When Yuan was made Governor of Shantung a number of the Boxer leaders
called upon him expecting to find in him a sympathizer worthy of his
predecessor. They told him of their great powers and possibilities, and
of how they were proof against the spears, swords and bullets of their
enemies. Yuan listened to them with patience and interest, and invited
them to dine with him and other official friends in the near future.

During the dinner the Governor directed the conversation towards the
Boxer leaders and their prowess, and led them once more to relate to
all his friends their powers of resistance. He fed them well, and after
the dinner was over he suggested that they give an exhibition of their
wonderful powers to the friends whom he had invited. This they could
not well refuse to do after the braggadocio way in which they had
talked, and so the Governor lined them up, called forth a number of his
best marksmen, and proceeded with the exhibition, and it is unnecessary
to add that if the Empress Dowager had invited Yuan to the meeting with
the princes when they discussed the advisability of joining the Boxers
on account of a belief in their supernatural powers, she might have
been spared the humiliation of 1900.

We shall soon see that Yuan cared no more for the "confidential
instructions" of the Empress Dowager, when his statesmanship was
involved, than for the orders of the Emperor. His business was to
govern and protect the people of his province, and thanks to his wise
statesmanship and strong character "there was not only no foreigner
killed during the troubled season of anxiety and flight" of 1900, and
"comparatively little of the suffering elsewhere so common."

And now we come to another plot which indicates the character of Yuan
and two other great viceroys, Chang Chih-tung, now Grand Secretary, and
Liu Kun-yi, Viceroy of the Yangtse-kiang provinces. It is a well-known
fact that during the Boxer rebellion the Empress Dowager was so
influenced by the promises of the Boxers to drive out all the
foreigners that she sent out some very unwise edicts that they should
be massacred in the provinces. Yuan and his two confreres secretly
stipulated that if the foreign men of war would keep away from the
ports of their provinces they would maintain peace and protect the
foreigners no matter what orders came from the throne. So that when
these confidential instructions came from the palace to massacre the
foreigners, in