The Siege of the Peking Legations Author:Roland Allen Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V THE ATTACK OF THE IMPERIAL TROOPS I. FIRES : JUNE 20-24 When the attack began we calculated that we could hold out for some little time unless b... more »esieged with heavy guns. The total force of the combined guards amounted, indeed, to only 18 officers and 389 men, and the length of line to be defended was great, but we had the assistance of over 100 volunteers, amongst whom were several able military officers. There were Colonel Shiba, the Military Attache1 of the Japanese Legation, and his assistant, Captain Morita; Captain F. G. Poole, the Doctor's brother, who was in Peking studying Chinese; Herr von Strauch, of the Customs, who had been an officer in the Imperial German Guards; Captain Percy Smith, who was passing through the capital on a visit, and Mr. Nigel Oliphant, of the Imperial Chinese Bank, who had served in the Scots Greys. All these did signal service in the defence; and for my- own part I never doubted that such troops and such volunteers would be able to keepthe enemy outside or to expel them if they broke in, even though it might be at the cost of serious loss. The greatest anxiety was lest ammunition should fail. We all knew that it was far from sufficient, and Dr. Morrison has since assured the world that the Japanese had only 100 rounds per man, the Italians 120, the Eussians 145, whilst the best provided of the other guards had only 300 rounds. There were also four guns—an Italian one-pounder, an American Colt, an Austrian machine-gun, and a British Nordenfeldt of ancient pattern, warranted to jam at every fourth round. But still we felt sure that, though we might be forced to retire from some of the positions which we at first occupied, we should make a good fight for it. The really grave danger was lest the Chinese should mount guns on the wall an...« less