D’Arc’s Marionettes caught up in the Boxer siege of Peking

and Tientsin, China’s Ford of Heaven.

As mentioned in a previous article, it was in the second half of 1899 that George D’Arc
with his wife Agnes and their marionette troupe, D’Arc’s Fantoches Françaises, arrived
in Tientsin, the penultimate stop of their tour of the Far East that had included Bombay,
Calcutta, Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Their final stop, Peking, was to
follow within a month.

George had everything going for him. All along the way his show had been warmly
received, but most especially so in Tokyo where the cheers and applause was still ringing
in his ears. Tientsin had a considerable Japanese population and that augured well for his
box office.

Even before his first performance in Tokyo he was agreeably surprised by the familiarity
of the D’Arc name by the theatre going public. Furthermore, there were clear indications
that Japanese puppetry had been influenced by the Western form of the art, and most par-
ticularly by his father Lambert D’Arc’s presentation and style.

1
D’Arc’s Marionettes had played in many strange places, but none as strange as Tientsin,
where within walking distance of that ancient walled city stood five well established
foreign settlements four of which, the Japanese, French, British, and German, boasted of
their own municipal governments, their own courts of law, and their own garrisons and
police. The fifth, the American, stopped short of instituting its own municipal government
though it reserved the right to station troops in the area.

The settlements’ access to the outside world was either via the Hai Ho whose mouth was
at Taku, forty miles to the south, or by rail from Taku’s adjacent town of Tangku. Either
way there was no escaping the river’s shallow waters and the sand bar that stretched
across the estuary. Even the smallest sea going vessel had to anchor on the ocean side of
Taku Bar and transship its freight on to lighters with shallow enough draught that allowed
them to go up river to Tientsin or cross over to the railhead at Tangku.

George with his extensive transportation experience gained from his South African,
Indian, and Australian tours was equal to the task of getting the show’s hundred puppets
and their costumes and stage scenery and props from Tokyo to Tientsin without mishap.
And so it was on July 19 that his Fantoches Françaises opened at the Bijou Theatre on
Bruce Street in the British Settlement. The box office turning out even better than he had

2
hoped, he extended his Tientsin season until he could no longer postpone the call from
Peking. The delay might have been for the good, for he was having problems arranging
for a suitable show place in the Imperial Capital as can be seen from his letter to the edi-
tor of Peking & Tientsin Times.

It was not until the last week of August that he loaded his props and scenery and his
hundred puppets on to flat cars for the five hour rail journey to Peking. And just as he had
stated in his letter to the press, it was on September 7th that he opened his season there on
a makeshift stage in the grounds of the Russian Postmaster.

His houses were disappointing, and he soon learned the reason from Auguste Chamot who
helped him locate a show place in Peking, and who was now the host of the hotel where
he was staying. Since “Boxers” had emerged on the city’s streets, it was safer for foreign-
ers to stay indoors. As to who the Boxers were, Chamot described them as crazy members
of an anti-Manchu anti-foreign cult who believed that chanting Buddhist doggerel while
engaging in weird forms of martial arts gained them immunity from fire and sword. They
sometimes called their movement the Society for Justice and Harmony and sometimes the
Clench Fists for Justice and Harmony. It was from the latter designation that they came
to be called “Boxers”. To George they certainly fitted the bill of those “Mandarins and
Buddhist priests” who had disrupted his attempt to set up a showpiece opposite the Peking
Observatory.

George pressed on with the show despite the poor box office until the third week of
September when he received an invitation from Tientsin he could not refuse. It was to
perform for most of the month of October at the prestigious Gordon Hall. What made the

3
offer even more compelling was that he had to be in Tientsin by the year’s end anyway to
embark for the UK, his grand tour of the Far East having finally drawn to a close.

His season at the Gordon Hall closed on the night of October 21 1899, but when in
November his troupe of puppet manipulators, songsters, scene shifters, and costumers
embarked for England, he was not with them. He had a new venture in mind, one which
would take him and Agnes back to Peking. Family legend has it that he was commis-
sioned by the Manchu Court to create a wax effigy of the Empress Dowager. We also
know from notes, handwritten by his daughter, Grace, that he went to Peking to discuss
with Mons Auguste Chamot how he might become involved in running hotel de pékin.

The picture frame and partial picture frame above are from George D’Arc’s 1900 photo
album. The photo contained in the full frame is of two gentlemen, two ladies, and three
children. Written on the frame above the gentleman on the right is the name clearly iden-
tifying him as Monsieur Chamot. Perhaps the lady next to him is his wife Annie.

