Excerpt from Indiscreet Letters From Peking: Being the Notes of an Eye-Witness, Which Set Forth in Some Detail, From Day to Day, the Real Story of the Siege and Sack of a Distressed Capital in 1900 the Year of Great Tribulation Of course the Peking siege has already been amply described in many volumes and much magazine litera ture. Dr. Morrison, the famous Peking correspondent of the Times, informs me that he has in his library no less than forty-three accounts in English alone. The majority Of these, however, are not as complete or en lightening as they might be; nor has the extraordinarily dramatic nature of the Warning, the Siege, and the Sack been Shown. Thus few people, outside Of a small circle in the Far East, have been able to understand from such accounts what actually occurred in Peking, or to realise the nature Of the fighting which took place. The two best accounts, Dr. Morrison's own statement and the French Minister's graphic report to his govern ment, were both written rather to fix the principal events immediately after they had occurred than to attempt to probe beneath the surface, or to deal with the strictly personal or private side. Nor did they em brace that most remarkable portion Of the Boxer year, the entire sack of Peking and the extraordinary scenes which marked this latter-day Vandalism. A veil has been habitually drawn over these little-known events, but in the narrative which follows it is boldly lifted for the first time. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.