The posting of
seditious placards, exhorting to the utter destruction of foreigners and
of every foreign thing, continued unrebuked. Hostile demonstrations
toward the stranger gained strength by organization.
The sect, commonly styled the Boxers, developed greatly in the provinces
north of the Yang-Tse, and with the collusion of many notable officials,
including some in the immediate councils of the Throne itself, became
alarmingly aggressive. No foreigner's life, outside of the protected
treaty ports, was safe. No foreign interest was secure from spoliation.
The diplomatic representatives of the powers in Peking strove in vain
to check this movement. Protest was followed by demand and demand by
renewed protest, to be met with perfunctory edicts from the Palace and
evasive and futile assurances from the Tsung-li Yamen. The circle of the
Boxer influence narrowed about Peking, and while nominally stigmatized
as seditious, it was felt that its spirit pervaded the capital itself,
that the Imperial forces were imbued with its doctrines, and that the
immediate counselors of the Empress Dowager were in full sympathy with
the antiforeign movement.
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