In the partial frame the identities written by the same hand are given as M.Chamot, Mrs
D’Arc, Mr D’Arc, and a Mr Moore. Regrettably the photograph itself is missing.

Throughout this article, any photographs reproduced from George D’Arc’s album will be
referenced as D/Album plus the item number. The above photo and space for the missing
photo are referenced as D/Album 47 and D/Album 48.

4
We know that from the winter of 1899 to the spring of 1900 George and Agnes were back
in Peking, but what a time to be there. Hotel de pékin guests were on tenterhooks as were
much of Peking’s foreign population. The Boxers who had spilled over from Shantung
Province were joined by supporters from towns and cities across the north. Hardly a day
went by without some outrageous incident being reported in the local press.

At Peitang Cathedral, where George and Agnes wor-

shipped, they heard the warnings of a white bearded
prelate concerning the mortal danger facing them all.
That explained the sandbag defences the couple saw
being erected all around the Cathedral structure. The
man’s warnings were borne out when every foreign
language newspaper in Peking reported the brutal mas-
sacre of Catholic Christian converts, man woman and
child, in three local villages set up under the auspices of
Monsignor Alphonse-Pierre Favier, Vicar Apostolic of
Peking (George and Agnes’s white bearded prelate).

It was when the telegraph lines to Tientsin were cut that

the French Minister Pichon called for volunteers to take
the train there to warn the French military authority of
the danger facing Peking’s foreign residents. George,
familiar with the crossing, having made it six times,
felt obliged to volunteer. He and Agnes had hardly ever
been apart since their marriage six years back, but it
was a relief to know that he would be back with her in
just two days. It was on May 26 that he and three fel-
low volunteers were at the station situated beneath the
city’s towering Chienmen to board the morning train.

5
 GEORGE

The train arrived at its first stop, Fengtai, without incident. But there it stayed motionless
for ten minutes, twenty minutes, an hour. One of his companions asked a guard what was
happening. He got no answer. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, the train began creep-
ing forward. Soon their carriage was swaying and vibrating as the engine settled into

a barking rhythm. At Langfang, mobs of peasants who tried to storm into the carriages
were viciously beaten back by troops of the Imperial army. As the train crept into Yangt-
sun it was met with a deafening fusillade of small arms fire, and black smoke billowed
from torched buildings. The door burst open and a priest shouted at them: “Run for it,
Boxers on the rampage.” They made straight for the sorghum fields, not yet at their full
seven foot harvesting height, but high enough and thick enough to give them cover. Hid-
ing by day and moving by night, they headed in the general direction of Tientsin. At dawn
on the third day a mounted Sikh patrol came upon them. On May 30 the four stood before
Tientsin’s French Commandant. On delivering the message from Pichon, they were
thanked and dismissed with a wave of the hand.

But George held his ground. With all respect would the Commandant pass on the warn-
ing to the British authority. The British needed no warning the man shot back. They were
well aware that the Boxers had burned down Fengtai rail station and were threatening the
Legations. Stunned by the news, George declared that he had to return there immediately.
Impossible was the rejoinder. He should know that foreign civilians were forbidden to
travel on the line to Peking. What’s more, even foreign military had to have permission
before they could board any train heading there. It had taken some hard negotiating be-
fore the Chinese agreed to let four hundred sailors and marines from seven nations travel

6
to Peking to reinforce the Legation guards there. And the total number of four hundred
was to be strictly enforced.

For the French Commandant that was the end of the matter. For George, it was far from
it. He stood at the edge of Victoria Road as the contingent of Royal Marines, selected to
be part of the four hundred, marched ceremoniously to the station behind a Chinese brass
band. With all those bystanders attracted to the spectacle there was little chance of his
tagging along unobserved.

And at the Bund where the US Marines were crossing over to the railway station his
chances were even less of attaching himself unseen to the end of their column.

7
All told, it took five trains to transport the four hundred marines, sailors, and soldiers to
Peking. Even as the last train was steamed out of the station, a rumour was spreading
throughout the settlements that the British Admiral Seymour was putting in place a pow-
erful multinational force to fight its way to Peking. George was jubilant. With his knowl-
edge of the line, Seymour would jump at the chance of recruiting him.

Camping at the station where the reinforcements would be arriving, he witnessed the ar-
rival of the US naval landing party on a train from Tangku. And he was all smiles at the
novel Russian method of travel when a trainload of Russians pulled in. They had ridden
all the way from Tangku on the roofs of coaches carrying an American circus that had
made the bizarre decision to play in Tientsin at this dangerous time. Warren’s Circus by
golly! He knew them. He had crossed paths with them in Bombay and Singapore. He
remembered them well: the trapeze artists, the daredevil horseback rider, and the clown,
the funniest clown he had ever seen.

