As I sat in the library all through the forenoon receiving reports and giving directions, there was a constant hissing of bullets and shells overhead. No shell dropped in our legation, although two or three fell in the British. The Chinese artillery fire was remarkably accurate. Sitting there and listening to the tumult of shouting and firing from the Chenmen gate and the volleys of guns and artillery exceeding in volume of sound any Fourth of July I had ever experienced, I felt thankful to have seen a day when the Chinese would stand up and fight out a big issue. I soon found that the battle was not commensurate with its sound.
Shortly before noon Chang Hsun was brought to the Dutch Legation, accompanied by a German employé of the Chinese police. Chang Hsun had been persuaded to come by his generals almost with the use of force. He was still under the illusion that he could mediate. When the Dutch minister informed him that this was impossible, he wished to return to his troops. This, of course, could not be permitted.
Firing was violent from dawn until nearly noon. The field guns, machine guns, and rifles filled the air with enormous tumult, but from eleven o'clock on the firing gradually diminished, and it entirely ceased at four in the afternoon. Immediately thereafter I proceeded by motor car to the various centres of fighting. I found that Chang Hsun's house had been struck by several shells and that the indirect artillery firing of the government troops had been managed with considerable accuracy. The human dead had already been removed from the neighbourhood although numerous carcasses of horses remained. Thence I proceeded to the Temple of Heaven, where I was astonished to find Chang Hsun's troops encamped with all their guns and artillery, eating, drinking, and talking in the best of spirits. They told me that five of their men had been killed, and that their bodies were still there. The absence of visible results from the enormous expenditure of ammunition during the day was astonishing. I found, however, that the method of fighting employed by the troops was to creep up as closely as possible behind a high wall, and fire into the air in the general direction where the enemy might be. Hence, the bystanders were in rather greater danger than the combatants themselves. In fact, the total number of killed as a result of the fighting of July 12th was twenty-six; seventy-six were seriously wounded, and more than half of these were civilians.