Part 3 - Defending the Legations

On 20 June, the Chinese government, in answer to the Allied bombardment and landing at Taku, dropped its pretended neutrality and demanded that the foreign legations pack up and leave Peking within 24 hours. On his way to the foreign office to protest this impossible demand, the German Minister, Baron von Ketteller, was shot by an Imperial Chinese soldier. Within 24 hours after the delivery of the ultimatum, Chinese troops opened fire on the Austrian and French lines. The French replied with gunfire. The siege of the legations had begun. All foreigners, including some 300 women and children, were concentrated in the British, Russian, American, German, Japanese and French Legation compounds. The area, comprising the Legation Quarter, was bounded on the south and dominated by the immense Tartar Wall, 60 feet high and 40 feet wide. Thus the key to the American sector was the Tartar Wall, which was in the hands of the U.S. Marines for the next eight weeks. Marine Captain Myers' post on the wall was the peg which held the whole thing together.

The besieged foreigners sat about erecting barricades and getting provisions. More than 150 ponies, assembled for a race-meeting, guaranteed fresh meat. The ample cellars of the Peking Hotel included more than a thousand cases of champagne and vast stores of anchovy paste. Such bonanza fell short of making up for the Russians' forgetfulness in leaving their field gun on the platform at Tientsin.

The first sortie was on 23 June in order to clear out the Hanlin Yuan area which the Boxers had ruthlessly set afire in an attempt to burn out the neighboring British Legation. As this noble academy perished, taking with it half the recorded culture of China, British and U.S. Marines assaulted through the flames to drive off the Boxers who were interrupting bucket brigades trying to douse the fire with chamber pots full of water. The next evening, the Boxers again probed with small arms fire. Captain Halliday, the Royal Marines' commanding officer, during the counterattack, was critically wounded in the shoulder and lung, but still marine enough to drop three Chinese with his revolver while covering his people's withdrawal, and then to stagger under his own power to the hospital. This action won him the Victoria Cross. Taking advantage of the action in the British sector, Captain Myers, who had constructed a barricade facing west towards the West Gate, led a part of Marines forward along the wall. Before long he hit resistance in force. One foreign observer estimated that 2,000 Chinese were massed behind six successive barricades with several big guns. This showed the power confronting the American position, i.e. 29 men against the Chinese Army. Needless to say, Myers took no ground that night; however, he lost none either.

The Marine's position across "The Wall" (as everyone called it) opened on its immediate south front into a huge bastion, 40 yards across, overgrown with grass and brush from years of neglect. A ramp, inside the American lines, led up to Myers' barricade. Down the wall, to the west, with a corresponding ramp, a Chinese barricade confronted Marines. Five hundred yards in Myers' rear, facing towards the East Gate, the German Marines had a barricade manned by approximately 15 men. On both the east and west towers, the Chinese had observation posts and cannons which shelled the American and German positions. Although a tough spot, Captain Myers felt that they could hold out.

In broad daylight, on 27 June, the Boxers attacked the American position. With all weapons firing, the Chinese fell back leaving more than half of their number dead along the lines. The next night, although Myers' barricade was again probed, it was the Germans' turn to receive the main Chinese effort. At dawn on 1 July the Germans discovered that the Chinese had placed three guns in embrasures immediately facing them. Shortly after, under heavy shellfire, the German detachment, which had only a corporal in command, took flight. What compounded the problem was that they signaled to the Marines in their rear, facing the other way, that they had been overrun. By prearrangement the Americans withdrew, abandoning the Wall for a lower barricade covering the ramp.

However, Captain Myers was not going to submit and after obtaining reinforcements from the British Marines, he counter-attacked. With only three casualties, the American position was retaken. But, the Germans were less successful and had to be content with an intermediate holding position instead of the one they had yielded. Meanwhile the Marines built a barricade of their own across the Wall to their rear.

Myers, by now, was completely worn out. He had taken to himself the responsibility of the Wall, leaving Captain Hall (second senior Marine officer) the less demanding posts guarding the American compound below. For more than five days he had gone without sleep. But, after reoccupying the Wall on 1 July, he was ordered by Sir Claude MacDonald to turn over his post to Hall and go below for sleep. This he did, and Captain Hall assumed command of the upper barricade. Just 24 hours later, at dusk on 2 July, Myers returned to his barricades and resumed command. In his absence the Chinese had been permitted to advance their wall 40 yards across the open front of the no-man's bastion which flanked both Chinese an American barricades. They were now within feet of the south end of the American position, and had just erected a 15 foot tower overlooking it.

If foreign troops expected to stay on the Tartar Wall, the Chinese would have to be ejected. At 0130, in a heavy rainstorm, Captain Myers collected 30 of his own people, 26 British Marines, and 15 Russian sailors. At the simple command, "Go!" the attack jumped off, Myers leading the Anglo-American main effort against the bastion and tower, the Russians making a secondary attack on the right. Luck was with Myers. The Chinese had failed to man their tower, and by following the Boxer barricade across the bastion, Myers was able to lead his men into the rear of the enemy position, where the Chinese were still shooting into the darkness to their front. The attack succeeded completely, although Myers was wounded by a Chinese spear. Within a half hour the Boxer barricade, reversed, was the new front line. Thirty-six Chinese lay dead, and two flags were taken. Total Allied casualties were two U.S. Marines killed, one wounded, one Royal Marine and one Russian also wounded. Small as this night attack may seem, it proved to be the turning point. It was the only effectual offensive accomplished during the siege. However, his victory very nearly finished Captain Myers, the hero, for his wound became badly infected and worse still, he came down with typhoid. This left the Marines under command of Captain Hall.

After the Myers attack the defense settled into a snipers' war between the Chinese and American barricades. As the Chinese made more and better use of their artillery, the need for a counter-battery weapon became important. On 7 July, an old cannon was found in the ruins of an iron workers shop. A Navy Gunner's mate named Mitchell adapted the muzzle-loading relic to shoot the Russian sailor's ammunition. Within two days the weapon was test fired. Besides the Russian shells, which worked quite well, Mitchell tested it with a bag of nails and the lethal charge exceeded all hopes. The gun was christened "The International," but finally the troops just called it "Betsy." The gun shared honors with the Marines' machine gun which had killed more men than the rest put together. Some activity flared briefly on the Wall, on 15 July, where Captain Hall was building a new barricade to cover the rear face of his position. Here under heavy fire, Private Daniel Daly won his first Medal of Honor (34 Marines won the nation's highest decoration during the relief and siege) for coolly holding an advance position alone while Captain Hall went back for reinforcements. After 16 July a kind of truce prevailed until Peking was relieved on 14 August. By this time, 17 of the original 56 Marine and Navy defenders had been killed or wounded. Of the officers, Captain Hall alone was unwounded.