On May 31 George was there, ready and available, when Admiral Seymour arrived at the
station to board his two thousand fighting men.

8
He hailed a team of Royal Marines loading their equipment. They ignored him. He waved
wildly at a squad of Austrian marines, but again he got nowhere.

Then he came upon a detachment from HMS Barfleur mustering for embarkation. He
called out to an officer “Can I join you? I know every stop on the way.” The officer
waved him off.

Next day, his luck was in. There was an empty carriage on the train leaving for Peking.
He stepped aboard and grabbed a seat.

9
 AGNES

If George agonized over Agnes’s safety every day and

night since he left her at the hotel, so did Agnes over him.
He was to have returned in two days, that is by May 28th
the latest, but not a sign of him. Worse still, on the eve-
ning of the 28th came word of Fengtai rail junction being
overrun by the Boxers, the buildings torched, and the track
to Paotingfu torn up. And with every passing day came
further news of the Boxers’ acts of terrorism. George had
placed her under Mons Chamot’s care, but now the man
was gone, and his American wife Annie too. The two had
made the daredevil decision to ride out to a village close to
Fengtai to rescue Belgian engineers and their families who
had fled the carnage at Fengtai.

News spread like wildfire that the rescue party had succeeded in its death defying mis-
sion, and was heading back to Peking with its charges: thirteen Belgians, their nine wives,
and seven children.

10
Agnes had at last something to cheer about. If Mons Chamot could get through Boxer
lines then so could George. There was every chance he was safe in Tientsin.

And now at hotel de pékin the welcoming hurrahs had hardly died down for Chamot and
his wife when Agnes’s hopes were given another boost. Word spread that trainloads of le-
gation guard reinforcements from several nations were arriving at the railway station. She
held up a silver coin to the nearest rickshaw coolie to speed her there. She successfully
fought her way through the jam of glum and silent Chinese onlookers, but she had less
success evoking an answer from the assembling marines. None had ever heard of George
D’Arc. A Royal Navy officer added that the Chinese officials who had given permission
for the five trainloads of guards to proceed to Peking were there to enforce the number
allowed to entrain. The British had to reduce their number by twenty-five. Not a single
civilian was allowed to board.

For Peking’s foreign residents the arrival of the reinforcements could not have been more
timely. Boxers were drilling openly in the Chinese City. Their posters, everywhere to be
seen, promised the elimination of the hated foreign devils. And this was no vain boast.
Peking & Tientsin Times reported the brutal torture and execution of the English mis-
sionaries Robinson and Norman and most of their Chinese flock - men, women, children.

When on June 10 the Paomachang racecourse grandstand was burnt to ground, and a day
later the Chancellor of the Japanese Legation was pulled from his carriage and hacked
to pieces by Boxer broadswords, foreigners needed no further warning. They packed up
what they could and headed for the refuge in the Legation quarter. Protestant missionaries
in and around Peking brought with them their thousand Christian converts.

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At midnight on June 12th, a night Agnes was never to forget, she was snapped awake by
a bedlam of roaring and screaming. Her door burst open and a servant shouted: “Ch’i lai
Ch’i lai - Get up Get up.” In the lobby fast filling with guests she heard that a band of
Boxers had broken through the Hatamen fortress gate and were slaughtering any Chinese
shopkeepers and their families they could lay their hands on. And now over the blood
curdling blasts of trumpets and horns she heard the terrifying chant: “Sha Sha - Kill Kill.”
The clamour intensified as the Boxers swept past the hotel on Legation Street in pursuit
of terrified shopkeepers and their families.

At first light, drugged from lack of sleep, she and three other guests followed Mons
Chamot across silent deserted Legation Street to the Chinese stores opposite the ho-
tel. He beckoned them into a cloth shop and ordered them to scavenge as many rolls as
they could carry of silk, satin, linen, even brocade and hurry back with their loads. And
there on the hotel’s kitchen tables where the fabric was unrolled, they followed a sewing
amah’s instructions on how to use Chinese scissors to cut the fabric into lengths for sew-
ing into sandbags.

Busy with needle and thread, Agnes was able to ignore the desultory rifle shots that
sounded most of the day. But at night she was out of bed in a flash when tremendous
bursts of machine gun fire sounded as if they were coming from next door. Not from
next door, she learned from the desk clerk, but from the Austrian guards’ Maxim that had
wiped out the Boxer braves testing the Legation defences.

