space of the compound. They practised running in plimsolls and sandals, carrying rifles and fixed bayonets, and they rehearsed – with the help of the French artillery officer – how to destroy cannon. ‘Throw zem off ze tower as well, if you can,’ he urged. ‘But zey will be ’eavy.’

  On the afternoon before the sortie, Simon told Alice about the plan. She stood for a moment, very still, with tears in her eyes. Then she put her arms around her husband’s neck and nuzzled his ear. ‘I know it is no use me trying to dissuade you from this ridiculous exercise,’ she said. ‘But, you know,’ she pulled back her head and looked him in the eyes, ‘one day you will push your luck too far. You cannot continue to get away with these ridiculous enterprises. Let someone younger go, my dear. You have done far more than your bit in this siege. I do so not want to be a widow at my age.’

  He kissed her briefly. ‘Don’t worry. Dear old 352 will look after me. But one thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t let Gerald or his mother know about this.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They assembled just as the moon was beginning to settle over the rooftops, looking like a rather exotic Chinese lantern, low in the sky.

  The marines had exchanged their scoop-brimmed straw hats for a variety of knitted skullcaps and their boots for training pumps. They wore dark clothing and they had blackened their faces. Each man carried a rifle and bayonet at the trail, except for Jenkins, whose arm having recovered had volunteered to spike the guns and bore the bag of spikes and a large hammer. At his belt, however, hung his large knife. Fonthill and Strouts wore revolvers tucked into their own belts and carried naval cutlasses in their right hands, the blades blackened to prevent moonlight reflecting from them.

  Sir Claude had risen to wish them Godspeed and stood shivering slightly in his dressing gown, although the night was not cold. ‘You look like pirates,’ he observed, with a sad smile. ‘Good luck.’

  The two officers saluted him with their cutlasses and Simon blew a kiss to Alice, who stood erect in the shadows. Dry-eyed but tight-lipped, she acknowledged it with the merest nod of her head. Then the little company moved away with a quick step.

  Fonthill had chosen the sluice gates for their exit from the Quarter, not only because he knew it was lightly guarded from the Chinese side – the besiegers now never thought that the defenders would try to leave their ramshackle fortress – but because it was the nearest point of egress to the Chien Men, some three hundred yards away. The gates were not raised, for it would have been too noisy a process to carry out without alerting the guards. At either side of the grills, however, in the tunnel at the base of the Tartar Wall, there was a space big enough for one man to slither through. Simon took one side and Strouts – a burly, well-moustached man – the other. The rest of the party waited, huddled against the dripping walls of the tunnel.

  Peering through the grill, Fonthill saw two guards, squatting on the pavement at the far side of the road. They did not move and it seemed that they were asleep. No one else was to be seen, although gunfire sounded from quite near. Nodding to the captain, Simon slithered through the gap and bounded across the road.

  But, despite their posture, neither of the guards was asleep. They were, however, surprised to be suddenly set upon by two darkly dressed men with black faces emerging from the canal and they were just a little slow to gain their feet. The blade of Fonthill’s cutlass wrought a slashing cut across the right shoulder of the nearest man. But he, like his fellow, was a Moslem Kansu from the north, toughened by years of campaigning for his brigand chief, Tung Fu-hsiang. He grunted with pain but rolled away from Simon’s next swing and, drawing a knife from his belt, thrust at Fonthill’s stomach. But it was a weak blow with his left hand and the blade point caught in Simon’s cummerbund without penetrating. The next blow from the cutlass nearly severed his head.

  Strouts had similarly finished his man and the two marauders stood for a moment, their blades dripping red, while they anxiously scanned the street on either side of them. There was no sign of life. Fonthill beckoned and the marines, led by Jenkins, began slipping past the
sluice gates and running across the road to join them.

  ‘Ever used a cutlass before?’ grunted Strouts.

  Simon shook his head, still panting.

  ‘Thought not. Everyone uses the blade, just because it’s curved. No good. The swing gives yer man time to duck. Use the point. Stupid weapon. Don’t know why it’s curved. Only good for thickheaded sailors.’

  ‘Still, wish I’d got one,’ sniffed Jenkins. ‘All I’ve got is a ropey old bag.’

  ‘You’ll be lethal with that,’ said Fonthill. ‘Now. Everyone here? Good. Remember no firing. If we get into trouble, use the bayonet. Right. Follow me.’

  They set off at a fast trot, making little sound and with no light reflecting from their blackened lungers.

  No one was about in those narrow streets, although rifle fire sounded all around them. Simon realised that the musketry was coming from the upper floors of the houses, where snipers were directing a desultory fire on the American and German defenders on the ramparts of the wall. No one was looking down. It was just as well, for the raiding party would have been hard-pressed to have fought their way through the streets if met by stubborn opposition.

  As it was, they found their way to where the Chinese had reduced the jewellery and fine furs quarter to blackened rubble with their indiscriminate torching of the shops earlier in the siege. It was flames from these buildings that had set fire to the fine, old brick and wooden pagoda of the Chien Men tower, leaving it a stumpy ruin of charred bricks, now some forty-five feet high. Somehow, however, the Chinese had managed to swing the two guns up to the top, giving the guns sufficient height to fire across the Tartar Wall and directly into the Legation Quarter. The two cannon could now be seen, silhouetted against the night sky.

  Fonthill halted the raiding party at the end of the ruins of the shops. A scattering of soldiers lay, huddled in blankets, sleeping at the base of the tower. Others could be seen, standing by their guns at the top. To reach the tower, however, the raiders would have to cross a stretch of open ground.