The Eternal Collection

All the events and the majority of the characters in this novel are factual. The Allied troops entered Peking on the night of April the thirteenth 1901 and the British Legation after a fifty-five day siege was relieved the following day. Those imprisoned in the Legation were able to survive owing to the foresight of Herbert Squiers, the First Secretary at the American Legation who had bought large quantities of food before the siege began. At daybreak the Dowager Empress, dressed as a peasant, left the f*******n City in a cart with the Emperor and the ferrety Prince Tuan in another. And only a handful of eunuchs went with them. Peking was looted by the troops and Chinese soldiers. What they could not carry away they burnt. The Powers behaved with magnanimity and agreed diplomatically with Li Hung-Chang that what had happened was a Boxer Rebellion against the authority of the Throne. On this basis the Dowager Empress’s part in the events could be overlooked. Somewhat grudgingly she agreed and handed over Prince Tuan, together with some other Boxer leaders for punishment. He was exiled. Reparation had to be made in the sum of sixty-seven million pounds for two hundred dead Missionaries and thirty thousand Chinese converts. After Li Hung-Chang had sealed the last of the agreements with the foreign Powers, he then collapsed and died. The Dowager Empress ordered that a Shrine should be built in Peking in his honour. On November fourteenth, 1908, the weak and ineffectual Emperor passed into the Hall of his Ancestors and the next day, as the astrologers had prophesied, the Dowager Empress followed him.