Great arcs of flames lit up the sky above the Chinese city to the south. “Look,” someone
cried out, and there in clear view was the magnificent hundred foot high Ming tower of
the Chien Men fortress gate being consumed by fire.

The calm steady voice of Mons Auguste Chamot sounded. “Tomorrow first thing you will
all be moved to the British Legation. We are under siege.”

12
 GEORGE

Rebuffed by HMS Barfleur’s officers, and that was on May 31, George was now aboard a
train in a carriage all to himself. After only a short delay, loud retorts of exploding steam
sounded from the engine ahead and the train creaked into motion. Even as it was mov-
ing the carriage door slammed open and three Cossack officers entered. George raised
himself expecting to be sent packing, but they broke into smiles and waved him down.
The train chugged slowly past blackened shell-torn villages before it pulled to a halt at a
station platform. Not a Chinese to be seen, only Royal Marine and US Marine stretcher
bearers. George hailed one. “Are we not headed for Peking?” The man stared at him in
astonishment. “No sir, we’re not. This is Peitsang. We’re on our way back to Tientsin.
There was fierce fighting at Yangtsun, many casualties. We’re taking the wounded to
Tientsin. Who are you anyway?” When George told him he was at once commandeered
to carry a stretcher on to the train.

Back at Tientsin where the wounded were being unloaded, a

voice sounded through a megaphone “Heads down. We’re under
fire.” And sure enough, every now and then there would be a
loud crack of a rifle shot followed by a thud as the bullet hit the
station building. While Russian and Japanese wounded contin-
ued to be carried off somewhere, George kept close behind a
mule-drawn ambulance as it crossed the bridge leading to the
settlements. In the lobby of Customs House on Victoria Road,
now a temporary hospital, an English nurse confronted him.
“Why are you not in the Volunteers? You should join the Volun-
teers.”

When he learned from the Volunteers’ recruiting officer that as

an infantryman he would be staying put manning the settle-
ment’s defences, but in the mounted unit, otherwise known as
the Frontier Rifles, there was a good chance he would be joining
the relief force when it headed out for Peking. To qualify one
must have a horse. Did he have a horse? His mind raced to his
friends at Warren’s Circus. They had a good stable of wagon
horses. He gave the officer a nod.

The very next day, June 13th, never mind horses, all units of
the Volunteer Corps were shoulder to shoulder at the western
defence line firing their 45 calibre Martini-Henry rifles into
swarms of attacking Boxers. Even if that were not nerve-racking
enough, shrieking shells began bursting thunderously all about
the settlements. Word passed round. “Get ready to pull back. We
must shorten the line.” An hour passed, two hours, the shelling
continued, and there was no order to pull back. It was now com-
mon knowledge that the shells were being fired by modern Ger-

13
man Krupps howitzers of the Chinese Imperial Army. There could be no doubt that they
had joined in with the Boxers and were making an all out attack on Tientsin station. Once
the railway was in their hands, the settlements were doomed. But now came wonderful
news. At the critical moment 1,500 Russian troops from Taku poured on to the station.
They were a week late joining Seymour’s relief expedition, but in the nick of time to save
the settlements. Supported by the deadly accurate fire from their field guns, the Russian
infantry threw the Chinese back into the native city.

They might have been sent reeling, but from the protection of their walled city the Chi-
nese continued with their bombardment of the settlements, the French suffering worst,
nearly all their buildings flattened and burned to embers. Worse still, Boxers and Impe-
rial sharpshooters had infiltrated the thinly held lines and were taking a deadly toll of the
residents and their military personnel.

A French officer was shot dead on rue de France and an Englishman killed as he came out
of his cellar on Meadows Road. Outside Hsiao Pai Lou, the heart of the American Settle-
ment, two Americans were shot down. But it hit more at home when George heard that
George Peters, manager of Warrens Circus, was killed by a sniper’s bullet.

On June 17 the Volunteers were relieved from their front line duties. And that could not
have been more welcome for George and his fellow troopers. The unit of Royal Marines
that took over had done so twice before. A hardened bunch they were, veterans of South
Africa, not given to joking or hilarity. But on this day they were all smiles. They’d re-
ceived the good news that the detachment of theirs with Seymour’s Peking Relief Expedi-
tion which had been soundly defeated at Yangtsun by the massed forces of China’ Kansu
Muslim Army, had fought its way to Hsi Ku Arsenal only eight miles from Tientsin and
was holding out there with Seymour and the remnants of his force.

Good news for the marines, but chilling for George. If the Chinese army was powerful
enough to send Seymour’s men packing, what hope was there for the meagre force of
guards protecting Peking’s legations! What hope was there for Agnes!

