RE Boxer Rebellion:
If you want to watch a great old movie, see “55 Days At Peking” with Charleton Heston and David Niven.
Great flick about the events in that time.
Dad was there in 1945, defending a coal mine outside Beijing from battles between Chiang Kai-Shek’s troops and Mao Zedong’s troops.
Let’s remember the other side of the story.....which is that the boxers took to murdering foreigners (and Chinese Christians) wherever they could find them. Many completely peaceful and unarmed missionaries were among the victims - including women and children - and the Imperial German ambassador was murdered by a large crowd.
There is a reason why Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Britain. America and Japan all allied against them. The Dowager Empress and her advisors were obviously playing a double game of publicly condemning the violence while privately encouraging the boxers. This fooled nobody. Whatever China’s grievances (some clearly legit), just murdering every foreigner they could get their hands on was barbaric, unjust and quite stupid.
My grandmother’s second husband was there.
3 Marines on a 3 day liberty pass becomes a Marine Invasion when the history is written.
There were about 50 Marines in the Legation Siege with 19 casualties (3 dead, 16 wounded). A Marine battalion was engaged in Tiensin with the 9th U.S. Infantry Regiment. The Relief of Peking including the 14th U.S. Infantry Regiment, the 6th U.S. Cavalry, elements of the 5th U.S. Artillery and a battalion of Marines. They had light casualties. The Americans was about 3,000 in total with 1,000 of them Marines. The relief column came from many nations including Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Italians.