The Empress Dowager, who hated the very idea of reforms based upon foreign models, was opposed by the Emperor, who desired them. The prime-minister, Prince Tuan, bitterly anti-foreign, found his schemes opposed by Prince Ching and the ever-politic Li Hung Chang. The bloody Kwang-su general, Tung-Fu-Hsang, who thirsted for the blood of foreigners, was thwarted in his plans for their destruction by the more wary General Jung Lu, who ordered his troops not to kill any more than they could help.
So Pekin fell, almost without a struggle, and for a year afterwards the city was misruled and looted by foreign soldiers, who destroyed many of its most beautiful structures and carried away its most precious works of art. From it also they ravaged the surrounding country, sending out punishment expeditions to kill, burn, and destroy in every direction.
In the mean time the American troops had been followed into the city by a train of the biggest army wagons ever seen in China, each drawn by six huge mules, and by a number of four-mule ambulances, one of which brought Rob Hinckley. From it he was transferred to a hospital, where he lay for weeks with no knowledge of his surroundings or of what was happening about him. Then one day he opened his eyes and looked into the face of his mother.
Of course he knew that this was a dream, for all things were but dreams with him now, so he wearily closed his unreliable eyes and went to sleep. The next time he opened them he again saw his mother's face, bending lovingly, but oh! so anxiously, over him. This time the dream lasted until she gently kissed his forehead, and he heard her say: "Please, dear God, don't take him from us!" Then he knew that he was awake and must make haste to get up, because it troubled his mother to have him lie there. Besides, it was very silly not to be able to raise his hands. A little later it occurred to him to wonder if he were in Cheng-Ting-Fu, or, if not, how it happened that his mother had come away from so safe a place into one so full of danger as Pekin.
By-and-by they told him all about the expedition that, accompanied by his father, had been sent down the road from Pekin, how terribly it had punished Pao-Ting-Fu for its murder of missionaries, and how it had gone on to Cheng-Ting-Fu to find all the foreigners who had taken refuge behind its brave walls safe and unharmed. He learned of his parents' joyful reunion, and how they had hastened back to Pekin and his bedside. Gradually, too, he was told the thrilling story of his father's escape from the dreadful city of Tai-Yuan, of his perilous wanderings through Shan-Si and Ho-nan, until finally he found himself on a branch of the Han River, down which he floated for many nights in a skiff to Hankow. From there he was taken on a United States gun-boat to Shanghai, where he met Mr. Bishop, the engineer, and learned that his boy had plunged into the very heart of the storm of wrath then centring about Pekin.