14
 AGNES

Riding in Peking carts, wheelbarrows, rickshaws, it took two days for the guests of hotel
de pékin to move themselves and their luggage to a pavilion in the British Legation
grounds. Agnes who considered herself staff and not a guest excluded herself from the
exodus. Auguste Chamot did not object. Being under his charge he could keep a better
eye on her in the hotel. Besides, there was much work to do, cutting various fabrics and
sewing them into sandbags, cutting and rolling gauze for bandages. Chamot’s American
wife, Annie, was perfectly capable of performing these duties, but she chose to participate
in the preparation of the hotel’s defences. Dressed in a French colonial army field jacket
and English jodhpurs, and with her rifle always near at hand, she went busily to work
positioning sandbags so that the loopholes provided the best arc of fire.

The only guests Agnes saw now were military officers and embassy brass from various
legations. Sometimes there were two of three of them at a coffee table, sometimes they
occupied most of the seats in the banquet room. Much of their talk went over her head,
but it was plain as day to her when they discussed with Chamot the number of bread
loaves his bakery could produce in a day and how might they be dispersed to the lega-
tions.

An American marine passed a note to his commanding officer at the table. The officer
rose to his feet. “Von Kettler shot dead,” he let out. And when it transpired that the Ger-
man Minister Baron von Kettler had been assassinated while on his way to a meeting at
the Tsung li Yamen requested by the Celestial Empire’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, it
could only mean war.

15
And that war was only an hour in coming. Sudden ear shattering fusillades of musket and
rifle fire and flights of fiery torches slammed against the French Legation’s outposts and
Embassy building. Agnes stood petrified by the stunning blasts, the screams and yells of
soldiers in battle, the eerie deep rumbles of Buddhist horns. Mons Chamot grabbed her
hand. “Come with he,” and he led her down into the hotel bakery.

Even in the bakery there was no escaping the horror. Three French marines and an Italian,
were brought in, their uniforms soaked with blood. A man wearing a Red Cross armband

called out “Bandez!” Agnes held up a gauze roll. He nodded. And while he pressed swabs
on the hideous wounds, she did her best to wind the rolls around them.

Some time in the night, the door pounded and Chamot shouted into her ear, “Get on your
feet. We are retreating to the British Legation.” She heard him banging on other doors.
She did not know how long she stood in the hall as if in a drunken stupour before he was
back. “Plans changed. We are not moving.”

She sat back on the bed. If only George were here. There was so much to tell him. She
must tell him that the hotel was bearing the brunt of the Boxer attack, that there was no
avoiding the sounds and smoke of battle, that there was no avoiding the horrific sight of
torn and mutilated limbs.

In the morning Mons Chamot was here there everywhere, issuing orders, gesticulating.
He stood before her. “You can do your part by supervising the distribution of the bread. It
looks like we’ll produce 300 loaves today. We’ll keep 30 and send the rest to the British
Legation for further distribution. Tomorrow the numbers might be different.”

So in the ensuing days there was always something more to tell George. She must tell
him of the responsibility thrust upon her to supervise the allocation of bread to the dif-
ferent Legations still holding out, that on two occasions she had ridden the Peking cart
carrying the bread to the British Legation, and how it had infuriated Mons Chamot when

16
he heard about it. Was she not aware that the bridge over the drainage canal was in clear
view of snipers, that three drivers had already been shot dead?

For sure she must tell George that through marvellous luck or divine intervention she
happened not to be in that part of the hotel when shells smashed into it. Twice the hotel
caught fire, and twice she joined the bucket brigade that worked feverishly to extinguish
the flames.

And yes, she must remember to tell him that she had come face to face with the wife of
the Austrian diplomat they met when they first arrived in Peking. The lady informed her
that she and her husband had forsaken the safety of the British Legation and booked in at
the hotel.

But they were not to renew their friendship. On July 14, Bastille Day, a day for celebra-
tion, two tremendous explosions rocked every pavilion, shed, and hut in the French Lega-
tion. The mines the Boxers had detonated under the French positions buried alive many
of its defenders. Among the few survivors who were dug out of the rubble was the badly
wounded Austrian diplomat.

As the screeching battle cries of the Boxers signalled their ground attack, so French
bugles sounded and the last reserves of French, Austrians, and Italians rose to meet the
enemy head on. Performing incredible feats of courage, they recaptured the deep trench
that had been dug to serve as the legation’s last ditch defence.

