When the Empress Dowager ignor miniously fled from Peking in 1900 there was not a single Manchu soldier of the 65,000 men on the eight Banner Corps rolls, who were receiving regular Poy, who would risk his life to escort her, the Emperor, and others of the Imperial '00 Household, out of the capital and protect them on their fight to Taiyuan, A body of Chinese troops did this work and showed themselves ready to fight to the death against any pursuing enemy. was not until the Court had arrived at Taiyuan and were out of danger, that the Manchus began to flock around their Empress Dowager and try to oust her protectors, claiming it.be their right to guard her.' She, however, knew these men pretty well by that time and roundly rated them in public for their. palpable cowardice. Hence up to the time when the Court returned to Pekin in January, 1902, Chinese troops: still guarded the old lady's precious person, and even to the present day the principal troops surrounding the Imporiat Palaces and Eho Park Palace who escort their Majesties between these two places are men belonging to the commands of Viceroy Yuan Shih-kai and Generals Ma Yiikim and Chiang Kuei-ti. The present crisis and the growing antipathy in the country against the governing race have however revived her Majesty's latent suspicions against. people of Chinese descent, which had been lying dormant for over two years, and it is now reported from the "Palaces that she is thinking seriously of recalling from Berlin H.E.
Yin Ch'ang (Manchu), at present Chinese Minister to Germany, to take command of the recently organised foreign-modelled Manchu troops who are to be turned into an Imperial Guards Corps at once, with Rich Kiang, the Manchu Vice-President of the Board of War, now commandant of those troops, as second in command. "This will enable her to dispense with her Chinese guards whom she is said to be really afraid of at heart.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.