The _Evening Post_, March 20, 1902; _Tokushu Jōyaku_, pp. 415–416. Footnote 408: The _Kokumin_, March 23, 1902. Footnote 409: See, for instance, _Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Documents Diplomatiques: Chine, 1894–8_, No. 19 (p. 12); No. 36 (p. 29); No. 37 (p. 30); No. 61 (pp. 45–46); No. 65 (p. 49). Footnote 410: During the peace negotiations at Peking after the Boxer war, Russia and France coöperated as closely as did Great Britain, Japan, and the United States. Footnote 411: See pp. 77 ff., above. CHAPTER XIII THE CONVENTION OF EVACUATION It will be remembered that we left the Russo-Chinese negotiation regarding Manchuria at the point where Prince Ching, either late in February or early in March, presented a counter-proposal to the Russian demands.[412] It has also been shown that the Anglo-Japanese Agreement closely preceded, and the Franco-Russian Declaration followed, this event. By that time the allied forces had gradually retired from North China, and the Chinese Court, which had fled to Si-ngan, had retraced its steps to Peking, arriving at the palace on January 7, 1902. The political surroundings of the East seemed to have assumed a somewhat more reassuring outlook, except in Manchuria, than they had worn at any time since the siege of the Legations in 1900. The Russian Government seized this opportunity to conclude with China, on April 8, 1902, along the line suggested by the counter-draft of Prince Ching, the now celebrated Convention providing for the evacuation of Manchuria, which went into effect simultaneously with its signature. We subjoin this important document,[413] together with the official statement with which the former was published in the St. Petersburg _Messager Officiel_ of April 12:— “The grave internal disorders which suddenly broke out over the whole of China in the year 1900, exposing the Imperial Mission and Russian subjects to danger, obliged Russia to take decided measures to protect her Imperial interests. With this object in view, the Imperial Government, as is already known, dispatched a considerable military force to Peking, which had been abandoned by the Emperor and the Government authorities, and introduced a Russian army into the frontier State of Manchuria, to which the disorders in the Province of Pechili had quickly spread, and were manifested by an attack upon the Russian frontier by the native chiefs and army, accompanied by a formal declaration of war on Russia by the local Chinese authorities. “Nevertheless, the Imperial Government informed the Government of the Emperor that Russia, in undertaking these measures, had no hostile intentions toward China, whose independence and integrity were the foundation of Russian policy in the Far East.