17
Three mornings later, she woke with a start. She tensed. Silence, eerie silence permeated
the hotel. She got down to the lobby as fast as she could. “Truce,” someone said. “There’s
been a truce.” It was too incredible for Agnes to accept. She believed it later in the morn-
ing when she heard that four cartloads of melons, cucumbers, and cabbages had arrived
at the American Legation gate. Each cart had a sign written in Chinese which translated:
“With the compliments of her Imperial Majesty.”

Days of waiting, but none of the eagerly awaited fresh vegetables reached the occupants
of hotel de pékin, Finally, a basket of eggs was delivered there by the British Legation.
Agnes rejoiced over the two, nicely soft boiled for her by the hotel under chef.

She was still under Mons Chamot’s orders not leave the hotel under any circumstances,
so obviously he had little faith in the cease fire, but she felt safe enough to remove the
cotton wool plugs from her ears. And where she had stooped low whenever she passed a
window, she now raised her head above its sandbag parapet to steal a glimpse at the go-
ings on outside. She saw a French marine treading his way through the rubble of bricks
on Legation Street. She saw an Austrian in conversation with a Manchu brave. Both
broke into smiles. What further proof was needed that the killing had stopped for once
and for all ?

Her hopes along with the hopes of close on five hundred foreign civilians and over two
thousand servants and refugees and four hundred heroic legation guards were shattered
when the besieging army ended the armistice with a barrage that dwarfed any other it
had previously fired. And while their shells were still falling, their shouting screaming
swordsmen, pikemen, riflemen swarmed in on the attack from every direction. Their
numbers were overwhelming. The defenders fell back. Those in the French Legation’s
deep trench barely made it back into the hotel. “Dites vos prières,” someone called to Ag-
nes. “La fin est proche.” When she stared around her and shook her head, another voice
called: “Say your prayers, the end is near.”

It was August 13.

18
 GEORGE

When last we left George, and that was on June 17th, he had just been given the good
news by bluejackets that Admiral Seymour’s force though badly mauled was holding out
at Hsi Ku Arsenal. The bluejackets knew nothing of the fate of Peking’s foreign residents.

It was now while the Volunteers were back on their watch that the sounds of battle, faint
at first grew more intense by the minute. Some daredevil volunteers who stuck their heads
above the parapet reported no man’s land to be totally deserted. All that rattle of rifle and
machine gun fire and detonation of grenades and mortars and shell bursts seemed to be
coming from the southern front. And so it was. Hurrahs and shouts began sounding all
along the line. “Yanks have broken through at Taku Road!” And within half an hour US
Marines were in the settlement with a British naval landing party alongside them haul-
ing their artillery pieces. And now from the race course Italian marines came charging
through the barriers with standards raised and trumpets blaring.

And that was just the start. The floodgates opened and an endless stream of khaki clad
Americans and white jacketed British and their mule carts and gun carriages poured into
the settlement. One moment George and his colleagues-in-arms were cheering waving
spectators, and next they were flat down on their faces as the screeching whzzzz was fol-
lowed instantly by the stupendous burst of a shell. Then another burst and yet another as
salvoes from the Chinese army’s modern German artillery continued without stop.

Next morning, the news had hardly passed around the Volunteers that powerful Russian
and Japanese forces on the east side of the Hai Ho had broken the stubborn resistance
of the Imperial Chinese Army, when the Chinese field batteries safe behind the city’s

19
fortress walls opened up again. And the pounding continued for another six straight
days before it came suddenly to a close. It was only when George clambered out of the
deep shelter that he learned why the guns had fallen silent. American, British, Japanese,
French, and Russian forces had stormed the ramparts and taken the city. But at what ter-
rible cost. Among the piles of dead was hero of Gettysburg, Colonel Emerson Liscum,
who at the height of the battle had led a bayonet charge against the Chinese line.

Tientsin City fell to the Allied forces on July 14th, and when a week went by, two weeks,
and no move was made to march on to Peking, George was beside himself. And he was
not alone. Protests rose from every quarter. Even the world’s press demanded action of
Commander-in-Chief General “Wait and See” Gaselee. And still he made no move.

Left to kick his heels, George wandered on to the Recreation Grounds where troops from
the United Kingdom were camped. He immediately recognized their talk. It was Taffy,
pure unadulterated Taffy. “What regiment?” He asked. “Royal Welch Fusiliers, Second
Battalion.” (Welch was the regiment’s preferred spelling). A stroke of luck indeed! All
he need do was play his Cardiff card. And he must have done so for all it was worth –
D’Arc’s Waxworks on St Mary Street – Chamber of Horrors – Oliver Cromwell’s Head,
the lot, for he came away with permission to accompany the battalion’s mule pack when
General Gaselee gave the order, expected any day now, to march on Peking.

