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Updated: May 19, 2025
In the morning a party from headquarters was making a tour of inspection of the Su wang-fu posts, in order to see exactly how much battering they could stand, and how soon the Italian contention that already the hillock works were untenable would become an undeniable fact.
These barricades are becoming more and more powerful, and are being pushed so close to us by a system of parallels and traverses that at the Su wang-fu and the French lines only a few feet separate some of our own defences from the enemy's.
Ponies and mules are also getting scarcer, and the original mobs, numbering at least one hundred and fifty or two hundred head, have disappeared at the rate of two or three a day as meat. Our remaining animals are now quartered in a portion of the Su wang-fu, where they are feeding on what scant grass and green vegetation they can still find in those gloomy gardens.
Passing over to the Su wang-fu, you realise the extraordinary difference between the danger points along the British Legation northern and western barricades, and little Colonel S 's command. Here you are in direct touch with the enemy, for the snipers of forty-eight hours ago have been strongly reinforced, doubtless attracted by the possibility of loot.
All this I discovered in the course of the morning, and by afternoon I had nothing better to do than go over to the great Su wang-fu, or Prince Su's palace grounds, now filled with Chinese refugees, both Catholic and Protestant, and there watch the Japanese at work.
You only have to see these mutinous marines at work for five minutes as snipers to be convinced of that. I saw a case in point only a few hours ago. Men were wanted to drive back, or at least intimidate, a whole nest of Chinese riflemen, who had cautiously established themselves in a big block of Chinese houses across the dry canal, which separates the British Legation from the Su wang-fu.
If they bombarded us without intermission for twenty-four hours, they would render the British Legation almost untenable. Two or three more guns are on the Tartar Wall; three or four are ranged against the Su wang-fu and French lines; some are kept travelling round us searching for a weak spot. They have no system or fire-discipline.
Poor people they little know! Is it always thus with faith? So the Su wang-fu, which is but the northwestern part of our lines, is now a city in itself, inhabited by the most unlikely people in the world. Three days have sufficed to give it an entity of its own.
The commanding Italian knoll on the northwest corner of the Su wang-fu remains firm, but somehow no one has very much confidence in the Italians, and secondary lines are being formed behind them, towards which the Italians look with longing eyes. And yet next to the British Legation posts the Italians are having the easiest time of all.
Another gun, a newcomer, had also been posted somewhere near the ruins of the Chinese Customs, as if encouraged by the success of the other one, and was now playing on the main-gate posts of the Su wang-fu, and rendering even these more and more dangerous for us to hold permanently. The newcomer was, however, still, comparatively speaking, far away; it was our old friend we most dreaded.
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