Название: The Last Days of Pekin
Автор: Pierre Loti
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Документальная литература
isbn: 4064066248765
isbn:
On this fresh October morning the sailors and soldiers of all nations are hurrying and skurrying along the shaded road that leads to the French fort, seeking the pleasures of discovery; amusing themselves in a conquered land, catching chickens and pilfering salads and pears from the gardens. The Russians are taking down the Buddhas and gilded vases from a pagoda. The English are driving with sticks the cattle captured in the fields. The Dalmatians and the Japanese—fast friends of an hour's standing—are making their toilet together on the banks of a stream, and two Bersaglieri who have caught a little donkey are riding it astride, almost bursting with laughter.
And yet the sad exodus of Chinese peasants which began yesterday still continues; in spite of the assurance given them that no harm would be done to any one, those who were left felt themselves too near and preferred to flee. Whole families departed with bowed heads; men, women, children, all dressed alike in blue cotton gowns, and loaded with baggage, even the babies resignedly carrying their little pillows and mattresses.
One scene was heart-breaking. An old Chinese woman—very, very old, perhaps a hundred years old—who could scarcely stand up, was going, God knows where, driven from her home, where a company of Germans had established themselves; she went away, dragging herself along with the help of two young lads who may have been her grandsons and who supported her as best they could, looking at her with infinite respect and tenderness. Seeming not to see us and looking as though she had nothing further to expect from any one, she passed slowly by, her poor face filled with despair, with supreme and irremediable distress, whilst the soldiers behind her were throwing away with shouts of laughter the unpretentious images from the altar of her ancestors. The beautiful sunshine of the autumn morning shone calmly on her well-cared-for little garden, blooming with zinnias and asters.
The fort which fell to the lot of the French occupies almost the space of a town with all its dependencies, lodgings for mandarins and soldiers, electrical work-shops, stables, and powder magazines. In spite of the dragons that adorn the gates and in spite of the clawed monster painted on a stone slab in front of the entrance, it is constructed upon the most recent principles—plastered, casemated, and provided with Krupp guns of the latest models. Unfortunately for the Chinese, who had accumulated in the vicinity of Ning-Hia some terrifying defences—mines, torpedoes, fougades, and intrenched camps—nothing was finished, nothing completed anywhere; the movement against foreigners began six months too soon, before they had gotten into working order all the material Europe had sold to Li-Hung-Chang.
A thousand Zouaves who are to arrive to-morrow are to occupy this fort during the winter; while awaiting their arrival we have simply brought along a score of sailors to take possession.
It is curious to go among these houses, abandoned in haste and terror, and to find ourselves in the midst of the disorder of precipitate flight; broken furniture and dishes, clothing, guns, bayonets, ballistic books, boots with paper soles, umbrellas, and ambulance supplies are piled pell-mell before the doors. In the kitchens dishes of rice are ready for the oven, with plates of cabbage and cakes made of fried grasshoppers.
There are shells everywhere, cartridges strew the grounds, gun-cotton is dangerously dispersed, and black powder is scattered in long trains. But side by side with this debauch of war materials, droll details attest the human side of Chinese life; on all the window-sills are pots of flowers, on all the walls are household gods placed there by the soldiers. The familiar sparrow abounds here, and is never interfered with, it seems, by the inhabitants of the place, and from the roofs the cats, circumspect but anxious to enter into relations with us, are observing the sort of ménage that will be possible with such unexpected hosts as ourselves.
Very near us, a hundred metres from our fort, passes the Great Wall of China. It is surmounted at this point by a watch tower, where the Japanese are now established, and there they have planted their white flag on a bamboo stick in the red sunlight.
Always smiling, especially at the French, the little Japanese soldiers invite us to come up to see from above the surrounding country.
The Great Wall, seven or eight hundred metres thick at this point, descends gently amid green grass on the Chinese side, but drops vertically on the side toward Manchuria, where it is flanked by enormous square bastions.
We mount, and at our feet we see the wall plunging on one hand into the Yellow Sea, while on the other it rises to the summits of the mountain and goes winding on through the fields as far as the eye can see, giving the impression of a colossal thing which never comes to any end.
Toward the east we have a view, in this clear light, of the deserted plains of Manchuria.
Toward the west—in China—the wooded country has a deceptive look of peace and confidence. All the European flags hoisted on the forts have a festive air amid all the green. It is true that on a plain near the shore there are evidences of an immense movement of Cossacks, but they are far away and the noise does not reach us, though there are at least five thousand men among the tents and among the flags which are stuck into the ground. Where the other powers send to Ning-Hia only a few companies, the Russians on the contrary proceed in great masses, because of their designs on neighboring Manchuria. Shan-Haï-Kouan, the Tartar village which has closed its gates through fear of pillage, appears in the distance, gray and mute as though asleep behind its high crenellated walls. On the sea off toward the horizon, rests the squadron of the Allies—a fleet of steel monsters with black smoke, friends for the moment, silently assembled in the motionless blue.
The weather is calm, exquisite, buoyant. The prodigious rampart of China blossoms at this season like a garden. Between its sombre bricks, loosened by time, asters, and quantities of pinks like those at the seashore in France are pushing their way through.
This legendary wall, which has for centuries stopped all invasion from the north, will probably nevermore see the yellow flag and the green dragon of the Celestial emperors. Its time has gone by, passed, is forever at an end.
III
ON THE WAY TO PEKIN
I
Thursday, Oct. 11, 1900.
At noon, on a beautiful calm day that is almost warm and very luminous on the water, I leave the admiral's ship, the Redoutable, to go on a mission to Pekin.
We are in the gulf of Petchili on the road to Taku, but at such a distance from the shore that it is not visible, so there is no indication of China anywhere.
The trip begins with a short ride on a steam launch, which takes us out to the Bengali, the little despatch-boat which will bring me to land by to-night.
The water is softly blue in the autumn sunshine, which is always bright in this part of the world. To-day, by chance, the wind and the waves seem to sleep. As far as one can see, great warships succeed one another, motionless and menacing. As far as the horizon there are the turrets, the masts, the smoke of the astonishing international squadron with all its train of satellites, torpedo boats, transports, СКАЧАТЬ