But Gaselee continued to hold off giving the order. It wasn’t until August 04, which for
George was another week of crushing anxiety, before the Allied force of some twenty
thousand strong, finally started off on its way. Squadrons of Cossacks, Bengal Lancers,
and Japanese cavalry scouted ahead, feeling the way. Foot infantry followed. And at the

20
tail end the Service Corps units, with George, who never did get himself a horse, attached
to the Welsh mule pack. At Peitsang, a mere twenty miles from Tientsin, blasts of cannon
fire stopped the column in its tracks. Under a hail of rifle fire and choking in the black
smoke and yellow dust, the Welsh drivers turned their pack train into a gully. And there,
tormented by mosquitoes, mole crickets, and horse flies it stayed all night. At dawn when
George joined the section of mules delivering water to the battalion, he was astonished
to hear that the Japanese after a bloody but victorious battle against Tung Fu Hsiang’s
Kansu warriors were in possession of the town.

The retreating Chinese quickly proved they had not lost the war. Only forty-eight hours
later from fortified positions round the rail town of Yangtsun they opened up on the col-
umn with withering volleys of rifle and cannon fire. Once again the mule pack took cover
in a hollow. Before long, stretcher bearers appearing with their gruesome burdens told of
the heavy price the American, Welsh, and Sikhs had paid. But at least there was some-
thing to show for their sacrifice. The Stars and Stripes went up over the town’s west wall
and the Union Jack over the east.

But no resting on laurels. Bugles sounded up and down the column. ‘Wait and See’
Gaselee had changed his tune. Never mind the intense heat wave that blanketed the
whole north China plain, the battle weary Welch Fusiliers reached the village of Hosiwu
on August 9th, and three days later they stood by as the Japanese stormed the city of
Tungchow, only thirteen miles from Peking. That night a squadron of Cossacks swept
out of Tungchow and were at Peking’s huge city wall without a single shot being fired
at them. When news of this reached the column the plans for coordinated attacks on the
city’s fortress gates were thrown out of the window. The race was on for the glory of be-
ing first to reach the Legations.

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By moonlight, Rajputs, Sikhs, and Welch Fusiliers skirted their way round the Japanese
storming Chih Homen and the Russians firing their artillery at point blank range at Tung
Pienmen. At dawn, George was one of the thousand Sikhs, Rajputs, and Welshmen gazing
up at the lone legation defender in plain view atop the Tartar Wall flashing his semaphore
flags. Shouts of command and the Welsh and Sikhs deployed to cover the Rajputs as
they advanced double file into the Legation Quarter through a small sluice gate forty feet
below the signaller. The hour it took for the Rajputs to get through was the longest and
most torturous in George’s life. Finally it was the turn of the Welsh to proceed through
the wall.

George’s heart was in his mouth as he waded through the knee deep black slime that
channeled through the Tartar Wall. On reaching firm ground, scenes of devastation
greeted him on every side: great mounds of gray brick, shells of buildings, charred
beams, tiled roofs spread-eagled over the ground. A sudden crackle of rifle shots and he
ducked. When he looked up again, there before him stood an apparition, a South Af-
rican campaign hat over a bronzed face, grimy khaki shirt, leather bandolier, jodhpurs.
George pointed to the multi-tiered curved roof of a temple-like structure that dominated
the skyline. “Isn’t that Chienmen?” . . . “No, that’s Hatamen. Chienmen was destroyed.
Those rifle shots you heard moments ago came from its ruins. Boxers are still holed up
there.” . . . “Then we are not far from hotel de pékin? . . . “Correct, but you can’t get there
from here. All those barricades on Legation Street. But you can get there from the British
Legation. Anyway why do you want to go to the hotel? It was badly shelled, many of the
staff killed. It’s not open for business.”

George swallowed hard as he allowed himself to be led by his mule twisting and turning
its way across Legation Street. Where he remembered the street to be straight as a die

22
along its entire length it was now blocked off every fifty feet or so by barricades of stone
blocks, loose brick, garden gates, window frames. Standing in the Russian Legation he
lost his bearings. Could that mound of rubble be all that was left of the pavilion which
Postmaster Nicolai Gomloyeff made available to him for his marionette show only nine
months earlier?

