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. They secretly sent supplies of food to the besieged,
which the latter feared to use lest they be poisoned. But more
than that they kept their own armies in Peking as a guard and as
a final resort in case there was danger of the legation being
overcome, and as a matter of fact there were regular pitched
battles between the troops of Prince Ching and his associates and
those of the Boxer leader, Tung Fu-hsiang. Had the Boxers finally
succeeded, Yuan Shih-kai and Prince Ching and their associates
would have lost their heads, but as the Boxers failed it was they
who went to their graves by the short process of the
executioner's knife.
So Yuan was between two fires. He had disobeyed the commands of
the Emperor in not coming to Peking and had therefore incurred
his displeasure and caused his downfall. He had disobeyed the
Empress Dowager in not putting to death the foreigners in his
province, and if the Boxers were successful he would surely lose
his head on that account. The Boxers, however, were not
successful and as his disobedience had helped to save the empire,
Yuan, so long as the Dowager remained in power, was safe.
But a day of reckoning must inevitably come. The Empress Dowager
was an old woman, the Emperor was a young man. In all human
probabilities she would be the first to die, while his only hope
was in her outliving the Emperor, who had sworn vengeance on all
those who had been instrumental in his imprisonment
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