remarkable portion of the Boxer year, the entire sack of Peking and
the extraordinary scenes which marked this latter-day Vandalism. A
veil has been habitually drawn over these little-known events, but in
the narrative which follows it is boldly lifted for the first time.

The eye-witness whose account follows was careful to establish with as
much lucidity as possible each phase of existence during five months
of extraordinary interest. Much in these notes has had to be
suppressed for many reasons, and much that remains may create some
astonishment. Yet it is well to remember that "one eye-witness,
however dull and prejudiced, is worth a wilderness of sentimental
historians." The historians are already beginning to arise; these
pages may serve as a corrective to many erroneous ideas. Perhaps some
also will allow that this curious tragedy, swept into Peking and
playing madly round the entrenched European Legations, has intense
human interest still. The vague terror which oppressed everyone
before the storm actually burst; the manner in which the feeble chain
of fighting men were locked round the European lines, and suffered
grievously but were providentially saved from annihilation; the
curious way in which diplomacy made itself felt from time to time only
to disappear as the rude shock of events taking place near Tientsin
and the sea were reflected in Peking; the final coming of the strange
relief--all these points and many others are made in such a manner
that everyone should be able to understand and to believe. The
description of the last act of the upheaval--the complete sack of
Peking--shows clearly how the lust for loot gains all men, and hand in
hand invites such terrible things as wholesale rape and murder.

The eye-witness attempts to account for all that happened; to make
real and living the hoarse roll of musketry, the savage cries of