In the British Legation it was like a garden fête, flags and bunting hanging from eaves,
smiling faces, joyful shouts of greeting. Standing out in the milling crowd were military
uniforms of every colour, but with scarlet predominating. Some ladies were attired in
white as if for the Ascot, broad brimmed hats, dainty parasols, ankle length gowns. Oth-
ers not in quite such finery, but surely in their Sunday best, their hats in style and hems
touching the ground. One such lady turned to face him. He stood transfixed. He choked
out: “Agnes!” She raised a hand and gasped: “George, it’s you!”

This must have been the most dramatic moment of their married life yet their simple
greeting was all we were ever told about it. Fortunately, we have a letter written only six
weeks after the event by their Hong Kong contact, William Farmer, to a mutual friend, a
Mrs Fanning, which captures something of the magic of the moment. We show that letter
below.

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We are also fortunate enough in having the bottom half of a letter that had been written
on both sides of a single sheet of notepaper. The sheet had come apart at the horizontal
centre fold and the top half is missing. The letter’s author was Sir Claude MacDonald,
and the recipient, George D’Arc.
On the face side of the half sheet,
Sir Claude suggests that Agnes
was much more comfortable and
certainly had better food than he
or his staff during the siege. He
was probably right with regard to
the food available to Agnes, for it
was at hotel de pékin where much
of it was produced for the whole
legation quarter. Moreover, the
hotel’s reserve of canned goods
and wine never ran dry. But as
Commander of the legations’
defence forces he well knew that
whereas his quarters were set
back some distance from the front
line, hotel de pékin was the front
line under constant fire through-
out the siege. So whose locatioin
was the more comfortable?

On the reverse side of the half

sheet, Sir Claude lauds Mrs D’Arc
for having acted with “courage
and devotion above all praise.”
He states, furthermore, that he has
strongly recommended her for
the medal being awarded by Her
Majesty’s Government to all who
served with distinction during the
siege.

And Agnes duly received her medal.

(now in the author’s possession.)

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Widowed in 1924, heroic Agnes left China for England in 1927 where she retired in
Hove, Sussex. When her grandson, Desmond Power, author of this article, arrived there
in 1946, he spent a month with her. Here they are on Brighton Pier.

Her memory sharp, she regaled him with colourful stories of her time in Peking and
Tientsin. To this day he kicks himself for failing to ask her what happened to George’s
marionettes in 1900. Were they looted or destroyed as the late John Phillips has it in his
research, or were they taken out by the show’s workers just before the Boxers began their
attack on the foreign settlements?

Perhaps one day, the answer will come to light.

25
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to record here my appreciation for the courtesy and generous use of their time and
material of all those who provided me with information on the D’Arcs. And I earnestly
hope that I have not through inadvertence omitted anyone. If so, I offer my sincere apolo-
gies.

John M Blundall of Glasgow, Lanarkshire, puppet master of high repute for giving his
gracious permission to use the Japanese woodblock prints contained in his collection of
rare marionette artifacts. On Page 1 of this article, the print on the left, crafted by the art-
ist Tsukioka Kogyo, shows a D’Arc’s theatre stage on which a drunken Pierrot performs
on stilts. And the one on the right is of the celebrated actor, Onoe Kikugoro V, playing
the role of the drunken stilt walking Pierrot in direct imitation of one of D’Arc’s most
popular acts. My thanks go also to John Blundall’s colleague Stephen Foster, leading
studio craftsman and puppet designer, for processing and emailing the woodblock prints
for my use.

Frank Bren of Melbourne, VIC, noted researcher of stage and cinema, co-author (with
Law Kar and Sam Ho) of Hong Kong Cinema - A Cross Cultural View (Scarecrow Press,
US 2004) and to John D Simmonds of Turner, ACT, Old China Hand from Tientsin,
soldier of fortune and author of the historical novel Luddite, for their discovery of George
Lambert D’Arc’s 1899 letter to the Editor of Peking & Tientsin Times, which is printed on
Page 3 of the foregoing article.

Richard Bradshaw of Bowral, NSW, master puppeteer, actively engaged in presenting

puppets in Europe and Asia, and who is an author of published works such as D’Arc’s
Marionettes in Australia, and Mark St Leon of Penshurst, NSW, circus historian and
researcher who provided me with invaluable information on Warren’s Circus in Tientsin.

Australian War Memorial Collection for permission to show their photograph, which
appears on Page 17, of the hotel de pékin bedroom destroyed by shell fire.

Keystone Press Agency for permission to show their photographs which appear on Pages
20 and 21 of Allied troops at the time of the battle for Tientsin in 1900.

Joyce Larson Blessinger of Lacey, WA, for her donation of the photographs that appear
on Pages 14 and 29 showing the destruction of the Tientsin settlements by Chinese artil-
lery.

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