When I saw the position of the Legation quarter and especially that of the British Legation, where all the foreigners finally congregated--open to attack on every side, lying under the very walls of the Palace and the Imperial City--I felt convinced that had there not been some restraining force within their own ranks, the Chinese could have wiped out the foreigners in less than a week. Bad firing on their part could only have averted, for a short space, the inevitable result to the Legations. Had there not been some power that was acting as a check upon the Chinese, no European would have been left to tell the tale; and this restraining force I feel confident came from the Emperor and the Empress Dowager themselves. The Empress Dowager (with the Emperor) was at the Summer Palace, as usual, during the summer of 1900. Though urged by her ministers and the Princes to remain there, where she was out of danger or could easily escape at its approach, she insisted on returning to the Capital and went into the Winter Palace a week before the Allies reached the city. She hoped as a “dernier resort” that the presence of the Sacred Persons, Their Majesties, in the city might serve as a check upon the soldiers and people, now maddened by their own fury; for the Imperial troops, instead of checking the insurgents and leavening the masses by their right and reason, had, instead, become imbued with the same spirit as the Boxers themselves! But the Empress Dowager, on this occasion, counted too strongly on her popularity and upon the respect that the people felt for the “Sacred Persons,” for even after their return to the Capital, even Their Majesties’ presence--even the issuing of Imperial edicts posted all over the city for the people to protect, or at least cease their attacks on the Legations--were powerless to do more than intermittently check the attacks. Finally the Allies reached and entered the city! The Empress Dowager, discouraged and finding herself powerless, finally succumbed to the fears of her entourage for her Person. She, herself, became almost panic-stricken at the thought of falling into the hands of the foreigners, whose depredations and cruelty to the Chinese on that memorable march from Tientsin had all been reported to her with the usual exaggerations. Her indomitable spirit was broken. She consented, in an agony of womanly fear, to fly. She was disguised as a common woman, her long finger nails, which would have revealed her exalted rank, were cut off, and, in a common cart, she made her escape from the city. As she had refused to go until the last moment, everything at the Palace was left in the wildest confusion. Neither her jewelry, nor hardly sufficient clothing, was taken. She did not leave the Palace until several hours after the foreign troops had passed the Water Gate and were already within the walls of the English Legation. She had held out as long as possible.